Question: Your recent report reveals how 96 per cent of all victims of crime get virtually no support to help them cope with their experiences. What sort of help should victims of crime be receiving?

Dame Helen Reeves: Our key message is that we need a new way of thinking about crime. Crime is a social problem and it affects almost everybody at some point. When crime occurs, it affects our employment; our health; for some people, it leads to serious financial problems and for others, particularly if the crime occurs where they live, there are serious issues about security and sometimes even moving away from home. All of those things need to be addressed, quite apart from what happens to the offender.

Question: So how would you like the Government to view the whole issue of crime and punishment and victims?

Dame Helen Reeves: We are very interested in some of the new initiatives going on in other areas with joined up Government, where the various departments are coming together to see what shared responsibilities they have. We would like to see far more work done with the departments that are responsible for housing and health and education, talking to Home Office ministers about how they could come together to do the utmost possible to reduce the effects of crime, both short term and long term for all victims.

Question: So do you think we should have, perhaps cabinet committees on victims of crime?

Dame Helen Reeves: Yes, there has already been a cabinet level committee on domestic violence for some time which has been important in bringing together aspects of civil law and criminal law in that area.

The Government should look to setting up a Cabinet Committee on the wider issues of crime. Issues of crime affect everybody, particularly if you consider burglary. Burglary has a very low clear up rate, so few offenders go through the criminal justice process. Victims get referred to Victim Support, but increasingly more and more of our time is taken up dealing with the very serious crimes and violent crimes, particularly those which go to court where we need to support people as witnesses. Increasingly, burglary victims are getting little more than a leaflet and they are being left to contact us if they need anything. If we were able to see more burglary victims, we could help them with crime prevention, for example, by ensuring that they had contact with the people who could both fit locks and bolts and give advice about special crime prevention measures. In some cases, we would be able to help with social security and, if there had been a serious problem, if people were very distressed and needed to move, we can and do quite often support them in that application to the housing authority. The type of help that we could give would be very wide.

Question: Perhaps the Government isn't able to afford all these things?

Dame Helen Reeves: Quite often it is simply because nobody has thought about it. As we have seen with the various improvements that have been made with criminal justice, once people realised how much could be done for so little - it's just a question of choosing the right words and showing a little bit more consideration to people - some of these improvements will cost very little to implement.

As far as we are concerned however, with Victim Support, the main problem is that more and more of our own very limited resources are being taken up in dealing with serious crimes and particularly in helping people get through the criminal justice process. And that means, of course, that we just haven't got additional volunteers available to make contact with many people whose offenders have never been caught.

Question: Should the Government be looking to ways of providing emotional support for victims of crime?

Dame Helen Reeves: The most important thing in our campaign is to demonstrate that dealing with crime as a social problem should have three components. You have got to try and prevent crime which is terribly important. You do have to try and deal justly with the offender, which we totally support. But the issue which has been left out completely is actually trying to reduce the overall impact of the effects of crime. If you consider what would happen in a health service that didn't try to reduce pain, you'd realise that people would lose confidence in it very quickly and wouldn't see any point in going to the doctor. That is what has been happening with crime: people have lost confidence; they don't see any point in going to the police; they know that most of the offenders won't be caught anyway; and they know that going to the police won't be of any practical use to them.

What I would like the Government to recognise is that reducing the impact of crime is absolutely fundamental to a secure community where people feel part of the community and know that they are respected and cared about. As for the psychological consequences, obviously you do need more people in voluntary organisations like Victim Support who are available just to have the time and talk to people. But also in the health services, we're saying that GPs, in particular, and people who work at Accident and Emergency departments, ought to have as part of their training sensitisation to crime. They should be recognising when people come in with injuries or with depression that crime - and sometimes repeat crime - might be the cause. They could maybe attempt to raise the issue in a sensitive way or simply ensure that there are informative leaflets around in the waiting rooms that people can pick up. If they can refer those people for help at an early stage, they can prevent long term problems from setting in later.

Question: Is there a strong link between dealing with the impact of crime and the public's fear of crime?

