Northern Ireland Affairs Committee
Oral evidence: Victims’ Payments Board, HC 308
Monday 4 December 2023
Ordered by the House of Commons to be published on 4 November 2023.
Members present: Sir Robert Buckland (Chair); Stephen Farry; Tony Lloyd; Carla Lockhart.
Questions 1 - 24
Witnesses
I: Commissioner Ian Jeffers, Commission for Victims and Survivors Northern Ireland; Professor Ciaran Mulholland, Professor of Psychiatry, Queen’s University Belfast, and Author, Rapid Review April 2021 (TPDPS); Professor Siobhan O'Neill, Professor of Mental Health Sciences, Ulster University, and Mental Health Champion for Northern Ireland.
Examination of witnesses
Witnesses: Ian Jeffers, Professor Ciaran Mulholland and Professor Siobhan O’Neill.
Q1 Chair: Welcome to a meeting of the Northern Ireland Affairs Select Committee. I am delighted to be joined by colleagues and indeed our first panel for the afternoon for our inquiry into the Victims’ Payments Board and its operation. We are joined for the first panel by three panellists, two in the room and one online. We have Ian Jeffers, the Commissioner for Victims and Survivors. I am grateful to you. We have Professor Ciaran Mulholland from Queen’s University Belfast. We are joined online by Professor Siobhan O’Neill from Ulster University. We are extremely grateful to all three witnesses for joining us today.
If I may start by looking at the review document produced by Harvard University, I should declare an interest as a senior fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School. I do that now. The observation made by that reviewer was that a “successful scheme must be victim-centred”. To what extent do you think that that has been achieved?
Ian Jeffers: The intention as well is that it is victim-centred. There is no question about it. We can always challenge ourself: could it be improved, changed and amended? We have to consider that the scheme was set up after a long campaign from the WAVE Injured Group. It was effectively 13 years of campaigning and the scheme is in its infancy. We should recognise that it is in its infancy. We will always find instances where we would say that it is not victim-centred, where we may be taking too long to process applications. The next panel can talk at length about that. There will always be examples where people are in the system for too long a period of time, and that is where we need to challenge ourselves.
Everything I have seen suggests and the feedback I have had from individual victims has been that the intention is right, but my main concerns would be the time taken to process applications and the communication with victims through that process. That communication process can feel slightly bureaucratic and not friendly. We must accept and understand that the people applying to this scheme have suffered an awful lot, and from incidences that date back maybe 30 or 40 years. We are treating it very much as putting them into a process, so we need to look at what the communications are during that process and how we make it friendly, or as friendly and victim-centred as we possibly can.
That would be my main observation. I would not want to criticise the scheme at all at this stage. It has been long fought for. It is starting to provide payments now to individuals who have applied and we need to now review that and say, “Could we improve it?”
Q2 Chair: No doubt we will come back to some of the detail of the operation of the scheme very shortly in further questions. I would like to hear from Professor Mulholland as to what your assessment is as to how truly victim-centred the scheme has been thus far.
Professor Mulholland: Good afternoon. Clearly we are all here because we are concerned about the victims and survivors. We all understand the hurt and injury that they have suffered. As the commissioner has already pointed out, this scheme was a long time in the building. It took a long time to build it. I believe that it is victim-centred, but that does not mean that it is without its challenges for victims, in particular the need to tell your story and to tell your story perhaps more than once, with all of the attendant consequences, which can be negative. The teams that we have put in place at every point in the process are victim-centred individuals and victim-centred teams with victim-centred processes.
We can look at it now. We should look at it now, as Ian pointed out. We should ensure that we iron out any creases and that it gets better over the course of the next period. I really think that it is victim-centred, insofar as it can be at this stage. We have learned from the first few weeks, the first few months and the first two years. I think that we will continue to get better. There are some steps we put in place recently that we will maybe talk through at some point over the course of the coming hour.
Q3 Chair: Professor O’Neill, what is your view as to the victim-centred nature of the scheme thus far?
Professor O’Neill: My involvement has been as a reviewer of the initial proposals for the scheme. I had concerns around the criteria for inclusion in the scheme and the idea of being trauma-informed about this whole process and what that means. It is recognising that, that we are talking about people here who have suffered significant trauma. There is a need to provide adequate support, to be transparent around what is possible with this scheme and to make sure that it aligns with a trauma-informed framework, which is about making sure that we do not re-traumatise individuals by making them tell their story repeatedly, as Ciaran pointed out. Also, the very notion of applying a percentage injury to psychological injury to evaluate someone’s psychological trauma has the potential to cause harm.
The fact that the scheme exists is a positive thing. It is victim-centred and victims are being offered something here, but we need to tread very carefully. There is some evidence that some victims are experiencing negative consequences as a result of the scheme and that certainly needs to be looked at.
