Tackling Violence Against Women and Girls

Debate between Tonia Antoniazzi and Yvette Cooper

Wednesday 2nd March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

I agree. I think that things are going wrong at every stage in the process. Things are going wrong in the police investigation—I will come on to talk about Operation Soteria, and how we should go much more widely—in the referral process between the police and the Crown Prosecution Service, which is also breaking down, and in the prosecution. The hon. Member is absolutely right: at every stage in the process things are going wrong. That raises the challenge for us in Parliament, because there is always a risk that different bits of the criminal justice system end up blaming each other. We need the oversight to pull everybody together and demand that action is taken. My fear is that we are not seeing that oversight, because it is simply not delivering results.

I have respect for the Ministers in both the Ministry of Justice and the Home Office who work on violence against women and girls, but I say to them that the work is not delivering results, and it is overwhelmingly not on the scale that we need. Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary and fire and rescue has said:

“Provision is at breaking point.”

It has said:

“Rape victims are continually and systematically failed by the criminal justice system.”

How have the Government allowed that to happen? How have the Home Office and the Ministry of Justice allowed that to happen? How have we allowed it to reach breaking point? Back in 2014, Labour called for action to increase prosecutions, but the opposite has happened. The rape prosecution rate is down to a horrendous record low of just 1.3%—lower than ever.

We should consider for a moment the reality of what that means. Around 63,000 rapes are reported a year. It is estimated that at least as many again are not reported. Of those reported, just 1.3% result in someone being charged. That means that across the country more than 300 women will be raped today—more than 300 lives devastated by a vile crime, according to those estimates. Those figures mean that, on average, 170 rapes will be reported today, but the figures also suggest that just less than three of those rapists will see the inside of a court room this year, never mind the inside of a prison cell.

These are the basic pillars of the criminal justice system: if a vile crime happens, the victim should expect to be able to get support, and for the police to investigate and the perpetrator to be pursued, prosecuted and brought to justice. Nothing can ever undo the damage that the crime has done, but at least we can give the victim justice, and protect others from the same thing happening again. The truth is that all of us should be ashamed of the reality of the way that the criminal justice system is treating violence against women and girls. I know that across the criminal justice system there are brilliant police officers who are working hard to get evidence and to get the prosecution rates up, brilliant lawyers and CPS prosecutors who are working incredibly hard to try to get prosecutions, and brilliant support workers and advisers who are working hard to support victims, but the total system is failing.

We have a system that still too often has blind spots around violence against women and girls. There could be blind spots, for example, on the way that domestic abuse prosecutions happen—something that I have been raising, and that the Government have accepted. A woman in my constituency told me how she had been assaulted while she was pregnant, but the case timed out. She could not get justice because of the six-month limit in the magistrates court, which works sensibly for common assault if it means fights in the street or in the pub, in order to speed up the justice system, but does not work for domestic abuse, where there may be countless reasons why someone cannot report a crime straightaway.

When I first raised that, neither the Home Office nor the Ministry of Justice had any research on it. Many in the criminal justice system and in organisations that had campaigned on violence against women and girls had assumed that it was just not possible to change that, because it was so embedded in the criminal justice system. I welcome the fact that the Minister talked to me about this, commissioned research and accepted the proposals that we put forward to change the system and to lift the six-month limit, but it reflects a deep blind spot that has been in the system for too long.

There is still a blind spot on spiking. Until the surge of needle spiking last autumn, it had been too often dismissed as a crime linked to young people drinking and drug taking, and particularly to young women drinking and not taking enough care to protect themselves. The best that would happen was that a bit of advice would be given young women on how to cover their drinks to stay safe.

[Tonia Antoniazzi (Gower) (Lab)]

Does my right hon. Friend share my concern that there is a lack of cohesion between presenting at accident and emergency and reporting the crime to the police? In a case that I was involved in recently, a young lady who had to stay in hospital overnight was then told by the hospital that she had to go to the police the next day when she was out of hospital. Does my right hon. Friend agree that this is a real issue that we have to resolve between A&E departments and the police?

[Yvette Cooper]

I completely agree with my hon. Friend’s point. I have also had cases raised with me where the victim of spiking was told to make an appointment with the police to have the tests done and could not get an appointment until considerably after the drugs would have left her system. Therefore, there was no possibility of getting the evidence needed that might then help with an investigation.

That is why we need a co-ordinated approach, but that requires leadership. Very often it is the nature of our criminal justice system and the support services, be they in health, mental health or other areas, that we need organisations to work together, but ensuring that that happens needs leadership from us and, ultimately, from the Government. That is the purpose of today’s debate: to call for much stronger leadership from the Government to tackle these awful crimes and the gaps where things are simply not happening.

There has now been recognition of the seriousness of spiking, but we still have to go much further to ensure that action is taken. I spoke to a college class of 17-year-olds in my constituency a few weeks ago. We started talking about this, and I asked them how many of them knew someone who had been spiked. They were 17-year-olds, and all the girls and half the boys said that they knew someone who had been spiked. That shows the scale of the challenge that is affecting young people. We have failed as a society and across the criminal justice system to take the action needed.