Britain faced accusations of moral failure last night as politicians from all parties called for compensation for UK citizens who have been injured or disabled in terror attacks abroad.
The clamour for action was sparked by the plight of the most seriously injured Briton in last year's attack on Mumbai's Taj Hotel, in which terrorists targeted people with British or American passports. Will Pike, a 29-year-old Londoner who faces a lifetime in a wheelchair, reveals in today's Observer that he is having to cope with just £15,000 in help from a government-backed Red Cross fund.
Like others, Pike returned home to find he was not covered by the compensation scheme set up after the 7 July 2005 bombings in London to help all victims of terror attacks, of whatever nationality, on UK soil. He said he felt terribly "let down", at a time when he had hoped the government and the prime minister would show "condolence" and "care". His father, Nigel, has launched a private appeal for contributions to help Will rebuild his life. Lord Brennan, a prominent barrister and Labour peer, who has been campaigning for families affected by terror attacks abroad, said: "It is a shameful state of affairs.
"Any decent country would be ashamed to find itself in this position." He pointed out that other western countries have systems in place to provide compensation for citizens who fall victim to terror attacks abroad. The annual cost of setting up a compensation fund in the UK would be just £3m, he added.
Noting a growing sense of "community" in Britain amid the economic crisis, as demonstrated by the outcry in support of the Gurkhas, Brennan said: "People may find it very difficult to explain what justice is. But they very readily understand what an injustice is. And this is an injustice." He said victims of the Mumbai attack – and of earlier terror strikes in Bali, Turkey and Sharm el-Sheikh in Egypt – had been left without the financial help they needed to cope with physical or emotional injury, or bereavement.
The Pike family's constituency MP, Liberal-Democrat Lynne Featherstone, yesterday sent a letter to the prime minister urging him to intervene. "Just as we have a moral obligation to the Gurkhas, we also have a moral obligation to those who are injured by those who perpetrate terrorist attacks on our citizens – wherever in the world they become targets," she wrote.
Tobias Ellwood, a Conservative MP whose younger brother died in the Bali bombings in 2002, said: "What upsets me most is that the budget for counter-terrorism has actually gone up, from £1.2bn to £2bn. And yet the government still isn't willing to use a little bit of that money to help those people who have actually suffered."
Labour MP and former Foreign Office minister Ian McCartney, who secured an adjournment debate in the Commons last year to try to spur government action, said: "The situation is totally unacceptable. Terrorism is an attack not on individuals but on a state, as Mumbai made clear. A state's duty is to its citizens."
Tessa Jowell, the minister in charge of helping victims of terror, said: "I recognise the anomaly is a glaring one. Government accepts we have to find a fair solution." A Justice Ministry spokesman said Jack Straw was determined to "find further ways of supporting the victims of all crimes" and had set up a working group on the issue of compensation for overseas terror victims.
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