Victims and Witnesses Strategy

Tom Brake Excerpts

Monday 30th January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clarke]

I will consider it. Such situations are extremely irritating, and in extreme cases could be contempt of court, but, as the right hon. Gentleman knows, no one has ever found a way to deal with them. There always will be cases when some miscreant leaves court and celebrates too vigorously the fact that he has not lost his liberty or in some other way. If he starts adding insult to the court or his victims, something should be done to find a way of dealing with him under the rules of contempt of court.

[Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)]

I welcome the Secretary of State’s statement and the proposals, particularly on requiring offenders to pay more to compensate victims and on providing compensation to UK victims of terrorism abroad. On UK victims of crimes abroad, will the Secretary of State agree to meet a cross-party group of MPs to look at the issue of people who are victims of serious crimes of another nature, such as serious assault?

[Mr Clarke]

It would be very nice to do that, but that is the history of this scheme from the start, which is why the aspirations of Parliament and Government have always run rather ahead of the available funding. I would like to compensate people with broken fingers or sprained ankles, but that would get us into arrears and months and years of delay before anyone could be paid. We have to concentrate on the most serious cases. As far as people abroad are concerned, all kinds of nasty things can happen abroad, although we hope that they usually do not. People can have all sorts of crimes committed against them or catch all sorts of peculiar diseases, but we have to bear in mind that British taxpayers’ obligation to compensate in such cases has to be limited to a certain extent.

On terrorism, the case has always been that it cannot be insured against, and that is why everybody has agreed that the taxpayer should compensate in such cases. I would be reluctant to accede more readily to going further and adding yet more people whom the British taxpayer has to compensate for unfortunate experiences in Africa.