Criminal Injuries Compensation Scheme

Baroness Bray of Coln Excerpts

Wednesday 7th November 2012 Commons Chamber

[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.

[Angie Bray (Ealing Central and Acton) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend will be aware that for some time many of us on both sides of the House have campaigned for a better deal for victims of dangerous dog attacks. I appreciate that those with more serious injuries will still be able to receive compensation under the scheme if they have no other source of compensation, but what about those with more minor injuries? Will they have access to the new discretionary reserve fund, so that they can at least make their case for some compensation?

[Damian Green]

Some of them undoubtedly will be covered by the new hardship fund, to which I intend to refer in a moment. I thought that the right hon. Member for Tooting was uncharacteristically churlish in describing it as a smokescreen. It was set up because the Under-Secretary, the Secretary of State and other Ministers listened—