Child Grooming Victims: Compensation Awards

Lord Scriven Excerpts

Thursday 20th November 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Levitt (Lab)]

I am afraid I am absolutely not going to agree with that. It is going to be a matter for the new national inquiry, and I am not going to pre-empt that.

[Lord Scriven (LD)]

My Lords, my noble friend Lady Walmsey did not necessarily ask about the terms of reference of the inquiry; she asked about the mechanisms of the payments of the compensation scheme. Have the Government learned from what has happened in the infected blood and Post Office Horizon schemes, and are they now working on the mechanisms of the compensation scheme so that fast payment will flow once the public inquiry has reached its conclusions?

[Baroness Levitt (Lab)]

The difficulty with that question is that it presupposes the existence of a compensation scheme for these victims. There is no such compensation scheme in existence. Whether or not that is something that is recommended by the national inquiry, we will wait to see. As I have already said, there are a number of different categories of victims in these cases, and not all the same conditions apply to all of them. But I take the point that if there were to be a compensation scheme, it would be important that it paid out quickly.