Criminal Injuries Compensation

Debate between Charlotte Nichols and Laurence Turner

Tuesday 29th April 2025 Westminster Hall

[Laurence Turner]

My hon. Friend, the Chair of the Justice Committee, makes an important point. We must also consider the number of victims of crime who are so exhausted by the process that they choose not to appeal, even though they may have grounds to do so. His scrutiny in this area is very welcome.

Changes made to the scheme have an unhappy history in this House. Some Members may recall the very contentious changes made to it in 2012, with the express intent of reducing expenditure by between £40 million and £60 million a year. At the time, in the face of sustained scrutiny, including from Members on the then Government Benches, the Minister of the day, the hon. Member for Maidstone and Malling (Helen Grant), announced:

“a hardship fund of £500,000 per year which will provide relief from hardship for very low-paid workers in England and Wales who are temporarily unable to work as a result of being a victim of a crime of violence.” —[Official Report, 27 November 2012; Vol. , c. 14WS.]

That concession secured support for the relevant secondary legislation. The fund is still in existence, but its criteria are too tightly drawn. An applicant must be paid no more than £5,700 a year, the equivalent of statutory sick pay, and they must apply to seek it not within two years of an injury, but within two months of an injury, in order to qualify.

Far from the fund supporting low-paid victims of crime by £500,000 a year, the Ministry of Justice told me recently that only £4,100 has ever been paid out of it, and no payments at all were made in the seven years to 2023-24. I suspect that the very few workers who were eligible to apply were unaware that it exists. The hardship fund is a dead letter; it would be better to scrap it than to claim that special support is available to low-paid workers when, in practice, it is not.

[Charlotte Nichols (Warrington North) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend refers to low-paid workers; we know that retail staff are among the victims who experience a really shocking amount of violent crime within the workplace. Will he join me in paying tribute to the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers for the work it is doing to ensure that its members who are victims of violent crime in the workplace can access the CICA scheme?

[Laurence Turner]

I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention, and I agree with her. USDAW’s Freedom From Fear campaign, which has been running for many years and covers a number of important issues, including the importance of fair access to compensation, is to be welcomed, and USDAW should be congratulated on the changes that it has already secured in this House.

Another high-profile change was the tightening of the criteria, so that the scheme only applied to injuries caused by deliberate violence inflicted by a person. That change excluded most dangerous dog attacks, and in practice compensation for such attacks can only be secured if it can be shown that a dog was directed to attack by its owner. It seems to me a serious flaw that a child or postal worker might be mauled by a dog and left with life-changing injuries, and the keeping of that dog may itself be an offence under the Dangerous Dogs Act 1991, but there would be no route for the victim to claim compensation, especially if the owner of the dog cannot be identified.

The Communication Workers Union continues to campaign on this issue; ahead of this debate, it drew attention to figures showing that each year 200 Royal Mail workers lose a finger or part of a finger after a dog attack. I encourage Ministers to look again at this issue, especially in light of the growing number of animals belonging to new, and now-banned, breeds such as the XL bully since 2012.

As has already been said, compensation for criminal injuries is an important issue for workers in public-facing roles more generally, and I am grateful to USDAW, GMB and Unison, as well as the CWU, for their work to draw attention to the risk of violent assault to their members. And for the avoidance of doubt, I draw attention to the support provided to my constituency party by GMB and Unison.

The changes to the scheme that I have referred to were made under the previous Government, but I wish to press the Minister on two further and more recent points. First, shortly before Easter the Ministry of Justice published its response to the consultations undertaken between 2020 and 2023. In that response, the MOJ said that there would be no immediate changes to the scheme, in part because of resource constraints.

The decision not to accept recommendation 18 of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse has understandably caused disappointment and reignited wider criticism of the scheme. The Government cited two factors: protection of universality, which means treating all applicants in the same way, and cost. If the scheme is not to be amended to provide different criteria for victims of childhood sexual abuse, what other steps will the Ministry now take, such as the provision of enhanced guidelines on the circumstances under which an out-of-time application would be accepted, taking into account our modern understanding of the lifelong effects of this horrendous crime?

On resourcing, will the Minister accept that although the nature of the scheme means that expenditure varies year on year, the cost of compensation has actually fallen on average—that is the trend—after inflation is taken into account. Although the number of applications has risen, that appears to have been driven by an increased number of ineligible claimants. The scheme overall costs less than it did before 2012—less in cash terms, I believe, than under the pre-statutory scheme—and, as mentioned, CICA’s headcount has fallen.

Reforms are needed, but I am concerned that we seem to be talking again about protecting the sustainability of the scheme. I know the Minister has a strong personal commitment to this issue and to enhancing support for victims of crime more generally. I hope she will be able to reassure us that any future reforms of CICA will seek to improve victim support, including in its compensation elements.

Our constituents expect us to bring our knowledge, our judgment and the benefit of our experiences to this place. Like some other Members of this House, my interest in this matter arises partly through my direct experience of the scheme. By their nature, such matters are difficult to talk about; if I stumble, I ask for Members’ patience.

Some six years ago I was on the wrong end of an attempted robbery. I was left concussed, my arm was dislocated and one of the joints in my right hand was shattered. I was physically unable to leave the house for a month, and I had a frozen shoulder for a year. There are long-term physical effects: I have premature arthritis and permanent loss of movement on my right-hand side. By any common-sense judgment they are serious and blameless injuries, arising from violence, but with one minor exception: annex E of the scheme does not recognise them as such.

