Ellie Reeves (Lewisham West and Penge) (Lab) I beg to move, That
this House commemorates International Women’s Day; regrets that
under this Government conviction rates for rape have reached a
historic low and that the typical delay between reporting an
offence of rape and the completion of the resulting criminal case
is over 1,000 days; calls on the Government to introduce minimum
sentences for stalking and rape, to raise minimum sentencing for
spiking and to...Request free trial
(Lewisham West and Penge)
(Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House commemorates International Women’s Day; regrets
that under this Government conviction rates for rape have reached
a historic low and that the typical delay between reporting an
offence of rape and the completion of the resulting criminal case
is over 1,000 days; calls on the Government to introduce minimum
sentences for stalking and rape, to raise minimum sentencing for
spiking and to implement Labour’s survivors’ package for victims
of rape and serious sexual violence to restore trust in the
criminal justice system; and further calls on the Government to
begin an immediate assessment of the impact of setting up
specialist rape offence courts on the significant Crown Court
backlog of rape cases, as recommended by HM Crown Prosecution
Service Inspectorate.
Today is International Women’s Day, a day when we celebrate the
achievements and progress of women. On the day President Zelensky
addressed Parliament, I start by paying tribute to the brave
women and girls of Ukraine—those who have left their loved ones
behind as they flee war, those who have had to endure childbirth
in bunkers and those who remain in the country facing Russia’s
aggression. I know hon. Members on both sides of this House want
to offer them our full solidarity.
International Women’s Day is also a time to reflect on some of
the challenges we still face at home, among the gravest of which
is rape and sexual violence. Tackling and preventing violence
against women must be a national priority. Women and girls must
feel safe to walk home at night, feel able to have a drink in a
pub or nightclub and live free from the fear of an abusive
partner. When women report a rape, they must feel that the
criminal justice system is working for them, not against them.
Yet, due to the problems of our justice system in ensuring that
victims of rape and sexual violence receive justice, the sad
truth is that we have seen the effective decriminalisation of
rape.
The latest Office for National Statistics crime figures for 2021
show that sexual offences recorded by the police are at record
highs. Rape accounted for 37% of those offences, and the latest
Home Office data shows that just 2.9% of reported sexual offences
and 1.3% of recorded rapes result in a charge or summons. Let
that sink in: only in just over one in 100 reported rapes is
someone charged. Those are record lows. Not only that, but in the
tiny minority of cases that are prosecuted, victims now face more
than 1,000 days’ delay from the report of the offence to
completion at court—an unacceptably long wait for a survivor to
access justice.
Meanwhile, Her Majesty’s Crown Prosecution Service Inspectorate
found that in cases involving rape and serious sexual offences,
nearly half of CPS letters lacked basic empathy, and only 19% of
letters were of the right quality. The Victims’ Commissioner
found that only one in seven victims believed that they would
receive justice by reporting the crime to the police. That is a
sign that victims are losing faith in the system. Inadequate
support, along with delays, means that 41% of rape cases now end
with the victim’s withdrawing their support. No wonder many
survivors feel the system is working against them, not for them.
That is completely the wrong way around.
(Kingston upon Hull West and
Hessle) (Lab)
I thank my hon. Friend for giving way and hope the Minister is
able to respond to this point as well. I have previously
mentioned that women who are subjected to rape are not entitled
to criminal injuries compensation if they have had a prior
conviction, whatever that conviction might be. That means that if
they are then a victim of rape they are entitled to no
compensation. Does my hon. Friend agree that this is completely
unfair, and that just because someone may have a committed a
crime in the past, that does not mean that when they are raped
they should not have some compensation for the suffering they
faced?
I thank my hon. Friend for making that point so passionately. She
is absolutely right, and of course this needs to be looked at and
changed.
The impact of these failings in the criminal justice system is
all too real for many of those with lived experience of it. One
survivor at a recent roundtable I held along with my hon. Friend
the Member for Birmingham, Yardley () told us that while they had
come to terms with what had happened to them, they could not come
to terms with how they had been treated by the criminal justice
system. Survivors continually tell us that they often feel as
though they are the ones being investigated or standing trial,
and that lengthy court delays compound and extend their trauma.
One survivor said:
“I still have flashbacks to the whole process and ask myself what
I could have done differently. The defendant had help on what to
expect in court, but all I had was someone saying ‘if you tell
the truth then that’s enough’—well I did tell the truth but it
wasn’t enough.”
Another said:
“It was my belief that all of this extra pain and suffering being
endured by myself in order to go through the investigation with
only a slight chance of it going to court wasn’t worth it in my
opinion. Especially since I would have had to face my perpetrator
in court and I was told it most likely wouldn’t end up with a
prosecution anyway.”
(Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)
I thank my hon. Friend for the excellent comments she is making
in emphasising the importance of hearing the voices of survivors
of sexual assault. Will she join me in congratulating my
constituent Anna Robinson, who has written a play about her
experience of sexual assault and going through the criminal
justice system with the many failings and delays in it? The play,
which is touching and moving, and also funny, is playing at the
Alphabetti theatre in Newcastle right now and is a marvellous
example of the victim finding a voice.
I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention and the tribute that
she pays to her constituent Anna Robinson. It sounds like a
fantastic play, and I am sure she has shown great bravery and
courage in using her experience to shine a light on the
difficulties that women face.
The cases that I referred to are not unique. The recent criminal
justice joint inspectorate report said that the criminal justice
system is failing victims of rape and that widespread reform is
needed. Despite all this, action from the Government has been
lukewarm and lacks urgency. We welcomed the end-to-end rape
review, but it took over two years to publish it, and we are now
one year on from that with little noticeable change. The review’s
commitment to developing a better understanding of the impacts of
trauma on rape victims and survivors across the criminal justice
system, and the important commitment to taking a more
suspect-focused approach to rape investigations, was encouraging
and welcome. Yet even so, the review’s proposals were just
piecemeal ideas without the funding and real accountability to
make the change needed, and there was a concerning lack of
urgency in the timescales put forward. The scorecards, which are
a useful tool for transparency, completely lacked an equalities
analysis, meaning that there is a blind spot in understanding
justice outcomes for rape victims and survivors who are black and
minoritised, deaf and disabled, or LGBT+. As long as this
information remains missing it will show a fundamental lack of
commitment to making our justice system work for everyone.
(Hampstead and Kilburn)
(Lab)
I want to speak on the point of making the justice system work
for everyone. My constituent Michelle recently wrote to me
because she has a stalker who is the father of her child. He has
abused her, threatened her, and turned up on her doorstep and her
mother’s doorstep. She spoke to the police, who said that she
should apply for a non-molestation order, but she does not
qualify for legal aid because she works full time and, as a
single parent, she cannot pay solicitors’ fees. Will my hon.
Friend comment on the fact that there are women like Michelle
falling through the cracks in the justice system, and something
needs to be done to help them?
I thank my hon. Friend for raising that important point and
shining a light on the dreadful situation her constituent is
facing. Stalking is a really serious crime, and later in my
speech, I will say a little bit about what Labour would do to be
tougher on stalkers.
One of the commitments made by the Government in the rape review
was to return to 2016 charging levels for rape cases, but at the
current rate of progress it will take 29 years to reach that
target, and even then it is not a particularly ambitious target.
In the absence of effective leadership, the Labour party has put
forward a plan to reverse the trend of falling prosecutions, to
ensure victims can once again have faith in the system that is
supposed to protect them. Our survivors support plan would
fast-track rape and serious sexual assault cases through the
police, Crown Prosecution Service and courts; establish a pre and
post-trial survivors support package, including a full legal
advocacy scheme for victims and better training for professionals
about myths and stereotypes; and appoint a Minister for survivors
of rape and sexual violence to investigate and tackle the root
causes of delays in the system and act as a champion for victims.
We would also end lenient sentences for rape and stalking by
introducing new statutory minimum sentences, as well as
toughening up sentences for spiking.
It is unacceptable that rape victims are waiting years
post-charge for a court date, especially given the comparatively
small number of cases that are going through the system. Rape
survivors are often the most vulnerable and traumatised, but
waiting for trial means they cannot move on with their lives and
cannot access counselling for fear that their counselling notes
will be disclosed at trial.
