New Clause 28
Children and Young Persons Bill [Lords]
3:00 pm
David Kidney (PPS (Rt Hon Rosie Winterton, Minister of State), Department for Transport; Stafford, Labour)
I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
Limitation periods provide cut-offs on people’s ability to bring cases to court. There are limitation periods in criminal courts and civil courts. There are different limitation periods for different behaviours and there are different rules about disapplying limitation periods and extending them. The Law Commission was asked to examine the state of the law in 2001 and concluded that the law was needlessly complex, outdated and, in some respects, unfair. It gave as an example of complexity and unfairness sexual abuse cases. Unfortunately, many sexual abuse cases that have come to the public’s attention over the years have related to children who were abused in public care. They are particularly powerful cases, because the public feel that very vulnerable children, whose protection the public were charged with, have been let down a second time. We are seeing that all over again at the moment in the cases being investigated in Jersey.
The Law Commission said that the law should be reformed, and in 2002 the Government said that that was a good idea and they would do that, but still there has been no reform. Several hon. Members, myself included, have been asking parliamentary questions about the Government’s intentions. Last year—2007—the Government told me in written answers that they would start to reform the law at the beginning of 2008. When I asked a written question at the beginning of 2008, they said that they had not got round to it yet and they might do so later in the year. Now we are in the second half of the year and still there is nothing.
It might be fun for me to criticise the Government for being slower than they said they would be, but it is now several years since they said that they would amend a law that has been shown by the Law Commission to be complex and unfair. Still there are cases of people who have been deprived, by a limitation period, of the ability to bring a claim for compensation for sexual abuse sustained when they were in public care. Potentially, other people will suffer in future years until we amend the law. I am therefore trying to provoke a debate through new clause 28, at least in respect of children in care—I recognise that limitation periods apply much more widely than simply to this group of people and this type of case—to see whether the Minister can tell me whether the Government will finally make some progress.