DO OLDER people in the health and care system have human rights that need to be protected? And if so, is enough being done to ensure that they are? These are the questions being asked by Parliament’s Joint Committee on Human Rights (JCHR) which has called for evidence — by February 17 — on the issue.

The Committee’s concern has been raised by two recent reports. First, physical ill-treatment and neglect of older people was highlighted in the British Institute for Human Rights report Something for Everyone. Secondly, the Age Concern Rights for Real report, published in May 2006, examined means of using human rights law and principles in practical ways to ensure that older people are treated with respect and dignity. This report cited estimates that about 500,000 older people were subject to abuse at any one time in the UK.

Victimisation or neglect of older people within the healthcare system, who may be particularly vulnerable to ill-treatment, raises important issues of substantive human rights law, says the committee. It has focused on particular human rights that can be breached in the treatment of older people. Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights guarantees the protection of life and requires positive steps to be taken by the State. Article 8 protects the right to respect for private life and physical and psychological integrity. Article 14 outlaws discrimination on the basis of race and age. And in extreme cases Article 3 prohibits inhuman and degrading treatment of older people. In the round these rights can be described as protecting the dignity and choices of older people when they become vulnerable.

The Committee has listed areas in which it is interested. Matters relating to the actual care of people in hospitals and care homes include removing meals before they are finished, use of covert medication and refusing to give those in care homes the weekly allowance to which they are entitled. More general issues include the insistence that people move to care homes rather than having care packages in their own home; the number of deaths of older people shortly after being made to move care homes; and the refusal of local authorities to place couples in the same nursing home. The Committee says that it will consider how human rights principles could be applied to ensure that older people are treated with greater dignity and respect when being cared for.

This inquiry into what is often the Cinderella area of human rights will be welcomed not only by the usual pressure groups and charities but also by millions of older people and their often anxious families. It has the potential to be a launching pad for the generic right to respect for human dignity.

Stephen Cragg is a barrister specialising in public law at Doughty Street Chambers

s.cragg@doughtystreet.co.uk

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