Victims and Witnesses Strategy

David Nuttall Excerpts

Monday 30th January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clarke]

We must ensure that the approach is proportionate and the circumstances appropriate. The hon. Gentleman, who raises a perfectly serious point, will see his question canvassed in the consultation document. It is not for me to suggest circumstances in which difficulties might arise. However, if someone was convicted for shoplifting and then, a year or two later, was the victim of an extremely serious assault in unrelated circumstances, that might be an exceptional case. If someone with a previous conviction has got themselves injured intervening to protect another victim from another crime, that, too, might be an exceptional case. I do not want to sketch out all the exceptional cases, however, because there would not be many of them. Nevertheless, I think that we can protect ourselves against challenge as long as it is possible to consider those cases. However, the bulk of criminals should not be entitled to payment from the taxpayer when they are victims of crime themselves.

[Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)]

The current maximum award available under the criminal injuries compensation scheme to the most seriously injured victims of crime is much less than they would receive from a civil law claim for damages. Do the plans contain any proposals to remedy this problem?

[Mr Clarke]

That was the problem when the scheme was first set up—I remember wrestling with it 20 years ago. At that point, we had slipped into a situation in which a compensation claim was assessed as though it was a personal injuries claim in a civil court, which meant that every case took ages to litigate, lots of lawyers would turn up to make representations on the basis of large numbers of medical reports, and the costs soared. Everybody accepted that this was completely unsustainable. The compensation scheme for criminal injuries is not meant to be full compensation; it is meant to be a contribution towards covering the financial consequences of the injury. As I said earlier, it would be nice if the taxpayer could pay everybody full compensation as if it were a civil award, but frankly that was never practicable from the moment it started, and it certainly is not affordable now.