Ms Derville Rowland:

There are two dimensions to that. In a civil court action, a limitation period exists to prevent people bringing cases after a certain length of time. In the legal mechanism of a court case that is a defence someone can raise. If it is not raised as a defence it will not become an issue in the case. It is different for the ombudsman because that is a statutory filter it has to apply in considering complaints. It has been very helpful that the limitation period for the ombudsman has been varied from a statutory perspective. It sweeps away any difficulty there is with long-dated cases coming forward for complex financial products. That has been very beneficial. It acts to assist people who want to bring cases that have been in existence for a long time before the courts without acting as a barrier to their doing so. It operates in two different ways, depending whether it is the statutory ombudsman scheme or it is litigation in courts.