April Fools' Day

• 1/4/23: Abolition of MHA and MCA — Following the recommendations in Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, 'Concluding observations on the initial report of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland' (3/10/17) that the UK should "[r]epeal legislation and practices that authorize non-consensual involuntary, compulsory treatment and detention of persons with disabilities on the basis of actual or perceived impairment", and should "abolish all forms of substituted decision-making concerning all spheres and areas of life", the government has decided to repeal not only the Mental Health Act 1983 but also the Mental Capacity Act 2005. Details of future legislation have yet to be announced, but it is likely that preventive State detention will be permitted based on a non-discriminatory assessment that a citizen is dangerous. This step has been welcomed by both the Association of Patient Representatives in London (APRiL) and the Federation of Outpatient Lawyers (FoOL).X

• 1/4/13: To coincide with the implementation of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 and the abolition of the Legal Services Commission, both of which take effect on 1 April, the Legal Aid Agency has announced that neither the fixed fees system nor the matter start system is 'fit for purpose'. A spokesman stated that (a) the mental health fixed fee system has reached a level of complexity of which Heath Robinson would have been proud, so from today future payments will be based on a reasonable hourly rate for work reasonably incurred; and (b) the matter start system is unnecessary because of the abolition of fixed fees (in any event, ECHR obligations mean the total number of cases is determined by the number of patients detained by the state), so from henceforth individual firms may carry out as many cases as reputation and market forces permit. The Federation Of Outpatient Lawyers issued the following initial statement: 'This common sense approach seems too good to be true.'

• 1/4/12: The government have announced that from 1 April 2012, following the Court of Appeal decision in Cheshire West and Chester Council v P [2011] EWCA Civ 1257 and the subsequent High Court decision in Re C; C v Blackburn and Darwen Borough Council [2011] EWHC 3321 (COP), the entire Mental Health Act 1983 will be repealed. The government spokesman, Avril Poisson, said: “Those subject to the Act lack capacity, as demonstrated by their inability to comply with voluntary inpatient treatment, and they should be treated equally to others who lack capacity. Recent case law on deprivation of liberty has shown that the relevant contrast when assessing ‘relative normality’ is not ‘the ordinary adult going about the kind of life which the able-bodied man or woman on the Clapham omnibus would normally expect to lead’ but rather ‘the kind of lives that people like X would normally expect to lead’ (Cheshire West, para 102). Periods of hospital inpatient treatment are normal, as an inevitable corollary of psychiatric disabilities: during those periods there are no realistic alternatives and no deprivation of liberty within the meaning of Article 5 of the European Convention.” She said that the 29-year-old Act would be abolished with immediate effect because it is no longer fit for purpose, and that the “so-called” deprivation of liberty safeguards would also come under scrutiny. “When I use a word,” she said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.”