DOCTORS could green-light assisted dying without access to mental incapacity records, a peer and professor of palliative medicine warned today.

Anyone who has been deprived of their liberty under the Mental Capacity Act (2005) in the last year should be ineligible for an assisted death, Baroness (Ilora) Finlay of Llandaff told the Lords.

The crossbench peer said: “The very fact that an impairment of capacity serious enough to precipitate a DOLS (Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards) application has occurred should act as a yellow flag when eligibility is being assessed.”

The Assisted Dying Bill is being scrutinised in the Lords having passed its initial stages in the Commons.

If passed, it would allow terminally ill adults in England and Wales with fewer than six months to live to apply for an assisted death, subject to approval by two doctors and a panel featuring a social worker, senior legal figure and psychiatrist.

Hospitals or care homes in England and Wales can make a DOLS application to a local authority authorisation to restrict an incapacitated adult’s freedom for their own safety, under the Mental Capacity Act 2005.

These are valid for one year following a series of six assessments within 21-day period or once-renewable seven-day periods pending a Court of Protection decision, Professor Finlay explained.

The Bill’s proposed panel, however, has no access to data regarding whether any such applications have been made, Baroness Finlay said.

“The system is completely overloaded … and this goes to the heart of the problem: as local authority records are not integrated with health records neither the panel nor the assessing doctors in this Bill will always have details of applications and outcomes.

“It is known that an episode of impaired capacity serious enough to trigger restricted liberty can signal further episodes of delirium in a fifth of people or be the first point of dementia … unrecognised indications of impaired decision-making could all too easily lead to an excess of poor assessments and inappropriate assisted deaths.”

Labour peer Lord Falconer of Thornton, who is leading the Bill in the Lords during the final debate on the legislation this year, suggested it could have “enhanced protections” regarding assessments of mental capacity.