£100k payouts for sex abuse victims... IF they don’t sue

SURVIVORS of historical child abuse in Scotland will now be able to apply for financial redress payments of up to £100,000, as well as an apology.

But the landmark law faced criticism last night over a ‘waiver’ which will force those who claim to give up their right to take civil action against organisations they allege allowed abuse to take place.

The move has been branded a ‘betrayal’ by some survivors – with MSPs yesterday admitting they found it difficult to back the Bill containing the ban.

Repeated efforts to remove the waiver throughout the parliamentary process were rejected.

Deputy First Minister John Swinney has said the waiver would be the only way to ensure organisations where abuse took place would pay into the scheme.

Speaking in the Bill’s final debate, Mr Swinney described it as ‘one of the most important pieces of legislation that the Scottish parliament would consider in its lifetime’.

He also apologised to survivors, saying: ‘I want to say to survivors – this should not have happened to you and it was not your fault.’

Mr Swinney called for the parliament to unite behind the Bill. He said: ‘Today is about actions, not words, about deeds, not promises. Today we must fulfil our duty to our fellow citizens.

‘Today as individuals, as a parliament and as a nation, we have the opportunity to stand with survivors, to see them, to hear them, to walk alongside them, in a way that no one did during their childhoods.

‘Today, without compulsion and without agenda, I do that to fulfil the commitment I made to survivors when I was appointed to this role in 2016.

‘I know that across the political spectrum, that determination is shared by all members.’

The Bill will allow survivors abused before 1964 who cannot or do not want to raise a civil court case to receive financial redress.

Survivors will have the right to raise a civil action if they wish but, to receive a payment through the redress scheme, they must sign the waiver.

Green MSP Ross Greer raised concerns over this but did support the Bill.

He said: ‘Nothing we can ever do can right the wrongs of child abuse... But we can and we should do all we can to bring some modicum of justice to survivors. This scheme represents one avenue through which we will do that.’

Survivors will be able to apply for a fixed rate redress payment of £10,000, or seek an individually assessed payment which will involve giving details of their experience.

The levels of these payments will be set at £20,000, £40,000, £60,000, £80,000 and £100,000.

Next of kin of victims who have died can apply for £10,000 which will be paid out in some circumstances.

Labour’s Iain Gray, in his last speech before stepping down at May’s Holyrood election, said the Bill ‘finally promises some redress for people who we collectively let down so badly’. He said the scheme ‘could have been better’ but it was ‘a substantive acknowledgement, at last, of survivors’ suffering and our responsibility for it’.

Tory education spokesman Jamie Greene said: ‘We have tried our best but we now pass that baton to those who will operate that scheme and we pass the product of that to the ones who will benefit from it.

‘We offer them redress and I hope we offer them closure.’

‘Today we stand with survivors’