Criminal Injuries Compensation Scheme
Debate between Helen Grant and Andrew Smith(12 years ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mrs Helen Grant)
I have listened with great care to the points made by hon. Members in today’s debate and I shall respond in a moment to some of them. In his opening speech my right hon. Friend the Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice set out the principal reasons for reforming the scheme. He made it clear that proper support for victims and witnesses is a very high priority for this Government.
The public expect the criminal justice system to have at its heart the interests of those who have suffered. That includes paying compensation in certain circumstances, but the question for any responsible Government is what those circumstances should be. My right hon. Friend sought to set our changes to the criminal injuries compensation scheme in the context of all the changes we are making to the support that we provide for victims and witnesses. It would be foolish to consider them in isolation. The key point that the Government want to make is that we seek broadly to maintain overall spending on victims, not to cut it, but to change its composition so that money is used more effectively.
As to the criminal injuries compensation scheme itself, there are two main problems, which were highlighted so eloquently and clearly by my hon. Friends the Members for Reigate (Mr Blunt), for Enfield, Southgate (Mr Burrowes) and for Enfield North (Nick de Bois). The first is that it is in financial difficulties. I know that Opposition Members have made much of their disagreement with us over this, swallowing whole the briefings provided by trade unions, but the fact is that the scheme does need to be put on a sustainable footing.
Mrs Grant
The second point is that the design of the criminal injuries compensation scheme is inadequate and the policy rationale flawed. Compensation is in many cases poorly targeted, with millions of pounds spent on relatively minor claims such as sprained ankles. Worse than that, over the past decade, nearly £60 million has been paid to 19,000 claimants who were convicted criminals. So, instead of taking money from an unaffordable scheme and using it to give cash for minor injuries months or even years after the event, our plans seek to make a structural change in the nature of the help that we give to our victims.