Maria
Eagle: I wonder if the hon. Gentleman recalls—he is
skipping over it—the 1996 legislation that his Government
brought in, which took the scheme away from being based on the way of
the civil courts. Does he repudiate that
now?
Mr.
Burrowes: No, I do not. I was talking about the genesis,
the beginning, where it came from—
Maria
Eagle: That sounds like “Doctor
Who”.
Mr.
Burrowes: The Minister has been watching too much TV. I
will happily spend a few minutes talking about “Doctor
Who”, but we need to get away from time lords and different time
zones and into reality. It is victims groups that are concerned about
the issue, and it needs to be addressed carefully. We need to see what
response the Government receive to ensure that they have properly and
carefully considered not to make changes to firm-up the part of clause
13 that effectively means that unless there are exceptional
circumstances an award would be reduced or disallowed if an applicant
had unspent criminal convictions. Plainly, if those convictions are
connected to the incident involved, that is a different situation,
although one appreciates the difference between a statutory basis and a
non-statutory basis. Nevertheless, there are important principles
relating to this area, in terms of contributory negligence. Victims
groups are concerned, which is why that matter needs to be properly
addressed by the Minister. She must justify why the Government wish to
firm up the position, rather than, as some groups have suggested,
making a presumption in favour of an award, disregarding previous
convictions, and rather than its being disregarded except in
exceptional
circumstances. The
fourth area relates to what the Minister mentioned when introducing the
scheme: whether the relevant provision should apply to overseas
injuries, particularly those that have come into prominence in relation
to terrorist attacks. There is concern about British citizens who are
injured abroad, particularly in terrorist attacks, when a terrorist
attacks not only that individual, who is injured, but the state,
affecting the freedom of us all. There is a shared responsibility in
relation to those victims. A global compensation scheme is both costly
and, in many ways, unworkable. However, have the Government looked at
and are they addressing alternatives, such as steps to ensure that
victims and bereaved families are receiving adequate support in respect
of processing any compensation applications in the domestic or
international courts? Are the Government assisting in that
regard? The
other point that was mentioned in the 2005 document was that the
Government were considering a national disaster charitable fund. Has
there been any progress on
that? The
Stone report on 7/7, released in November 2007, immediately comes to
mind. Are the recommendations of that report being followed? The
recommendations largely relate to information about the following:
staff being informed about circumstances; the preparation and use of
experts; adequate training and support to address the responses that
individuals might demonstrate and the likely effects on them; a
corporate attitude; ensuring that staff treat applicants as being
entitled to an award and eligible until proven otherwise; adapting
guidance papers as appropriate; joining up with other organisations
that are part of the recovery process; and ensuring that applications
benefit from economies of
scale. Barry
Gardiner (Brent, North) (Lab): I have listened to what the
hon. Gentleman has said. I do not think that any Committee member would
doubt the extensive tour de table that shows the research that he has
engaged
in. However, I have not heard him mention a single proposal that would
amend what we are dealing with today. Does he have substantively
different proposals to
offer?
Mr.
Burrowes: As the hon. Gentleman knows, Committee members
have no power to amend the draft scheme that we are presented with; we
have to proceed on the basis on which the Government are proceeding and
either oppose it or approve it. It is important to hold the Government
to account on the basis of their terms of reference, which were made in
relation to the 2005 Act. It is important to see whether they have
taken account of the Stone report, to see if that required any
additional variations or amendments to be made to the current
scheme. The
2005 document, and previous documents and rhetoric from the Government,
make a lot of play about the victims surcharge and how that has dealt
non-financially with the concerns about compensation to support victims
groups. The Minister will be aware of the shortfall in relation to the
victims surcharge: the expectation of £16 million for
a fully operational year and a total of some £3,783,191.
However, there was a commitment that arrangements would be made to fund
victims services and that those would be made good from the Ministry of
Justice vote. Although this is tangential in respect of the scheme, it
is part of ensuring that we do not treat the scheme, as the Minister
said, as if it were in a vacuum, and is about ensuring that we consider
how the Government are supporting victims groups through victims
surcharge receipts. We must also look at how and whether the Government
will hold good to their commitments, and how they will make up the
shortfall. There is concern about divvying up the £16 million
that is expected to come through the surcharge. Some £250,000
has been allocated to victims of homicides, but bereaved families are
concerned that that is a limited amount and that more should come to
them.