Chair: No doubt we will expand upon some of these introductory themes in subsequent questions.
Q4 Carla Lockhart: Hello, panel. How are you? Thank you very much for coming before us today. My first question is around the review of April 2021. Within that review there were about 14 recommendations, I believe. Are you satisfied that these recommendations have been implemented? I would also be keen to gauge your opinion on the complexity of the scheme and where the problems exist. Could any comparisons be drawn thar would help to make the process more efficient?
Professor Mulholland: Perhaps I will address the question initially because of the centrality of the review in the process. The regulations were agreed in early 2020. I had some involvement in the process before January or February 2020 and then I had given some advice to some of the people who drew up the regulations. When the regulations were laid, there was an onus on individuals such as me to interpret the regulations and we had to think about that in some detail. As you probably know, Carla, what is central to the scheme is the concept of psychiatric or psychological injury, that somebody has been injured and the consequence is a disablement.
The concept of psychiatric or psychological injury does not have a lot of meaning in the clinical world. The average psychiatrist or psychologist would not use that term. In that world of compensation or in the legal world, psychiatric injury means something and is taken to mean a diagnosis, so a person must have a diagnosis. If you do not have a diagnosis, you are not eligible for the scheme. That is difficult because in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s many of the people who were affected by a bomb explosion or shooting did not go to see their doctor. If they did go to see their doctor, they may be seen very briefly, given some medication, but they often were not referred on to mental health services, or, if they were, they did not always receive a diagnosis.
The key diagnosis for us today, in 2023, for people who have been traumatised is post-traumatic stress disorder, and that diagnosis did not exist in any sense until the late 1970s or early 1980s. It was maybe the 1990s when it was widely accepted to be a diagnosis. We are left with all these problems and it is complex.
We want it to be kind and understanding to the applicants, but there needs to be a burden of proof on the system that the person has been affected by a Troubles incident, that a diagnosis has resulted, such as post‑traumatic stress disorder or recurrent depression, and then that that diagnosis, that illness, has resulted in their permanent disablement. At every stage it is complex and I can talk it all through in some detail, but you probably do not want to go into all that detail at this stage. It meant that it was complex and it was always going to take some time to fully build the system that we needed to build.
In terms of the 14 recommendations, the answer is that some of them have been enacted and some have not, but that review process was at a very early stage. It was not so much the way of firm “must do” recommendations; it was suggestions. We were working with multiple partners at that stage, with Capita, the Department of Justice, the Executive Office and the Department of Health. Everyone was trying to take on board the meaning of the regulations and how we might interpret the regulations. That was the purpose of the review, as opposed to a “you shall do” or “must do” list, if that makes sense.
Ian Jeffers: On the complexities of the scheme, one key thing, which has been touched on by Professor O’Neill as well, is that we see victims having to retell their stories many times. If you consider the application process itself, they may or may not have the support of an advocate to do that. It is entirely up to them to do it. They are telling their story at that point to get it committed to paper. Then they are telling their story potentially two, three or four times along the way, quite often to people that they do not know and—I say it guardedly—do not trust.
When we consider the nature of what they are sharing, it takes time for victims to build that sort of trust, to feel confident to tell their story. It is simply wrong that we make somebody tell their story three, four or five times through this process for the most complex ones and those that need assessments and so forth. That is an area we should look at and see whether there is a way that that can be streamlined.
We all accept that you need to tell the story. This is part of an evidence-gathering session. Parts of the evidence gathering are proving to go quite well, where information comes from the police, for example. There are other parts where it is taking a long time to gather the evidence, and that puts pressure on people, looking at it from the point of view of the information that is needed to qualify that person, to get that over the line.
Q5 Carla Lockhart: That seems to be the crux of the problem on the ground. It is that burden of proof and that obtaining the evidence. With the best will in the world, the police force is stretched. GPs are stretched. How do people actually get this information? As you rightly said, Professor, a lot of it was not detailed the way it would be today. How do we fix that problem. How do we help victims actually access it?
Ian Jeffers: The key to this is communication. We need to help victims understand as well the complexity of what needs to be gathered. I have met with the legacy branch for PSNI and, from everything I can see, it is meeting its service level agreements. In fact, it is excelling on them with that information. There is a dedicated team operating out of Seapark that is gathering and providing information.
Where it appears to fall down is where information is coming from the health service and potentially from the MoD. That seems to be slower. We need to look at how we can improve that flow of information. I see it in the health side of things. The small number of cases that arrive on my desk generally are frustration because a GP will not send records. Quite often, it is GPs who are based in GB on the mainland. There is not an understanding or an appreciation. If you ask a GP for records from 1976, the chances are that that GP will have merged about six times. If the records even exist now, they certainly were not computerised then. We all understand that, but that creates a huge frustration with people, so there is that information flow.
