Caroline Dinenage
Main Page: Caroline Dinenage (Conservative - Gosport)Department Debates - View all Caroline Dinenage's debates with the Ministry of Justice
Rape: Criminal Prosecutions
Caroline Dinenage Excerpts(2 years, 5 months ago)
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Victoria Atkins
I thank the right hon. Lady for raising those historical cases. They are in the system and the injection of investment—£477 million in the overall Crown court system—will help with those particular cases. One of the reasons we selected the three pilots as we did—I should say that the Lord Chief Justice very much worked on this—is that we looked at the backlog of sexual violence cases within courts. For those courts with a lot of sexual violence cases—through no fault of anyone; we are not alleging that there is any fault within the system—and with these backlogs, we hope that this enhanced specialist support will give us some evidence as to whether these measures work, with a view to going further if need be.
Dame Caroline Dinenage (Gosport) (Con)
I have absolutely no doubt of my hon. Friend’s commitment and dedication to this cause, and I am grateful to her for that. A lot of the figures she quotes are encouraging, but the fact is—she says it herself—that we have a long way to go. As she said, key to this is confidence in the system. Victims need confidence to come forward in the first place and then confidence to stay the course through the process, which can be fairly punitive, as she would be the first to admit. What more can she do to drive that confidence among victims?
Victoria Atkins
There are many ways in which we can support victims. One is through specialist support such as ISVAs and the victims charities that do such a vital job of working with women and victims of sexual violence. Another thing that we are in the process of setting up is a 24/7 support line for victims of sexual violence, and I am extremely grateful to Rape Crisis for its help on this. We are testing it carefully over the next couple of months to ensure that we understand when peaks and flows will necessitate proper staffing, but we are absolutely committed to providing those services so that victims can get the help they need when they need it.