(Newbury) (Con)
The hon. Lady is making a good speech. There is an important
point about judicial listing that we as a House have never really
addressed, which is dealt with in the inspectorates’ report. Out
of something like 52 cases they looked at, 34 were relisted at
least once during the process, so the victim, having waited one
or two years, then waited again while the case was kicked out of
the list and put in at a later date. We never talk about that in
Parliament because it is seen as a judicial function, but does
the hon. Lady think it is time we did?
The hon. Lady is absolutely right to mention the joint
inspectorates’ report and what it said about this issue. The
inspectorates looked at 54 rape cases, 32 of which were adjourned
more than once; one was adjourned 21 times, often at 24 hours’
notice. In their report, the inspectorates recommended that the
Ministry of Justice immediately group adult rape cases into
specialist rape offence courts, which called on the Government to
look at implementing a year ago. It is not difficult to imagine
how those courts could be set up using the existing court
capacity, with a few courtrooms in every Crown court centre
allocated to dealing with rape cases and existing ticketed judges
hearing the claims. Best practice around separate entrances and
exits for accuser and accused could be enforced, and safe space
rooms could be available. Today, we ask the Government to begin
an immediate review into setting up specialist rape offence
courts to help clear the significant Crown court backlog, so that
rape victims are not waiting nearly three years for their cases
to get to court. I hope the Minister will back this call.
Allowing victims to give their evidence and be cross-examined
pre-recorded, known as section 28, also has an important role to
play in speeding up cases. It has applied to child and vulnerable
witnesses for some time, and the equipment to hear evidence in
this way is available in every Crown court in the country. Labour
has long called for section 28 to be rolled out to victims of
rape and serious sexual violence. It would mean victims could
give their evidence as soon as possible, improving the accuracy
of their testimony, relieving some of the stress and anxiety
while waiting for trial and allowing them to pursue pre-trial
counselling, yet in the Government’s end-to-end rape review, all
they offered was an extension of the existing section 28 pilot
from three Crown courts to a further four. The Government finally
said in December last year that they were committed to rolling
out section 28 for intimidated witnesses, yet we are still
waiting for that to happen. Even in the pilot areas, the
inspectorate’s report found that section 28 is not being used
consistently by the police or the Crown Prosecution Service.
We are three years on from the Government announcing their
end-to-end rape review, yet section 28 is being used for rape
victims in only a handful of Crown courts, and even then the
necessary training and awareness are not fully in place. Warm
words and promises are all very well, but without the political
will to make things happen, the pace of change will be far too
slow for thousands of victims.
One of the things that survivors tell us time and time again is
that they feel the criminal justice system is working against
them. With no right to their own legal support, they can find
themselves trying to navigate a complex and opaque system on
their own. One victim said of their journey through the criminal
justice system:
“I felt unsupported by the prosecution lawyer. I did not know his
name or how he was going to advocate for me. I had only met him
10 minutes before going into court. The whole experience is
traumatising. I completely understand why people do not report
rape to the police.”
Other victims have told me that the demands to disclose all the
data on their mobile phones going back years made them feel like
they were the ones on trial, and that they were unsure of their
rights when it came to the digital strip search. That is why
under Labour, rape victims would have a legal advocate from the
moment they reported their case to the police station, right
through to trial. That advocate would be there for them every
step of the way, driving up standards in the criminal justice
system and reducing attrition rates, but the idea is nothing new.
A pilot of that scheme was trialled in Northumbria in 2020, and
it found that legal advocates substantially improved best
practice in the police and CPS and led to an overall improved
victim experience. It would cost just £3.9 million annually to
replicate this scheme across England and Wales. If the Government
were truly serious about this issue, they would roll it out in a
heartbeat.
As well as fixing these problems with the criminal justice
system, we need to see sentences that deter potential offenders
and send a strong signal that violence against women and girls
will never be tolerated, but the public are losing confidence in
the Government on this, with polling showing that seven in 10
women consider action to stop sexual harassment, rape and
domestic abuse to be inadequate. That is why we are announcing
that a Labour Government would toughen sentences for spiking and
introduce minimum sentences for rape and stalking.
There is currently no statutory minimum sentence for rape, only a
maximum sentence of life imprisonment. While the starting tariff
in the sentencing guidelines is five years, that can be reduced.
In 2021 alone, seven rape convictions were referred to the
Attorney General’s Office through the unduly lenient sentences
scheme. They had initial sentences ranging from two to five
years. Despite that, none of the cases was referred to the Court
of Appeal. Truly appalling crimes are receiving lenient
sentences, yet the Government are not doing anything to tackle
it. Labour would introduce a new statutory minimum sentence of
seven years, which better reflects the seriousness of the crime
and the lives it destroys.
Sentences for stalking and harassment do not reflect the fear and
distress they create for the victims of these crimes, who are
very often women and girls. Despite a record number of
convictions for stalking in 2019, more than half of those
convicted got community or suspended sentences. Labour would
create a new minimum custodial sentence of five months for
stalking involving fear of violence or serious alarm or distress.
A court would have to impose at least the statutory minimum,
unless there were exceptional circumstances.
Despite a surge in reports of spiking to the police in recent
years, there have been no more than 66 prosecutions in any year
since 2010, and only 512 in total between 2010 and 2020.
Conviction rates have also plummeted, with just 0.56 convictions
per prosecution over that time period. Under pressure from
Labour, the Government have agreed to a review into spiking,
which we welcome, to find out how widespread it is and who is
being targeted, but the review does not explicitly cover
sentencing, and it must. We need tougher spiking laws to deter
people from committing this awful crime, and a Labour Government
would seek to introduce tougher sentences by referring the issue
to the Sentencing Council for new guidance. I hope the Government
will agree to do that.
Under the Conservatives, rape prosecutions are at a record low,
so perpetrators are left on the streets and can reoffend, which
leaves women and girls less safe. The Conservatives call
themselves the party of law and order, but how can they say that
when they have effectively allowed rape to be decriminalised on
their watch? Until we have a Government who are ready and willing
to commit to the actions needed to drive up rape prosecutions,
victims will continue to be failed by the system. The Opposition
have a plan to put things right. Is it not about time that the
Government backed it?
Madam Deputy Speaker ( )
As colleagues will appreciate, time is pretty short, so it is
likely that I will introduce a time limit of five minutes once
the Minister has sat down.
5.40pm
The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice ()
I have had the privilege of debating International Women’s Day
for several years, but never has one been set in such an
atmosphere or against such an international backdrop as the
horrific invasion of Ukraine. We are incredibly honoured to have
heard moments ago from President Zelensky, who is facing enormous
threats to his personal safety and that of his country and fellow
citizens. I will address the debate in the same spirit of
international unity on this great day when we celebrate and mark
our hopes and aspirations for women around the world.
The last 13 days have shown how precious democracy is across the
world. We in the United Kingdom have a long and proud history of
democracy, but it is something that we must protect, cherish and
nurture. We in this Chamber are the personification of the
importance of democracy in our country. It is through
contributions made here, and through the work of Back-Bench MPs
and Ministers, that we deliver change through democratic
processes in our great country.
We are already hearing of terrifying incidents of violence
against women and girls in Ukraine. Of course, we have seen the
absolutely heart-rending experiences of women and girls fleeing
their home and their country to seek safety and sanctuary
elsewhere in Europe. We stand with them and with all women and
girls who are living through conflict in this terrible time. I
take in genuine spirit the tone in which the debate has been
raised and I invite, as we have as a Government, scrutiny of the
measures that we are taking to address violence against women and
girls.
We have taken a hard and honest look at how the entire criminal
justice system deals with rape and serious sexual violence. We
have acknowledged that in too many instances, it has simply not
been good enough. Since the publication of the rape review last
year, however, we have learned lessons and we have brought and
are bringing measures into place to build change.
When these devastating crimes happen, we want victims to come
forward and feel confident to report them and to seek justice.
That involves many stages of the criminal justice process from
the moment a report is made to the police to the conclusion of
the case. On the global stage and on British streets, we are
working tirelessly every day to ensure that women and girls feel
safe and that they know that they can trust the criminal justice
system to punish perpetrators. We are breaking biases, supporting
victims and making the changes that the public expect.
