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9.6 pm

Mr. Alex Carlile (Montgomery): There is a slight danger that the Minister will escape from the debate covered in plaudits and with a small halo, suggesting that

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the Government have achieved a great success in improving the lot of victims of crime. We should not forget the history of the scheme. Under it, as compared with the old non-statutory scheme, victims of crime will receive less money from the Government than they received before.

In the past, victims of crime received, broadly speaking, damages that they would have received in a civil court, taking into account all the elements that form the sophisticated law of damages that applies in a civil court. There has been a significant reduction, and it is quite clear that the sole purpose of the introduction of the scheme and its fated unlawful predecessor, the original tariff scheme, is to cut public spending.

The Library's best estimate is that, in the next financial year, there will be a saving of £200 million. That money is a reduction in what would have been payable to the victims of crime. For that reason, it comes ill from the Government to attempt to earn too much praise for what they have done for the victims of crime. The reduction shows that the Government have hardly striven to achieve greater justice for those victims.

We must not forget that the Government have been dragged kicking and screaming to this new improved tariff scheme. Its history includes the resignation of Martin Thomas QC, a distinguished practitioner on the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board. It includes complex proceedings for judicial review related to the use of the royal prerogative in unpredictable legal territory. It includes judges intervening, for which they are now being criticised. The Government do not seem to like judges upholding the constitutional rights of British citizens.

The history of the scheme includes having to abandon one that was extremely ungenerous and that would have created much greater unfairness for victims of crime than the present scheme. It also includes the anomalies that were mentioned by the hon. Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth (Mr. Michael). Those have been well highlighted by Victim Support, and are well documented.

The cost of rectifying those anomalies is small, as the hon. Gentleman said. I am very surprised that the Government, who seek to support victims of crime, or at least say that they seek to support victims of crime, are not prepared to pay up between £2.6 million and £5 million in order to redress what is seen--at least by many people-- as an injustice.

Of course I appreciate that the whole area of awarding damages for bereavement is difficult--because it cannot be measured by compensation--and that the compensation paid for bereavement in civil cases is very small; nothing more than a token to recognise the feelings of bereavement suffered by the bereaved. It is therefore very disappointing that the Government have not been able to share those feelings of people who have been caught in what was a very small time trap--which, as has been said, could have been dealt with very quickly.

It is a disappointment, too, that so few Members are in the House to speak on such an important issue. I understand, however, that tonight is a big night for the Labour party. I believe that it has a greyhound meeting, which has attracted many of its Members. However, to suggest that new Labour has gone to the dogs would not be--perhaps--terribly fair.

To return to the motion, I raised with the Minister in an intervention the issue of inflation. I ask him to bear in mind closely the point that I made. Civil courts have

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always been able to award damages that are the right valuation at the time. Inflation in the civil courts has never been anything more than realistic. If one looks, as I have professionally, over the years at the way in which damages have developed, one sees that sometimes the courts have fallen behind inflation and then caught up later. But when particular types of injuries have been awarded in jerks, rather than in a steady rise to reflect inflation, injustice has occasionally occurred.

Mr. Nigel Waterson (Eastbourne): Given the hon. and learned Gentleman's experience in criminal practice and his work as a recorder, and given the new rules in the House about paid advocacy, has he taken the opportunity to discuss his involvement in this sort of debate with the new Commissioner for Standards?

Mr. Carlile: I have certainly not discussed with the Commissioner for Standards my involvement in this debate, nor would I. What I am doing now falls plainly within the rules.

Mr. Jeff Rooker (Birmingham, Perry Barr): He is not initiating anything.

Mr. Carlile: I am not initiating anything; I am not advocating anything, except improvement of the law. That is what I am elected to do. I say to the hon. Member for Eastbourne (Mr. Waterson) that if we are to be barred from speaking in the House on matters on which we happen to be reasonably expert, we have reached a poor pass in parliamentary democracy.

Mr. Simon Burns (Lord Commissioner to the Treasury): You voted for it.

Mr. Carlile: Someone who is usually silent in this House said from a sedentary position that I voted for it. I certainly did not vote--nor did any of my right hon. or hon. Friends--to bar Members from speaking on matters on which they have professional and working expertise.

Mr. Rooker: The rules do not do that.

Mr. Carlile: If anybody is under the illusion that the new rules do that, they are wrong, as the hon. Member for Birmingham, Perry Barr (Mr. Rooker) has just reflected, with all his experience and knowledge of parliamentary procedure.

