The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mrs Helen Grant)
This has been a short but interesting debate, and I congratulate the hon. Member for Luton North (Kelvin Hopkins) on securing it. I have listened very carefully indeed to everything he has said.
Support for victims and witnesses of crime is a priority for this Government. That is why, for example, we have provided Victim Support with £114 million in grant funding spread over three years, enabling it to invest in long-term service provision. The victim and witness general fund provides £5 million a year in grant funding to voluntary sector organisations supporting the most seriously affected, vulnerable and persistently targeted victims.
We are spending £2.75 million on individuals bereaved by murder and manslaughter in 2012-13, while in line with our coalition commitment—I am personally proud and pleased to announce this—we have put rape support centres on a secure financial footing, with 65 centres around the country receiving total grant funding of nearly £3 million a year until 2014. Over the past year we have funded the establishment of four new centres, and a further five will open in March 2013. Last but certainly not least, we aim to raise up to an additional £50 million from offenders, which is a very significant sum. It is to be spent on services for victims, along with the existing central Government spend of £66 million. I shall return to that in a moment.
The proper protection and support of those who have suffered at the hands of criminals is a fundamental and essential part of our civilised justice system. We are determined to provide the best possible support for the most seriously affected, vulnerable and persistently targeted victims of crime, helping them to cope with and recover from what are often terrible experiences. However, because of the financial climate, we cannot be blind to the question of which policies are feasible and which are not.
As the hon. Gentleman said, the criminal injuries compensation scheme is demand-led, and the cost to the Government is more than £200 million each year. Historically, the scheme has been underfunded. Funding allocated at the beginning of the year has often needed to be topped up at the end of the year to enable the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority, which administers the scheme, to continue to make payments for claims as and when they fall due. Last year the authority was provided with additional funding, and a total of £449 million in criminal injuries compensation payments was made, the largest ever in a single year.
Despite that cash injection, total liabilities currently stand at around £532 million. That includes an estimate of the claims for which payments are likely to fall due in the future but which have not yet been lodged with the authority; it also takes account of the remaining rump of pre-tariff cases. With new liabilities arising at a rate of about £200 million a year under the current scheme, that is simply not sustainable in the present economic climate. The scheme must be put on a sensible, sustainable footing so that timely payments can continue to be made.
Against that background, it made excellent sense for the Government to look carefully at the scheme and consider certain reforms. We concluded that the scheme needed to focus resources on the victims who are most seriously affected by injuries that they suffer as a result of deliberate violent crime committed in England, Wales and Scotland. We believe that the provision of support services for victims at the point of need is a much better use of money than providing small amounts of compensation, in some cases long after the incident involved, for relatively minor injuries. For that reason we are removing payments for less serious injuries such as sprains and fractures.
However, we concluded that, as well as protecting injury payments to victims with the most serious injuries, it was right and proper to protect tariff payments to the bereaved, to all rape victims and victims of other sexual assaults, and to those—including victims of domestic violence and children—who are subjected to a repeated pattern of abuse. We have also retained the vast majority of special expenses payments, with the exception of payments for private health care. Those are fair and sensible policy decisions.
Some Members may have seen one or two briefings about our reforms, including papers produced on behalf of postal workers and shop workers. While I am more than happy to acknowledge the valuable, indeed essential, role that many of those people perform, sometimes in the face of challenging circumstances, the Government do not believe that a compelling case has been made for maintaining payments for minor injuries, which is what has been asked of us. As with other applications to the scheme, if postal or shop workers’ injuries are sufficiently serious, they will be eligible. As I said earlier, our aim is for additional services to be funded by offenders, which will provide better support for those with minor injuries.
Another key part of our reform package results from our view that payments should be made only to blameless victims who co-operate fully with the justice process. Those with unspent convictions will not be able to claim if they have been sentenced to a community order or imprisonment, and those with other unspent convictions will be able to receive an award only in exceptional circumstances.
The hon. Gentleman made important points about loss of earnings. We believe that our proposals are the fairest way to achieve the necessary reforms and to create a sustainable system. I also wish to clarify the position on dog attacks, which he also raised. The purpose of the scheme is to compensate for injury caused by deliberate violent crime, and there are other avenues that people can pursue, including civil remedies, in relation to these incidents.
We envisage that the cumulative effect of our reforms will help deliver savings of an estimated £50 million per year to the taxpayer. That does not mean that we are reducing the overall spend on victims—our aim is to keep overall spend on victims the same. That is to be achieved by offsetting the £50 million reduction in the criminal injuries compensation scheme with a similar amount raised from the offenders for victims’ services.
The Government’s intention is that the new scheme will be implemented around the end of September. For that to happen, it requires the approval of both Houses. There was a debate in the Lords on 25 July and there will be a debate in this House next week, on Monday 10 September. On that occasion, I will go into more detail than I have today about the changes to the scheme and I will also be seeking the House’s approval for our statutory scheme which will compensate victims of future overseas terrorism. In conclusion, the draft criminal injuries compensation scheme represents a coherent and fair way of focusing payments on those most seriously affected by their injuries, within an affordable budget.
Question put and agreed to.