As I raised with my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham West and
Penge (), when rape convictions are
completed and somebody is found guilty, the victim is sometimes
unable to get criminal injuries compensation because she may have
prior convictions that are unrelated to sexual assault, as
happened to my constituent. I have raised that in Parliament
before and I was promised a meeting with a Minister, which has
not yet been forthcoming. In the spirit of co-operation, I hope
that on the issue of sexual violence, the Minister will look
again at eligibility for criminal injuries compensation.
The hon. Lady has raised an important point and I undertake
myself to meet her to discuss this—very much so.
This Government have taken decisive and measurable action in the
last 12 months to make our system stronger. I stress the word
“measurable” because this is how we are going to drive change
across agencies over the coming months and years to address the
issues highlighted in today’s debate. We are focusing on
preventing these horrendous crimes from taking place in the first
place. We published the tackling violence against women and girls
strategy last year very much in response to the 180,000 accounts
that we received from women and girls, and men, who wanted to
share their thoughts and experiences of violence against women
and girls.
We have already put a range of practical steps in place,
including, only last week, the public communications campaign
“Enough”, which I encourage all Members across the House to share
on their social media channels and networks to get the message
out about the unacceptable attitudes that we do not want to see
in our country in the 2020s.
We have also funded local projects and initiatives across England
and Wales to the tune of more than £27 million to improve the
safety of women in public spaces through the safer streets fund.
I know this is a matter of interest to various colleagues. We, of
course, have the roll-out of statutory relationships, sex and
health education in schools, because we understand that we need
to ensure that children and young people are taught at the
earliest age possible and in an age-appropriate way what healthy
and respectful love looks like.
In the last year, we have also published the end-to-end rape
review report and action plan and we have looked at every stage
of the criminal justice system. The hon. Member for Lewisham West
and Penge (), understandably, says it
took a long time. It did, because this is such a complex area,
and everybody in the House will appreciate that we do not want to
suffer unintended consequences, no matter how well meaning
measures may be in the first place. With that approach, we
outlined in the action plan a robust and ambitious programme of
work.
In December, precisely because we are determined to have an
attitude of non-defensive transparency about what is happening at
various stages across the criminal justice system, we published
our first six-monthly progress report and quarterly scorecard for
adult rape cases. I am never very sure about that precise word,
but it is the word we have come up with for the time being. It is
about increasing public transparency of performance across the
criminal justice system at every stage by grabbing data from the
system from the moment a crime is recorded by the police to the
completion of a case in court. The metrics have been selected to
cover priority areas such as victim engagement, timeliness and
the volume of cases reaching court.
The hon. Lady raised the point about equalities. Believe you me,
this is something we are very conscious of. She will, I hope,
understand—I do not say this by way of complaint; it is just a
fact—that, because different parts of the CJS collect their data
in different ways and measure different things, we have had to
group together. She will have seen from the scorecards how
carefully we have had to use the measures in various parts,
because there is not a single line of measurement that runs
through every stage of the CJS. We will get there, but at the
moment it is taking a bit of time to collect that data. On the
point about equalities, it is one of those measurements that we
do not have yet. That is not for want of attention or effort, but
it is taking a bit of time to try to address some of the very
real equalities measurements. She will know, I hope, that, as
part of the scorecard process, I personally not just chair
meetings with leaders across the CJS, but listen to survivors
groups, because they are the people who can very much guide us on
some of this work.
(Birmingham, Yardley)
(Lab)
Could the Minister explain whether there are any plans with any
of the scorecards or process of monitoring to look at the data
around constant and repeat offenders? One of the main problems in
the system is that nobody is monitoring repeat offenders or doing
any real offender management. What we see again and again is the
same people committing the same crimes. Will anything be found in
the data to deal with that particular issue?
May I correct the hon. Lady on that point about repeat offenders?
People are managing it and monitoring it, albeit not through the
scorecard. She will know of the offender management systems in
place and the ViSOR—violent and sex offender register—system. She
will also know, because we discussed it at great length during
the passage of the Domestic Abuse Act 2021, of our programme to
revolutionise the way the current system, MAPPA—the multi-agency
public protection arrangements—works into MAPPS—the multi-agency
public protection system—which will be able to track the most
dangerous offenders in the ways both she and I want. We are
offering these metrics precisely so that there can be scrutiny of
the stages at which things are going right, or indeed wrong.
Having produced national scorecards, we will soon produce local
scorecards so we can look locally to see where good practice is
happening and where other areas need to follow suit.
On the criminal justice system, we have recruited, as I hope the
House knows, more than 11,000 police officers as part of our
commitment to recruit 20,000 officers, and more than 100
prosecutors in the Crown Prosecution Service have already
undertaken induction training on rape and serious sexual
offences. On the point raised about mobile phones and the data
strip search, again, having listened to victims, charities that
support survivors and the Domestic Abuse Commissioner and the
Victims’ Commissioner, we have in the Police, Crime, Sentencing
and Courts Bill set out the legal framework for digital data
downloads. We understand how that can be so terribly difficult
for victims and their willingness, frankly, to go along with a
case.
The issue of specialism has been raised. That is why we are
supporting Operation Soteria, a joint police and CPS programme of
work whereby they turn the investigation on its head, from
looking at the victim to looking at the suspect. That is clearly
the way forward and we have committed to expanding the initial
work from five areas to, in the next tranche, 14. We will be
rolling this out nationally, but we have to do it through the
staged approach because one can imagine, I hope, the differences
between a huge metropolitan force and a much smaller, more rural
force in terms of economies of scale and ways of working. We are
doing it in an iterative, careful way so that when we make change
we make effective change that has meaningful and positive
consequences for victims.
We are focusing even more on victim support, too. We are putting
victims at the heart of the system so that they get the support
they need to continue with such cases. We are providing an
unprecedented £150 million to victims support services this year,
an increase of over £100 million on the budget in 2010-11, and we
have committed to increasing funding for all victims support
services to £185 million by 2024-25, including increasing the
number of independent sexual and domestic violence advisers,
because we know that victims who have access to IDVAs and ISVAs
are nearly 50% more likely to stay engaged with the criminal
justice process.
We are also commissioning a new national helpline and online
services for victims of rape and sexual violence, which will be
available 24/7. This is a real step forward. We want victims to
be able to get help when they need it. We have seen the huge
successes of the national domestic abuse helpline and I want to
replicate that for victims of sexual violence.
(Warwick and Leamington)
(Lab)
Does the Minister agree that many police forces no longer have
RASSO—rape and serious sexual offences—units? Does she think they
should have them?
We have different agencies involved in the criminal justice
system. Sometimes, there is an understandable wish in the Chamber
for us to be able to control everything from the Dispatch Box,
but we have a strong tradition of chief constables directing
their personnel, training and so on. I have to say that the
reaction of the police to Operation Soteria has been truly
committed. They want to make the sort of changes we are already
beginning to see with Op Soteria. I genuinely believe that,
through Soteria, we will begin to see real change in policing.
With the roll-out of that in the pilot areas, national learning
is already being shared and that will roll through forces—even
those not in the next tranche of 14.
I am conscious about giving Back Benchers time, so I will pick up
just a couple more points. I hope that the House supports our
decision to include violence against women and girls in the
strategic policing requirement, which means that it must be
prioritised as other serious crimes such as homicide, serious and
organised crime and terrorism are prioritised. Of course, through
the Domestic Abuse Act 2021 and previous measures, this place has
strengthened the law on things such as the so-called rough sex
defence and the new offence of non-fatal strangulation. Indeed,
the police Bill, which is in the other place, will increase the
time that sexual offenders serving sentences for offences of
particular concern must spend in prison from half their custodial
term to two thirds.
We have heard about the roll-out of section 28, which, in
fairness, I think the Opposition welcome. That is one of the
levers by which we will really make progress on the timing of
cases. If we can persuade the CPS and judges to permit victims to
give their pre-recorded evidence at a very early stage in a case
after investigation, that will help with timeliness. There is
hope and expectation that that will increase guilty pleas, but
also it will help victims to give their best evidence in a timely
fashion, and juries will, in due course, be able to consider it.
