Criminal Injuries Compensation Scheme Review: Additional Consultation 2023

Tuesday 18th July 2023 Written Statements

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Edward Argar)]

Today I have laid before Parliament a public consultation on two elements of the statutory Criminal Injuries Compensation Scheme 2012 (the scheme). This consultation follows through on the Government’s commitment in response to the final report of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (the inquiry) to consult on two of the inquiry’s recommendations for changes to the scheme.

The scheme exists to compensate victims of violent crime in England, Scotland and Wales, with the core purpose of recognising, through compensation, the harm experienced by victims injured by violent crime, including sexual assault. The scheme focuses on compensating those most seriously injured, providing awards for physical and mental injury, as well as loss of earnings, bereavement and funeral payments. In 2021-22 the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority (CICA) paid out £158 million in compensation.

In October 2022, the inquiry published its final report —a landmark moment in the Government’s efforts to tackle child sexual abuse. The report made two new recommendations for the scheme: that its scope be amended

“to include other forms of child sexual abuse, including online-facilitated sexual abuse”;

and that the time limit be increased to seven years (from the current two) for applications relating to child sexual abuse.

In the Government response to the inquiry, we committed to consult on these recommendations. This will allow us to give due consideration to the important work of the inquiry and to consider whether or not to make changes to the scheme as a result. This builds on our consultations in 2020 which sought views on proposals to make the scheme simpler and easier for people to understand and engage with following a review of the scheme, and in 2022 when we considered the scheme’s unspent convictions rule in the light of another of the inquiry’s recommendations.

We are consulting on the following two options for changes to the scheme’s scope:

Amending the definition of a “crime of violence” to include other forms of child sexual abuse, including online-facilitated sexual abuse, as recommended by the inquiry.

Amending the eligibility criteria to also bring serious non-contact offences, such as grooming, coercive control, revenge porn and stalking within scope of the scheme.

We are also consulting on the following four options for changes to the scheme’s time limits:

Amending the time limit to seven years for child sexual abuse applicants, as recommended by the inquiry.

Amending the time limit to seven years for all applicants to the scheme.

Amending the time limit to three years for all applicants who were children under the age of 18 on the date of the incident giving rise to the injury.

Amending the time limit to three years for all applicants to the scheme.

We will consider carefully all views and representations made by respondents, in order to inform our conclusions. Ministers will decide if any changes should be made to the scheme and set these out in a single response covering all three consultations on the scheme that we have held since 2020.

The consultation is available in full at: https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/criminal-injuries-compensation-scheme-review-additional-consultation-2023. The consultation will close on Friday 15 September.

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