My Lords, I am glad to hear that the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, does not want to bias anyone; I am sure that is absolutely right and we are all on the same page on that. However, he talked of a public interest in having a period of limitation. Clearly, there is a public interest here, but there is also a private, individual one. The amendments in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Thomas of Gresford, try to get that balance right. The noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, put the point very well by saying that we should not be talking about taking the role of the courts out of this entirely: there needs to be some discretion. Amendment 23 begins to rebalance this.
The noble Lord, Lord Faulks, is right that, clearly, there is a period in which people can bring cases but, if our previous set of amendments, which would extend the point from one to six years after the date of knowledge, were not accepted, we would need some mechanism that allowed a bit of discretion because, at the moment, there would be none for the courts. As such, Amendment 23 is desirable in its own right, but it is even more important if other amendments are not accepted, either now or when they are put forward by the Government, or when they are moved on Report.
Could the Minister give a further response on the date of knowledge? In opening his remarks on the previous set of amendments, clarifying a point he made on Tuesday, he said that the 94% of cases that were brought within—or what would be within—time were within six years not just of the incident but of the date of knowledge. If that is the case, does that not make it even more incumbent on the Government to look again at the date of knowledge as a relevant time point to have in the Bill—and not one but six years?