Rape: Prosecutions and Support

Baroness Donaghy Excerpts

Tuesday 29th November 2022 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Donaghy]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what steps they intend to take (1) to increase the number of rape prosecutions, and (2) to provide more support for women and men affected by rape.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord Bellamy) (Con)]

My Lords, the 2021 End-to-End Rape Review Action Plan committed us to double the number of adult rape cases reaching court by the end of this Parliament, back to 2016 levels. We have since seen an increase in both prosecutions and convictions. Actions taken include establishing the criminal justice dashboard; funding Operation Soteria, making police investigation suspect-focused; providing the rape and sexual abuse support fund; launching a 24/7 rape and sexual abuse support line; and completing the rollout of pre-recorded cross-examination, so that victims no longer must face the courtroom but can be cross-examined beforehand.

[Baroness Donaghy (Lab)]

I thank the Minister, but under this Government, conviction rates for rape have reached historic lows, with only 1.3% of recorded rapes resulting in a charge. MoJ data from June of this year showed that 28% of 53,000 outstanding Crown Court cases were for alleged sexual offences, with up to five years before anything reaches the court. Some 65% of cases analysed in London last year ended in victim withdrawal, revealing a lack of high-quality victim care in the justice system. What other plans do the Government have to improve this shocking situation?

[Lord Bellamy (Con)]

My Lords, first and with respect, we are making progress on this matter. Your Lordships will perhaps recall that, after 2016 and the Allan case, where a prosecution collapsed for lack of disclosure, prosecutions for rape fell until 2019. Then we had the pandemic. That is why the Government are now committed to returning to 2016 levels.

I will give one example of progress. In 2016, a total of 766 rape cases per quarter were referred by the police to the CPS. In Q2 2022, we had 901 such referrals, up on 2019 by 97% and even up on 2016 by 18%. Many other examples can be seen on the criminal justice system delivery data dashboard at justice.gov.uk, to which I respectfully refer your Lordships. You can see the progress we are making on every offence, across every region of the country. That is a considerable achievement and I commend it to your Lordships. In response to the noble Baroness, I do not doubt that difficulties remain, but we are making progress.

Human Rights Act 1998

Baroness Donaghy Excerpts

Thursday 14th July 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Donaghy (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lady Whitaker for initiating this debate. I read her contribution in a debate that took place 11 years ago. Her wisdom and compassion shone out then as it did today. I quote one extract from her contribution:

“Enemies of red tape and bureaucracy should welcome the Human Rights Act. It is there to give a human dimension back to state operations. It is not … primarily for lawyers any more than water is for water engineers. It is for citizens to rely on and public servants to have regard to.”—[Official Report, 19/5/11; col. 1507.]


In the same debate the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, said:

“one of the central purposes of human rights law is to protect the interests of those sections of the community who lack political power, who Parliament has failed to protect against unfair treatment by the majority … Parliament remained sovereign on all these issues … tempting though it is for politicians to try to win support by fighting a battle of Parliament Square against the Supreme Court, the current Administration need to be reminded that there are many issues where the dispassionate assessment of public policy by an independent judiciary, and by a reference to standards of fairness and proportionality, serve a valuable public purpose.” —[Official Report, 19/5/11; cols. 1502-03.]

Of course, we now know that the current Administration, the same Conservative Government, have yielded to that temptation 11 years later.

Before I continue, I echo the tributes that were made at the time to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Irvine of Lairg, who led that particular debate and, more importantly, steered the Human Rights Act 1998 through this House. His contribution to this country is immense. He reminded the House then that although Britain was the first state to ratify the European Convention on Human Rights in 1951, failure to incorporate the convention into our domestic law meant that our own citizens could not argue for their convention rights in our own courts, but had to take the long and expensive road to Strasbourg that some noble Lords have already referred to. It took another 47 years to resolve that, and he paid tribute to Churchill’s Conservative Government for ratifying the convention and referred to a publication by Norman and Oborne entitled Churchill’s Legacy: The Conservative Case for the Human Rights Act. In attempting to dispel many of the myths about the Human Rights Act, Norman and Oborne concluded:

“it is unlikely that reform of the HRA would be on any political agenda, were it not for the potent advocacy of the most powerful media groups in the country”.

The noble and learned Lord pointed out that the convention and the Act had

“enhanced protection for journalistic sources”,

and seen

“a dramatic reduction in the level of libel damages, and the right to report on a much wider range of court proceedings”.—[Official Report, 19/5/11; col. 1494.]

