Current Petitions

The next two petitions relate to institutional child abuse. Petition PE535, by Chris Daly, calls on the Parliament to urge the Government, first, to make an inquiry into past institutional child abuse—in particular for children who were in the care of the state under the supervision of religious orders; and, secondly, to make an unreserved apology for said state bodies and to urge the religious orders to apologise unconditionally. The second petition, PE888, is also by Chris Daly. It calls on the Parliament to urge the Government, in the interests of those who have suffered institutional child abuse, first, to reform the Court of Session rules to allow fast-track court hearings in personal injury cases; secondly, to review the implementation of the Prescription and Limitation (Scotland) Act 1973; and, thirdly, to implement the recommendations of the Scottish Law Commission report on the limitation of actions.Members have copies of the written submissions relating to both petitions. Are there any particular views about how to deal with the petitions, which have been in the system for a wee while?

There is a suggestion that we could possibly close our consideration of the petitions. I ask Fergus Cochrane to keep us right: we can consider closing both petitions, but is one of them more—

Okay.

That is not an unreasonable suggestion. Let us see how the Government intends to respond to the report that has been published. Depending on the speed of its response to us, we should be able to deal with both petitions relatively quickly.