Sir Ranulph Fiennes
Who Would Speak for You? What the Sir Ranulph Fiennes' case in England says about Powers of Attorney in Scotland...
Suggested meta title: Powers of Attorney after the Fiennes case — how Scots law differs, and why drafting matters Meta description:
A care watchdog in England and Wales found that Britain's greatest living explorer, Sir Ranulph Fiennes, had been unlawfully deprived of his liberty. The case raises hard questions about who you appoint as Attorney — and how the document is drafted. Category: Wills, Power of Attorney & Guardianship Publication: October 2026 Internal links: Power of Attorney · Guardianship · Wills & Executry · Contact
Most people who grant a Power of Attorney spend a long time thinking about whether they need one, and almost no time thinking about what it actually allows the person they appoint to do. A case reported in England and Wales in September has made that second question considerably harder to ignore. Sir Ranulph Fiennes, the explorer, 82, who has not been seen publicly for around two years. Following a lengthy investigation,
The Daily Telegraph reported that a care watchdog concluded he had been "unlawfully deprived of his liberty" after his wife placed him in a care home.
It has been reported that he was placed in care homes under a false name, that his whereabouts are known only to his wife, Louise Millington-Cotes, and that a care home owner raised concerns with the authorities including that no deprivation of liberty safeguards order had been obtained.
Lasting power of attorney was granted to Mrs Millington-Cotes in 2024, and it has been reported that visitors were required to sign non-disclosure agreements before seeing him.
Sir Ranulph's stepson has said he contacted the Office of the Public Guardian's safeguarding team and is crowdfunding a legal challenge to the Power of Attorney.
It is important to be clear about the limits of all this. These are press reports and a regulator's view expressed in correspondence. No court has determined the matter, and it is not for us to say what happened or why. What the case does do — and this is why it is worth writing about — is expose how a Power of Attorney actually works once it is in force, and how few people understand that before they sign one. The thing most people misunderstand. A welfare Power of Attorney is not a form of assistance. It is a transfer of decision-making authority. Once it is operative, your Attorney can decide where you live. Which care home. Whether you move, and how often. In practice, and depending on how the document is drafted, they may effectively control who has access to you — because the power to decide where someone lives carries with it a great deal else. Most people appointing a spouse or a child do not think of it in those terms. They think of someone helping them with the bank. The financial side is the part everyone considers; the welfare side is the part that determines whether your later life is spent among the people you love or apart from them. That is the real lesson here, and it has nothing to do with celebrity. It is the ordinary reality of a document that hundreds of thousands of people sign without advice.
Does Scots law do this better? Partly. It would be misleading to say Scotland is immune, and anyone telling you otherwise is selling something. Where Scotland is genuinely stronger: A solicitor must be involved. Under the Adults with Incapacity (Scotland) Act 2000, a Scottish Power of Attorney requires a certificate from a solicitor or a doctor confirming that they interviewed you immediately before you signed and are satisfied you understood what you were doing. In England and Wales a certificate provider need not be a professional at all. That single requirement means every Scottish POA has passed in front of someone whose job is to ask the awkward questions. Adult protection powers. The Adult Support and Protection (Scotland) Act 2007 gives councils real investigatory duties and powers where an adult may be at risk of harm, including powers to seek assessment orders, removal orders and banning orders. There is no direct English equivalent with that reach. The Mental Welfare Commission for Scotland. A dedicated body with powers to investigate the welfare of adults with mental disorder, which can and does look into individual cases. England has no comparable standing watchdog for this. The sheriff's supervisory role. The 2000 Act allows an application to the sheriff for directions, and a Power of Attorney can be revoked by the court where the attorney is not acting in the granter's interests.
Where Scotland is weaker, and it needs saying: Scotland has no equivalent of the Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards. The Scottish Government committed in 2023 to reforming the 2000 Act, including on deprivation of liberty, and a consultation and expert working group have been taking that forward — but as things stand, the specific mechanism that flagged the problem in Wales for Sir Ranulph does not exist here in the same form. So the honest answer is that Scotland has better front-end safeguards and better adult protection machinery, and a gap of its own at the other end.
Which brings us to the part that is actually within your control. What good drafting can do. A Power of Attorney is not a form. It is a document that can be built to your circumstances, and almost none of the following appears in an off-the-shelf version. Split the roles. There is no requirement that the same person hold both financial and welfare powers. Appointing different people for each creates a natural check, because neither can act entirely alone. Appoint more than one attorney. Two attorneys required to act jointly on major welfare decisions is one of the simplest and most effective safeguards available. It costs nothing to include. Name a substitute. If your first choice cannot or will not act, you decide who follows — not a court. Require consultation. Your attorney can be obliged to consult named people before significant decisions: a change of residence, a move out of the area. It does not give those people a veto, but it does create a record and a group of people who will notice. Restrict specific powers. You can require that your attorney not move you outside a defined area, or not without the agreement of a named person. You can specify that your existing GP is retained. Decide when it starts. Welfare powers cannot be exercised while you retain capacity, but you can set out clearly how incapacity is to be determined and by whom. Write down who matters. A short statement of your wishes — who you want to see, where you want to live, what matters to you — is not legally binding but carries real weight with attorneys, care providers and, if it ever came to it, a sheriff. None of that is exotic. All of it takes a conversation.
Here is the question worth sitting with, and it is not a comfortable one. If you lost capacity tomorrow, and the person you have appointed made a decision your family thought was wrong — would anyone be in a position to find out? If the honest answer is no, the document needs work. Not because you distrust the person you have chosen, but because circumstances change over decades, and the safeguards you build in now cost nothing and may never be needed. That is precisely what makes them worth having. If you want yours looked at we prepare Powers of Attorney and we are equally happy to review one you already have. Plenty of people discover theirs was never registered, or names an Attorney who has since moved away or died.
Appointments at our office in Alexandria, by video, or at your home. Fees agreed in writing before we start. Call 01389 756785.
This article is general information about the law in Scotland and is not legal advice on any individual case. It reports matters that have appeared in the national press and expresses no view on the conduct of any individual; no court has made any finding in relation to the case referred to.