We will roll that out as soon as is practicable.
My hon. Friend the Member for Newbury () highlighted the issue of
cases being knocked off the list, floaters and so on. Again, we
expect that section 28 will be able to deal with some of listing
issues that she rightly raised..
I of course endorse and support everything the Minister said on
section 28. Everyone who has given evidence to the Home Affairs
Committee’s review on rape has spoken about how important that
is. There have been one or two dissenting voices, but the power
of section 28 procedures has basically been advocated across the
board. The one thing that was said to the Justice Committee this
afternoon that I must make the Minister aware of is that at the
moment it is very patchy whether police forces across the country
are even aware of section 28, or whether they are making victims
aware of it. With the national roll-out, will she pledge to
ensure that the police are applying it?
Of course, that communication programme is part of our work in
rolling it out. That is why we are working as fast as we can, but
we do need to take the police and others with us.
In terms of minimum and maximum sentences, the average sentence
for an offence of rape in 2020 was more than 10 years. We very
much respect the right of courts to retain all available
sentencing options in these cases, but we understand from the
figures that we see that the courts are mindful of the enormous
impact that these terrible offences can have on victims and the
wider community.
I gently remind the Opposition that they called for a single
Minister. Well, we have two for the price of one here on the
Government Benches. We all understand that the criminal justice
system has many facets. We have two Ministers solely focused on
violence against women and girls. Finally, I thank every single
woman—and every person—working across the criminal justice system
to help support victims of rape and sexual violence. That
includes those offering a hand to hold in a sexual assault
referral centre, independent sexual violence advisers as well as
our team of officers and Crown court and other litigators. Every
single one of them is helping us to deliver justice and I thank
them sincerely for it.
Several hon. Members rose—
Madam Deputy Speaker ( )
Order. We will start with a six-minute time limit, although that
may well have to go down. I call .
6.00pm
(Birmingham, Yardley)
(Lab)
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker; I was not expecting to be called
so quickly, so this is a delight, and Happy International Women’s
Day to you. I want to talk over a few things. Obviously, along
with the shadow Justice Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for
Lewisham West and Penge (), I spend a huge amount of
time with victims and setting out what we think the Labour party
policy needs to be, and I endorse absolutely everything that she
said.
There are a number of things that I feel the Government are not
currently addressing and on which there does not seem to be any
direction of travel. The first thing—it would be remiss of me not
to mention that this has come from almost every victim of sexual
violence that I have ever met, and certainly in the past few
weeks—is the commissioning strategy around health provision for
victims of violence and abuse. In my view, and I tried to get
everybody to vote for this during the passage of the Domestic
Abuse Act 2021, there should be a statutory duty on every public
commissioning body that runs people-based services to have to
commission specialist support for victims of violence and abuse.
It is inexcusable that in the vast majority of mental health
services across our country, there is absolutely nothing in the
way of specialist support. I have never met somebody, male or
female, suffering from substance misuses, who was
heroin-dependent or who had their lives blighted by substance
misuse, who had not suffered some form of sexual violence as a
child or adult. The reality is that we should put in those
specialist services and insist that every public health
commissioner and every mental health commissioner in the country
provides this as part of their sexual health and substance misuse
strategies.
The Minister has talked about chief constables and the fact that
they get to decide, and that local areas will pick. There is not
a local area in the country where people are not being raped.
There is not one; it is not one of those crimes. There are crimes
that happen in my constituency every single day that likely are
not happening so much in the Minister’s constituency. We have
very different seats, but this is not a crime that discriminates
in any area. All our constituencies are full of people who are
being raped and abused.
The situation at the moment is that, unlike what we have done in
making refuge a statutory duty, we do not say that local decision
makers and local commissioners have to provide specialist
EMDR—eye movement desensitisation and reprocessing—trauma-based
support. We sit back in this building and delegate responsibility
to local decision makers. Personally, I think that if there is a
chief constable in the country who thinks that they should not
have specialist support and specialist officers for sexual
violence, they should not be a chief constable in our country—the
end. I am absolutely certain that the Minister agrees with
me.
I wish to raise another very important point regarding
healthcare. The Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social
Care, the hon. Member for Erewash (), answered a parliamentary
question this week about ending telemedical abortions. She said
that the Government had taken advice with regard to vulnerable
women and how they use the service and that has resulted in the
decision to end telemedical abortions. I would like Ministers to
tell me which experts they spoke to, because there is not a
women’s organisation in the land that fights for women who have
been victims of sexual violence or domestic abuse that would
agree with the Government’s current stance on telemedical
abortions.
It does not begin and end with the criminal justice system—thank
goodness, because there would be literally no hope for rape
victims if that were the case. There is not a rape victim in the
country who would say that they have had a good time in the
criminal justice system. I have heard rape victims describe
themselves as the lucky ones because they were raped by a
stranger—and their phone was still taken off them. What on earth
for? My phone is not taken off me when my car gets broken into.
Why are we taking phones off them?
The Under-Secretary of State, the hon. Member for Redditch
(), told me last week that
there is never a time when she would not want to brief this House
on Operation Soteria. I ask Ministers: when the people running
Operation Soteria arranged with me to brief Members in this House
about the findings of the Metropolitan police that in some cases
three quarters of police officers think women routinely lie about
their sexual violence experiences, why were we not allowed to
hold that briefing? Why were the people who work on Operation
Soteria not allowed to come to Parliament to brief Members?
The Government say that Operation Soteria is something that they
are doing, but it is not just a check box—“Oh, we’ve done
Operation Soteria.” We have to know what people are saying, so we
can scrutinise it. What they have said so far is that the system
needs an entire overhaul. That is what I will be looking for.
6.06pm
(Wantage) (Con)
I wish we did not have to debate a topic like this on
International Women’s Day, but given how the system has been
failing victims of rape, it is right that we do. I do not think
that the country has ever had a good enough approach to the
victims of violence and sexual violence towards women and
girls—not successive Governments, not the police, not the Crown
Prosecution Service and not wider society. I will return to that
point.
I looked at the figures yesterday. In the year ending 2003, there
were 11,445 rapes against females in this country. In 2020, there
were close to 53,000 rapes against females in this country. I
accept that, as with all crime, people will say that that is
partly a result of better systems for reporting and recording,
but that can only be part of it. In only two of the years between
2003 and 2020 was there a downward trend; in every other year the
figures were up on the year before. They have gone up further
still, and our conviction rate is much lower.
While preparing for this debate, I went back to some of the very
powerful cases that I have heard about from constituents.
Unfortunately, such is the nature of these crimes that there are
too many for me to cite, but I have picked three. For one
constituent, it was three years before their case reached court.
During that time, they were told not to have therapy; they were
then told that they could have therapy, as long as the
therapist’s notes were made available for the defence lawyer of
the person who had raped them. They were told that they should
not apply for compensation; they were told that they should not
talk about the trial; they were told that they might not be able
to watch the trial.
I just cannot imagine going through that sort of process after
having had this done to you—having justice denied for so long and
all these obstacles put in your way. I can imagine why it is
easier to let it go and think, “I don’t want to carry on with
this, because it feels like the system works for the perpetrator
rather than for the victim.”
I had another constituent who was raped by someone who had
already had six “no further action” notices for six separate
assaults against six different women. I had a third constituent
who summed up the system pretty well: she said that the police do
not feel that they can put forward a case that the CPS will not
go for, and the CPS will not put forward a case that it thinks a
jury will not go for. She felt strongly that when a case gets to
the jury, it is in the hands of people’s prejudices. She quoted
statistics from the findings of a 2018 attitudes survey. One in
three people had said that they did not think rape as a result of
coercion was actually rape, one in four had said that rape in a
long-term relationship was not rape, and one in 10 had not been
sure whether raping someone who was drunk or asleep constituted
rape.
The system is undoubtedly failing victims, and I therefore
welcome a number of measures that the Government are taking. I
welcome the scorecards, because I think that the data will really
help. I welcome the funding for rape support services, and—it is
ridiculous even to have to say this—I welcome the increased
emphasis that will be placed on the suspect’s behaviour rather
than the victim’s credibility. I note what has been said about
the proposal for a seven-year minimum sentence, and I note that
in 2020 68% of people received sentences longer than seven years
and the average was 10 years. I also think it right that the
Government are considering the introduction of specialist rape
offence courts.
