Worth Richard: Criminal Justice Reform Bill — In Committee 
Worth Richard: Criminal Justice Reform Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:640;Page:10565] 
Dr RICHARD WORTH (National) 
: 
 No one else has spoken about Supplementary Order Paper 127. I am glad the Minister the Hon Mark Burton is in the chair because I believe it would be helpful if he could offer a short explanation as to why that Supplementary Order Paper in his name lies before us. I know what its purpose is but the question is why this is being done. What it is about is amending the Prisoners’ and Victims’ Claims Act 2005. That legislation was due to expire on 30 June 2007 and the plan is to extend that date to 1 July 2010 in this particular and critical part of the bill. 
Members of the House who were in Parliament in 2004 will remember that legislation. It was highly controversial and it culminated in the passage of the Prisoners’ and Victims Claims Act in 2005. That legislation was about setting up a code to enable prisoners who believed they had been abused to make claims against the prison authorities. There was then to be established a compensation fund from which to provide payments if they were successful in those claims and a priority was established for paying out any money that the prisoner got in compensation. If it was not possible to trace the victims the prisoner got it all. 
There was huge concern about that legislation on both sides of the Chamber it is fair to say. A number of deeply philosophical and troubling questions arose from it. For example if there was a fund how was that fund to be allocated when there was more than one victim? Should the money go to the first victim should it be spread equally should a person who was more scarred get more money than a person who was less scarred and issues such as that? It was made clear that because of the concern that Parliament had about this legislation it should expire with the close of 30 June 2007. That is made very clear in Part 2 of the principal Act. 
Now we have by a side wind a Supplementary Order Paper that seeks to perpetuate what is clearly an unsatisfactory circumstance. No one doubts that prisoners should be safe; that is not the argument. Where excesses occur action should be taken. But I believe that the action that should be taken in respect— 
Darren Hughes 
: What kind of action? 
Dr RICHARD WORTH 
: —I will come to that—of excesses by prison staff is disciplinary action. Those prison staff should be punished. They perhaps should be charged. They perhaps should lose their jobs. There is a range of possible penalties. It was wrong in principle to create a special compensation fund. 
So why I ask the Minister are we perpetuating that legislation when it was clearly the wish of the Parliament that come 30 June 2007—19 days ago—that legislation should have ceased to exist? 
Hon MARK BURTON (Minister of Justice) 
: 
 The member who has just resumed his seat raises perfectly reasonable and considered questions. I perhaps would take him to task just a little on his final assertion. I do not think it is fair to assume that the House by a majority wanted the Prisoners’ and Victims’ Claims Act to expire. What it is fair to assume is that it certainly wanted it to run until 30 June. We find ourselves in a position that I think I could best summarise by saying this: the conditions that led to the creation of a short-term provision—as it was; around a 3-year provision—assumed that some other measures would be able to be completed within that time relating on the one hand to the victims of crime and on the other hand to the whole process of the structures procedures and provisions around the oversight of complaints made by prisoners and compliance with rules of conduct around the oversight of prisoners. 
As it happens perhaps the most important measure that has not been concluded has to do with the rights of victims. As the member will know a significant select committee inquiry is still in progress and it will be an important part of advising the Government and the House on appropriate measures that will have some direct bearing. So that is the first thing. The second point is that work is well advanced but not yet complete on issues around the oversight of complaints procedures for prisoners. 
Both those matters are best served by the extension of this provision. That is essentially what Supplementary Order Paper 127 seeks to do. It is a further extension to preserve what is not a perfect provision at all I readily admit for the victims of crime but is certainly better than the removal of it until those other matters that I have now discussed are completed. So what the Supplementary Order Paper seeks to do is to maintain for the time being until 2010 the right of access for the victims of crime in the circumstances—and I will not repeat them all because the member has given a good overview of that and I have previously too. Its purpose is to maintain for the victims of crime access to compensation payments should they become available in the way that is prescribed in the original 3-year provision. 
It is on that basis that this Supplementary Order Paper is introduced. Of course as the member has rightly pointed out it replaces Supplementary Order Paper 121 as a result of a matter of timing because we did not get Part 2 completed in the Committee stage in the last sitting block of Parliament. So the technical changes around timing were required; thus Supplementary Order Paper 127 was put in to replace Supplementary Order Paper 121.