To return to the point, we want this tariff scheme to work. It is important for the criminal justice scheme that it should work. It is important for the reputation of the House that the scheme should work. Therefore, it is very important that we should be given more than a vague commitment by the Minister that inflation will be taken into account by uprating the tariff regularly. It is bad enough to be a victim of crime, but it would be unforgivable if victims of crime were also made the victims of public spending cuts. We need the clearest of commitments on those issues.

I hope that the scheme will work. I hope, however, that the Minister will recognise that--many, many reasons have been given by the hon. Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth--if further anomalies arise, the Government should be willing to address them. I trust that an element of flexibility will be applied over the years to the new scheme, which will mean that victims of crime will still be able to obtain justice for their injuries.

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9.14 pm

Mr. Maclean: With the leave of the House, Mr. Deputy Speaker. This has been a short but interesting debate. I shall deal first with the point raised by the hon. and learned Member for Montgomery (Mr. Carlile) about inflation. Of course we are committed to reviewing the scheme regularly. We want to keep all its aspects under constant review, and we acknowledge the need to take inflation into account. It would be politically unsustainable for any Government, of any colour, to run such a scheme without reviewing it for inflation-- especially if inflation under another Government were to rise a great deal faster than at present.

Labour Members raised the issue of the treatment of fatal cases. I want to take a few minutes to make it absolutely clear what the position was and is. Under the common law damages scheme--the old 1990 scheme--compensation for dependants or relatives of those fatally injured was and is assessed in accordance with the Fatal Accidents Act and allied legislation. That produced some anomalies. For instance, the father of an illegitimate child could receive no award for bereavement, nor could parents when their child was over the age of 18 when killed.

As the whole House knows and agrees, death by accident is always a tragedy. In the light of the cases that arose under the 1990 scheme, we--this Government, who have been reprimanded by some hon. Members tonight-- became convinced that there was a case for treating the families of homicide victims rather differently from the position under the Fatal Accidents Act.

Thus, when we devised the interim tariff scheme, we made it possible for the first time for parents and a spouse, whether or not common law, and the children, of any age, of a homicide victim to qualify for a share of the new fatal award of £10,000, which had replaced the common law damages scheme award for loss of dependency, loss of support, and bereavement.

We estimated that the change would result in more than 80 per cent. of claimants in fatal cases receiving more money than they would have done under the 1990 scheme. The enforced withdrawal of the 1994 tariff scheme and the reinstatement--as had to be done--of the 1990 scheme meant that the more restrictive eligibility criteria of the 1990 scheme had to be applied once more.

I wish that people had recognised that the interim tariff scheme that we introduced in certain areas was considerably more generous than the old scheme. It meant that those categories of relatives or dependants who had, for the first time ever under our proposals, become eligible for an award under the tariff scheme were unfortunately no longer eligible.

We have considerable sympathy for such claimants. The fact that they cannot now qualify for an award is an unfortunate consequence of the withdrawal of the 1994 tariff scheme, necessitated by the House of Lords judgment. Nevertheless, we still think that it is right that such categories of claimants should be able to qualify for a fatal award.

Thus, under the new tariff scheme before us today, the eligibility criteria for fatal cases are the same as they were under the earlier tariff scheme. Once the new scheme is

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introduced, such people will be eligible for a fatal award of £5,000--or £10,000 if there is only one qualifying claimant. In addition, under the new tariff scheme there will also be payment for loss of dependency--that is, reliance on the breadwinner's income--and loss of parental support.

I must tell the House that there is nothing that we can reasonably do for those who would have been eligible under the 1994 tariff scheme and who would again be eligible under the 1996 scheme, but who have been rendered ineligible by the enforced reinstatement of the old scheme. Applications must, in equity, be considered under the terms of the scheme in force at the time of application.

That means that, because the 1994 scheme was ruled ineligible, the cases to which I have just referred have to be dealt with under the 1990 scheme. It is not possible to treat such applicants as a special case, and allow them a payment under our more generous 1994 tariff scheme, or let them reapply under the generous 1996 tariff scheme. That would be wrong in principle, and anomalous in practice.

Let us not forget that between 50 per cent. and 60 per cent. of applicants would have been better off under the 1994 tariff scheme than under the reinstated 1990 scheme. We cannot move to a situation in which any group of claimants--however strongly they may feel--are allowed to pick and choose their claim under whichever scheme they think would be the most advantageous for them.


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