Lord Moore of Etchingham (Non-Afl)

My Lords, one of the issues that arises in this long and sad saga is the difficulty of arriving at truth and the associated possibility of false accusation. Indeed, the IICSA inquiry was set up in the first place on, in one sense, a false premise—a whole load of utterly untrue accusations against prominent people. That was why it began. Operation Midland showed the accusations against Ted Heath, Lord Bramall and Lord Brittan to be absolutely untrue. There are many such occasions on which false accusations are made. The reason this is relevant is that, first of all, it is a terrible thing to accuse people falsely, and, secondly, it can produce an extraordinary waste of time, effort and money, instead of finding out what really is true. In this respect, I very much endorse what the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, said about mandatory reporting. We need to work out what it would actually do and what effect it would have. It is proposed by Professor Jay in the IICSA recommendations, where she says that, on the disclosure of child abuse, reporting is mandatory. But what is the disclosure of child abuse? Is it simply somebody saying that somebody has behaved badly? Is it a direct accusation? Does it exonerate the person receiving that from investigating themselves and thinking hard about it? Do they exercise judgment? Are they just complying rather than exercising their conscience? These are serious questions that need to be asked about this subject.