Cass Review

Debate between Victoria Atkins and Jackie Doyle-Price

Monday 15th April 2024 Commons Chamber

[Dame Jackie Doyle-Price (Thurrock) (Con)]

The report is very welcome, but it has been a long time coming. One issue I would like to put to my right hon. Friend is the whole failure of governance that it shows. In particular, NHS England’s specialist commissioning requires challenge. As she explained, what was initially commissioned as a treatment course for a small minority of people has been allowed to expand unchecked and without any consideration of the ethics of what was being done to children. What will she do to ensure that does not happen again? Secondly, the Tavistock clearly enjoyed the popularity brought by being at the front end of what was seen as a set of cutting-edge treatments. Frankly, the governors allowed that to get in the way of what they should have been doing: ensuring patient safety. What does she propose to do about that as well?

[Victoria Atkins]

I thank my hon. Friend, who in her parliamentary career has done so much to shine a light on this sort of behaviour. She has espoused worries, both publicly and privately, about the children and young people at the heart of this matter. Looking to the future, the Tavistock clinic has shut. As I said, it stopped admitting patients a year ago. The new services that are already in place—the two new hubs, with plans to expand further across the country—are about ensuring a multidisciplinary approach to young people, so that, with exactly the experiences Dr Cass sets outs so starkly in her report, children are treated as human beings and patients, not as siloed conditions. One of the main problems that emerged with the Tavistock behaviour and the way it took place is that gender questioning was siloed in a way that no other health or mental health condition was. We want to move back to a place where clinicians are no longer scared of looking after children and young people with these issues, and that they see it as part of their general practice and general work. That is how we are best going to address the very complex needs of many of these children and young people.

Rape: Criminal Prosecutions

Debate between Victoria Atkins and Jackie Doyle-Price

Tuesday 28th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Victoria Atkins]

A male Member of the House is shouting at me across the Dispatch Box while I am trying to explain. This is a deeply serious subject, and it must be—I would hope—a matter on which we can find measured and constructive ways of working together in order to improve justice for victims, because that, surely, is what we should all be focusing on.

[Jackie Doyle-Price (Thurrock) (Con)]

Support for victims of rape is essential to ensuring that more of these crimes are brought to prosecution, but rape victims often say that, having gone through the trauma of the assault, they are then dehumanised by being treated, effectively, as a piece of evidence when they report it, and then have to prepare themselves to be traumatised yet again when they appear in court. What discussions is my hon. Friend having with the Department of Health and Social Care to make good the NHS’s commitment to giving all victims of rape a lifetime care pathway, so that they can be confident enough to appear in court?

[Victoria Atkins]

I thank my hon. Friend for identifying not just the immediate impacts of sexually violent attacks but the lifelong impacts that they can have. The Department of Health and Social Care and NHS England are involved in all the discussions that the Deputy Prime Minister and I have on this. NHS England is particularly keen to roll out support to victims longer term as well as short term, and also to roll out the further provision of more independent sexual violence advisers, which we have committed to do by 2024-25, bringing the total to more than 1,000 ISVAs nationally. They will be critical as part of the recovery process. Having met many of them recently, I understand how valuable they can be for victims both in their recovery and in giving them the support they need to take these important criminal cases forward.

Tackling Violence Against Women and Girls

Debate between Victoria Atkins and Jackie Doyle-Price

Wednesday 2nd March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Debbie Abrahams]

rose—

[Jackie Doyle-Price (Thurrock) (Con)]

rose—

[Victoria Atkins]

I will give way to the hon. Lady and then to my hon. Friend.

[Victoria Atkins]

The world in the 21st century is having to grapple with some of those factors that we have seen emerge on the internet over the last two or three decades. I genuinely think this is the moment for our country to draw a line in the sand and say, “Enough is enough. We expect better from tech companies and we expect better in terms of regulation of tech companies.” That is what the Online Safety Bill will involve.

[Jackie Doyle-Price]

rose—

[Victoria Atkins]

I give way to my hon. Friend, who has been so patient.