Credit to the board themselves. Justice McAlinden made it clear that the onus should not be on the victim to provide the evidence. The onus should be on the administrators of the scheme to gather the evidence. Coming back down to communication, if the hold-up is in the health board, let us keep the person informed much more regularly, not a very formal letter every number of months or whatever it may be.
Q6 Carla Lockhart: I know that my colleagues are going to touch on the age and the problems that that brings. In relation to the issue around what constitutes somebody being at a scene or at an incident, that has caused a lot of problems out on the ground, particularly for police officers who were on duty who are not now eligible because it was part and parcel of their work. What more can we do to try to address that? I do not think that it is right that people in that circumstance should not be entitled to it.
Ian Jeffers: I have not necessarily struggled. You had to be there or in the immediate aftermath—
Q7 Carla Lockhart: What is the immediate aftermath?
Ian Jeffers: There has always been an interpretation of the immediate aftermath. I totally agree. One example I have is a family involved in one of the larger instances and there were five in the family. One was killed. Three were actually at the scene and one was not, but they have all applied. The one who was not will not qualify, does not qualify, because they were not at the immediate aftermath, despite the fact that they do not have a mum. We are going to look at that and that opens up another debate about what we do with the bereaved. It should sit separate to this scheme, but that is an important thing that I will happily come back on.
We need to provide really clear advice on what we mean about the immediate aftermath. Now that we are into the run of things and we are starting to see determinations come through, we need to provide those brutal examples of what that is interpreted by. That is something that we have ongoing conversations with the board on.
With regard to police officers and so forth, that is almost a separate debate that needs to be had. Who is eligible for this scheme? Let us be really clear. Remember that the scheme was set about and it was campaigned for originally to provide, effectively, the equivalent of a pension where people who had been injured as a result of the Troubles could not build up a workplace pension. That is really, in some ways, what the scheme came about for. In the absence of any other form of acknowledgement and schemes like that, it is inevitable and understandable that people would apply in here. It is our challenge now to say, “Who should be eligible for this?” and make sure that we are really clear on that.
Q8 Carla Lockhart: It is horrific that people who, quite literally, were at the scene, were lifting the pieces, are not eligible for it.
Ian Jeffers: There is no debate that they were at the scene. I agree.
Q9 Carla Lockhart: I would be keen to explore that further. Also around the eligibility, there has been a lobby on mothers who were pregnant. There is scientific evidence now around the fetus and the baby in the womb feeling and knowing trauma. Again, that feeds very much into that element of needing to look at that aftermath and who was there. A lot of children were shielded from the immediate scene.
Ian Jeffers: It is sadly ironic that your parents or a parent, a surviving parent, will have tried to do the right thing and shield particularly their children from it all. Now they are paying the penalty because they were not at the immediate aftermath. We need to look at some of those things and that determination of what that means. Is the immediate aftermath when the policeman knocks on your door to tell you that you have lost a loved one? That is not the definition of an immediate aftermath because that is just information passing on.
There are some cruel elements to the scheme that we need to look at, but it brings in the wider conversation about what we are doing around acknowledgement of those who have suffered significantly. We cannot expect one scheme to tick all the boxes. We have no real proper scheme for the bereaved in place. We should be looking at that as well. Indeed, one of my last acts will be to issue advice to the Executive Office on the bereaved. From that point of view, we have to look at almost a more rounded package and not try to squeeze everything in here, because I do not think that that is right for victims and survivors. At the moment, victims and survivors see that this might be the only place that they can get that recognition.
Q10 Carla Lockhart: Could Professor O’Neill come back on that aftermath and the trauma that it has caused for those particularly who may not be classified as being in the immediate aftermath and the difficulty that they are having accessing the pension? Also, you mentioned the amount of work that victims and survivors groups are having to do and the extra work in terms of trying to get that information. Is there any thought that some more funds, potentially channelled to those groups, would help in gathering that information quicker and getting to the decision making?
Professor O’Neill: On the issue of being there in the immediate aftermath, it is certainly not in keeping with the criteria that we would use for mental disorders or mental illness. If you look at the criteria and the classification systems that we use to define mental illness, there is nothing about where you need to be when a particular trauma occurred. It is about how you respond to that trauma and how your body and brain responds and the behaviours and everything that follows on from that. It makes no sense to have that as a criteria in terms of psychiatric criteria. We pointed that out, but that is the basis on which the legislation was developed, so that was put in there.
It would be helpful if we could look at that again and find a way to make sure that people who have suffered significant trauma and a mental illness resulting from that trauma, but who were not there at that exact moment but were exposed to something really traumatic that led to a mental illness, could be included in some way. From a mental health and illness perspective, that would be the right thing to do. That would be the appropriate thing to do because the criteria were drawn up based on so much experience, knowledge and evidence around mental health and mental illness and what that looks like.
