On 12 August 2016, Herft appeared before the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse and was questioned about his policy in regard to the reporting and responses to allegations of abuse during his time as Bishop of Newcastle. Herft admitted that there had been no framework for dealing with accusations of child sexual assault during the first half of his tenure in Newcastle. He had written a policy called "Principles and Procedures for Dealing with Accusations of Sexual Harassment" in 1993, but this had not been prepared with child sexual abuse allegations in mind.