Another area
of concern, which the Government have sought to make some play of, is
making offenders pay wherever possible. The idea is that they should
pay back what has been paid out by the state through Criminal Injuries
Compensation Authority payments. How much has been gained from orders
under the Domestic Violence, Crime and Victims Act 2004, and how much
is that system progressing? Could further payments be received by
ensuring that offenders pay, not just in the community but in prison?
Could the Government work harder by going back several years to a piece
of legislation that is on the statute book but that was never
implemented, the Prisoners’ Earnings Act 1996? Could more effort
be made to ensure that prisoners perform both purposeful work and work
that pays, as well as paying into a victims fund so that victim groups,
if not individuals, receive recompense?
The Government
have talked about having a victims toolkit to help victims to get
grants for which they are not currently eligible. It was suggested that
the toolkit would be delivered in April 2007, but we are still waiting
for it.
One matter
that has not been addressed in the scheme is loss of earnings.
Applicants are not entitled to compensation for loss of earnings for 28
weeks, so a self-employed taxi driver who was assaulted by a
passenger
would be unable to claim for loss of earnings in those months. I
appreciate that it is not directly equivalent, but in a civil claim
that would be as of
right. Maria
Eagle: Is the hon. Gentleman suggesting that his party
would have loss of earnings in the scheme from the date of
injury?
Mr.
Burrowes: No, the position is that it needs to be
carefully considered by a Minister, who needs to be aware of and to
have discounted the concern that has been raised by victims groups, the
legal profession and others.
Barry
Gardiner: I think it would help the Committee if the hon.
Gentleman clarified his view and position on the matter. We can discuss
it in the abstract and talk about whether the Government or the
Committee have considered it, but the key point is knowing where we
stand.
Mr.
Burrowes: I made it clear to the Minister that I was not
considering that to be proposed within the scheme. It is important that
the Government should establish that they have taken full account of
concerns about the lack of entitlement to loss of earnings for
28 weeks. The Minister might respond that it is because of
eligibility for statutory sick pay during those 28 weeks,
which means that the state is making some provision in that time, but
for the self-employed taxi driver, that provision may be
limited.
Another area
of concern is rehabilitation for victims of violent incidents who have
been discharged from hospital. In a civil claim, the insurers would
have a code for rehabilitation and would nominate a rehabilitation
consultant—often a nurse—who would assess that
person’s need, such as whether a wheelchair or ramp was needed.
That code is a useful, practical mechanism that insurers use in civil
courts to assist applicants. Is a similar code being considered within
the ambit of the scheme as a practical way of providing rehabilitation
for victims? In many ways, such a rehabilitation scheme would
effectively assist the victim of a violent incident, in many ways, to
return to work and be less dependent on the state. I do not want to
take any more of the Committee’s
time—
Mr.
Lindsay Hoyle (Chorley) (Lab): Hear, hear. Quite
right.
Mr.
Burrowes: That news was greeted with wild
acclaim.
I do not wish
to oppose the draft scheme, but there is a concern about whether a gap
has arisen between the proposals made in 2005 and the draft scheme and
whether an opportunity has been missed to address many of the concerns
that victims have
raised. 5
pm David
Howarth (Cambridge) (LD): It is pleasure to serve under
your chairmanship, Mrs.
Dean. I
read the draft scheme with increasing relief that it does not pursue
some of the ideas in “Rebuilding Lives” that would have
been damaging. I particularly welcome the fact that the Government have
not proceeded with the proposal to exclude victims who suffered the
crime at work, which would have been unjust. An argument was made in the
consultation paper that suggested that the employer should take on that
burden and pay compensation through insurance. That argument, in
itself, would have proved too much, but it could be applied to
individual victims, as it could be argued that they should have
insurance. That argument would have undermined the entire scheme, so I
am glad that it has not been proceeded with. I hope that the Minister
can assure the Committee that there is no intention, at any point, to
bring that idea
back. The
principal idea set out in “Rebuilding Lives” that has not
been advanced is the proposal to remove about 60 per cent. of claims at
the bottom end of the range to finance the lifting of the cap from its
present level of £500,000, and I welcome that decision. The
Minister stated that that proposal was wholly unacceptable to
consultees, and rightly so. The scheme is a way of sharing the risk of
harm from criminal injuries. In a perfect world, criminals would pay
through civil damages, but for the most part, unless they win the
lottery, which has happened once or twice, it is unlikely that they
would be in a position to pay civil damages. The question is therefore,
“On whom should fall the burden of the risk that the defendants
themselves cannot pay?”