We rightly talk about how to fix the system to ensure that
perpetrators are given the punishment that they deserve, that
this is a quick process, and that we have a high conviction rate.
However, this is another area in which we should spend more time
talking about prevention. It seems to me, as I am sure it does to
everyone else, that a boy who grows up respecting girls and is
taught about healthy relationships is unlikely to become a man
who rapes women and keeps them in toxic relationships. When
Ofsted conducted a review of sexual abuse in schools, it found
that many children and young people did not bother to report such
abuse because it was so common that they did not see the point of
doing so.
I think that as well as dealing with the people who have
committed these crimes, we should focus much more on how we
control what children and young people can access on the
internet, what they can see in video games, and how they observe
men behaving in both private and public spheres. Teaching boys
how to behave in the right way will give us the best chance of
securing the society with zero tolerance for rape that the
Government rightly say they want.
6.12pm
(Newport West) (Lab)
I am glad to be able to speak about this Labour motion in support
of victims of rape and sexual violence on International Women’s
Day, although it is ironic that on a day when we celebrate the
role and importance of women in society, we also hear that women
and girls continue to suffer rape and sexual violence.
This Government are not doing enough to tackle this issue. The
response to a freedom of information request submitted by the
South Wales Argus, my local newspaper, to Gwent police revealed
that in 2021, 587 incidents of rape were reported, only five of
which resulted in charges, and 436 are still under investigation.
That is completely unacceptable. If the crime were murder, there
would be a public outcry at those appalling figures, but crimes
of rape and sexual violence can be as devastating as murder for
the victims and their families, and can leave mental and physical
scars that will take years to heal, if they ever do.
However, those figures represent only a small fraction of the
real problem. Rape Crisis, an umbrella charity for rape crisis
centres across England and Wales, has stated:
“More than 1 in 5 women and 1 in 20 men have experienced rape or
sexual assault as adults.”
This is an epidemic, in which not enough is being done. It needs
to be treated seriously, and Labour in power will do that.
Meanwhile, the Conservatives’ record speaks, loudly, for itself.
Rape prosecutions and convictions have reached historic lows, and
the typical delay between an offence of rape and the completion
of the resulting criminal case exceeded 1,000 days for the first
time in 2021, under this Tory Government. Make no mistake, Madam
Deputy Speaker: the Government's actions so far, and their
continuing inaction, speak more clearly and loudly than any words
spoken from the Conservative Benches today. Labour will guarantee
33,000 extra sitting days to get case loads down, and the
creation of a Minister for rape and sexual violence survivors. We
will also remove the legal barriers that prevent victims of
domestic abuse from receiving the help that they need through
legal aid. Labour will fast-track rape cases to ensure that
people are not waiting years for their day in court, because
justice delayed is justice denied. We cannot allow on any level a
culture of obstruction and delay to prevent that justice from
being delivered.
At the moment, rapists and perpetrators of sexual violence are
walking free as victims are dropping court cases because of
delays, a lack of confidence in the system and the threat of
being confronted in their local area by their attacker. Victims
of rape face having their phones taken from them by the police
and not returned for many months. This leads to further anxiety
and to another avenue of communication and comfort being closed
off to the victim. Again, this is simply unacceptable, as the
victim is made to feel vulnerable and alone at a time when they
should be supported and reassured to know that their attacker is
being brought to justice swiftly and punished accordingly.
My constituents in Newport West want to know that they are safe.
They want to know that if something terrible happens to them they
will be supported and that they will have justice. Under the
current Government, that justice is lacking, and people’s faith
in our justice system has been eroded. Max Hill QC, the Director
of Public Prosecutions, has described how the criminal justice
system that deals with rape and sexual assault is creating a
“crisis of public trust”. The Conservative Government have hit a
historic low and I urge them to raise their game for the sake of
all women and girls across the UK. We must protect and support
them all.
6.16pm
(Bromley and Chislehurst)
(Con)
This is an appropriate day on which to have this important debate
because as we celebrate International Women’s Day we also need to
recognise the particular challenges and threats that women and
girls sadly face in our society. We all want the experience of
victims of rape and serious sexual offences in the criminal
justice system to improve. We also want to ensure that the guilty
are convicted of these offences. That has to be done in a way,
which, in our criminal system, safeguards the rights of an
accused person, who is of course innocent until the offence is
proved against them. That is always a difficult balancing act,
and particularly difficult in sensitive cases such as these. I
say that as someone who has probably prosecuted and defended more
rape and serious sexual offences than most people currently in
this House. This requires investment in resource, in training and
in sensitivity.
The best way we can increase the level of rape convictions in
this country is to improve the quality of the evidence gathering,
so that when the files go to the Crown Prosecution Service to
take a decision to charge, more cases meet the threshold. We
cannot lower the threshold in any criminal case. The threshold
for prosecution is the same for any criminal case, and so it must
remain. In other words: is there sufficient legally admissible
evidence for a reasonable prospect of conviction? The key problem
is that not enough cases so far are reaching that threshold.
Interestingly, when cases of rape and serious sexual offences are
charged and get to trial, the conviction rate when they go before
a jury is broadly similar to that for other serious offences of
violence. A positive thing about our jury system is that,
whatever polling there is about the misconceptions about rape
that allegedly exist in general society, once the jurors have
been empanelled, sworn their oath, heard the evidence and
listened to the directions of the judge, they take their
responsibilities very seriously indeed and generally set those
misconceptions aside. We must ensure that we keep the Judicial
Studies Board’s model guidance to judges up to date, and that the
judiciary take that seriously themselves.
The problem is getting these cases to the Crown court in the
first place. It is appropriate that the chief inspector of the
Crown Prosecution Service and the senior inspector of Her
Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary gave evidence to the
Justice Committee today, as my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury
() said earlier. They gave
compelling evidence about the challenges that we face. There is
much being done. The end-to-end rape review is important,
Operation Soteria is important and they said that there was a
willingness for there to be greater collaboration across the
system, but there are still issues.
I want to highlight one issue in particular, which is the
question of delays. We have talked about the significant amount
of delay, with an average of 706 days from the reporting of the
offence to the start of the trial. It is interesting when we
break that figure down, because the evidence we heard from the
chief inspectors was that there is an average of 218 days from
the start of investigation to sending the file to the Crown
Prosecution Service for a charging decision. From receipt of the
papers by the Crown Prosecution Service to a decision to charge:
21 days. From the decision to charge to the first appearance in
court: 13 days. From the decision to charge to the first
pre-trial and preparation hearing: 30 days. A plea is entered and
directions are given, but it is another 320-odd days before the
final disposal at trial.
That shows us where the problems are. On that evidence, it is not
within the CPS. I pay tribute to the priority that the current
Director of Public Prosecutions has given to rape and serious
sexual offences, but the evidence is very clear that the biggest
attrition rate, the biggest drop-out rate, among complainants
comes in the period between reporting a case to the police and it
going to the CPS for charge.
That means the police need to handle these cases much more
sensitively. Good chief constables recognise that, and I also
find it inexplicable why on earth any force would not have a
RASSO unit. There are proper obligations to disclose unused
material as part of the checks and balances in our system, but
there is no reason why it should not be done speedily and
sensitively. We need to make sure that happens, and we also need
better training on proper evidence gathering, asking the right
questions, probing intelligently to find supporting evidence and
working with specialist Crown prosecutors to build a case.
That will get more cases over the charging line, and then we need
to look at the delays in bringing cases to trial, which is where
there is merit in exploring specialist courts and making sure we
have enough ticketed judges and recorders to do it, as well as
enough experienced advocates both prosecuting and defending—that
is important to the experience of complainants, to just outcomes
in such cases and to confidence in the system.
These are important matters that we need to address, and I hope
the chief inspectors will come back to our Committee once the
Government have responded to their joint thematic report, which
raises important points and is obviously something this House
will want to consider again in the future.
