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.'