Member

Turning to Amendment 14, tabled by the noble Lords, Lord Russell and Lord Polak, and the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, I hope and believe that the noble Lord, Lord Russell, knows that the Government share his desire to support victims who have been harmed by child sexual abuse. I want to clear up something about how the criminal injuries compensation scheme works. Online abuse is already regarded as a crime of violence where it escalates and involves actual physical violence or the immediate threat of it. However, this scheme does not and was not set up to compensate for harm in the widest sense. It compensates for injury caused rather than by the type of violent crime that caused the injury. Were we to include other forms of online abuse, this would broaden the scope of the scheme. Extending it to some types of crime only would send a clear message that some victims are more deserving than others. This would be quite wrong and is something that this Government cannot support.