In terms of the evidence that needs to be collected, something that is really important to point out is that one of the features of PTSD is avoidance behaviour. PTSD is about flashbacks and nightmares. Those are the sorts of symptoms that people experience when they have PTSD. In response to those symptoms they try to avoid thinking about it or talking about the trauma that led to that.
If you think about the culture of the time when many of these events were happening, we did not talk about our mental health. We certainly did not talk about trauma. We covered things up. There was a shadow of silence around all of this stuff so it is certainly going to be really difficult, and in some cases impossible, to find evidence, because people covered it up and did not talk about it. They certainly would not have approached doctors. They may have developed physical health problems as a result, and we could start to link those to traumatic events and mental illness, but this evidence is going to be hard to find. We need to acknowledge that.
Maybe there is more we could do to help those groups who are campaigning and helping people to uncover that evidence, to look at different ways of finding that evidence. It can be very difficult for someone who is applying for the scheme to go through that search for evidence. That can be traumatising in itself, so yes, if there is anything we can do there, that would be very much welcome.
Ian Jeffers: Could I come back on the question about the support? As the Committee is well aware, there are a number of funded victims groups in Northern Ireland, of which about six or seven of them provide advocacy services to help applicants with their process. They are funded through Victims and Survivors Service. Could there be more? Without a doubt, yes. Many of the groups talk about the additional workloads that they have had. Inevitably, if they are putting people through and helping them complete applications, there are other services maybe not being provided, so that is one area to look at.
It would be remiss not to point out that we do not have the same healthy sector, if you like, within the rest of the UK. SEFF, I believe, is the only organisation that could provide some support in the UK and they do that with, I think, two members of staff. The same support is not available if somebody who is living outside of Northern Ireland wants to apply.
We also need to recognise that many victims—probably the majority of victims—do not engage with victims groups. They have chosen not to, they feel that they do not need to or there may be their own personal safety, security or comfort areas that they have. We need to look at whether there are other people who could support applicants, whether that is a citizens advice bureau, an Advice NI-style character, or even working with a place like the jobs and benefits agency, which has qualified staff to support people putting in PIP applications, for example, and things like that. We should look outside of the sector. Maybe that is not a good example. I see you grimace.
From that point of view, we also have to recognise that not all victims and survivors want to engage with the sector to put an application form in. I know that the team coming after us will talk about, “You do not need anybody to support you. You can do it yourself”. If you look at the stats and the number of people who are putting in online applications versus paper applications, the preferences is towards the paper application; that may mean sitting, having a conversation with somebody and filling it out. We need to look at that process and discuss what support is available, because it is a traumatic process.
Professor Mulholland: Could I perhaps come in on the question of evidence retrieval? It is at the centre of the scheme and actually things have probably moved on in recent months. The Committee would probably like to hear about that in a little bit of detail.
Some applicants come forward in possession of their own medical records. That happens sometimes and, if that happens, somebody’s application will be dealt with very quickly, but that is a tiny proportion. More applicants know that they have been to see a particular doctor or therapist, or they have been to a particular hospital at a particular point in time. Then the onus is on the health service, health and social care in Northern Ireland, either secondary care, hospital services or primary care, to provide the records. That proved challenging in the initial weeks and months for two reasons.
One is because of the historic nature of these incidents, so the 1970s and the 1980s, where the records might have belonged to a hospital group that no longer exists or a trust that no longer exists. They might even sometimes have been destroyed. That has happened. The other problem was in 2021, 2022 and 2023. Health services are very stretched and current health and social care staff do not have the time to devote to this process, even though they would wish to.
We have put in place a system with three different processes, or four different processes, actually. General practitioners have agreed to provide the information that they have in their possession. They have done that quite efficiently, sometimes a little bit slowly, but they have mostly provided the information in a timely fashion. Within secondary care, if somebody’s records can be found easily, we now have a system where they can all be brought together into one place. We have a team of clinicians who review the records and will complete the necessary paperwork to take the process to the next stage. If that happens, that avoids a need for retelling and any potential re‑traumatisation.
If, at that point, the records are insufficient, the applicants are asked to meet a psychologist or a psychiatrist for an independent new assessment. That can be challenging and that is where sometimes people find it difficult to retell their story, but sometimes of course it can be therapeutic if it is done sympathetically. The person may never have had a chance to talk about what happened before and they appreciate that opportunity. That is an important step.
The third step that we have put in place now is for those very complex and difficult cases, such as the one you just mentioned, Carla, about the unborn baby in the womb. When the mother is pregnant and she is caught up in a bomb explosion, what happens? What are the implications? That is difficult and there are lots of other difficult cases. We have a small group of experts now who are focused on the difficult cases, including those cases where an application has been made on behalf of a deceased person. The person is no longer alive and their nearest relative makes an application on their behalf. Then we have to work backwards. We have to collate information on somebody who is no longer with us, and obviously that is complex.