There was—and is—also a psychological effect. An event of that kind changes a person. I am changed in ways that I still find difficult to talk about. I have learned that recovery is not some happy state that is one day achieved: it is a process that follows its own timetable at an uneven pace, towards a destination that can never be fully reached. In my case, the perpetrators were never identified. I incurred substantial costs because the assault happened almost on my doorstep. Although I would be unlikely to recognise the perpetrators, they would have recognised me.

At the conclusion of the investigation, the police referred me to the criminal injuries compensation scheme. My experience of the scheme is typical of the delays and impersonal contact that have already been described, and does not require repeating. What I will say is that when a person is compelled to relive their experiences, within a system that they feel they have to fight against, the original injustice is continually visited anew.

At the conclusion of the process I received the lowest tariff award of £1,000. That was given because there was some post-surgical scarring—the only injury that qualified under the scheme. In truth, that aspect was the least consequential effect of the assault. The criteria felt—and still feel—arbitrary. I received an apologetic letter from one of the administrators of the scheme, and I remain grateful for that human touch. The award did not, as it does not for many, cover the costs of travel and accommodation for surgery or physiotherapy—but, three years on from the assault, I was just glad to have some official recognition and did not pursue an appeal.

I do not say any of this to attract attention or sympathy, or to suggest that my experience was in any way exceptional. The point is that it was not. Like many victims of crime, my hope now is that some good might come from adverse experience. In that respect, I agree with the Minister when she wrote:

“The clear message to me is that we need change, and I will be considering how Government can best provide the support that victims need and deserve.”

I hope we will hear more about those plans today.

I am encouraged by the Prime Minister’s clear and personal statement of support for victims of crime in response to my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington North last week. I am glad to have the opportunity next Tuesday to introduce to the House a ten-minute rule Bill that aims to secure the wholesale review of CICA and the scheme that the Victims’ Commissioner called for in 2019. The victims of violent crime deserve better, and I hope the Bill will secure cross-party support.

--- Later in debate ---

[Laurence Turner]

I will not detain Members long, but I wish to thank everyone who has spoken in this debate for their informed speeches and for their tone. It is right that we scrutinise and criticise the records of Governments past and present—that is one of our critical functions—but all hon. Members have approached the subject with the seriousness and sensitivity that it deserves. We all share the common aim of having a scheme that delivers more for the victims of crime.

From the Back Benches, we heard from the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon). Although he described some of the differences in Northern Ireland, I was struck by the similarities with the frustrations experienced by victims in England, Wales and Scotland. My hon. Friend the Member for Warrington North (Charlotte Nichols) made a speech combining powerful empathy with an acute reading of the technical challenges that still exist in the scheme.

I thank my hon. Friends the Members for Derby North (Catherine Atkinson), for Wolverhampton West (Warinder Juss) and for Congleton (Sarah Russell), who enriched the debate with their professional experience and expertise. In particular, I was struck by the extremely important issue that my hon. Friend the Member for Derby North highlighted, which needs remedying. It should be a matter of concern to us all that apparent dead letters in the law can be reanimated with a sometimes surprising lack of scrutiny.

From the Front Benches, we heard from the hon. Member for Eastbourne (Josh Babarinde), who spoke for himself as well as for his party. He has described his own experiences before in this place and has used those experiences to bring forward his own legislation on related matters. I thank him for his speech.

We heard an account from the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle (Dr Mullan), and it was very important that we heard such an account from the Opposition in this debate. He highlighted an issue that perhaps needs further scrutiny, which is the satisfaction rates that have been claimed. I have to say from my own experience of the scheme that I do not recall ever being asked to give a satisfaction rating. I wonder whether there are issues with how people are asked and what the response rate is; I must say that the 95% figure he cited is surprising to me.

The victims Minister set out an overview of the contributions to this debate. I was struck by her comment that changes to the scheme will not be made at the present time. It is important that if changes are made to the scheme, they are not driven by a short-term desire for cost-savings; they must be motivated by the improvement of the service for victims.

[Charlotte Nichols]

I thank my hon. Friend for his summing up. I want to pick up on that point. When the White Paper on changes to the scheme came out in 1993, more than two Governments back, the then Government said that the changes they wanted to make to the scheme were driven by a desire to “provide a better service” to claimants, although they admitted that the main aim was to cut costs. It is clear from today’s debate that it is important to ensure that change is driven by providing a better service, rather than by cost-saving measures. Does my hon. Friend agree that that needs to be the core focus, above any other consideration from the Treasury?

[Laurence Turner]

I am delighted to hear a reference to a White Paper from 1993. I am a great believer in the theory that obscurity is a source of strength, and my hon. Friend has provided some evidence for that.

The Treasury takes a legitimate and necessary interest in annually managed expenditure. On the other hand, there is a real risk that changes made at relatively short notice, with curtailed time for scrutiny in this place, could deliver a worse service. That must be avoided at all costs, as we have seen from some negative experiences with past changes to the scheme.

Building on the Minister’s welcome commitment to continue to work with Members of this House and victims across the course of this Parliament, I hope that we can secure the positive changes that she wants to achieve. I thank all hon. Members who supported the application for the debate, including some who are unavoidably absent, such as my hon. Friend the Member for Worsley and Eccles (Michael Wheeler) and the hon. Member for South West Devon (Rebecca Smith), who gave notice that unfortunately they have been detained by other matters. This is the first debate on the important subject of criminal injuries in this Parliament, but I am sure that it will not be the last. I thank you for your chairship, Dr Murrison, and I thank everyone for their contributions.