Clause 62
Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill
3:45 pm
David Heath (Shadow Secretary of State for Justice & Lord Chancellor, Ministry of Justice; Somerton and Frome, Liberal Democrat)
The hon. Member for Leyton and Wanstead is absolutely right to draw attention to his concerns about the clause. It is preposterous to suggest that reducing the availability of compensation for the victims of miscarriages of justice somehow rebalances the scales between the victim and the perpetrators, which is how the Government often like to portray it. We are not talking about perpetrators when we talk about the victims of the miscarriages of justice—we are talking about victims of the state. Such people are victims of the worst possible manifestation of state action short of judicial execution; which is to say that they are deprived by the state of their liberty without cause, wrongly.
It is entirely inappropriate for there to be—either in the Government’s mind or as presented to the public—any linkage between the unfortunate victims of crime and the unfortunate victims of a miscarriage of justice through the courts. As the hon. Gentleman says, absolutely correctly, no linkage exists in reality. We are not talking about a common fund. The money does not come out of a fixed pot so that in order to reduce the compensation available for miscarriages of justice, the position of victims of crime must be enhanced—that is simply not the case.
I greatly deprecate the reductions in the criminal injuries compensation fund. It is wrong that we are so parsimonious in that respect. For heaven’s sake, let us not say that as a result of that we must also fail to compensate people for depriving them of their liberty, which is what the Government intend to do in this respect.
The courts have proper discretion in the area, and that should not be limited in the way that the Government suggest. What I said, sotto voce and from a sedentary position when the hon. Gentleman was talking, is that there seems to be an underlying view in the Government’s proposals that someone who is a victim of a miscarriage of justice is really a guilty party. That person may have got out of prison, but they still “really did it, didn’t they”, and therefore they are not worthy of proper compensation for the actions that the state took in depriving them of their liberty. I do not accept that argument for a moment. If somebody is innocent, they are innocent——both in the eyes of the law and in the eyes of the Executive. The arrangements for their compensation should not be attenuated to take account of some notional prejudice within the system.
My argument is simple. I do not think that we should have this artificial limitation, as it would not reflect the genuine injustice that has been perpetrated. If there is a deficiency in the criminal injuries compensation scheme—and I believe that there is—we must look at that. That is where we should concentrate proper resources, so as to make it more effective in dealing with the victims of crime who should undoubtedly be better compensated than they are currently in the absence of proper reparation from the perpetrator.
Finally, I agree with the hon. Gentleman that the right person to compensate a victim of crime is, where possible, the criminal. However, we must accept that there are instances in which that is not possible, and that is the role of the state.