Dame Helen Reeves: If you try to reduce the effects of crime and people have a very good experience - if everyone they come into contact with is full of understanding and concern and made sure they got the right services - they will tell this story to their families, their neighbours and friends, and people will recognise that if a crime does happen, that they can rely on the people around them to help them to cope and get over it. As things are at the moment, I think everybody knows that if you become a victim of crime, you are more or less on your own. There is very little financial compensation available; what you have lost you have probably lost for good; and that if you complain about it or if you have time off work you'll only get into more difficulties. So it's really quite a devastating prospect to be a victim of crime when you think you might be so isolated.

Question: Do you believe victims should play a greater role in determining how their offenders are dealt with?

Dame Helen Reeves: I've met very few victims who would ever want to play a role of that sort, and even if they did I think it would be quite wrong to suggest that they might ever have a role. The fact is that delivering justice is one of the most important things that a state has to do. And they have to do it fairly and within all of the law and the international conventions. It would be quite wrong for them to take into account subjective opinions of people who have been at the receiving end of the crime. So, knowing that they wouldn't be able to do that, it would be wrong to raise people's expectations that victims' voices will really count in dealing with the offender. I'm afraid even if people really want it, that isn't going to happen.

Question: Do you believe as some people say that there should be more face to face contact where an offender apologises to a victim of crime?

Dame Helen Reeves: I think the important thing about any sort of mediation or restorative justice is that it must come from the victim. Again, I have met victims who say they would like to meet the offender, even in very serious crimes where a family member has been murdered. I've known a number of relatives of murder victims who've said they would like to go into the prison and meet the offender before he is finally released, simply because they can't make sense of what happened and they want to know more about it.

If it comes from the victim - and it's handled well and both the victim and the offender are well prepared for what's going to happen and supported throughout - then it can be a very important thing. However, I would be concerned if the initiative was one-sided, that is, coming on the side of people who were trying to rehabilitate the offender only and they didn't invest enough time in allowing the victim to make a decision and give them proper preparation and support. If that happened, you could have a situation where the victim is exploited and that is the worst of all possible scenarios.

Question: The Government seems to be supportive - or making positive noises - about the idea of a victims' commissioner or a watchdog for victims' rights. What powers would you like to see a commissioner or a watchdog on victims' rights have?

Dame Helen Reeves: We would like to see a commissioner who is able to investigate all sorts of issues across the board, not just in criminal justice but also in the health services and in employment law and the whole wide spectrum of issues that affect victims. We would like to see them with the ability to be pro-active, to investigate and to make recommendations about changes that need to be made - even before any specifically serious cases occurred.

What was originally proposed was an Ombudsman who would investigate complaints. We think that is a little bit too late. We would like to see somebody who had a role appointed by Government to investigate all of the issues that victims are concerned about.

Question: And pull all of the strands of the departments together?

Dame Helen Reeves: Yes, and look at the whole range of issues and to make recommendations, some of which might affect several departments at the same time.

Question: Before Tony Blair came to power, he promised to take victims very seriously. Five years on, how do you think the Government has fared?

Dame Helen Reeves: I think that, in terms of criminal justice issues, which were our main priority five years ago, they have made very good progress. We were focused on the injustices that victims and witnesses in criminal cases were facing because they were actually being re-victimised by the criminal justice system, which we call 'secondary victimisation'. To have a justice system that did more harm than good seemed to be extremely wrong, so we prioritised that for a long time.

The Government has recognised the responsibility - as have all of the main agencies in criminal justice - so we now have policies that should go a long way to making things better. They are still being implemented which is why you haven't always seen the improvements on the ground as yet, but there is an enormous amount of work going on, and that should all be safely in place in the next few years. What we are doing now is looking to the wider agenda. We've stopped secondary victimisation in criminal justice, now let's get down to other serious services and by that I mean, helping people by sharing the burden because victims shouldn't be left alone with it.

Question: So what's your message to Tony Blair and David Blunkett?

Dame Helen Reeves: Start to look at crime in a new way. It is not just a legal matter that can be dealt with by the courts, it is a social issue that affects the whole of society and should be dealt with as such. If it isn't dealt with soon - as a social issue - I dread to think of the consequences.