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Lord Carlisle of Bucklow: An issue as complex and far-ranging as this is difficult to decide at this hour of the night at the end of the Bill's passage through this place. As the noble Lord, Lord Thomas, said, at present if a compensation order is made by the court in favour of the victim of a crime of violence, and if that victim then applies to the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board, the board deducts from the amount which it grants that which the person has received under the order made by the court.
As the noble Lord said, that means that, since usually only part of the money has been paid, that part is deducted financially from the order and the board then takes over the responsibility of attempting to enforce the remaining part of the order against the individual. It is a cumbersome organisation, but we do recover a certain amount of money.
I have a lot of sympathy with the argument of the noble Lord, Lord Thomas, that people want their compensation early and if we could devise a scheme whereby they received a sum of money quickly rather than paid over weeks, it would be to the advantage of the victim. The difficulty is how the court arrives at what that figure of compensation should be, and also what area it would cover. Perhaps the whole question of the relationship between the compensation
paid by the individual and the compensation covered by the state through the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board deserves detailed study.I believe that the Minister will confirm that although the delays are bad, they are better than they used to be. We are conscious, as we are always reminded by Victim Support, that the desire of the victim is to get something quickly rather than perhaps a greater sum at a later date.
9.15 p.m.
Baroness Blatch: Two points trouble me about the amendment. First, there is no compensation clause in the Bill. We are committing a new Parliament to considering a new issue in 12 months' time: to carry out a feasibility study and to come forward presumably with the results of that study on a compensation scheme. That is the first point: the proposal is not linked to any clause in the Bill.
Secondly, it is a considerable and open-ended extension of the criminal injuries compensation legislation because we are not talking specifically about criminal injuries. This concerns any compensation order made by any court to any offender which would be met immediately by the court from state funds. It would then have to be recovered. We are talking of a pretty considerable blank cheque on the part of the state.
There have been repeated proposals for immediate payment of court compensation orders in the past and the arguments have been rehearsed on many occasions. Immediate payment would of course remove from the victims the problem of spasmodic and incomplete payment of compensation by offenders. But the objections--primarily cost--have proved compelling.
I take absolutely the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Thomas, and my noble friend Lord Carlisle about frustration over the speed at which payments are made. That will always be an issue and I pay tribute to the progress that is being made. I know that my noble friend would wish to make yet more progress in clearing the backlog and getting on top of current claims.
There are no central records of default, but we have estimated that the cost of immediate payment could be up to £10 million a year to start with, taking into account loss of interest on the sums awarded and outright loss through amounts written off as a result of default and, indeed, as a result of the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board finding at the end of the day that a payment is not due. That initial cost could be expected to escalate if the Government agreed to underwrite compensation orders at the taxpayers' expense.
Apart from the cost argument, underwriting compensation orders would appear unfair to others with equal or perhaps greater need, for example, beneficiaries of maintenance or debt orders. It could also be unfair to victims who were not awarded compensation, for example, where the offender had been imprisoned and there was no prospect of obtaining or enforcing payment, or in cases where there was uncertainty or dispute as to the amount of compensation which it might be appropriate to award. Furthermore, immediate
payment of compensation from public funds would also tend to distance the offender from the sense of having wronged the victim.Thus, while we can see the superficial attraction of the underlying idea, we find the practical objections compelling. We think the better answer is for the courts to set compensation at an appropriate and reasonable level, and then to enforce payment vigorously. It is, after all, the courts' responsibility to ensure as far as possible that the penalties which they impose are correctly assessed and are made to stick. They already have the powers they need to do this with respect to compensation orders.
It is my understanding that about 80 per cent. of compensation orders are met by the offender and about 20 per cent. are not met either in part or in whole. It will be clear from the foregoing that we see no good purpose in revisiting the issue yet again. I cannot imagine that we would arrive at a different conclusion. I therefore ask the noble Lord not to press his amendment.
Lord Thomas of Gresford: I am grateful but somewhat disappointed at the Minister's considered reply to the proposal. I sought through the amendment not to put in place a scheme that would immediately cost money, but to ask for a feasibility study so that all the issues to which the Minister referred could be properly examined and a report could be made on which action could be taken.
I have aired the matter as far as I propose and I seek leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Lord Thomas of Gresford had given notice of his intention to move Amendment No. 108C:
After Clause 46, insert the following new clause--
(" .--(1) When a court passes a custodial sentence, it may order the deferment of the commencement of that sentence until such date as it shall specify, not being more than six months after the date on which the deferment is announced by the court.
(2) The power conferred by this section shall be exercisable only if the court is satisfied, having regard to the nature of the offence and the character and circumstances of the offender, that it would be in the interests of justice to exercise the power.").
The noble Lord said: In view of the time, I prefer to reserve my remarks on this amendment until a later stage.
[Amendment No. 108C not moved.]
[Amendments Nos. 108D and 108E not moved.]
Clause 51 [Short title, commencement and extent]:
Earl Russell moved Amendment No. 109:
The noble Earl said: The noble Baroness gave us a brief preview of the Government's reply to this amendment when we debated Clause 35 stand part on Thursday last. I have read and re-read recently what she said then. The point she made was that the amendment, in her view, would be self-defeating. The noble Baroness said that it would prevent the conducting of pilot studies, which would prevent the possibility of arriving at accurate costs.
I do not take that point as conclusive but I take it extremely seriously. I therefore say to the noble Baroness that if she will give me an assurance that, after the pilot studies, the costing assessment will be made and reported to this House before any further disqualifications are made under Clause 35 of the Bill, I will beg leave to withdraw my amendment and say nothing further. If the noble Baroness can give me that assurance, it will meet everything I have to say.
However, if she cannot, there are still some points to be made which are of substance. It is true that one cannot assess the costs of disqualifying people from driving with complete accuracy until pilot studies are made. But it is true also--I am sure that the Treasury has already made this point--that if one is introducing a measure, one needs at least a ball park estimate of the costs it will incur. One needs to know whether by disqualifying people from driving we are, in particular, increasing the social security budget by preventing them from working. There are ways in which such estimates can be made. I am not only concerned with the figures; I am concerned also with how the Government arrive at the figures when they set out to estimate the cost to one department of a measure introduced by another.
I have spent a lot of time questioning the Department of Social Security about how it undertakes those assessments. I have not received particularly lucid or transparent replies. Therefore, while the amendment is before the Committee, I hope to obtain some idea of how the Home Office will set about assessing the costs to social security of depriving people of their driving licences. For example, is it able to do studies which find out what proportion of the population today cannot go to work by public transport? It is a question to which I should like an answer and to which sample surveys could supply at least an approximation to an answer.
Will the Home Office study the rate at which people come off benefit? Will it compare the rate at which people with access to public transport come off benefit with the rate at which people who do not have access to public transport come off benefit? Among people without access to public transport, will the Home Office compare the rate at which car owners come off benefit with the rate at which non-car owners come off benefit?
Those are all perfectly possible exercises. If the Home Office does not intend to address them, I should like to know what other exercises it intends to attempt. The whole issue of costings is shrouded in too much mystery: we make something of a fetish of it. If we want--as I am sure the Government want and as I want--people to make reasonably realistic estimates of the costs of what they propose, we cannot keep the
Page 34, line 26, at end insert--
("( ) Sections 35 and 36 shall not come into force until the Department of Transport and the Department of Social Security have calculated the resultant cost to the Department of Social Security, as required by Treasury guidelines, and have reported the result, and the methods, of such calculations to Parliament.").
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