Rape: Prosecutions

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

Thursday 30th January 2025 Grand Committee

Asked by

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what are the main factors that have led to decades of low levels of rape cases being prosecuted, and continue to prevent such prosecutions, and what steps are they taking to resolve this.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I would like to thank in advance all noble Lords who are speaking today. I will be listening very closely to the two former Met Police Commissioners here today, because they probably not only understand the problems but know exactly where the solutions lie. I hope the Government will be listening to them as closely as I will.

We all know that our country is failing rape victims, who are mainly but not exclusively women. I could stand here all day and quote figures that show how bad things are now, and how bad they were a decade ago or even three or four decades ago. Misogyny is not new, and it is the root of most rapes. There have been times when women could be priests, or even gods, but extreme misogyny arose in Assyria two and a half thousand years ago and brought it into politics and religion.

I could talk about the way that young working-class girls in Rotherham were not believed and were ignored. We could explore the allegations of police collusion and corruption, with links to local drug gangs, or I could go back a decade and talk about the failures of the police when the Yorkshire ripper was killing sex workers. There is the scandal of Jimmy Savile, operating as a sexual predator in plain sight, with powerful friends in the BBC and Downing Street; or Worboys, the taxi driver who the police believe had 100 victims, some of whom had reported being assaulted before he was finally caught.

Each of these cases has the common threads of women and girls not being believed or fearing they would not be believed. There are the half-hearted investigations of women who do report and the professional scepticism of Crown Prosecution Service staff about whether a jury is going to convict. There is the character assassination of survivors and the intrusive exploration of their personal lives by the authorities, which are meant to be supporting them in getting justice. These high-profile cases open up the public debate, but they are the merest fraction of the lived experience of hundreds of thousands of women and girls who have reported, or not reported, gone to trial, or tried to, and then given up in despair.

What is striking in reading through the library of previous reports, inquiries and ministerial speeches is the repeated themes and recommendations. They tend to broadly agree with the existing policy relating to the investigation and prosecution of rape and then state that this policy is not being properly implemented. These kinds of failures are long standing. It can feel as though the repeated commissioning of these reviews and inspections is a way for government and other authorities to indicate concern, while never following through with the action and resources needed to make change. I am absolutely positive that this Labour Government will do better than that.

From the 1980s onwards, we had a slow but positive shift in the way the police and Crown prosecutors handled rape cases—from the setting up of rape investigation rooms and the swift collection of forensic evidence, to a merit-based approach to prosecution that looked at the evidence, rather than second-guessing what a jury might or might not decide. Coming out of the scandal of grooming gangs in several northern towns, Sir Keir Starmer, the then head of the Crown Prosecution Service, argued that it was not a question of the victim’s behaviour or criminal record, but whether the crime had happened. He said:

“if the yardstick traditionally used by prosecutors for evaluating the credibility of a victim in other cases were used without adaptation in cases of sexual exploitation, the outcome would potentially be a category of vulnerable victims left unprotected by the criminal law.”

He was absolutely right.

These changes, combined with the #MeToo campaign and a series of high-profile historical scandals, led to a huge increase in the reporting of rape cases. This was a success, but it came just as austerity led to the slow collapse of the criminal justice system. The result has been a disaster for rape victims—rape survivors—who have been seriously let down by an overstretched judicial system that has responded in the worst of all possible ways. It is a system that promises justice but delivers delays and failure.

The numbers of rapes recorded by the police increased steadily from the 1980s but tripled between 2014 and 2018, reaching their highest-ever volume. The number of reported rapes being successfully prosecuted has, however, dropped from 25% in 1981 to 1% or 2% in recent years.

Instead of our society recognising the scale of a hidden scandal and putting resources into achieving justice when hundreds of thousands of people started reporting this horrendous but regular, everyday crime, what the last Government did was to cut police, lawyers and police time. The Crown Prosecution Service quietly dropped the merit-based approach and rationed cases going forwards based on a Ladbrokes betting shop analysis of the odds of a jury convicting the alleged assailant—I am going to be very careful about naming the person I believe is responsible for that, because I am not sure whether saying it in the House of Lords gives me cover from prosecution.

The solution is more resources, and that means making it a priority within the judicial system—no more delaying trials for a year or more, so that the rape survivor gives up all hope of justice and drops out from emotional exhaustion. As long as rape is a crime that people think they can get away with, they will do it. Do this Government, or any Government, want rape legalised? The year-on-year failures make that appear, near enough, the outcome of austerity.

The other thing the Government can do is education and changing the culture. This is incredibly important and I feel that this avenue of recovery has not been explored. In France, Gisèle Pelicot has done this and changed the culture of shame from being all on the survivor to the shame being directed at all the men who raped her, all those who colluded and all those who did not report to the police what was happening. We need Ministers to get behind survivors and make it clear that rape is not just about grooming gangs, spiked drinks, dodgy taxi drivers or even police officers. All those need dealing with but, distressingly, most sexual assaults are about familiar and comfortable environments and people whom you know. Therefore, education is absolutely basic to sorting out this problem. I look forward very much to hearing what the Minister will say in reply. If he could pick up that point about education, I would be very grateful.

