Ulster Unionist Peer, Lord Empey, has called on the UK Government to do the right thing and get the Bill to provide historical institutional abuse victims with redress onto the statute book before Parliament is dissolved for the General Election.
Lord Empey said:
“The Government was confronted with a full-scale rebellion in the Lords because of its failure to get this Bill on the statute book before next week. Given the House of Commons will sit next week there are simply no excuses.
“When it was clear that there was going to be a division, the Government knew that it would have been totally humiliated. I do not think any Government would want to go into an election having just deprived victims of historical institutional abuse of compensation.
“However, it is not over and I want to make clear to victims this is not settled. Sadly, we do not have control but we have done our duty in sending it to the Commons. I hope that the level of support shown today in the House of Lords is of some comfort to those survivors watching and waiting.
“It is now over to the House of Commons. I hope they do the right thing.”