Oral Answers to Questions

Baroness McIntosh of Pickering Excerpts

Tuesday 5th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

We have learned all the lessons about the flaws in the electoral register here. That is exactly what we are seeking to address, not least by looking at the experience in Northern Ireland and elsewhere.

[Miss Anne McIntosh (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

T12. I wish to place on record my admiration for the ambition shown by the Deputy Prime Minister, but does he not agree that if he sticks to his present programme and allows the first elections to the House of Lords to be held in 2015, it is over-ambitious—even according to his own test—to hold them in the same month and year as the next rural district elections and the next general election?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

“Ambition” was clearly intended as faint praise, and I will take it in that spirit. I think we have shown in past elections that the problems involved in the principle of combined elections can be overcome, as long as there is a clear distinction between the mandates for the bodies that are being elected on the same day.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Solicitor-General]

Of course I do, and it is imperative that trafficked children, who are the victims of this hideous crime, are not prosecuted but are treated as victims. Equally, it is imperative that adults under such duress, too, are not prosecuted but treated as victims. The Crown Prosecution Service recently published a public policy statement, which I am sure my hon. Friend has read, and the Home Office will shortly publish a human trafficking strategy that will deal very much with the points that he has made.

[Miss Anne McIntosh (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

2. What plans he has to review the prosecution of rape cases by the Crown Prosecution Service.

[The Solicitor-General]

We have no such plans at the moment, but I assure my hon. Friend that the CPS and I take the prosecution of rape very seriously indeed, and that it is constantly under review.

[Miss McIntosh]

Does the Solicitor-General have any idea about the level of prosecution of rape cases in Scotland compared with that in England? Will he undertake to remove all barriers to prosecution? In particular, will he facilitate the reporting of rape cases, which will speed up the prosecution rate in due course?

[The Solicitor-General]

I am sure that what is similar in Scotland and in this jurisdiction is not only that rape is taken extremely seriously by the prosecuting authorities and the police, but that prosecution requires evidence. It is essential that victims of rape and sexual assault are enabled to give their evidence and to withstand the hideous stress that necessarily follows from being a witness in a rape or sexual assault case. I can assure my hon. Friend that the Director of Public Prosecutions has personally overseen the drive to improve the approach of the CPS to rape prosecutions.