Criminal Injuries Compensation Scheme

Mark Durkan Excerpts

Wednesday 7th November 2012 Commons Chamber

[Damian Green]

I can only repeat to the right hon. Gentleman what I have just said to the hon. Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Katy Clark): if the injuries are serious and long lasting, people will still be eligible for the scheme. There is a genuine misunderstanding. [Interruption.] Let me get on to the bands in a moment, and I hope I will assuage the concerns of the right hon. Member for Tooting.

[Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Damian Green]

I have been generous in giving way. I will make some progress now, and give way later.

Apart from the policy problem, the scheme does not live within its substantial budget. In recent years, the CICA has been provided with an annual budget of about £200 million. However, the budget has on a number of occasions been topped up at the end of the year to enable claims to be paid when they are due. That practice simply cannot continue. Secondly, we are still resolving claims that were made under the pre-tariff system operating before 1996. Although we have made extra funding available to pay these older claims, pre-tariff liabilities stood at about £150 million at the beginning of the financial year. Thirdly, overall scheme liabilities— including existing tariff scheme liabilities, an estimate of cases that are likely to fall due in the future, and the remaining pre-tariff cases—are in excess of £500 million. Although the scheme will always have an outstanding liability, I am sure that Members on both sides of the House will agree that the figure is indisputably too high and must be reduced. The scheme must be put on a more sustainable footing if it is to continue to offer timely compensation to victims and provide a set of fair and realistic expectations.

--- Later in debate ---

[Damian Green]

Let me explain first, and then I will give way to those Members who have not yet intervened.

What that means in practice is that bands 1 to 5 of the current tariff, which contain the more minor injuries such as short-term sprains, will be removed. Bands 6 to 12 are to be subject to a graduated reduction of between 60% and 24%, but bands 13 to 25 are to be protected in their entirety at existing levels.

There has been much talk about injuries in bands 1 to 5 possibly not being minor. However, many injuries already appear more than once in the existing tariff and are ranked according to their seriousness and recovery time. Those injuries in bands 1 to 5 that we are removing may, therefore, appear again in band 6 or above, if the recovery time is longer or the injury is more complex. Where an injury has an ongoing impact, therefore, it will generally still be included in the draft scheme.

[Mark Durkan]

The Minister says the reformed scheme is intended to help victims of the most distressing crimes. Human trafficking must be one of the most distressing crimes anyone can suffer, but it is clear that no account will be taken of the trauma and utter denigration suffered by the victims of human trafficking. They will be assessed only on the basis of whether their injuries happen to score on the scratch-card under the new scheme. The all-party group on human trafficking recently heard an unhysterical briefing from judges on the implications of the new scheme for such victims.

[Damian Green]

If people have injuries that qualify, and if they are resident in this country, they will still qualify—although things might depend on how long they had been in the country. As I hope the all-party group would accept, the overall package of services for the victims of trafficking—which I know a bit about from my previous life as Immigration Minister—is considerably better than it was in the past.