A Daily Mail headline last week screamed: "Anger as court seizes £3.2bn from the elderly".

By this, the paper meant that the court had appointed deputies to manage - in total - £3.2bn in assets belonging to people who had lost capacity, under conditions set by the court.

The nub of the argument was that the court was appointing people who weren't family members as deputies - in a minority of cases, where solicitors or councils are chosen - and that where it was appointing family members it was being overly restrictive about how finances should be used or accessed.

There were two highly emotive case studies to back up these points.

The court was also accused of being "obscure" - seemingly a reference to the fact hearings are held in private - and attacked for paying out only 0.5% in interest on people's savings.

The Office of the Public Guardian (OPG) was not spared either. It sparked the paper's ire for charging individuals who lack capacity £23m to monitor deputies.

Straw's response is unlikely to cut much ice with the Mail, reasonable as it is. He pointed out that:-

  • Deputies are usually family members, and families typically support appointments of deputies.
  • Deputies now face far fewer restrictions on accessing and using money than before the Mental Capacity Act 2005.
  • Deputies can appeal against orders that are too restrictive.
  • 15% of individuals are not charged by the OPG to monitor deputies, while 72% are charged £175 a year and just 2.5% are charged £800 a year - a figure that was highlighted in some of the coverage (£175 still seems like quite a lot to me but the alternative is money coming out of general taxation to finance this work).

Appointing deputies is always likely to be a fraught business as people already have lost the power to determine how their affairs should be managed.

Ideally, as Straw points out, people should be appointing attorneys to take control of their affairs should they lose capacity in future.

He says this should be "as common and natural as making a will", a point also made by the Public Guardian Board - which scrutinises the OPG - in its annual report this week.

To make this a reality there is a big job to be done by the OPG, the Ministry of Justice, local authorities and others to raise public awareness of the provisions of the Mental Capacity Act, two years after its implementation.

In the meantime, expect more media coverage like this from the Mail and others.