I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
As you will know, Mr Deputy Speaker, I was fortunate enough to come 14th in the ballot for Private Members’ Bills. Unsurprisingly, a few hours after hearing that news I returned to my office to find a full inbox, and over the next days the amount of mail that I received increased substantially. One letter gave me some hope. It was from the former Member of Parliament for Chertsey and Walton, Sir Geoffrey Pattie, who wrote that in the 1970s he had managed to get legislation on to the statute book having also come 14th in the ballot. That has given me a little encouragement, and I hope that the House will be minded to look seriously at my own Bill and will allow it to proceed as well.
Having been given this opportunity, I thought carefully about the legislation I should present to the House. I concluded—on the basis of my time as a member of the all-party parliamentary group on runaway and missing children and adults, and also on the basis of personal experience—that a means of supporting families by dealing with the uncertainties surrounding presumed death would be an extremely worthwhile cause to champion.
As I have said, I have some personal experience of the effects of such situations, although at one step removed. In 1996 my sister’s godfather disappeared. His name was Norman Harriss, and he was an airline pilot, married, with two sons. The case was reported at the time. He had taken a yacht on to the Solent. The yacht was found with the engine still running and the dinghy missing, and with no sign of him. A search ensued, but, unfortunately, he was never found.
When I was thinking about taking up this cause, I contacted one of Mr Harriss’s sons, Alistair, to ask whether he thought the proposals were a good idea and whether it would have helped his family if such a law had been in place in 1996. Fortunately, he was unequivocal in his response: he said he was more than happy for me to mention his father’s case and stressed the effects of his disappearance on the family when no provision was in place to acknowledge properly his father’s death.