David Winnick
Main Page: David Winnick (Labour - Walsall North)Department Debates - View all David Winnick's debates with the Home Office
(9 years, 3 months ago)
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Mrs May
My hon. Friend makes an important point. The inquiry will be looking into significant issues and it will not be able to come to decisions in a short space of time. However, the panel members I have spoken to are clear—as am I—that they should recognise the need for striking a balance between getting to decisions and ensuring that they are doing the full job. This is not an inquiry that should simply be pushed into the long grass, and we need to have some answers for the survivors within a reasonable period of time. I have said before in the House that the inquiry panel, under the new chairman, will have to look into whether they report to survivors and survivors groups, to this House and more widely on a more ongoing basis than would normally be the case, because of the nature of the issues that they are dealing with.
Mr David Winnick (Walsall North) (Lab)
I do not for one moment doubt the Home Secretary’s commitment to holding a thorough inquiry, but does she acknowledge that if someone had set out to wreck the whole process from the very beginning, that person could not have done a more effective job than this? I hope she recognises that this is a tragedy. It goes beyond Ministers or Back Benchers or anything of the kind. As far as the survivors are concerned, what has occurred is a tragedy—first, when they were abused, and now with what appears, to them at least, to have been a farce since the inquiry was established.
Mrs May
I recognise that survivors will rightly be concerned to ensure that the panel inquiry is established on the basis on which they wish it to be established, with a chairman, and that it gets on with its role. As the hon. Gentleman will be aware, when the inquiry was first established, it was based on the model that we had used for the Hillsborough inquiry, which had been very successful. We felt that that was an appropriate model to use in the circumstances. In discussions with survivors and others, however, it became clear—particularly from the survivors—that they felt that statutory powers were needed, which is why I have indicated that when the inquiry continues under a new chairman, it will do so on a statutory basis.