Without the
criminal injuries compensation scheme, the entire burden of that risk
would fall on the victims themselves. The function of the scheme is to
share some of that burden, although not all of it, with the state, and
thereby with taxpayers as a whole. It is worth saying, as has been said
on previous occasions by Governments introducing schemes of this sort,
that the criminal injuries compensation scheme is not about the
Government accepting responsibility for crime or for the harm caused by
crime, but about sharing the burden imposed by criminal defendants on
their victims. That is why it was right to reject the proposal to take
60 per cent. of the beneficiaries out of the scheme. The number of
people who benefit is important, and the notion of concentrating on a
few very badly affected victims would immensely reduce the scope of the
scheme. Part of the idea behind the scheme is that as many victims as
possible should benefit from
it. I
sympathise with the Ministry that the original intention was to be able
to raise the £500,000 cap, which has not kept up with inflation,
as the hon. Member for Enfield, Southgate mentioned. Had the cap kept
up with inflation, it would now be about £650,000. Even at that
level, it would fall well short of what badly disabled victims would
receive in a civil action. I fully accept that the scheme is not
designed to match civil damages, because it is an exercise in sharing
the burden, not in the state taking responsibility for it, which would
be quite a different thing. But the point remains that if the cap does
not keep pace with inflation, the share of the burden borne by victims
as opposed to taxpayers will rise.
In 2005, the
Department said that it was not in a position to squeeze any more money
out of the Treasury to pay higher benefits for the top end of the
scheme, so it had to look for ways of moving money around its budgets.
The Department is now much bigger and it has many more budgets to move
around, but the question is whether there is still no room elsewhere in
the budget to
raise the cap. The other question was raised by the hon. Gentleman, who
asked whether more money could be found in other ways.
“Rebuilding Lives” discussed reducing offenders’
benefit payments, but if we make too big a deduction, that interferes
with the possibility of rehabilitation. On the other hand, if we make a
very small deduction, the administrative costs might be greater than
the benefits, and we might be better off just paying more out of
central funds. Will the Minister comment on that aspect of the
consultation paper? Another anomaly relates to the fact that we want
attachment of earnings, not just of benefits, but the question then is
how far we would go, and whether that would interfere with
rehabilitation. The hon.
Gentleman mentioned the possibility of clawing back money from people
who are in prison. The scheme before us deals mainly with violent
crime, and many of the offenders concerned go to prison, so the
question is whether the suggestion is practical or plausible. We might
have to ask the Prison Service to take on more work inside prisons from
the private sector. A lot of the work that happens inside prisons is
from elsewhere in the public sector, so, effectively, we would just be
shifting around the public budget. Work is done for the NHS, for
example, but the Government would have to try to find more work from
private sector sources, then pay prisoners more than their current
£9 a week and claw back some of it for victims’
compensation. On the face of it, that seems like a good suggestion, and
I should like the Minister’s comment on it.
Unlike the hon. Gentleman, I
have only two specific points about the details of the scheme. First,
paragraph 35(1)(d)(iii) deals with care costs, and there seems to be a
change from the 2001 scheme. The new scheme restricts care costs to
applicants’ core costs, such as the cost of helping them with
bodily functions and meal preparations, whereas the previous scheme
seemed to deal with all care costs. Why has the change been made, and
is it justifiable to place the extra cost on the individual victim?
Secondly, in a similar vein, I have a question about the earnings
limit. Financial loss under the criminal injuries compensation scheme
is restricted, unlike civil liability damages, to one and a half times
average earnings: someone cannot get whatever earnings they have lost;
they are limited to one and a half times average earnings. But the
definition of average earnings appears to have changed from the 2001
scheme to the 2008 scheme. In the 2001 scheme, average earnings were
defined as gross average industrial earnings, whereas in the new
scheme, they are defined as median gross weekly earnings. Why has that
change been made, and what difference is it expected to make? On the
face of it, given that earnings are skewed with a very long
tail at the high end, changing average—meaning mean—to
average, meaning median, represents a reduction in the amount of money
available. On the other hand, changing from industrial earnings to
earnings in general might have the opposite effect, so I should like
the Minister to comment on what it is expected to
do.
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