Asked by: Lord Lucas (Conservative - Excepted Hereditary)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask Her Majesty's Government, further to the statement by Baroness Williams of Trafford on 17 March (HL Deb, col 371), that “on an experimental basis” they “will ask police forces to identify and record any crimes of violence against the person, including stalking and harassment, as well as sexual offences where the victim perceives it to have been motivated by a hostility based on their sex”, whether the police will record the sex of the victim on the basis of the victim’s legal sex or of their self-identified sex.
Answered by Baroness Williams of Trafford - Shadow Chief Whip (Lords)
The Home Office is discussing this request with the police in the near future, following which further details about the data collection will be made available.
Asked by: Lord Lucas (Conservative - Excepted Hereditary)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they will change the focus of the current round of the Safer Streets Fund so that all applications aimed at protecting women from attack are eligible.
Answered by Baroness Williams of Trafford - Shadow Chief Whip (Lords)
Recent tragic events have highlighted the importance of ensuring people are safe whilst walking our streets.
We have announced we are investing a further £25m into the Safer Streets Fund this year, focused on ensuring people feel safe in public spaces and building on the £45m we have already committed. This investment will be launched in May once the Purdah period attached to local council and Police and Crime Commissioner elections has ended.
The Fund will deliver physical crime prevention measures, such as improved street lighting or increased CCTV coverage. There is strong evidence to show that simple solutions like these help prevent crimes before they happen, empowering communities and individuals, including women and girls, to feel truly safe.
The ongoing application process for the second, £20m round of Safer Streets Funding will remain unchanged.
My Lords, as I said at Second Reading, I welcome the Bill. That the Government have chosen to encourage the provision of public lavatories is a great public good, because adequate lavatory provision is a liberation for many millions of people, for whom the thought of not finding one when …
..."My Lords, I urge the Government to take the opportunity to give the Bill some wording that expands its ambit, and to take advantage of the leverage that it gives them—as the noble Lord has noted, it is a generous disbursement of funds—to achieve other policy objectives. The policy objective …
..."My Lords, I am very grateful to my noble friend for his obiter dicta on the Government’s general intentions in this area, which I applaud. I can see that he has clearly understood the intent of my amendment and disagrees with it. I therefore beg leave to withdraw it.
..."My Lords, I am attracted to the idea that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead, has just advanced. After Second Reading, I had a very long and entertaining conversation with the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, on the technical subject of valuation. Some of it may have stuck …
..."My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Greengross, asked me to speak to Amendment 13 in her name. We very much share the sentiments just expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy. We all support this Bill and want to see it succeed. We want it as a foundation on which …
..."Asked by: Lord Lucas (Conservative - Excepted Hereditary)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask Her Majesty's Government further to the Written Answer by Baroness Williams of Trafford on 3 February (HL12365), whether they will now answer the question put, namely, what assessment they have made of the change in rates of sexual abuse by women reported to police; and what assessment they have made of the impact of police recording suspects' self-identified gender on the number of cases of sexual abuse being recorded as committed by women.
Answered by Baroness Williams of Trafford - Shadow Chief Whip (Lords)
As set out in my response, information on sexual abuse committed by transgender women is not held centrally. Information on trends in sexual offences recorded by the police is routinely published by the Office for National Statistics. The most recent publication, is available here; https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/bulletins/crimeinenglandandwales/yearendingseptember2020.
The Office for National Statistics had made it clear that sexual offences recorded by the police do not provide a reliable measure of trends in these types of crime. Sexual offences, including examples of sexual abuse, are underreported and therefore cannot be used to accurately assess changes in perpetrator demographics.
The Government takes all forms of sexual abuse extremely seriously, regardless of between who it takes place or the profile of the perpetrator. Whether it is committed by a woman or a man, sexual abuse in any situation, is unacceptable.
We are taking action to improve outcomes for rape cases through our end-to-end review of the criminal justice response to rape, which commenced in Spring 2019. The review covers from the point of police report through to final outcome in court.
We are committed to ensuring victims receive the support they deserve - the Ministry of Justice has awarded £12 million to 91 rape support centres across England and Wales in 2020/21 to provide independent, specialist support to female and male victims of sexual violence. This represents a total investment of £32m over the last three years.