6.22pm
(Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)
I pay tribute to Labour Front Benchers for calling this important
debate on International Women’s Day. On a day when women and
girls across the world have much to celebrate, it is a tragedy
that we are talking about something so horrific, but it is right
to do so given that we are where we are.
The awesome, inspiring and very moving address from President
Zelensky is a reminder that sexual violence against women and
girls is always a huge risk in war. Where a power ignores UN
conventions and bombs the routes that refugees are taking out of
cities, I am afraid we cannot expect that power to behave any
better when it comes to respecting women and girls.
It is reckoned that 5 million people in England and Wales,
principally women, have been victims of sexual assault. A third
of girls aged 16 to 18 say they have experienced unwanted sexual
touching at school. We have heard many Members say how the
justice system lets down women and girls, too. There were an
estimated 139,000 rapes in 2019-20, with fewer than 59,000
reported and only 2.4% resulting in a conviction. Every one of
those statistics is a woman, a girl, an individual, a victim, and
almost every one of those statistics is a woman, a girl, an
individual, a victim who got no justice, which is an utter
outrage.
Men often do not think about the impact of sexual violence on how
women and girls think about the mundane things of everyday life.
It feels like spring today but, when autumn comes around and the
nights draw in, it is a mundane, perfunctory decision for women
and girls to change their routes and practices of where they go,
when they go and who they go with. That is somehow a normal way
of managing their time and their life to cope with such utter
wickedness. It fills me with shame, as a man, that we live in
that kind of society, where it is not safe for women and girls to
go about their normal daily lives. If we are not safe, we are not
free.
What makes me, and women and girls, angry is that we see precious
little action. I am trying to be sensitive in what I say here. In
my time as a Member of Parliament, we have lost two precious
colleagues in and , and we grieve them and miss
them. The response of the authorities, the security services and
the police to those horrific murders was to strengthen our
security; we see police turning up at our surgeries, and I am
grateful for that and it is welcome. The response to
well-publicised appalling acts against women—rapes and murders—is
what? It is the Metropolitan police taking action against the
women who protest. It is this Government choosing not to make
misogyny a hate crime when they had the option to do so. It is
the failure of us all to tackle the attitudes among boys and men
towards women—the hon. Member for Wantage () mentioned that—and the
objectification of women, through films, TV and the internet.
When some outrage happens and a woman is raped or murdered,
people on the internet will say, “Oh, it is not all men.” Stuff
that, every man has responsibility. Every man has a
responsibility to check their own attitudes, reflect upon them
and make sure that we seek—for ourselves and the young men we
raise in this society—to be respectful towards women and see them
as equal in every way.
On International Women’s Day, I want to take a moment to refer to
the reality of our need to focus on the plight of girls around
the world who are subject to, or at risk of, forced child
marriage and the violence associated with that. It was my
privilege earlier today to speak to Evi Gosden and Sheiba
Aigiomawu from Compassion UK, whose work in educating girls and
their families in countries such as Uganda so that girls are kept
safe from the cruel practice of forced child marriage is so
utterly important. I encourage Members and indeed anyone paying
attention to this speech to support Compassion UK’s work, which
is done via sponsorship of girls and their communities, and is
hugely effective.
I will make a final, related comment. In many developing
countries, women die in childbirth in greater numbers and more
children do not make it past infancy. The child survival work of
Compassion UK, supported by the UK Government through
international aid—hooray!—runs the risk of not being renewed
after December. Why is that? It is because of the cuts in
international aid. It is no good us, on International Women’s
Day, speaking up in favour of protecting women and girls here in
this country or overseas if we will not match those words with
actions that sometimes bear a financial cost.
6.27pm
(Warwick and Leamington)
(Lab)
I rise to speak in favour of this motion, on International
Women’s Day. I recently held a summit on this issue, and the
public made it clear to me that the Conservative Government are
failing women. The consequence of this failure is felt on a
personal level by women and girls. It erodes their confidence to
be alone in public, in the dark, and it instils a fear that I
find it hard to imagine many men would be able to comprehend.
Last autumn, I conducted a survey in my constituency on rape and
sexual violence. Several hundred people responded and I was
shocked to learn that 69% of respondents carried their keys in
their hands on their way home; that 45% sent their current
location to a friend or loved one; and that 66% would call
someone while walking along. Although small in scale, these acts
are, unfortunately, increasingly necessary, due to a rise in
violence against women and girls; this is not helped by the
flattening of rape prosecution rates, high-profile murders such
as that of Sarah Everard and the cuts that have decimated our
public services.
On a local level, Warwickshire police abolished their specialist
RASSO unit nine years ago, in 2013. On a national level, the
number of staff at the Crown Prosecution Service fell by a third
between 2010 and 2019. Successive Conservative Governments have
presided over a series of cuts at both ends of the national-local
spectrum, which has eroded this country’s ability to counter
VAWG. With two out of five police forces lacking a RASSO unit—I
referred to that in my point to the Minister—these cuts have made
securing justice for gender-based violence and sexual assault, in
effect, a postcode lottery.
The results of the cuts make for grim reading. As we have heard,
a mere 1.3% of rape cases are prosecuted, despite the number of
rapes reported to the police being at record highs. I am appalled
to confirm that Warwickshire is reported as having the lowest
rape conviction rate of any county in England and Wales, with
only seven of just 15 cases pursued by Warwickshire police
resulting in conviction. It is no surprise that we see a strong
correlative link between cuts to local services and stark
decreases in prosecution and conviction rates. It has led to what
the Victims’ Commissioner, Dame , has described as the
“effective decriminalisation of rape.” That is a shameful record
by any standard.
With a policing culture now accustomed to the effective
decriminalisation of rape, it is particularly grotesque to see
the ways in which certain elements in police forces perceive
themselves to be above the law. A year after the tragic murder of
Sarah Everard at the hands of the Met police officer Wayne
Couzens, we are reminded of it by the revelations at Charing
Cross police station and others. Indeed, a Warwickshire police
officer currently faces allegations of inappropriate contact with
a domestic abuse victim.
This matter needs to be treated with the urgency it deserves. It
is unfathomable that the Government are preparing to close down
the Nightingale courts, including the one in my constituency,
when the average time taken in the courts to deal with a crime
rose by 15% in the three months up to September 2021, to 620
days. This matter needs to be addressed through the education of
boys and young men, but I do not have the time to develop that
theme now. The Minister may well justify the backlog because of
the temporary closure of many courts during the covid-19
pandemic, but the Government’s savage cuts between 2010 and 2019,
when half of all courts in England and Wales were closed, allowed
for 27,000 fewer sitting days than there were in 2016. The blame
lies clearly at the door of successive Conservative
Governments.
Labour would extend the use of Nightingale courts beyond April
2022, to begin to reduce the court delays and guarantee 33,000
extra sitting days to get the case loads down. To spur this
initiative on, we would appoint a specific Minister for rape and
sexual violence survivors. If victims have a specific voice in
Government, fighting for their interests and turbocharging the
required reforms, they will hopefully begin to feel that the law
and the state are on their side.
In a victims-led approach to reform, we would introduce a victims
Bill to establish the victims code in law. We would increase
sentences for rapists and stalkers and create specific new
offences for street sexual harassment and sex for rent. Making
legal aid available to victims and fast-tracking rape and serious
sexual assault cases through the court system would bring about
much-needed justice—and fast. These are the elements for which
the public are calling and the points that were fed back to me at
my recent summit.
Having promised to introduce a victims Bill in 2016, the
Government seem to have lost their grip on law and order, and in
particular on violence against women and girls, which is
increasingly endemic. The Government have had more than six years
to bring a Bill forward, but it seems clear that only Labour has
the drive, ambition and impetus to deliver justice for the
victims of sexual assault and violence against women.
6.33pm
(Dulwich and West Norwood)
(Lab)
I rise to speak in this important debate on behalf of women and
girls in Dulwich and West Norwood who have little confidence that
the Government, the police and the courts are there to protect
them. The shocking failure to prosecute the horrific offence of
rape is one of the clearest manifestations of the ways in which
this Government are failing women and girls. A woman can be
raped, and in less than 2% of cases will the perpetrator face any
consequences. It might as well be legal.
