To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, if he will make an assessment of the implications for his policies of average processing times for claims made to the Criminal Injuries Compensation Scheme.

The government-funded Criminal Injuries Compensation Scheme 2012 (the Scheme) exists to compensate for serious physical or psychological injury attributable to being a direct victim of a crime of violence. It provides an important avenue of redress for such victims and is part of the wider package of general and specialist support available to victims of crime.

The Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority (CICA), an Executive Agency of the Ministry of Justice, administers the Scheme and reports on its performance in an Annual Report laid in Parliament. This report includes data on the time it takes for decisions under the scheme to be made. While the CICA publishes this data on the length of time it takes to conclude cases, each case is necessarily considered on its own merits and complex cases can take longer to be determined.

We engage regularly with the CICA, including to consider its service levels and how it responds to resource demands. We also work closely with the CICA when considering policy development, and when we consult on potential reforms to the Scheme we consider the implications of any policy changes on the CICA and others in an impact assessment. In addition, the Ministry of Justice reviews the CICA as part of the government’s Public Bodies Review Programme, the most recent of which concluded in February 2023 and concluded that the CICA was in good health.