We have put together now quite a good system, which I think is minimising the need for retelling, which will minimise re-traumatisation and make the system more efficient. Some of that has just fallen into place in recent weeks and we have yet to see the full benefit, but I think we will see the benefit in coming weeks and months.
Carla Lockhart: It is encouraging that it is moving.
Professor Mulholland: I can provide the Committee with more information on that after the event if you wish.
Chair: Yes. Thank you very much indeed.
Q11 Tony Lloyd: In a sense, you have already woven what I am going to ask you about now in and out of your comments already. In terms of the bureaucracy, if we are talking about a victim-centred approach, I have seen a figure that said that there may be up to 30,000 potential applicants for the scheme. At the moment around 6,000 have applied. Is the scheme being properly communicated and is the scheme easily navigable? You have already told us about some of the barriers, but, generically, do we need to see more by way of communication? Do we need to look at process as well as the barriers that Professor Mulholland was just talking about in terms of the constant repetition of questioning?
Ian Jeffers: There is always room for more communication about it, both in Northern Ireland and outside of Northern Ireland. The awareness of the scheme outside of Northern Ireland is probably very scant. Certainly in conversations with some of the veterans groups, they may be aware of the scheme but do not promote it when it comes to it. I know that the next panel will talk about some of the plans they have. We have been in discussion with VPB about some of the communications processes so that they can go through that.
In terms of the accessibility of it, it is there. The website is quite clear if you look at it from that point of view. We have to consider that people may be reluctant to apply. They have seen coverage of it that might not be brilliant of people who have been turned down or refused for whatever reason. There is a reluctance, particularly, from veterans, police and army and so forth, to apply at this stage. People wait to see what happens.
Q12 Tony Lloyd: Why is that?
Ian Jeffers: I think that there is an element of them not knowing whether they are eligible, for a start, or think that they will not be eligible, or there is still a security fear in their own minds, understandably, of what they will and will not share with people they do not know. If we look at the victims sector, many of the victims groups would be single identity, so they might be UDR victims groups or police and so forth. There is comfort there. There is safety there. If we are then asking them to share information about what happened at a particular event and something else, that is challenging for many.
There is a looming deadline as well that we need to consider on this. There is a deadline for applications that will be backdated. That is going to create a huge problem if we do not address that sooner rather than later, because we are going to actually encourage top-level applications in just to meet a deadline to receive a back payment. There is some debate. I think that May of 2024 is the deadline when you look at when the scheme started or commenced and so forth. If you are not in by then, you will not qualify for the 10-years backdating. That is a significant financial penalty if you are a day late, behind that.
VPB, to its credit, has been quite clear. Even if your name is in the system on that day, it will be backdated if you are successful. That is going to encourage people to say, “Write your name down, sign it and say you were there”. I do not mean that in a flippant way. We could remove that deadline tomorrow. It is in the Secretary of State’s power to do that. I would encourage him to do so and do it quickly, because it would then help people, say, get in the right frame of mind and to have the right support around them to apply. I think that then you would see a change in things. I worry that we will see a spike in numbers coming forward just to meet that.
At the same time, we need to create the right conditions and look at communications across the island, not just in Northern Ireland, where I think that it is relatively well known. That is based on my conversations with many victims and survivors, many of the groups. Everybody knows about it. It is being talked about. That is not the same when I am having conversations, particularly, with veterans from Operation Banner.
Q13 Tony Lloyd: You made the point that members of the UDR and members of the security forces generally may have a specific issue. There may be other individuals who will fall under that category for different reasons anyway. In terms of navigating the system, are there things that we could do that would make that process easier for those affected groups? You cannot have anonymity by definition, but you do not have to have the thing blared from the mountain tops on each and every occasion.
Ian Jeffers: No, and I think that that would be a question to ask the next panel also. I know, credit to them, they are putting in place ways to make it easier to support, for example, members of the police service to apply. We are seeing that. A lot of it is to do with awareness and how the scheme is promoted and a lot is in terms of what help we can give to applicants and so forth. It is a communications exercise more than actually changing the system. The system is working. We might say that there are parts within the system we could improve on, simplify and streamline. It is accessible but we need to encourage people to access it.
Q14 Tony Lloyd: More generally, I think that all of you have talked about the potential for re-traumatisation of people who are asked to repeat their story many times. In general terms, is the structure of the system at the moment one that is sensitive, with the exception of what you have already described?
