Page 2728 - Week 09 - Thursday, 26 August 1993
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a man is claiming compensation for an injury he received as a result of accidentally being struck by a child on a bicycle. The Government is concerned that these sorts of claims under the scheme are increasing. We have a responsibility to contain the cost of the scheme and to ensure that its original purpose in compensating victims of violent crime is observed by the courts.
An amendment to the Criminal Injuries Compensation Act is needed to limit claims for compensation to deserving victims of serious crime. The Government has decided that the awarding of compensation should be linked to the prosecution of offenders and that the Act should specifically require the courts to exercise a discretion about whether an applicant has a deserving case for compensation. Compensation should not automatically follow for minor offences.
The Bill I am presenting today will amend the Act to require the court in every case to determine whether it is just and equitable that an applicant is awarded compensation. The courts will be required to have regard to whether the criminal who caused the injury has been prosecuted. Of course, in some cases the criminal cannot be identified or a prosecution may not proceed because there is insufficient evidence to prove that a suspect committed the offence. Compensation might still be appropriate in these cases. The Bill will therefore provide that the court can award compensation in the absence of a prosecution if it is satisfied that awarding compensation would be just and equitable. To ensure that the courts exercise this discretion appropriately, the Bill will direct the courts to consider factors which indicate whether the applicant is the victim of serious crime. These factors include whether the person who committed the offence has been identified; whether the offence was committed with an intention to cause injury to a person; and whether the offence was reported to police and the time at which the report was made.
The Bill includes an additional provision to allow the making of regulations to exclude specified categories of injuries from the compensation scheme unless there is a prosecution. The regulations will allow the Government to exclude inappropriate categories of injuries as and when they come to notice. The Government needs this flexibility to ensure that the objective of the scheme is upheld by the courts and to contain the cost of the scheme. Such regulations would, of course, be disallowable.
Some people in the community might say that all victims of offences should be compensated. But the scheme was never intended to compensate everyone who may be injured as a result of wrongdoing by another person. That, in effect, would be a national compensation scheme. The cost to the community of providing that sort of compensation scheme would be prohibitive. The Act recognises this already by excluding injuries arising from the use of motor vehicles. The consequences of motor vehicle and sporting injuries have to be dealt with by insurance schemes, by civil proceedings in the courts, or by the social security system.
The draft regulations, which I will table with the Bill, will exclude sporting injuries and injuries arising from the use of bicycles, skateboards and other recreational vehicles. The regulations will also exclude injuries arising from dog bites and other attacks by animals. In excluding these injuries from the Criminal Injuries Compensation Act, our scheme is being brought into line with
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