Child Grooming Victims: Compensation Awards

Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top Excerpts

Thursday 20th November 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top (Lab)]

My Lords, we discussed criminal exploitation of children last night. I know from my experience that a young woman was denied any compensation because of the way the trial was conducted. She was in the position where, when the third barrister had been appointed by the defendant, she was told that she had to go through her third cross-examination. She went out that night and did things she should not have: she got drunk, and maybe had other substances—I do not know—and ended up in the police station overnight, and then any compensation was denied her. We are in the position that because these young women are extremely vulnerable, the way we operate our court system retraumatises them in many ways. I hope that the Government, in thinking about the compensation, take these issues into account.

[Baroness Levitt (Lab)]

The noble Baroness raises a number of points in that question. Many of those will be for the national inquiry to deal with, so I will simply deal very quickly with the question of convictions and their effect on compensation. It is right to say that it is a condition of applying to the criminal injuries compensation scheme that the applicant does not have unspent criminal convictions. The difficulty with waiving that for one group is that it undermines the universality of the system. We are very anxious not to create a hierarchy of victims where some are seen as more worthy of belief or compensation than others, and we will do everything we can to avoid that.