MR Watts's defence of the Mental Capacity Bill is nave in the extreme (Dave defends new bill, Star, January 20). He says that if treatment has no curative or beneficial effect on the patient then treatment can legally be withdrawn.

However, very few people indeed will understand that the definition of 'treatment' in the Bill (which Mr Watts supports) includes assisted food and fluid. This shows how nonsensical is Mr Watts statement.

Food and fluid could never cure any form of disease or disabilities, such as those caused by a stroke. Food and fluid has only one aim and that is to prevent death by starvation and dehydration. Until 1992 when the BMA began to pressure for the withdrawal of so-called treatment to end patients' lives, assisted food and fluid was always classified as basic care - which is what it is. Food and fluid is a basic human right - but under this Bill it could be denied to mentally incapacitated patients, thus causing their deaths by dehydration and starvation.

Whatever Mr Watts and Mr Woodward may claim, the fact is that the Report from the Joint Parliamentary Committee on Human Rights was severely critical of sections of the Mental Capacity Bill, warning in particular that those sections dealing with the withholding and withdrawing of treatment, including assisted food and fluids, would not satisfy the requirements of the European Convention on Human Rights (Articles 2, 3 and 8).

The people of St Helens should demand that our MPs stand for basic human rights rather than following the demands of the present Government.

MARIA Overend (via e-mail, address supplied)