Women and girls see a terrible continuum from the casual,
everyday street harassment that they experience, to the culture
of sexual harassment in schools exposed so clearly by the
Everyone’s Invited campaign, to the horrific murders that have
reached the headlines in recent months: of Sarah Everard, Bibaa
Henry, Nicole Smallman and Sabina Nessa, and of the many more
whose names we do not know—women going about their daily lives,
walking home, celebrating a birthday or meeting a friend for a
drink on a Friday night.
Again and again, the Government have responded with warm words
but the action has fallen short. They have said that they will
create a new offence of sexual harassment in a public place if
there is evidence that it is needed. I am not sure what
additional evidence the Government need than the millions of
women up and down the country who rose up a year ago to say that
street harassment blights their lives and makes them feel unsafe
in their own neighbourhoods and town centres. The promised
legislation to criminalise curb crawling has failed to
materialise. There has been no meaningful follow up response to
the Everyone’s Invited revelations.
Women look at the reality of the framework of protection on which
they should be able to rely, and they see story after story of
police officers behaving in ways that are as bad as the offenders
whom they are supposed to apprehend—sharing pictures of murdered
women on a WhatsApp group, making advances as they report sexual
harassment, being charged with and convicted of rape, and, most
shockingly of all, using a warrant card to facilitate rape and
murder. Yet there is still no statutory inquiry into the culture
of misogyny in the police, and no commitment to culture
change.
The courts are no better. I spoke recently with a constituent who
is the victim of horrific domestic abuse. She told me that the
central London family court is so clogged up that no one ever
answers the phone. The Government must urgently act to give women
and girls confidence that they are safe at home, on our streets
and in public spaces; that if they are the victim of any type of
misogyny, from curb crawling to street harassment to rape, they
will be listened to and believed; and that the offence will be
investigated, evidence gathered and everything possible done to
bring a successful prosecution so that perpetrators are always
held to account.
Delivering this change requires much more than simply a change of
management approach at the Crown Prosecution Service. It requires
a wholesale change in the culture of policing and the practices
of the criminal justice system. It also requires a much greater
commitment to prevention, particularly in educating boys and
young men on respect and consent.
Finally, today is International Women’s Day, and as we debate the
shamefully poor rape prosecution rate in this country, we must
also stand in solidarity with women and girls in other parts of
the world. I want to mention in particular women in Ethiopia, who
over the past 18 months have been subjected to an horrific
conflict, which has seen the routine and systematic use of rape
as a weapon of war. The British Government must do everything
possible to end the use of sexual violence in conflict, working
through the UN and providing humanitarian and trauma support to
victims. They can do that most effectively from a position of
strength at home. The Government must show that rape is a heinous
offence and that perpetrators must always be held to account by
getting their own house in order and leading by example.
As a mother of two teenage girls, I reflect on how I always tell
them as they leave home in the morning to “stay safe” as if that
is somehow solely their responsibility. It is not. We cannot
tolerate any longer a society in which women and girls are
subjected to harassment on a daily basis, far too often
escalating into abuse and rape, and in which the institutions and
systems that should be there to protect them fail so dismally to
do so.
6.38pm
(Cardiff North) (Lab)
I thank all those who have spoken today, exposing the real
challenges that women face in the justice system and the
challenges that women face everywhere. Today, on International
Women’s Day, I want to pay particular tribute to the women and
girls of Ukraine, particularly after that heartfelt and emotional
address from President Zelensky—the women staying behind to take
up arms and the women fleeing for their lives, often with young
children or elderly parents. Our hearts and support go out to
them at this difficult time.
We have heard some powerful speeches in this debate. We have
heard how the justice system lets women and girls down. My hon.
Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley () pointed out the complete
lack of specialist health services for victims of serious sexual
assault. It was a passionate speech emphasising, as ever, her
wealth of knowledge, but also the need for a complete overhaul of
the justice system. My hon. Friend the Member for Newport West
() drew a comparison with the
victims of murder; the victims of serious sexual assault and rape
can be left with long-held scars of a different kind, yet it is
viewed so differently and not taken as seriously.
I welcome the comments of the hon. Member for Bromley and
Chislehurst ( ), the Chair of the Justice
Committee, who spoke strongly about the impact of delays on
victims and the need for specialist courts, something that Labour
is firmly behind and pushing the Government on. The hon. Members
for Wantage () and for Westmorland and
Lonsdale () raised the critical issue of men’s responsibility to
change behaviours and of shifting our culture and society. My
hon. Friends the Members for Warwick and Leamington () and for Dulwich and West
Norwood () both spoke powerfully about
startling statistics and how action from Government falls
woefully short.
“You’re safer staying in that abusive relationship than you are
trying to get out. The aftermath is 100 per cent worse.”
Those are the words of a survivor of attempted murder, rape and
domestic abuse. Rachel shared her 16-year living nightmare with
me, the flashbacks and nightmares of which are so traumatic that
she has tried to take her own life several times. A survivor of
the most abhorrent crimes anyone could face believes that staying
in her abusive relationship was better than facing our criminal
justice system. I ask hon. Members to think about that for a few
minutes.
Today, on this International Women’s Day, we are breaking the
bias of inequality that overwhelmingly costs women their lives,
their hopes and their futures. That must begin with our justice
system—a system that discredits and destroys, treating victims
like criminals despite having had their own bodies used against
them, a system that is now punishing victims and excusing
criminals. We see victims cross-examined and left feeling ashamed
as they report the atrocities that have happened to them.
That happened to a woman I met earlier this year, who was raped
at just 19 years old. Eight years after the incident, Sophie
bravely reported it to the police. It took the CPS 11 months to
decide to charge and another two and half years to get to court.
Then, following the poor advice of a court attendant, Sophie was
told she should attend court and take the stand. She was there
for two hours, sitting behind a screen to protect herself from
seeing the perpetrator, whom she had not seen for nearly ten
years.
The first thing Sophie was asked to do by the defence was to open
an evidence booklet placed in front of her to a particular page.
There in front of her was the picture of the man who had
violently abused her. It was a barbaric scare tactic used to
throw her off. The re-traumatisation meant she was unable to
recall important details of the incident. He was found not
guilty. Sophie’s case very disturbingly demonstrates the systemic
failures at every level of our criminal justice system, from the
police to the CPS to the court witness assistant.
Just over a week ago, the criminal justice joint inspection
report on rape was released. It identified that most victims feel
as if they are the ones being investigated or standing trial,
rather than the focus being on the behaviour of the accused. The
courts are complicit in the abuse that women face. That needs to
change, and it needs to change now.
Today we are breaking the bias that sees victims subject to
vengeful stereotypes. My own constituent was portrayed as a
scornful, resentful wife in court when her husband committed
fraud, forging her signature countless times. Helen lost
everything: her home, her friends, her career. Her father died
and her mother was sectioned, both broken by watching their
daughter go through such an ordeal. Her husband was found not
guilty. She tells me she is still living with the shame she was
made to feel—the humiliation, being called a liar, and tainted by
someone else’s dirt. Helen is just one of the survivors I speak
to every day as shadow victims Minister: women faced with
unimaginable circumstances. I am always in awe of their bravery
in speaking out about their experiences.
It is these women who gave me the courage to speak out about what
I went through. So today I want to break not only the bias but
the stigma. This abuse really can happen to anyone. I recently
gave a very personal interview about my own experience in a
controlling, emotionally abusive and coercive relationship. I
consider myself a strong, independent women with a thick skin,
having to navigate the brutal reality of being a woman in
politics, yet it still happened to me. I still felt trapped,
trying also to navigate the lying, the cheating, the gaslighting
and the controlling behaviour—living in a permanent state of
anxiety, unable to function at times, and not knowing what was
real or what was not. It took all my strength to leave the
relationship I was in. I left one evening last year with just a
single bag under my arm.
Many will not understand what it takes to leave that kind of
relationship or why you stay so long. Being able to talk about it
now without fear and without shame is as important as it is
liberating. But that is not to understate the constant trauma
both during and after, and its impact on the people around you. I
want to thank my friends, my family and my brilliant team for
being there.
