Child Abuse

Bernard Jenkin Excerpts

Monday 7th July 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

I think it would be most appropriate for the chairman and panel themselves to decide what to do on that matter, rather than Government trying to tell them what to do. Once the name of the chairman is announced, I am sure that Members of this House who have experience of dealing with these matters will wish to make their views known, but I think it is best to leave it to the chairman and panel to identify how they wish to work and take evidence and comments from people. May I commend the hon. Gentleman, who is another Member of this House who has done a great deal of work on this matter in trying to uncover the truth about those who have been victims?

[Mr Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)]

I welcome my right hon. Friend’s announcement of the overarching inquiry, which is important because if we wish to empower children to resist and report child sex abuse, we need to demonstrate that as adults we are prepared to talk openly about these things. Will she give her view on whether it is correct that no Government record should be destroyed without a record of its being destroyed being kept? If that is what has happened in these 114 cases, is she confident that it is not still happening, and is she satisfied that the Lord Chancellor’s code of practice on the management of records— to which I think the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) referred—is actually being complied with and, indeed, that it is adequate for the purpose?

[Mrs May]

As I indicated in response to the right hon. Member for Blackburn, the panel may well look at the question of record keeping. It is right that there are certain processes in place, as I also indicated in my earlier response. One of the issues we are dealing with is that, over the years and the time period we are looking at, a number of different approaches to record keeping were taken by Government Departments. It is, I think, best practice to identify what has happened to particular records when they are identified, but the practice of what is done has varied over time. That is one of the aspects that we will obviously need to consider.