Criminal Injuries Compensation Scheme

Sheila Gilmore Excerpts

Wednesday 7th November 2012 Commons Chamber

[Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Enfield North (Nick de Bois), who touched on a number of issues, although they were not all relevant to what we are debating today. Earlier this week, a Government Back Bencher—I cannot remember who—quoted Barack Obama’s adviser as saying

“Never let a good crisis go to waste”.

The problem we have had with this Government for two and a half years is that they have clearly decided not to let a financial crisis, the causes of which we disagree about, go to waste, as they have made all kinds of incursions into our various forms of social justice provision.

I think that Ministers must have been given a template that goes something like this: first, set up the straw man, creating so-called facts that usually run along the lines of “It’s too expensive”. The cost is exaggerated in two ways. First, one year of particularly high spending is thrown in as “normal” and then, as my hon. Friend the Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Katy Clark) eloquently put it, an historic scheme is mixed up with a current scheme to provide a notion that the scheme is unaffordable.

The second part of the argument is to say that the policy is flawed and targeted on the wrong people. Some Members might see where I am going with this. Those of us who have been involved in debates on various aspects of welfare reform will have heard exactly the same language being used. We are told, for example, that a benefit is “too easy to get”—even if that is not necessarily true. We have heard it all before with disability benefits, for example: they are “flawed”, “too expensive” and “targeted on the wrong people”. The Government then say that they are going to concentrate on “those in greatest need”. It always sounds quite plausible, until it is actually examined in detail.

[Stephen Lloyd (Eastbourne) (LD)]

Does the hon. Lady share my concern that people with brain injury will, under the proposals, lose 25% of their compensation? I am sure that Members will know that there is no such thing as a minor brain injury—brain injury is always significant—so does the hon. Lady share my concern?

[Sheila Gilmore]

That certainly is one of our concerns, so I hope the hon. Gentleman will vote with us in the Lobby.

We have gone through the straw man and the “concentration on the people in the greatest need” argument, although in fact many people who have very great needs are being left out. The third step that usually arises at some point in the discussion is: “We will set up a hardship fund”, which will then be presented as the answer to everything. The parallels with other legislation are apparent. We have heard it before in debates over welfare reform. A discretionary housing fund, for example, was said to be the answer to everything, so people did not need to worry. Here we have it again: the Government are going to set up a hardship fund, but it barely replaces 1% of what is actually being cut out. On top of that, the parameters of the hardship fund are vague—we still do not know what they will be—but the bottom line is that the hardship fund does not compensate for what is being taken away. That is the template within which Ministers have obviously been asked to operate, and we see it time and again. If one starts with flawed logic—a straw man that does not stand up to close examination—one comes to the wrong conclusions.

It is unfair and unreasonable to counterpoise compensation under the scheme with the setting up of good victim support services. Good victim support services are important, although many have declined as they are often funded through local government. If we can improve victim support services by taking money off criminals, that is good, but it should not be counterpoised against compensation. It should not be a question of one or the other. Nor should it be suggested as a substitute for the compensation that people have received previously. We support an increase in court-ordered compensation, but the proposal would take compensation away from people under the scheme before the availability of such money had been established. There might be success in getting more direct compensation from criminals to victims through the courts, but the people affected would not be eligible under the scheme, so the best way to save money might be through beefing up such mechanisms. However, let us do that first before we go any further. I urge those Members who have qualms about the proposed scheme to vote against it.