Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill

We also welcome these provisions. I welcome the provisions already in the Bill, and I was pleased to see that, albeit belatedly, the Government had tabled the new clause. I do not blame the Minister for the delay; I appreciate what he said about the complexity of the issue, and I agree that it is not surprising that it has taken some time to present measures to deal with it. I must tell the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) once again—I am making a habit of this, and I shall have to be careful about it—that he was absolutely right in all that he said. The potential cost to the taxpayer—and the actual cost so far—of the mistake that was made in allowing an anomaly to arise have been considerable, but let us hope that that flow of taxpayers' money will now be stemmed. I am still concerned about one thing, however. I do not know whether the Minister will be able to answer my question, and the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire may wish to intervene It appears that there is now a different time limit for the bringing of an action where there is potential delictual liability—or, indeed, an action in a personal injury case—to that for bringing an action under human rights legislation. The following situation could therefore arise under the terms of the Bill. Somebody who has been injured would have a right to bring a case under human rights legislation on which there would be a time limit of one year, but they would also have a right to bring a normal personal injury case or a case under the normal Scots law of delict—which is when someone has had an injury caused to them by someone else—and that would have a normal time limit of three years, or in some cases six or seven years. A person could therefore bring an action under the normal law of delict but by the time they discovered they were not going to succeed in that action it would be too late to bring an action under human rights legislation. The opposite situation could also arise: they might bring forward a human rights case and then discover that they had run out of time under the normal law of delict or personal injury law. I am taking a long time to explain this in order for the Minister to have a chance to consider the matter.