Imprisonment for Public Protection (Re-sentencing) Bill [HL]

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 15th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the passionate speech of the noble Lord, Lord Davies. I would like sincerely to thank the noble Lord, Lord Woodley, for bringing this debate today.

We have discussed this in your Lordships’ House so many times that it is sometimes hard even to find something new to say about it, yet here we are, finding new sources of anger at this injustice. Imprisonment for public protection was always a disastrous tactic. I agree that some of the judges and lawyers involved really ought to have understood that. Yet, as the noble Lord, Lord Woodley, also said, we have common ground among a quite odd bunch of noble Lords. It is just like the fish farms debate: we have an immense range of people with very different ideologies, yet they all feel the injustice of this issue.

On the issue of IPP prisoners held for years beyond their sentence, last month, in answer to a Parliamentary Question, Shabana Mahmood, the Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice, said:

“We are not considering a re-sentencing exercise for IPP prisoners, because that would automatically release a number of people who we do not believe it would be safe to release”.—[Official Report, Commons, 22/10/24; col. 214.]


I do not know whether that has been updated but it is a massive cause for concern, because it simply is not true. As lawyer and campaigner Peter Stefanovic points out in his film on this issue, the House of Commons Justice Select Committee says that a resentencing exercise, overseen by a panel of experts, for everyone still serving an IPP sentence is the only way to address the unique injustice caused by that sentencing. It recommended that the panel explore how resentencing could happen in a timely way, but one that would not jeopardise public protection. That does not mean the immediate release that the Justice Secretary suggests; she must know that, and if she does not she really ought to.

We cannot say that we have a justice system if we have an innate injustice such as this. The sentencing and continued imprisonment of IPP prisoners has just been cruel. We Greens are well aware that prison is overused as a tool of justice. Far too many people are imprisoned, when there are much more effective ways of rehabilitation or stopping reoffending.

I can understand the anger of people who say that we should look up serial rapists and murderers and throw away the key, but in this instance, we have, for example, a 17 year-old who steals a bike or people who grab other people’s mobile phones. I find it very difficult to believe that anyone listening to this debate would not agree wholeheartedly with us. This was a Labour Government’s mistake. It is down to this Labour Government to fix it. We definitely need a free vote on this in both Houses. If we do not have one, it will be yet another injustice heaped on these prisoners.

Criminal Justice Act 2003 (Requisite and Minimum Custodial Periods) Order 2024

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

Monday 29th July 2024 Lords Chamber

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My Lords, I welcome the Minister to his position; this is the first time I have been able to debate with him. I hope he has plenty of time to sort out the mess of the prison system. I support the order; there is obviously no alternative to passing it.

The Minister touched on the reasons why that has occurred. My understanding is that the offender management unit in the Ministry of Justice calculates what the demand will be for prison places, taking into consideration all the changes in legislation. Anything that we do in legislation makes it change its calculation, and I am pretty confident that the unit told Ministers a long time ago that we had problems. One reason why I got involved in looking at the penal system was a debate initiated by Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood in 2017 on overcrowding in the prison system. We just let it go on and on until eventually we had to do something, which is exactly what the Minister is doing.

My only question is: is there any scope to do something about unnecessary recalls? Released prisoners can be recalled for fairly trifling bureaucratic reasons, which causes a lot of disruption and an increase in the prison population. Also, is there any scope to reduce the remand population, which the Minister mentioned? I look forward to supporting the Minister in his work.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, it was a pleasure to hear the categories that will not be up for release, because nobody wants sexual predators and misogynists out on the streets—so I am delighted to hear that. But when the issue of prisons comes up, we always have to ask ourselves: what are they for? They ought to be for keeping dangerous people off the streets, but that is not what we do at the moment; we throw into prison an awful lot of people who should not be there. Through the Minister, this Government could think about changing who we put in prison because, quite honestly, the number of people going to prison is ludicrous when you think about some of the crimes they have committed.

Drug law reform is an obvious area. It seems absolutely ridiculous to put people in prison because of drugs offences when they have access to even more drugs there than they do out on the streets. Prisons are failing in that way, and I would be interested to hear what the Minister had to say about drug use in prison. Unfortunately, our new Prime Minister has indicated that he wants to continue the ideological war on drugs. Can the Minister at least review the evidence from the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs and publish its advice? The Conservative Government kept it secret because it called for the decriminalisation of personal possession of drugs.

It is good to hear about restorative justice, which is something further that that this Government could talk about. It is a voluntary process whereby people who have been harmed can work with the people who have caused the harm and perhaps identify how both parties can resolve or move on from it. We had amendments on this to the Victims and Prisoners Bill, so it would be good to hear the Government’s thoughts on this area.

