Life support treatment can be withdrawn from people suffering from debilitating diseases as long as relatives and doctors agree and medical guidelines are followed, the Court of Protection has ruled in a landmark judgment.
Delivering his judgment in M (by her litigation friend, Mrs B) v A Hospital [2017] EWCOP 19, Mr Justice Peter Jackson held that it had not been a legal requirement for the decision to withdraw life support to have been taken by the court.
He said it was clear that ‘the court is not the source of lawfulness: it identifies whether treatment is or is not lawful, but it cannot make unlawful treatment lawful, or vice versa’.
The requirements of the law, set out by the Mental Capacity Act 2005, were to act in the patient’s ‘best interests’, Jackson J said. While there is a strong presumption that it is in a person’s best interests to stay alive, ‘this is not an absolute, and there are cases where it will not be in the patient’s interests to receive life-sustaining treatment,’ he said. He referred to Lady Hale’s guidance in Aintree v James [2013] UKSC 6 that decision-makers must put themselves in the place of the individual patient and ask what their attitude to the treatment would be.
M, a 50-year-old woman, suffered from Huntington’s disease, an incurable neurological condition, and had been bedridden with little awareness of her surroundings.Her family applied for permission for doctors to withdraw treatment.
Caroline Barrett, solicitor at Irwin Mitchell, who acted for the family, said the judgment had ‘great legal significance’ and would ‘allow those suffering with terrible diseases such as Huntington’s, or other terminal or life limiting illnesses, to pass away with dignity, easing the suffering and pain for all involved’.
It is also one of the first reported cases where the court has appointed a family member, M’s mother, rather than the Official Solicitor, as ‘litigation friend’ to act on behalf of the patient.
Barrett said: ‘The judge specifically said that just because the mother was asking for withdrawal of treatment, this did not make her an unsuitable litigation friend.’
