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The White Paper Valuing People: A New Strategy for Learning Disability for the 21st Century, is shaped by the principles of Legal and Civil Rights, Independence, Choice and Inclusion. These principles are laudable, but this paper argues that in matters of health that are not within the experiences of adults with learning disabilities, a duty of care should override the elusive mantra of ‘choice’.

This article explores criminal law reform proposals on the law relating to sexual offences, scheduled for debate in the current parliamentary session, in order to illustrate the current tension between sexual empowerment and protection of people with learning disabilities from sexual violence. It suggests that law's response to the sexuality of people with learning disabilities, evidenced by the Sexual Offences Bill now before Parliament, will be inadequate as long as it is characterised as choosing between protection and empowerment. An alternative conception of sexual rights can provide a fuller and more persuasive account of the sexuality of men and women with learning disabilities.

There are a great many people with mental health problems receiving treatments that are aimed primarily at managing aggressive or challenging behaviours by means of sedation, seclusion or restraint. The management of these behaviours is frequently justified under Part IV of the Mental Health Act 1983, which permits treatments ‐ without consent if necessary ‐ for a person's mental disorder. Alternatively, the behaviours have been managed at common law on the basis that the patient is incapable of giving a legally effective consent to behaviour management and the interventions are considered to be in the person's best interests. This article considers the management of difficult behaviours in adults with mental health problems. This issue is particularly timely as there have been a considerable number of legal challenges in this area in recent years. This article reviews the practical contexts in which behaviour management, which here covers sedation, seclusion and restraint, is used with adults with mental health problems and explores the legal justifications for these interventions. Although the justification for the management of challenging behaviours is frequently asserted (or, more likely, presumed) to be therapeutic, a review of the research literature and recent case law casts doubt on the credibility of this therapeutic justification.

Serious case reviews (SCRs) are one means of learning the lessons arising from adverse, salient incidents and tragedies. Adult Safeguarding Boards in England are expected to have an SCR policy and procedure, to commission SCRs, to abstract and act on the learning, and to monitor the resulting action plans.

Since SCRs reflect a wide range of processes, the authors undertook a general review, drawing on their experiences of conducting and contributing to SCRs. They chose to pose sets of question‐prompts regarding the commissioning process, the management of the process, the appointment of a chair and author, the terms of reference, information‐sharing, confidentiality, involving relatives and making findings public. The compliance of the process with human rights legislation is also considered.

Whilst the authors acknowledge the responsibility of organisations to promote continuous and cumulative professional learning, they do not promote SCRs as the sole means of learning about the ways in which professionals and agencies work together to safeguard adults at risk of abuse.

The paper challenges the perception that SCR can be streamlined, structured, codified, and constrained.

Sexuality is complex, concerning concepts such as power relations, sensuality, personal integrity, capacity to consent, decision making, identity and self‐awareness, intimacy and relationships. Despite this complexity, it is an integral part of every human being, affected by race, socio‐economic status and intellectual ability. However, the expression of the sexuality of people with learning disabilities is denied and rarely facilitated. Often the importance of gender identity is ignored and this is reflected, for example, in how women with learning disabilities see their own bodies. Explanations include historical beliefs like eugenics, service principles such as normalisation, economics and an over‐riding concern to protect women and men with learning disabilities from abuse. Acknowledging that such factors play an important role in preventing the facilitation or expression of sexuality by men and women with learning disabilities, this paper focuses on the development of the criminal law, the role and potential of current sexual offences and the Home Office Report Setting the Boundaries.