Government rules out refunds for victims of historic miscarriages of justice

Board and lodging costs deducted from compensation payments will not be refunded, with the Government saying this was the ‘standard approach’.

The law on deducting bed and board costs from compensation payments was changed after an outcry over the treatment of Andrew Malkinson (Jordan Pettitt/PA) (PA Archive)

Victims of historic miscarriages of justice will not receive refunds for “board and lodging” costs already deducted from their compensation, the Government has said.

The previous government scrapped the policy of deducting such costs from compensation payments last year after an outcry over the treatment of Andrew Malkinson, who had spent 17 years in prison after being wrongly convicted of rape.

But the change was only introduced for future payments, with the question of how it would apply to past payouts left undecided.

The new Government now appears to have ruled out applying the changes retrospectively, with minister Nick Thomas-Symonds telling the BBC’s Today programme on Friday this was the “standard approach to government policy”.

He said: “The reality is when you do make a change in the law, when you make a change in policy, you are inevitably drawing a line somewhere.”

Mr Thomas-Symonds added there was still “an absolute commitment that people who suffer a miscarriage of justice should have the chance to rebuild their lives”.

The Government’s decision not to refund “bed and board” costs to those who had already received compensation has brought sharp criticism from members of both main parties.

Senior Labour MP Sarah Champion said it was “absolutely the wrong decision”, while Tory former cabinet minister David Davis said it was “unwise” and described the deduction as “insulting”.

Paul Blackburn, who spent 25 years in jail after being wrongly convicted of attempted murder and saw £100,000 deducted from his compensation to cover rent and food, told the BBC the policy was “morally wrong”.

He said: “It’s just compounding things, isn’t it?”

Most victims of miscarriages of justice do not receive compensation, with the House of Commons library describing it as “the exception rather than the rule”.

Under legislation passed in 2014, they are only eligible for compensation if a new or newly discovered fact shows “beyond reasonable doubt” that they did not commit the offence.

That law reversed a 2011 decision by the Supreme Court that extended compensation to cases where new information undermined the prosecution case to the extent that “no conviction could possibly be based on it”.

The amount of any compensation is decided by an independent assessor, and is capped at £1 million for people who spent at least 10 years in prison and £500,000 for all other cases.