All the women I have spoken to have one thing in common: they are
determined to speak out about the injustice that they face to
drive positive change. Deep-rooted inequality that makes society
unsafe for women and girls is not just a problem for women and
girls to resolve. We must remember that; it is everyone’s
problem. Our culture must change so that we are able to talk
about these relationships and the many women still feeling
trapped, abused and controlled can see that there is hope,
however small, that there is strength in exposing their
vulnerability and pain, and that they will get to the other side.
That is what breaks down stigmas.
I stand here on International Women’s Day proud of what I have
achieved—that I can stand here as a shadow Minister and advocate
on behalf of Rachel, Sophie and Helen. They are just a few of so
many thousands of women who need this Government to step up to
address the fundamental and institutionalised flaws in the
justice system, to toughen sentences for spiking and introduce
minimum sentences for rape and stalking, to implement Labour’s
survivors’ package for victims of rape and serious sexual
violence, and to begin an immediate review into setting up
specialist rape offence courts to help to clear the significant
Crown Court backlog of rape cases. There is no breaking the bias
without first breaking the stigmas. Only then can we even begin
to restore trust in the justice system.
6.48pm
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home
Department ()
It is real privilege to be able to close this debate and, in
particular, to follow the speech by the hon. Member for Cardiff
North (). It is the first time that
I have heard her story, but I am sure that she will have made an
enormous difference by speaking out today in the way she has, and
I commend her courage. She is absolutely right to say that she
will be changing attitudes by addressing the stigma and breaking
the bias, so I want to thank her, as will, I am sure, every
Member of the House.
It is a real privilege to close the debate on International
Women’s Day, and I associate myself with all the remarks that
have been made paying tribute to President Zelensky and the
incredible women and girls of that amazing country, Ukraine. We
stand with them. I never thought when I entered Parliament that I
would be addressing the House after a speech such as the one I
heard today. None of us has been left unmoved by it.
It is right that we focus on how we support victims and bring
perpetrators to justice. I thank everybody who has brought before
us the experiences of their constituents and told their stories.
Listening to those victims and their experiences is how we drive
the change across the justice system that all of us in this House
are passionate to achieve, in order to build a fairer society for
women and make our streets safer.
Yesterday, many of us attended an event run by Women’s Aid—it was
a pleasure to see so many Members there. The comments made at
that event chimed with me and many others. One of the Spice
Girls, Mel B, stood up and said that she had no problem at all
standing on a stage at Wembley stadium, singing and performing in
front of hundreds of thousands of people, but that was nothing
compared with the trauma of having to tell her story about her
abusive marriage and everything she has gone through. Continuing
to allow these victims and these incredible survivors to come
forward, supporting them, and working to achieve the change we
all want is how we will change the system.
I thank all Members who have spoken in this debate. They have
raised a number of points. Time does not allow me to address all
of them in detail, but I will start with the issue of stalking,
which has been mentioned by many Members. Stalking is a very
serious matter that has a broad spectrum of manifestations. We
are, of course, looking at this issue in the context of domestic
abuse, and also of harassment. That is why we awarded £11.3
million to police and crime commissioners to fund programmes for
domestic abuse perpetrators and perpetrators of stalking, whether
or not it takes place in a domestic abuse context. A wide range
of sentences are currently imposed for stalking offences,
reflecting the broad spectrum of manifestations of this
behaviour. The most serious offences could result in a maximum of
14 years’ imprisonment.
We have discussed extensively in this Chamber the issue of
stalking protection orders. As hon. Members know, I recently
wrote to all police forces making clear where they are not using
those tools appropriately, and that they need to use the levers
at their disposal in order to properly keep women and girls safe.
The grant rate for those orders is very high, and where they are
being granted, the police feel they are a very useful measure,
but there is more we can do.
We have also discussed the issue of spiking. We have all become
familiar with these new and concerning reports of needle spiking,
which is a terrifying experience—something that I think we all
find appalling, frightening and disgusting. It is a reasonably
new phenomenon, which is why my right hon. Friend the Home
Secretary is working with the police to better understand the
exact nature of spiking; what is actually happening with that
crime? We are working to make sure we record these incidents
through the crime recording framework, and are also urgently
considering the case for a criminal offence targeting spiking
directly. There are already a range of offences on the statute
book that the police can use to prosecute this behaviour, but we
are all concerned with making sure that those offences are used
and we will not hesitate to legislate if necessary.
My constituent Sharon Gaffka is involved in a campaign on
spiking, having been spiked twice herself. She now has more than
1,000 testimonies from people ranging from the age of 14 to 65.
It is not always a sexual offence—sometimes friends do it to each
other because they think it is a bit of a laugh to get a
reaction—but I wonder whether I can get my constituent to share
those testimonies with my hon. Friend to help inform the
Government’s understanding of what is going on here.
Of course. I thank my hon. Friend very much and I would be
delighted to do that. I am working across Government with
colleagues in the Department of Health and Social Care, the
Ministry of Justice, the Department for Education and so on to
have a cross-Government response to this matter.
Members have raised the issue of sentencing in a range of
contexts. It is important to note that the Police, Crime,
Sentencing and Courts Bill, which is passing through the House,
will ensure that serious sexual and violent offenders serve two
thirds of their sentence in prison, instead of half. Indeed, a
number of other measures in that Bill strengthen the management
of sex offenders, including by enabling electronic monitoring
requirements to be imposed on those who pose a risk through
sexual harm prevention orders and sexual risk orders, if
necessary.
It is important that our criminal justice system catches up from
the impacts of the pandemic. Our decisive action in the courts
has kept justice moving. That is why we invested a quarter of a
billion pounds to support recovery in the last financial year,
and 30 Nightingale courtrooms are to be extended until March next
year as we work across Government to continue our efforts to
tackle the impact of covid-19 on the justice system. The new
victims Bill, which we are introducing as quickly as possible,
will bring about a cultural shift so that victims’ experiences
are central to how our society thinks about and responds to
crime. We want to ensure that the Bill tackles the things that
victims most care about.
Members have referenced health, which is a vital component of our
strategy to provide the tailored support that victims of rape and
other serious sexual offences need. Through the work being
carried out by my colleagues in the Ministry of Justice, the
victims Bill consultation is looking closely at the commissioning
of community-based services, including the role of health bodies.
That consultation is now being analysed and we will bring forward
a draft Bill as soon as possible.
I will reference an important piece of work from my colleagues in
the Department of Health and Social Care through the women’s
health strategy. The Department will appoint our first ever
women’s health ambassador for England, whose role will be to
focus on raising the profile of women’s health, increasing
awareness and bringing in a range of collaborative voices.
Members will know that I work closely with Women’s Aid, which is
campaigning on better mental health support for victims of trauma
and sexual offences. That forms another important component of
the domestic abuse plan that we are bringing forward.
It is important to reference that we on the Government Benches
fully accept that the current data shows that the system is not
working as well as it could be. We have consistently been honest
and transparent about that. It is only by doing that that we will
be able to bring about the change that is desperately needed.
I am glad that my hon. Friend references data. Will she take on
board the fact that the joint thematic report from the two
inspectorates specifically references the need to do more on data
in this field and ensure that that is in the Government’s
response?
I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. We are reviewing
those reports and others to ensure we have that data at our
fingertips and bring forward the response that is required for
victims. We are not complacent. We know there is more to do. This
is the third time in the space of a week that I have personally
stood in this Chamber discussing these very important issues. I
am happy to continue to do so, because the work we are doing
through Operation Soteria and some of the other workstreams is
groundbreaking. I am proud to be associated with it, but we will
not rest until we get the result that we need.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House commemorates International Women’s Day; regrets
that under this Government conviction rates for rape have reached
a historic low and that the typical delay between reporting an
offence of rape and the completion of the resulting criminal case
is over 1,000 days; calls on the Government to introduce minimum
sentences for stalking and rape, to raise minimum sentencing for
spiking and to implement Labour’s survivors’ package for victims
of rape and serious sexual violence to restore trust in the
criminal justice system; and further calls on the Government to
begin an immediate assessment of the impact of setting up
specialist rape offence courts on the significant Crown Court
backlog of rape cases, as recommended by HM Crown Prosecution
Service Inspectorate.
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