The Armed Forces Compensation Scheme: A Sheep in Wolf's Clothing?

Abstract

This article addresses issues that arise out of a state's undertaking to compensate, from public funds, citizens it has placed in harm's way through its policy- and decision-making. In the past decade, many western liberal democratic states have been required to place a value on their citizens through the provision of compensation to troops injured as a result of their deployment to Afghanistan and Iraq. Here we examine the UK's much criticised Armed Forces Compensation Scheme (AFCS), charting its development and analysing its strengths and its flaws, in order to assess whether it places adequate value upon the sacrifices of the citizens for which it was created. We investigate whether, in its attempts to create a compensatory framework that mimics Tort, the legislature has ultimately promised an equivalence that the AFCS fails to deliver in substance and we examine the idea that the AFCS represents an uneasy and unnecessary collapse of the distinction between corrective and distributive justice.

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