Ian Jeffers: That would be a good question for the professionals here on this. Overall, I get very few people coming through my office complaining about the scheme, other than the time it is taking. They are generally very respectful and credit people such as Capita, which has been involved in the scheme, the staff within VPB and the support staff in the victims groups. Everybody recognises that they are trying to do the right thing, but it is the streamlining of the processes.
Look at where the constraints are. That is something that is a conversation we have ongoing with the Victims’ Payments Board, about where the blockages are and what is stopping things. We have already touched on some of them. It is this evidence gathering. You are specifically looking at those and in some ways holding those to account, those people that hold that information. How can we encourage that to flow a little bit easier?
Professor Mulholland: The key here is to collate the information that already exists and then, when that information is collated, to share it. With every stage information collection and gathering is necessary, but it should not be collected twice. It should be passed on at one stage of the process to the next stage in the process and eventually it lands on the Victims’ Payments Board panel table and they have everything to consider.
The system is set up to ensure that we share information and we do not ask people to repeat their story more than once, but I am sure also that there is unevenness in the system. It is quite a complex system. Many hundreds of people work across the process now, employed by the Victims’ Payments Board, in health and social care and employed by the groups that play a very valuable role at the outset. We could look at this. We could look at all of this to make sure that we share all of the information and minimise any necessity to repeat.
In terms of the complexity of the scheme, it always will be complex. We cannot really get around that. When you are trying to communicate a very complex process to the wider public, that is challenging. That can be difficult. There is going to be publicity in the new year. I understand that the second panel will speak to that, I would imagine. I understand that that will be a leaflet going through the door of every household in Northern Ireland and an attempt to raise awareness across GB simultaneously by other means. When that happens there will be new applications. There will be people looking at the website, trying to work out what is happening. We should just review everything perhaps to make sure that it is very clear. No matter how hard we try, I think that it just is going to be complex.
That is why the groups are so important. We have five groups that are funded, with staff members who guide applicants through their journey, not just at the beginning but the whole way through their journey, right to the point of determination. That is so important. Ian’s point about the many, probably thousands, of applications that have come in from individuals who do not have that support is a very important point and he is right to raise it. We should consider how we support those individuals, because they potentially are more lost than those who are supported by the groups.
Q15 Stephen Farry: Good afternoon to all of our witnesses. Research has indicated that previous compensation schemes at times were discriminatory in terms of their application. In terms of the current scheme, are you satisfied that it is being applied in a fair and equitable manner and that there are no groups that are adversely missing out for whatever reason. I will start with Siobhan and bring Ciaran and Ian back in.
Professor O’Neill: I am not really in a position to comment on that because I do not have enough information about the operationalisation of the scheme. If it is okay, I will hand you over to the other two members.
Ian Jeffers: I have not heard anything to say that the scheme is not operating fairly at all. It would be a good challenge to look at the 6,045 applications received to date and take a breakdown of where they have come from. I do not have access to that information, understandably, but I think that there is some little bit of research in the background. Looking at where the applications are flowing and all the groups involved, I believe that we have the support there to enable anybody who believes that they are eligible to apply. I have not heard anything to the contrary to say that anybody has been put off applying.
Q16 Stephen Farry: There is no area where some form of—I hesitate to use the words because sometimes they are misconstrued—affirmative action to try to push any particular section of the community is needed.
Ian Jeffers: There is none that I am aware of. It would be worthwhile trawling through. It would be a relatively straightforward process to look at a bit more data behind all those application. That is something that I know VPB is keen to look to see whether there are any trends coming right the way through from there through to the appeal process.
Q17 Stephen Farry: Sufficient data is being collected to enable all that analysis to be done.
Ian Jeffers: I think that there is a lot of data being collected.
Q18 Stephen Farry: Sometimes we collect too much data.
Ian Jeffers: We are now at the stage where we need to look at what is being collected and what is being shared. I know that we are all probably in possession of this document that has come through. The Victims’ Payments Board has always been keen to share information with me when I ask, but I would like to move to a more transparent environment where we are seeing information on applications published on the website and seeing where the blockages are. That would help in the communication process. Looking in, we could say, “There is maybe a constraint here and here”. All of the information being collected is correct, but could we interpret and use it better to help the applicants? Yes, without a doubt.
Professor Mulholland: There are probably two parts to the answer of whether it is fair. Some people would argue that the regulations are not fair. We have already touched upon this with regards to the bereaved, for example. 90% of those who died during the Troubles during the conflict were male, so those who are left behind are often their female partners. Those individuals, unless they were present at the scene of their loved one’s death, are not eligible. That is an unfairness for many people, but that is a question of the regulations.
In terms of the implementation of the regulations as they stand, we need to think about it. Are there any inbuilt levels of unfairness with regards to geography, for example, if you live in a particular area of Northern Ireland where there is not a group that is very active and you do not hear about it, or when you do hear about it you do not know who to talk to? That is possible, but I have no evidence that it is happening. In terms of gender, could there be inbuilt discrimination against men or against women? We need to consider that. There is also age, older people perhaps who find it difficult to cope with the application process. All of that is possible.
