Child Abuse

Lord Garnier Excerpts

Monday 7th July 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

On the way in which the review is being set up, yes, we have decided on a slightly different approach. The permanent secretary will be appointing a senior legal figure, as he has said. I felt that it was appropriate to ask for somebody to lead the inquiry who was involved in child protection matters and who was independent in a different way, working with the senior legal figure. Peter Wanless will be leading it, but a senior legal figure will be appointed, and the permanent secretary will make the announcement in due course.

On the 114 files that have not been found, that figure was first given in a parliamentary answer last October, and it was repeated in the very full letter that Mark Sedwill gave to the right hon. Gentleman. The investigator was unable to say what had happened to those files—that is precisely one of the problems. There is no evidence as to whether the files were destroyed or have been mislaid. Obviously, the new review will be able to go back over the work that the investigator did to see whether any further evidence can be adduced.

[Sir Edward Garnier (Harborough) (Con)]

Having sadly had to deal with a number of historic child sex abuse cases in my time as a Law Officer, may I assure the Home Secretary that the victims of these hideous crimes suffer from them well into their adulthood and often into middle and old age, so the need to bring to justice those who have committed these terrible crimes is surely uncontroversial. Will the Home Secretary make sure that those who have evidence to give or allegations to make can do so in the most convenient form possible—that is, to one central police force which masterminds the national investigation—rather than having a whole host of police forces collecting the information and giving it to the Crown Prosecution Service? At the moment, there seems to be a drip-feed of insinuation, which is causing a lot of distress to innocent people. What we need to see is the guilty prosecuted and brought to justice, rather than the innocent having their reputations trashed.

[Mrs May]

I take very seriously the point made by my hon. and learned Friend. In a sense, we are dealing with two types of allegations. The first are allegations that may be made in cases relating to the information given to the Home Office in the 1980s. There are also allegations about activities at children’s homes in different parts of the country. I will reflect on my hon. and learned Friend’s comment about the appropriate way in which those allegations can be made and properly investigated. I also echo his other point, because I think we have all seen, in interviews given by people who are well into their middle age or older and who were abused as children, that this is not a matter that goes away. It is not something that can be forgotten. It lasts with people for the rest of their lives and we owe it to them to give them truth and justice.