I beg to move,
That leave be given to bring in a Bill to require the Secretary of State to review the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority; and for connected purposes.
From time to time, this House has asked itself the question: what value do we place on support for the victims of violent crime? I believe that this is the right time to ask ourselves that question again.
Victim support can take many forms, including non-financial measures. We have got better, but we must get better still, at recognising the lifelong impact that violent crime has on a person. Victims would benefit from better sharing of information about support services, both public and voluntary, and the processes for accessing NHS diagnostic and therapeutic support. That information sharing should start with the police, the ambulance services and the Crown Prosecution Service, and I was pleased to hear recently from the CPS west midlands region about the enhanced victim support that is now in place. Nevertheless, there will always be cases in which financial loss has occurred, or financial remedy is a necessary or otherwise appropriate means of providing some measure of justice for those who have suffered assault.
I think that Members in all parts of the House would wholeheartedly endorse the principle that, whenever possible, the perpetrators of violent crime should pay the costs of restitution. Indeed, it is a welcome and remarkable achievement that the amount recovered to fund support services through the victim surcharge—first introduced in 2007—has nearly doubled over the last four years. However, the criminal injuries compensation scheme exists because some offenders lack, or cannot be proved to possess, the assets or revenue to pay those costs—the so-called straw men of the justice system—and in still more cases, the perpetrators of violence are never identified. Crime statistics notoriously do not tell the full story, but in the West Midlands police force area, nearly one in five violent assaults are not prosecuted because no suspect can be named. I commend the chief constable, Craig Guildford, and the police and crime commissioner, Simon Foster, for their success in increasing the number and the share of identified assailants, but the point stands.
The animating force behind the current criminal injuries compensation scheme was a Birmingham magistrate and the first secretary of the Howard League for Penal Reform, Margery Fry, who led a campaign in the 1950s under the clarion call of “Justice for Victims.” She argued that criminal injuries could not be narrowly considered to be a private matter between the assailant and the victim. Just as we provide for each other in times of sickness through national insurance, so too, she argued, a duty is owed by the state when it fails to prevent one citizen from injuring another. In her words,
“the State … cannot disown all responsibility for its occasional failure to protect.”
Today that same principle is set out by the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority, which says that payment is sometimes needed as an
“acknowledgement of harm and an important gesture of public sympathy.”
The criminal injuries compensation scheme is now an integral part of the justice system, even if it is—as the Chair of the Justice Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith and Chiswick (Andy Slaughter), put it last week—something of a “Cinderella service”.
Nothing that I say today is intended as a criticism of the staff of the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority; they work hard in difficult circumstances, given that staff numbers have fallen by a fifth since the current iteration of the scheme was introduced in 2012. The civil service people survey shows that they take pride and find professional fulfilment in their work, and, as someone who once received an award from the scheme, I remain grateful to them.
Important and positive improvements have been made since, six years ago, the Victims’ Commissioner published an excoriating report. Let me say at this point how welcome it is to see the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, the hon. Member for Pontypridd (Alex Davies-Jones), in her place. I know that she cares deeply about victim support as well as having specialist knowledge of this issue, and I am grateful to her for her thoughtful responses and conversations about it. However, it is also clear that failings remain within the system, as we heard last week when Members across parties contributed to a debate in Westminster Hall.
I draw particular attention today to the delays that too many applicants still experience; a lack of signposting or integration with wider support services, and a general lack of public awareness of the scheme itself; the trauma of dog attacks on postal workers and other victims by new and banned breeds, the victims of which are mostly ineligible for compensation following changes to the scheme in 2012; the recommendations of the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse; a supposedly £500,000-a-year hardship fund, established 13 years ago, that is now essentially a dead letter—the criteria are so restrictive that no payments have been made from it in the last seven years; and the tariff system itself, as many serious and life-changing injuries are not covered at all. It is true that the upper cap on the scheme is generous by international standards, but the lowest limit of £1,000 has been frozen in cash terms since 1992.
My hon. Friend the Member for Derby North (Catherine Atkinson) referred in this place to annex B of the scheme, which defines a “crime of violence” as including
“a sexual assault to which a person did not in fact consent”.
Those are words and ideas from another age. Even if the courts now adopt a more informed interpretation, the continued presence of that definition can only cause harm, and it must be struck from the scheme.
These problems—and I believe, on the basis of my own casework and that of other Members, that they do to an extent persist—impose a heavy burden on the victims of crime. Like some other Members, I bear the physical scars of violent crime, alongside other scars of a different and more subtle kind. I have spoken previously, in another debate, about that experience, and I do not intend to repeat those words today. It is enough to ask hon. Members to take it on trust that delays, the seemingly arbitrary rules of the scheme, the manner of the communication, and, sometimes, poor decision making can add to the sum of the pain that victims feel—a pain that can only be partially outweighed by the release that the end of the criminal injuries process brings. A perpetrator might evade justice, but it is part of the nature of the trauma response that, at a slight or unexpected prompting, a victim may be compelled to relive that crime again and again.
That is why the Victims’ Commissioner has called for an overarching review of the scheme to establish
“whether it actually fulfils its stated remit: to acknowledge the harm suffered by victims of violent crime who have no other access to compensation, and to provide redress as part of a just and compassionate response.”
That is what the Bill, which I beg leave to introduce, would achieve. The legislation would set out a simple requirement for a fundamental review, and for Ministers to report back to the House with proposals for further scrutiny and debate.
I cannot stand here and claim that easy answers exist to all these questions. Although I note that, to the best of my calculations, the cost of the scheme appears to be falling in real terms, we live in straitened financial times. That is why it is better for reform of the scheme to be carried out in a deliberative manner, on the basis of accurate and recent evidence, and with the needs of victims as the primary concern. To that end, I take heart from the Minister’s statement; although she said that the Government do not plan changes to the scheme “at this time”, she went on to say:
“The clear message to me is that we need change, and I will be considering how Government can best provide the support that victims need and deserve.”
I also take heart from the Prime Minister’s statement of personal support for the victims of violent crime when this matter was raised with him a fortnight ago by my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington North (Charlotte Nichols).
This issue touches the lives of people in every one of our constituencies. No amount of money can return someone to their mental or physical state prior to an assault, but a well-functioning, fair and compassionate scheme can bring victims some measure of justice.
Question put and agreed to.
Ordered,
That Laurence Turner, Charlotte Nichols, Michael Wheeler, Andy Slaughter, Warinder Juss, Antonia Bance, Chris Bloore, Catherine Atkinson, Kevin McKenna, Mark Sewards, Tim Roca and Alistair Strathern present the Bill.
Laurence Turner accordingly presented the Bill.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 13 June, and to be printed (Bill 231).