Victims and Witnesses Strategy

Debate between Lord Clarke of Nottingham and Nick Boles

Monday 30th January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clarke]

One of the things that we are consulting on—we have not mentioned it much, but anything we can do would be valuable—is increased support for witnesses. It has got better in recent years, but support to enable witnesses to find the experience a little less intimidating than they otherwise might, and to explain to them the process through which they will go, is always valuable and needs to be improved. On people who are victims of crimes about which they do not complain or which have not led to a prosecution, we have considered that and are issuing a consultation document. But the underlying rule of the scheme has always been that, in order to get compensation, people must be prepared to co-operate with the police and the prosecutors to get the crime dealt with, and we have to keep that. We have dealt specially with repeated physical violence, and that is meant to address domestic violence and some of the other cases to which the hon. Gentleman referred.

[Nick Boles (Grantham and Stamford) (Con)]

I welcome the Lord Chancellor’s statement, but does he understand that my constituent Trevor Lakin can never be compensated for the loss of his son Jeremy in the Sharm el Sheikh attack? He has been fighting for years for compensation for the sake of such people as Will Pike, who survived an attack in Mumbai. Will Pike is trying to rebuild his life and needs help from the Government to do so.

[Mr Clarke]

I agree with my hon. Friend, who has campaigned consistently on the issue since arriving in the House. Nothing can ever compensate people who suffer severe consequences or bereavement as the result of a serious crime, which is why the scheme has always aimed only to make a contribution towards easing the financial problems that such victims suffer. In the case of overseas terrorism, we are moving as we are and in future the direct victims of overseas terrorism will be able to receive compensation on the same basis as on the domestic scene. We are still imposing some limitations on claims by family and so on, but this is an enormous advance on the previous situation in which nothing was being done, as all parties agreed in the last Parliament that it should.