Data is very important. We are collecting a lot of data. We need to refine the data that we are collecting but we need to analyse the data that we are collecting. To the point you just made, Stephen, we are collecting a lot of data but not actually doing very much with it at the moment. The time is now. That would be something that we could look at in the next period of weeks and months.
Q19 Stephen Farry: Can we ask around bereavement? I appreciate that it is a slightly different concept in some ways. I understand that some parallel work has been done on that through TEO. Is that correct?
Ian Jeffers: TEO has asked the commission for advice and we will publish a paper on that hopefully within the next two weeks. That will look at some form of acknowledgement around the bereaved that might in some ways take some of the pressure from this if it was successful. We have got to consider, when it comes to the bereaved, that this is a huge group of people. It could number 12,000, there or thereabouts, if we include siblings within that. We have not acknowledged their suffering over the years. It is particularly worse if you look at the period from 1966 to 1976 before criminal injuries and so forth were changed. There is some great research by Queen’s University, Luke Moffett, on that that highlights some of those inadequacies. We would encourage a separate scheme on the bereaved that really acknowledges what they have gone through, and that would include siblings as well.
Professor O’Neill: At the time, it was understood that bereavement was often an exclusion criteria for mental illness because the response was a response to bereavement. I would always have argued that the bereavement is aside from the trauma and that there is a mental illness that results from the trauma, for example of recognising and identifying a body or going through that process. It is about the fact that, yes, the bereaved need to be acknowledged, but bereavement can cause a trauma-related mental illness as well.
As I said initially, this is not in keeping with our criteria for mental illness and that is a difficulty. That is something that really should be looked at. When you look at the additional harm that was caused to bereaved people, and it is in Moffett’s report there from Queen’s, some families were paid £50 to £90. There was such a discrepancy in the amounts that were given to families who had lost loved ones. That was really unfair and re-traumatising there too. That needs to be addressed.
Q20 Carla Lockhart: I have one final question on the back of what you said in relation to the current scheme and the fact that, in August 2024, the backdating element will end. Do you think that it would be important for this Committee to raise that with the Secretary of State?
Ian Jeffers: Yes.
Q21 Carla Lockhart: Through the Chair, I am hoping and trusting that, on the back of this, we can write to the Secretary of State to encourage him to lift that date.
Ian Jeffers: My understanding is that it is within the powers of the Secretary of State to review the scheme and remove that backdate or review that. As a quick thing to do, I would encourage removing the backdating. I do not think that there should be any debate on that. If it is not removed, it is wide open to some sort of judicial review, to be truthful. If I was at the same scene and I have my application in one day late and you have a payment that is backdated 10 years and I do not, that will not stand anywhere. I would just remove it. It does not serve any purpose.
Q22 Carla Lockhart: Also, when the Committee, if the Chair agrees, writes to the Secretary of State about that, in terms of the importance of a review, an overall review, again, do you feel that is important? I know that we had the initial review but I mean something slightly broader.
Ian Jeffers: The scheme has now been operational long enough. We know where the pitfalls are. We know where the constraints are. We have a fantastic team, I have to say, at Victims’ Payments Board that wants to do the right thing. I think that they would welcome that review. I would say to do it quickly and let us continue to improve it for victims and survivors.
Q23 Tony Lloyd: Professor Mulholland mentioned the possibility of inadvertent discrimination against the older people. One of the criteria of the scheme is that the board should be looking at the prioritisation of those over 80 and those who declare themselves to have a terminal illness. Is that part of the scheme working well? Where time is against them, quite frankly, are they being prioritised and are those cases being dealt with in a sensitive fashion? Also, do we know anything about those who have died before the scheme has come to a conclusion about their applications?
Professor Mulholland: They are very good questions. There are two groups that are prioritised. One group is the terminally ill. The second group are those aged over 80, so the needs of the more elderly population are taken into consideration. Prioritisation should mean an element of being fast-tracked and fast-tracked at every point in the process.
Unfortunately, some people have died during the process. That has happened. You are probably aware of that. I do not know the exact numbers. I could not give you a figure for how much more quickly individuals move through the process because they are in priority group. The Victims’ Payments Board representatives later this afternoon or this evening might be able to give an exact figure.
A lot of attention has been paid to it. I believe that it is working. I cannot say just how well it is working. It brings us back to the question of data and the need for a review, as we have just discussed. A review is timely. This is the right time for review and part of that review ought to be the collation of all of the existing data. Bring it together and mine it to see what we can learn from the evidence to date, including the question of prioritisation.
Tony Lloyd: That is helpful.