Of course, if we are going to let people out of prison, we have to remember the scandal of the IPP prisoners. I was sad that the Minister did not mention them today because that category has clearly suffered the most incredible injustice. The legislation was designed to keep serious offenders in prison, but instead we ended up with nearly 3,000 people, most of them non-violent, trapped in prison. IPP prisoners turn to suicide and hunger strike. This is a legacy of the last Labour Government that the new Labour Government need to fix, as I pointed out.

One report says that someone got, in effect, 16 years in prison for stealing a flowerpot at 17. A prison sentence of 18 months should not turn into 18 years, which has also happened. It is no wonder that our prisons are overcrowded if we keep throwing people in there to rot for minor crimes. So do the new Government have a plan to work at pace to safely release IPP prisoners where possible? Is there a proposal for new legislation on this? We need the new Minister to sort out a plan on this. We need a resentencing programme to get the majority of IPP prisoners out of prison. Apart from that, I can say only, “Good luck”.

[Lord Deben (Con)]

I wonder whether I may ask a very simple question. I very much support what is being put forward, but in my history no Government have ever answered the simple question: how come Britain locks up so many more people than comparable countries in the rest of Europe? It seems pretty barmy. I do not feel any less safe in Paris or Berlin than I do in London, and yet both those countries do not lock people up in the way we do. It is a fundamental and simple question. I hope very much that we will pass this, of course, but I hope it will be in the context of the Government being the first of any political party—the previous Labour Government refused to look at this as well—to look at this fundamental question and ask themselves, “Why?”

The answer must be that there are better ways of doing what we are trying to do. If it means ignoring pressure from the Daily Mail, then I am afraid that is what we have to do. Given the brave statement the Chancellor of the Exchequer made today about cuts, it might be a very good opportunity for this Government to take a new look at why we lock people up.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Timpson (Lab)]

I assume that if it is, I will not be able to have a sherry trifle, which is one of my favourite desserts.

To conclude, this statutory instrument is vital for addressing the capacity crisis in our prisons. It will pull us back from the brink of a total collapse of law and order in our country, which would put the British people at risk—something we cannot countenance. We should, however, be under no illusion: the measure we have debated today is not a silver bullet for prison capacity. It will not end this crisis and it is not the solution for the longer term, but it is a measure that buys us the time needed to take further steps to address the pressures in our prisons and put the criminal justice system on a sustainable footing, in turn providing greater protection to victims and the public. It rightly brings to an end the short-term measures of the previous Government that operated without due transparency, proper scrutiny or the safeguards to protect the public that are the heart of this Government’s approach.

Before I close, I wish to extend some further thanks, building on the remarks I made in my maiden speech in this place. As I said then, those who work in our Prison and Probation Service work every day with some of the most complex people, inside one of the most complex systems. Managing a prison system at around 99% capacity for an extended time will have been an extraordinary challenge not just for those on the front line but for all the partners in our criminal justice system, including civil servants at the Ministry of Justice and those working in the third sector. I therefore thank my colleagues at the Ministry of Justice and His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service not just for the way they have welcomed me into the department but for their committed and largely unsung service to guiding us through this current prison capacity challenge.

The last Government placed our criminal justice system and prisons in crisis, but the legacy of this Government will be different. It will see a prison system brought under control, a Probation Service that keeps the public safe and enough prison places to meet our needs—which will lead to having prisons we are proud of, but also prisons, probation and other services working together to break the cycle of the revolving door and reduce reoffending. Today’s measure is not the long-term solution—we are being transparent about this—but it is the necessary first step.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

Will the Minister respond, perhaps at a later date, to my questions about drugs policy and the fact that this Government did not release a report?

[Lord Timpson (Lab)]

I thank the noble Baroness. I will write to her, because I am not completely familiar with that and I would not like to get it wrong.

Prison Capacity

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

Wednesday 24th July 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Timpson (Lab)]

He is still on the right. In fact, he never sat on the left.

I accept that farms and gardens are very positive in prison environments. In fact, one of the prisons I visited recently is HMP Haverigg, a prison that Prisons Ministers rarely visit at all at the far end of Cumbria. One of my goals in this role is to go and see the prisons that Prisons Ministers have never been to. At Haverigg there is a big focus on gardening and market gardening, which creates not just extra skills but a great nurturing environment for the prisoners there. It is also a source of income, because they have a little shop at the gate. That is something I am a big fan of and I will be ensuring that we do all we can to support that

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

I welcome the Minister to his place; it is a brilliant stroke by the Labour Government. However, I did not quite understand his reply on the IPP prisoners. Clearly there is an injustice there that needs to be sorted as fast as possible. It was created by the last Labour Government, so it would be appropriate for the current Labour Government to sort it out as quickly as possible.

[Lord Timpson (Lab)]

The situation with IPP prisoners is of great concern. I know that huge numbers of Members on both sides of the House care about it deeply, and I share that concern. IPP prisoners are not caught by the changes that we are putting forward. I have spent a lot of time talking to IPP prisoners inside and outside prison—in fact, in my previous role a number of IPP prisoners were colleagues—so I know the complexity of the issues involved. I also know that we as a House need to be determined to find all that we can do to support IPP prisoners and their families, and to make sure that we still maintain safety.