It really would be impossible to get rid of this law, as others say, because often there is no way to prove who held the knife, or which parent did what, when, etc.
There is an area where I would like it extended, for a particular reason important to all of us. The Baroness Cumberlege latest report was after a series of medical scandal investigations she has carried out. Over and over, serious misconduct , killing and maiming, ruining lives, carries on, long after it could easily have been ended.
The reason is, as she says, the perpetrators are arrogant and nobody dares intervene, because of the code of 'not snitching'. This is backed by nursing and medical Unions and backed by the culture of putting the interests of fellow staff, not recipients, at the heart of the service. People who dare blow the whistle know for sure they and their careers will be ruined. The wrongdoers will escape to continue exactly as before, or in extremes, will simply move like the old abusing priests, to do the same thing in some other place. (Even care home staff have found the same)
Often, the notoriety is confined within the institution, where colleagues, workers in different sections but in the same place, and almost everyone down to the local stray cat, are insiders to at the least rumour and gossip, but, for closer people, actual witnessing of continued harm.
Heart scandals, baby scandals, gynae scandals, removing healthy breasts, putting in harmful mesh, prescribing thalidomide type drugs to pregnant women....on and on it goes.
One scandal was brought into the open by a fluke, because one of the theatre team who were A L L horrified by what the surgeon was habitually doing, happened to be a New Zealander, who used the option of skipping the country and returning to New Zealand, where he could easily get work without fear of the mafia-like retribution on U.K. whistle blowers.
My suggestion that the usual legal concept of being liable for what you 'knew, or could reasonably be expected to know' must apply to insiders of organisations where malpractice is being carried out.
That would reverse the incentive to tacitly collude in even fatal harm, by remaining silent, in order to keep one's job and pension safe.
Instead, the failure to whistle blow would be taken as being jointly liable.
The rest of the theatre team, the fellow priests, the admin. staff and the caretakers, would all have that incentive to stop harm, in order to save themselves appearing in court alongside the perpetrator.
It could be lawfully an assumed condition of all employment.
"Don't whistle blow, because you will ruin yourself" would be replaced by " Whistle blow, because it is the only way to protect yourself"