My Lords, I thank the Minister for that helpful reply. What a change of atmosphere in the Chamber from the business that we had earlier on this afternoon—long may it continue. I pay tribute to the Minister and his colleagues for the amount of time and effort that they have put into this issue. While this amendment may not be perfect in the legal sense, its sheer simplicity has helped to galvanise the debate to make it clear how important it is that children are identified clearly as a group. It has achieved its purpose in that sense.
The noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, talked about meeting those child victims and how struck he was by their resilience. The moment he said that, I reflected on it, and I asked myself why they were so resilient. In large part the reason why they were so resilient is, first, down to the individuals themselves but, secondly, due to the fact that all the victims who spoke to us had had the benefit of working with highly specialised help in the major children’s charities. That had helped them to emerge from the unspeakable traumas that they had experienced, to the extent that they could stand up in front of a group of probably slightly intimidating parliamentarians and they were able to speak clearly, without undue emotion and with great clarity and force, about their experience and how important it was for us to understand what we need to do as parliamentarians in this Bill to enable as many other victims as possible to benefit from the support that they had received. That was the key message that I got from that.
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I welcome the idea of having an accessible version of the victims’ code for children. It occurs to me that probably quite a lot of adults—including those in the agencies that are tasked with trying to enforce it—could do with an accessible version of the victims’ code. A lot of evidence over the years has shown that many of those officials charged with enacting the victims’ code, when put on the spot and asked about in detail, actually do not know very much about it. An accessible version for adults might be an idea.
I thank the Minister for having been so helpful. I think that we have moved forward in the right direction. With that, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.