Victims and Courts Bill

Sarah Champion Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 27th October 2025 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Champion (Rotherham) (Lab)]

I rise to speak to new clause 1 in my name. It would ensure the implementation of recommendation 18 from the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse. Survivors of child sexual abuse have been let down for years by a national compensation scheme. Too often their applications are delayed or denied, not because the legitimacy of their abuse is in any question, but because of loopholes set by the very organisation that was established to support them: the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority.

The many limitations of the scheme were considered during IICSA, which resulted in a clear recommendation to remove the unfair barriers set by CICA, but in April Ministers rejected that recommendation. My new clause 1 would overturn that decision. It has commanded the support of 27 Members from across the House and the backing of 29 charities and experts. They include the Marie Collins Foundation and the Association of Personal Injury Lawyers, which have campaigned passionately on this issue. In opening, the Minister said that she wants a universal scheme without hierarchy, but unfortunately that is not the case at the moment.

My amendment would widen the eligibility of the scheme to include those who have been victims of online-facilitated child sexual abuse. The recent Casey audit found that 40% of the 100,000 recorded child sexual abuse offences last year took place online, so that is around 40,000 children who will struggle to access compensation because their abuse is not considered by CICA “violent” enough to qualify. As IICSA rightly concluded, that rule

“does not take account of the extent of the harm and damage”

of online abuse, such as the ongoing fear that images of sexual abuse will remain available online indefinitely. By continuing to leave online abuse out of scope, CICA reinforces the risk that online sexual abuse is perceived somehow as less serious or less deserving of redress, but nothing could be further from the truth.

New clause 1 also seeks to increase the time limit for applications so that survivors have seven years from the date the offence was reported to the police, or from the age of 18 if the offence was reported while they were a child. The scheme currently has just a two-year time limit, but the average time it takes for a survivor of child abuse to come forward is 24 years to 27 years. There are many reasons for that, and we have heard some in the Chamber today: trauma, fear and shame, not to mention the length of time to go through the court process. The Minister knows this, which is why she and the other Justice Ministers rightly abolished the three-year time limit for civil claims by survivors of child sexual abuse, in line with IICSA recommendation 15.

However, the decision means that survivors face a strange paradox: no time limit for them to take legal action against their abusers, but tight restrictions if they wish to seek compensation for that same abuse. The Government have argued that there is discretion in the scheme to allow applications after the time limit has expired. That is indeed true. However, the proportion of resolved cases accepted after the time limit has fallen each year between 2020 and 2024. In 2020, 87.3% of applications received outside the time limit were resolved. By 2024, that was down to 66.9%. By contrast, the compensation model in Quebec allows seven years for all types of crime except for domestic abuse, child sexual abuse and sexual violence, which have no time limit at all. Surely that is the model we should be following.

Finally, new clause 1 would prevent survivors of child abuse from being affected by a rule that blocks or reduces compensation for victims with unspent convictions. APIL shared with me the case of a woman who was sexually abused by her father. She had suffered with her mental health as a consequence and was hospitalised. While in hospital, she threatened to kill herself with a letter opener. The hospital called the police, and she was convicted of possessing a knife. Because of that conviction, she was then refused the compensation by CICA that had been originally offered to her. That is why new clause 1 would ensure applicants with unspent convictions are not automatically excluded where offences are linked to circumstances of their sexual abuse as a child.

Anti-slavery charities have also been in touch to explain how this particular rule impacts on victims of trafficking who try to access the compensation scheme. It is not unusual for victims of slavery or, indeed, child or criminal exploitation to be forced into criminality by their exploiters. Those convictions, however, commonly lead to immense difficulty for those victims to then access compensation—something that victims of modern slavery, for example, ought to be entitled to under article 15 of the European convention on action against trafficking.

The criminal injuries compensation scheme is supposed to be a support scheme of last resort. Sadly, for many survivors, it is not even that. In the long term, CICA needs a complete overhaul. In the short term, however, survivors are keen to see the swift implementation of recommendation 18, because in doing so this House and this Government can send a powerful message that their abuse is recognised, that their future is prioritised and that meaningful change is under way.

[Josh Fenton-Glynn (Calder Valley) (Lab)]

I want to speak in support of new clauses 10 and 11, which would place a duty on authorities to guarantee support for victims of domestic abuse, sexual violence and child criminal exploitation, as well as their care-givers. I am proud to support a Government who are committed to halving violence against women and girls and who just last week announced some of the most significant steps towards supporting victims of abuse, including denying rapists access to children born of rape and an end to the presumption of contact in the family courts—not just words but action. I support calls for meaningful action today.

Victims are not only dealing with the trauma of what has happened to them. For many, the thought of the court case risks retraumatizing them. Given the backlog in our courts—a backlog left by previous Governments—victims are waiting months and sometimes years before cases are heard. That wait takes a huge emotional toll. We have to address the fear of the process if we are to meet our target of halving violence against women and girls. We have to support victims throughout the process. I urge the Government to build a system that gives victims the confidence to come forward knowing that they will not be left to cope alone.