[Jackie Doyle-Price]

I think we have all been very patient as women, to be brutally frank. I want to return to the point made by the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson). Let us call it what it is: this is male violence against women and girls. I hear what my hon. Friend the Minister says. There are probably more men here than I have seen in a debate of this kind, which is fantastic, but we are only really going to tackle this if we get full societal change. That means that our communications outside this Chamber must make it very clear that it is not a women’s problem that men are committing these crimes against them; it is the fault of everyone in society. People should stop looking the other way and we should cease just sucking all this up. Let us call it what it is—male violence against women and girls.

[Victoria Atkins]

I would very much welcome my hon. Friend’s views on the “Enough” campaign. We set out three scenes to tackle exactly that tendency to turn away, giving people the courage to call out so-called banter among their mates, and helping people who see behaviour in the street that they are not sure about to offer a helping hand and say, “We’re here if you want to talk.” That sort of approach is going to make the sort of societal change that I know we all want.

However, it is also vital that, when crimes sadly occur, victims get the support they need and deserve. That is why we have committed to increasing funding to vital support services to £185 million by 2024-25. Importantly, that includes increasing the number of independent sexual violence advisers and independent domestic violence advisers to more than 1,000. That is pivotal. The right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford rightly said that there are various stages in the criminal justice system, and as I move on to the rape review I will try to explain a little more the very technical work that we have been doing on this. We know that there are certain pressure points, and there is emerging evidence that the role that IDVAs and ISVAs play in supporting victims can really help to tackle victim attrition rates. It can mean that victims are nearly 50% more likely to stay engaged with the criminal justice system.

We are also—again, I have listened to the responses that we have received and to charities and campaigners—in the process of setting up a national sexual violence helpline in England and Wales. That will be available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, so that victims of sexual violence can get immediate access to support when they need it and when they want it. I think that will be a step change for many victims, knowing as we do just how important the domestic abuse helpline has been in offering support. We are also, of course, introducing a victims law. That is a critical part of our plans to ensure that victims’ voices are at the heart of the criminal justice process. It will strengthen the accountability of the players in that process and improve support for victims.

On another point of agreement, we want to see perpetrators of violence against women and girls ruthlessly pursued and brought to justice. Yesterday the Safeguarding Minister—the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, my hon. Friend the Member for Redditch (Rachel Maclean)—confirmed to the House that we will be adding violence against women and girls to the strategic policing requirement, meaning that it will be prioritised just as terrorism offences, for example, are prioritised. That is essential. I appreciate that it is the sort of technical thing that is all words and has very little meaning if one has just been raped and been the victim of a crime, but those of us who work in this process know how significant a commitment it is. We are now prioritising nationally the very crimes we are all so concerned about, in the way that serious organised crime and terrorism, for example, are prioritised.

However, we know that we cannot just look to criminal justice, so in the Domestic Abuse Act 2021 we committed to giving the police new powers to help bring perpetrators to justice and to stop the abuse. Domestic abuse protection notices and orders were a very strong part of the Act. We will be publishing a comprehensive perpetrators strategy, which will set out our approach to detecting, investigating and prosecuting offences involving domestic abuse, assessing and managing that risk, and reducing the risk that individuals will commit further offences. The strategy will form part of the domestic abuse strategy, which is due to be published in the coming months.

Afghan Citizens Resettlement Scheme

Debate between Victoria Atkins and Jackie Doyle-Price

Monday 25th October 2021 Commons Chamber

[Victoria Atkins]

Because the scheme has not been launched yet, as we are still developing it, I do not have a precise figure for the right hon. Gentleman. However, I ask him not to take from that that the figure has been met or otherwise. At the moment, I am not able to help the House with that number; when I can do, I will.

[Jackie Doyle-Price (Thurrock) (Con)]

My hon. Friend will be aware that those of us who visited the refugee centre in Doha a little while ago were very concerned to hear about the unaccompanied children with links to British families, who did not seem to be processed as quickly as those of other countries. Can she assure the House that she will ensure that those children are processed as quickly as possible? The longer they are in limbo, the more harm will be done to them.

[Victoria Atkins]

I am aware that colleagues on the Doha trip met those children, and I thank those colleagues for taking such an interest. I can assure my hon. Friend that this is being worked through. As always, there are safeguarding and other matters that we must turn our minds to, as we are doing, but we are trying to work through this as quickly as we can.