Criminal Injuries Compensation Scheme

Debate between Damian Green and Andrew Smith

Wednesday 7th November 2012 Commons Chamber

[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—

[Mr Andrew Smith (Oxford East) (Lab)]

Will the Minister give way?

[Damian Green]

May I respond to the previous intervention first?

The people to whom my hon. Friend refers will certainly have access to the hardship fund. As she knows, the purpose of the fund is to compensate those who have suffered as a result of a crime, and in the case of some attacks by dogs a criminal offence will not have been committed. The right hon. Member for Tooting mentioned a case in which someone had gone to prison, so clearly a crime had been committed in that case, and it ought to be covered by the scheme. However, I recognise my hon. Friend’s concern, and I hope that it has been addressed.

[Mr Smith]

I am grateful to the Minister. How will access to this very meagre fund be rationed, and what will he do if it runs out during the course of the year? Will he undertake to top it up, or will he deny assistance to further applicants once it has been exhausted?

[Damian Green]

I am pleased to be able to tell the right hon. Gentleman that a written ministerial statement will be published shortly giving details of the scheme. I can also tell him that there will be a £500,000 fund to establish the scheme, and that it will be aimed at people who are temporarily unable to work as a result of their injuries and are not in receipt of statutory sick pay or an equivalent employer-provided scheme.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Smith]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. The irony will not be lost on hundreds of thousands of USDAW members and other trade unionists.

The Government have argued, and we heard it from the Minister, who has now left—[Interruption.] I beg your pardon. He is still here. He has moved to the Back Benches, but perhaps not permanently just yet. He argued that the compensation scheme was financially unsustainable, but that is not borne out by the Government’s own figures or the impact assessment.

Over the past four years, the cost of the tariff scheme to the Ministry of Justice has averaged £192 million, which is both remarkably stable and within the current budget of £200 million. The cost of criminal injuries compensation as a whole was higher in 2011-12 because the Government made payments totalling £237 million on 78 cases that arose before the tariff scheme was introduced in 1996. The majority of those cases involved children, where a final assessment of their ongoing need could not be concluded until they reached adulthood. Total liabilities under the scheme are inflated by the cost of historic cases, including pre-1996 cases yet to be settled.

[Damian Green]

As I understand it, and I suspect this may be an argument that appeals to the right hon. Gentleman from his time at the Treasury, he thinks the system is fine and solvent as long as we keep delaying payments to victims, which is what has been happening for many, many years. Surely when he thinks about that, it is clearly an unacceptable way to ration public spending.

[Mr Smith]

I want the liabilities to be settled and the victims to get the money to which they are entitled. To be fair, some progress has been made on those cases. Earlier in the autumn there were 73 pre-1996 cases still to be settled, at a predicted cost of £148 million, but the figure has now come down to 33 cases, probably at a cost of £100 million, so the backlog is being addressed and is not the rising burden that the Ministry is trying to claim it is.

Furthermore, if the Secretary of State’s argument is correct, why does the Government’s own impact assessment state:

“The current scheme costs around £212m per year—£52.5m per quarter—and we assume that in the absence of reform this would continue”?

That is the cost to both the Ministry of Justice and the Scottish Government. The impact assessment does not state that in the absence of reform the costs would rise or get out of control; it states that the level of spending would continue. The problem is that the Government are choosing to cut the budget for the scheme.

I appeal again to Government Members. In making the victims of crime pay the price of these cuts, they have picked the wrong target. We know that difficult choices have to be made. I understand the pressure of party loyalty they feel under, but there are times when we have to put the interests of vulnerable members of the public first. If Government Members consulted their constituents and party associations about this, I feel sure that they would say, “Don’t cut criminal injuries compensation.” Above all, if they listened to the victims of crime, they would reject the measure and support our motion.