UNITED KINGDOM
The Guardian
Alan Travis, home affairs editor
Monday 15 December 2014
The home secretary is prepared to give significant new powers to the official inquiry into child sex abuse, including compelling witnesses to give evidence, she has told MPs.
“The overwhelming message I’m getting from those that I have been meeting, survivors and survivors’ representatives that I’ve been meeting, is that it’s important to make sure that we do get this right. I’m very clear that the inquiry should have the powers of a statutory inquiry,” Theresa May said on Monday. “This should be an inquiry that has the power of compulsion.”
The home secretary also indicated that she is reconsidering the inquiry’s terms of reference to enable a current 1970 cut-off date to be revised to allow allegations dating to the 1950s to be examined.
But May admitted that she was not yet on the verge of appointing a new chair to the controversial inquiry, with the Home Office considering more than 100 possible names for the job.
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