Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid) 16 June 2021
In relation to the level of financial redress that will be available to individuals, some of the detail is already set out in the 2021 act. Any further detail will relate to individual circumstances and applications that are made through the framework that has been legislated for by the Parliament. In the course of the next few months, before the formal establishment of the scheme, further information will be shared about the basis on which payments will be made.
In relation to the advance payment scheme, the issues that have affected the judgments around the scheme have principally related to ineligibility in relation to some of the fundamental criteria on age and condition. Those have been the principal factors. Other factors will relate to quality of evidence, but the overwhelming majority of cases for which any evidence is available have been approved.
As members will understand, there have been particular challenges over the past 12 months because of the need to physically access documents that have been literally inaccessible to some organisations because of Covid restrictions. We have, by exception, allowed a certain number of civil servants into an office environment, to scrutinise documents for the purposes of the advance payment scheme. We have not generally made such arrangements available to other civil servants, but we did it for that scheme. We have taken measures to try to make sure that, despite Covid, there was no interruption to the ability to meet the requirements of the advance payment scheme.
On whether there is a need to broaden eligibility, I am not persuaded by the argument that has been put forward. The fact that we will have a scheme in place before the end of the year gives me reassurance that we can meet the expectations of survivors.