Contribution
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dr Murrison.
My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham Northfield (Laurence Turner)—I am proud to say that he truly is a friend—laid out perfectly the historical context in which the criminal injuries compensation scheme was devised and the economic, moral and financial case for change, given that it has failed to meet its objectives. I am one of the co-sponsors of this debate, and I want to support my hon. Friend’s core argument and lay out an aspect of the scheme that cannot be understood by those for whom it is an abstract point of law or procedure.
Rape and sexual assault have a conviction rate of a pathetic 1.5% or so, so vanishingly few victims ever get justice through the courts. Of course we need to use every lever of Government to bring down the number of offences and drive up the number of perpetrators convicted, but to focus entirely on the criminal justice element is to miss the point when it comes to supporting victims. CICA provides a twofold civil remedy. First, it provides a level of financial restitution for the experience. Secondly, and most importantly, it is state recognition of the person’s experience as a blameless victim of violent crime. That vindication is an important part of the process of closure for people who have been victims of the most hideous crimes, including where a perpetrator has not been apprehended or where a conviction cannot be secured.
A constituent who was a victim of rape told me:
“I’ll probably never know why the jury decided not to convict in my case. The compensation awarded wouldn’t actually cover the cost of a copy of the trial transcript. The process of closure for me began with that letter from CICA, that seeking justice hadn’t been in vain despite the enormous personal cost.
Beyond the nightmares I still have replaying that night, replaying the trial, the court room, replaying every indignity meted out upon me over a truly miserable three year period; it is there. In black and white. On the record. This happened to you. He is a rapist. We believe you. That’s what that piece of paper meant.”
Every victim deserves vindication, but among the largest barriers is the time limit. The Victims’ Commissioner —the indomitable Baroness Newlove, who is incidentally a constituent of mine—recommended to the Government back in 2019 that it be amended in her landmark report “Compensation without re-traumatisation”. We are still waiting.
The time limit pressures victims into choosing between pursuing justice in the courts and a civil remedy—lest the defence infers a financial motive for coming forward—leaving them with a high statistical likelihood of ending up with neither. However, if the expectation is that victims should pursue both at the same time, or even in close succession, that is wildly unrealistic given just how much the criminal justice system retraumatises a person and puts far too much onus on the victim all at once. That is not a reasonable expectation for us in this place to have of the dozens of constituents I have signposted and supported through this process. It is a huge thing to do, and we can never fully appreciate just how much it grinds a person down unless they have been through it.
The fact that many of those who apply will be turned away because of arbitrary time limits, or that many will be dissuaded from applying at all for the support that they are entitled to in the expectation that that will happen, leaves victims without the ability to get closure. It leaves them frozen. In Warrington, 349 victims have already made a successful CICA claim in the past five years; from the crime statistics for our area alone, I know that there is massive under-claiming. Then there are all the cases that will not show up in those statistics, including those dealt with in the family courts. Currently, no agency is responsible under the victims code for informing victims about the scheme; the expectation is that that falls to the police or local support services.
I know that the Treasury has anxiety about this, but if we get anywhere near our target of halving violence against women and girls, the scheme will pay for itself. Until such time, victims cannot continue to pay the price. While there is no amount that would ever make being a victim of violent crime worth it, surely the least that they deserve is the amount that was intended back in 2012—not a fraction of that, as its value is eroded further each year by inflation.
For all the things that successive Governments have seen fit to spend money on, it breaks my heart that none have thought this scheme worth consideration. While we work to improve victim support services generally, there will always be a role for CICA. Unfortunately, CICA is compensation for state failure to keep people safe and, too often, to deliver justice. That compensation should be significantly uplifted at the comprehensive spending review to ensure that its value is a fairer reflection of the debt that society owes to those victims that it has let down. Awards must be index-linked to inflation, so we do not end up having the same debate in 15 years’ time.
The time limit should be amended in line with the recommendations of the Victims’ Commissioner, and we should ensure that the framework aligns with the rest of our system, including with our increased understanding of the harms of non-contact sexual offences. I hope that all hon. Members will support the ten-minute rule Bill tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham Northfield next week, so that we can start this vital reform. I look forward to the Minister’s response today.