Q24 Chair: In the answers you have given, we have been dealing with one of the questions that I wanted to ask about: whether the scheme is inclusive enough. There is a rule, of course, about previous convictions, whether they are spent or not, that have a link with the incident complained of. That does not seem to me to be wholly unreasonable, but I would welcome observations from witnesses as to whether they think the scheme in that respect is too narrow, or whether there are wider issues that we need to consider about its inclusivity over and above the obvious points that have been made about trauma, the wider repercussions of trauma and the fact that many people who might have been caught up in the aftermath or been party to the reactions of those loved ones who experienced it are not necessarily included in this scheme.
Ian Jeffers: In some ways it seems particularly cruel to have this definition of the immediate aftermath and the obvious and understandable interpretation of that. As Professor O’Neill outlined, the immediate aftermath should not mean that you witnessed the body or were one of the blue-light workers on the scene and so forth. In the absence of any other scheme, that has potentially encouraged people to look to say, “Am I eligible for this?” Again, the board can probably give stats on the number of people who have applied who do not meet the criteria.
To Ciaran’s point, it would be well worth looking at that from a data perspective. What is that telling us? Are there people putting their name into the scheme here in the hope that they get some recognition and acknowledgement for what has gone on? At the minute, that is one of the few places they can turn to. The hard evidence is not there, but should we go back and revisit that definition of the immediate aftermath? That is an interesting question to look at and, in the absence of anything else, maybe that is the place to do it, but I am not sure at what point you then draw the line. It would be terribly cruel to consider.
Professor Mulholland: If I might just comment from a clinical perspective, if I look at the scheme as a clinician, in somebody who has been traumatised the source of the trauma is of less important to a clinician. For example, there is the question of somebody who has been in contact with the criminal justice system; they have been through the prison system. If they have post-traumatic stress disorder and they are sitting in a room with somebody like me, you treat the PTSD; the source of the PTSD is less relevant. That is the clinical perspective. I would suggest that, if there is to be a review of the scheme, it ought to have a clinical perspective as well as the legal perspective, or the political perspective, I guess. That is very important.
Many people are being excluded who perhaps have had contact with the criminal justice system but have suffered greatly. We have to take that into consideration.
We need to return to the question of the bereaved. It has been mentioned several times. We need to think about emerging science and emerging concepts. There is a new concept now of complex grief. It is given other terms. It is a new concept that has found its place in the diagnostic systems in the United States of America, the UK and Europe. It recognises, as we did not recognise before, that some people have long‑term responses to bereavement, which are very deleterious and negative, with very negative consequences.
In Northern Ireland, at Queen’s University, Dr Michael Duffy has done a lot of work in this area. He is somebody who could play a major role in a review. He participated and contributed as one of the authors in the first review. We should look at that again.
The immediate aftermath issue is very relevant. Everybody has touched upon that too. Perhaps the current regulations could be interpreted differently, but I would probably not. It might be an aspect of the regulations that ought to be revisited or there might need to be an entirely separate scheme, as the commission is suggesting. From a clinical perspective—Siobhan has already touched on this—if somebody close to you dies, being present at the time of death or in the immediate aftermath of the death is important, but it is not everything. Many people develop PTSD, recurrent depression or complex grief. They could be 1,000 miles away and we need to think about that. That is the clinical evidence in 2023. I know that there are other perspectives on this from a legal point of view, but that should be brought to bear when we review the whole process.
Professor O’Neill: We are all in agreement that there needs to be a review of that immediate aftermath, just to see whether we can change that in line with what we know about the sequelae of trauma. Also, it would be helpful to get more population data around the numbers of people who are eligible and whether they have applied or considered applying and did not for various different reasons. As I say, there is certainly fear and mistrust. There might be an issue around people feeling that they do not want to benefit from something that was so negative. They do not want to revisit this. They have recovered, or they feel that they have somewhat recovered, and going through this would be harmful for them personally.
I know that the commissioner has done some work and 4% of the population reported bereavement and 7% mental health affected or witnessed a conflict-related incident. There are still high proportions of our population who are affected by the conflict who report being a victim, or meet the definition for being a victim. We need to work a little bit harder to find those people who are eligible but who are not applying and to understand why that is, so that we can bring them in. This is supposed to recognise the needs of victims and send a strong signal that we care about victims in Northern Ireland. We want to help people who have struggled as a result of our conflict here, and it is not really doing that in the way that it should be, I feel.
Chair: Thank you very much indeed to you, Professor, and to our panellists in person here. May I put on the record the Committee’s thanks to Ian Jeffers for his service as commissioner? I know, Ian, that you are moving on shortly, but we wish you well and thank you for the work that you have done. The panel members here are welcome to sit in the public gallery to hear the next panel. Thank you very much.