Criminal Injuries Compensation Scheme 2008

My Lords, I am grateful to both Front-Bench spokesmen for what they have had to say and for their support for the scheme and I thank the noble Lord, Lord Henley, for his praise for the Explanatory Memorandum. The noble Lord asked a number of questions. The first one was about teeth. I reject utterly his suggestion that somehow this has had something to do with a decline in the way in which dental practice occurs in this country. In our view there has been a considerable improvement, and I do not say that just because sitting beside me is the former Minister in charge of dentistry throughout the country. The fact is that awards for injuries to teeth are being increased to reflect the fact that the necessary corrective dental treatment is sometimes not available—that is the reality of the situation in the NHS—and the victim has to use the compensation award to meet the costs of treatment. We would have been criticised if we had not agreed to that. Although paragraph 35 of the scheme allows for the cost of private health treatment, including dental work, that provision does not take effect until the first 28 weeks of loss. The amendment helps victims who are not incapacitated for 28 weeks but still need to meet some of their dental costs. As for the noble Lord’s remarks and his question about orders, the issue is extraordinarily hypothetical. I can tell him that my honourable friend Bridget Prentice, whom he referred to, has had some helpful discussions with veterans’ associations. No doubt we can look forward with delight to a good debate on our return after Recess; in fact, it may be what keeps us going during those long weeks away. With regard to the impact of the situation on this statutory instrument, it does not affect the scheme changes. If the date of the coming into force of the tribunal SI is delayed, we will amend the coming into force of the scheme by negative resolution. The noble Lord also asked about the scheme’s growth over a number of years. It will be best if I write to him with a table of the increases paid each year. I opened this short debate by saying that £235 million had been paid out in the last year, which was a considerable increase on the previous year. What matters to innocent victims of crime is that their applications, if they come within the scheme’s ambit, should be paid as quickly as possible. I am happy to say that our record on that has improved markedly since 2006. I am also grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Falkner, for her comments, although I am not sure that I am so grateful for her extremely detailed questions. However, as she knows, I did have some notice of her questions. Let me deal first with care costs. These provisions often have something in common with previous benefits legislation. The amendment on care costs, which the noble Baroness picked up, follows the wording of Section 72 of the Social Security Contributions and Benefits Act 1992—it has taken us a bit of time to catch up with that wording. The intention is to make existing practice clear. Only core personal care costs are covered; these include dignity-based help that people need if they have been incapacitated, but not social care costs or peripheral costs such as arrangements for having housework or gardening done. We tend to see this amendment as a clarification rather than a change in emphasis. The noble Baroness also asked about earnings. The change of the loss of earnings calculation from one type of Office for National Statistics figure, which is no longer to be produced, to another has the effect of changing the arrangements from mean to median. We think that the practical effects—I hope that the noble Baroness will be content with this—are negligible, as most victims do not earn one and a half times the median gross weekly earnings. Individuals may be affected, but we are faced with the practical problem of not having the figures that the ONS used to produce to keep things in line with how they previously were.