The Government’s Bill of Rights is actually a rights removal Bill. The Council of Europe’s Commissioner for Human Rights found that the Bill could weaken human rights protections across the UK. How will the Bill reconcile with the rights available under the Scotland Act and the Good Friday agreement in Northern Ireland? The Scottish Human Rights Commission and many other organisations pointed out that the Government ignored their own independent review, which concluded that there was no case for widespread reform. The commission is quite clear that the Government’s Bill of Rights will undermine rights protections for people in Scotland. The director of Liberty, Martha Spurrier, said that the Bill would make it harder for people to access justice. My noble friend Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede said the same thing on 23 June. Incidentally, I am a member of Liberty. I ask the Minister whether he could satisfy my questions on the issue of the Good Friday agreement and the Scotland Act.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Bellamy (Con)]

With respect, I do not think that I have any channel of communication with the candidates for the leadership of the Conservative Party, but what I have just said is on the record and may be referred to. That is the Government’s position.

As your Lordships have observed, I personally find myself—as do the Government—with cannons to the left and cannons to the right. So in the valley of calm reasoned debate in this House, I would like to explore with your Lordships the centre ground to which this Bill is directed. In my repeat of the Oral Statement on the Bill on 23 June, I used the phrase “constructive balance”: balance between the roles of the legislature and the judiciary; balance between the domestic courts and the Supreme Court, on the one hand, and the Strasbourg judges, on the other, having regard to subsidiarity and the margin of appreciation; and balance between rights and responsibilities. To that theme of balance, I add three related themes: constitutional clarity, the separation of powers and reinforcing the fundamentals that underpin human rights.

I will address constitutional clarity first. After 25 years of the Act in operation, it is important, in the Government’s view, to restate certain basic principles. These include the following: that the convention rights are an integral part of the domestic law of the United Kingdom; that the ultimate judicial authority in interpreting those rights is the Supreme Court, taking into account our domestic legal traditions in particular; and that the possibility of divergence from Strasbourg is recognised—that is not in dispute; it has always been there, as has been pointed out already. Those basic principles are effectively recognised in Clauses 2 and 3 of the Bill, which are declaratory of the existing position.

It is important that the convention retains a very special and unique constitutional status: no other Act of Parliament provides a machinery where another Act of Parliament, even a subsequent Act of Parliament, can be subject to a declaration of incompatibility under Clause 10. However, when that arises, it is the Government’s view that the separation of powers must prevail. At the moment, under Section 3, we have this curious provision whereby the courts can read down the Act to have a different meaning to that which Parliament intended. The Government wish to clear up that constitutional muddle, if I may put it that way, and put the responsibility for bringing the legislation in question into line with the convention back where it belongs—that is to say, the legislature that first enacted the legislation in question.

[Baroness Donaghy (Lab)]

I apologise for taking up the House’s time but just to clarify: the Minister is referring to a balance, but it seemed to me to be a balance between the judiciary and the Executive, and the role of Parliament was not clear in what he was saying. I wonder whether he could clarify that. It seemed to be a power grab for the Executive.

[Lord Bellamy (Con)]

My understanding is that, in these circumstances, any necessary change to the legislation will be brought back to Parliament through the machinery of a statutory instrument, and required to be laid before the House by affirmative resolution. There is every ability for Parliament to determine what should then be done, so it is a balance between the legislature and the judiciary, and not, in the Government’s view, between the judiciary and the Executive, but let us explore that point further in due course.

Secondly, public authorities remain bound by the convention, as is set out in Clause 12. The main change here is in relation to this question of “positive obligations”; that is a conceptual issue which is being addressed in Clauses 5 and 7. Essentially, the underlying issue is: should human rights law under the convention develop a kind of de facto legislative or quasi-legislative content, with potentially serious implications for public expenditure or giving one policy objective priority over another, or are those kinds of decisions for the elected Members of the legislature? Where does the balance lie between the electorate, the whole process of elections, and democracy, on the one hand, and, as it were, judicial interventions on the other hand? That is, in my submission, a conceptual issue, which we should in due course grapple with. That is going to be, and is, the issue of the separation of powers.

Finally, in this brief response I draw attention to a third theme, hardly mentioned today, which is the reinforcement in the Bill of the Government’s commitment to freedom and human rights in the widest sense: freedom of speech under Clause 4, jury trial under Clause 9, the protection of journalists’ sources under Clause 21. There are many points that could be made, but I hope that that brief and admittedly high-level summary at least helps convey why the Government argue for the constructive balance that the Bill aims to achieve. It is not, in the Government’s view, weakening human rights; it is enhancing public confidence in the whole structure. One has to realise that not everybody is as convinced of the value of the Act as it now stands as are some of the noble Lords who have spoken today. This will, in the Government’s view, enable greater public confidence to be maintained in the human rights structure. This is not a new issue—

Domestic Abuse Bill

Baroness Donaghy Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 5th sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 5th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 8th February 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lucas (Con) [V]]

It will be immensely helpful to have a process of gathering information ahead of the Law Commission report on whether extension of hate crimes to embrace misogyny will work, and how. At present, we do not have good information. This is a really difficult area; I do not think that any of us has trouble with the concept of hate crimes, but the Scottish Parliament is currently undergoing extreme difficulty with the concept of hate speech. Many police forces in the UK are doing some very strange things with “hate incidents”, where these can be recorded just on the say-so of one person and then appear in another person’s DBS check. There are some difficult things happening around hate crimes and hate incidents generally; having good data must, surely, be at the core of reaching good conclusions.

