The Rights and Wrongs of Article 5 in Dementia and End of Life Care

The Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards (DoLS) were introduced in England and Wales for very good reasons. But it is generally accepted, by a Select Committee of the House of Lords for instance, that they are not working very well. They are regarded as overly bureaucratic. In 2017 the Law Commission published its report on how Deprivation of Liberty should be handled, which is likely to lead to a reform of the Law. But the concerns about the DoLS have raised deeper questions about the relationship between the Law and clinical practice. Are there areas of practice where proper concern about human rights should be subordinate to the requirements for good clinical care? Or is this anathema to the whole human and disability rights agendas? We shall reflect on the developments in connection with the DoLS in order to raise this question using a case vignette concerning end-of-life care for people with dementia. Our answer to the question will be speculative, but perhaps also provocative.