Here, we have a difficulty in that the police have changed their recording of crimes and reports so that they record only the reported gender of a person and not their natal sex, as is the protected characteristic under the Equality Act. Recently, we have seen extraordinary rises in the reported level of sexual abuse by women. Is this real? Is there something happening to women in our country that we really ought to understand, or is this a fiction of the change in the police reporting method? Not having accurate data disables us in understanding what to do.

I very much hope that, if something comes of this—I hope it will—the police will not only record the natal sex but will record the gender of all the people concerned so that we can understand exactly what is happening. It really does not help trans people that the hate they are subject to is subsumed under misogyny if they are trans women. We need to know whether this is happening to them because they are trans. We are trying to gather data and understanding; the better the data we have, the better our response.

I support, but would like to see extended, the definition at the end of this. It is really important that we have clarity and completeness. Let us record sex as per the Equality Act definition because that is, as my noble friend on the Front Bench has confirmed to me on previous occasions, the basis on which the Government are working. Let us also record self-identified gender or whatever other formulation works best—we could perhaps adopt the one from the forthcoming census—so that we have a complete picture of misogyny and trans misogyny and can, when the time comes, craft effective laws about it.

[Baroness Donaghy (Lab) [V]]

I am very pleased to support the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Russell. Members may have seen recent reports in the media covering the experience of elite female athletes being subject to harassment and intimidation when doing training runs in the street. They cannot go to their athletic tracks to train at the moment because of lockdown. As has been said, this is not about wolf-whistling; it is about violence and harassment, mainly against women. If those athletes were competing in an Olympic stadium, they would be cheered to the rafters for their success, but because they are training on the streets and are anonymous, somehow they are objectified and are easy prey.

During White Ribbon Week, I asked the Minister to accept the two year-old Law Commission’s report recommending that misogyny be made a hate crime. This is now a matter of increasing urgency. The police forces that have been adopting policies to record gender hate crimes are to be congratulated, but this needs to be adopted generally. Superintendent Andy Bennett of Avon and Somerset Police said:

“We know women are less likely to report hate crime committed by strangers in public, which could be because discrimination is normalised for many women.”


As the noble Lord, Lord Russell, said, Nottinghamshire Police was the first force in England and Wales to start recording hate crimes against women and girls. Sue Fish, the former chief constable of Nottinghamshire Police, said:

“Some of the feedback we had was that women, for the first time, described themselves as ‘walking taller’ and with their ‘heads held high’.”


According to the White Ribbon Campaign, one in five British men thinks that feminism has gone “too far”. Online misogyny can also be a gateway to wider divisions in society. A HOPE not hate report shows that some young men who interact with men’s rights activists online are on the first step to more extreme racist or far-right groups and regard more rights for anyone—such as people of colour, the LGBT community and people with disabilities—as a threat to their status. The chief executive of HOPE not hate supports this amendment. He states that misogyny is a recruiting tool for hate groups and a means to radicalise, especially among the very young. These online groups radicalise young men who go on to commit acts of aggression designed to intimidate, humiliate and control women.

Having better-quality information throughout all police forces is not just another paper exercise. It helps to increase understanding of the causes and consequences of violence against women and girls, and it gives women more confidence that their issue will be taken seriously. It may even go on to protect more women from violence and intimidation. I hope that the Minister will accept this amendment.

[Lord Paddick (LD) [V]]

My Lords, this afternoon, many noble Lords have described misogyny outside the scenario of domestic abuse—such as elite athletes training in the street, as the noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy, just said. I hope to explain that, while I agree that the recording of misogyny as a hate crime is a good thing, it may confuse things when it comes to domestic abuse.

As has been explained, Clause 70 requires the Secretary of State to

“issue guidance to chief officers of police about the disclosure of police information by police forces for the purposes of preventing domestic abuse.”

This amendment is about including in that guidance that the police should record any crimes where the offender demonstrated hostility or prejudice based on sex, or where it is perceived that the crime was motivated by hostility or prejudice towards persons who are of a particular sex. This, in effect, would require police officers to record misogyny as a hate crime, although as it is worded in gender-neutral terms it would also require them to record misandry as a hate crime. I am confused about why misandry would be a hate crime, but we will move on. It then tries to bring this within the scope of Clause 70, which is about preventing domestic abuse, by mentioning taking account of evidence about the relationship between domestic abuse and misogyny and recording misogynistic crimes that, in the opinion of the police, have also involved domestic abuse.