Caroline Flint
Main Page: Caroline Flint (Labour - Don Valley)Department Debates - View all Caroline Flint's debates with the Ministry of Justice
(13 years, 10 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Crispin Blunt)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the matter of defendant anonymity.
I welcome the opportunity to speak on this subject for a second time. On this occasion, I am a little less inhibited by time pressure, but I am conscious of the number of people seeking to catch your eye, Mr Deputy Speaker, so I will not delay the House too much. Since I last addressed the House, in the 7 June Adjournment debate, the Government have reviewed the arguments more fully and our thinking has advanced, and I look forward to the opportunity to explain where matters now stand. I also look forward to dispelling some common myths and misconceptions about our policy.
I emphasise again that the question of anonymity for rape defendants is wholly consistent with our fundamental commitment to supporting victims of crime. Violence against women, girls and vulnerable people is totally unacceptable, whatever the context or circumstances. We know that victims of sexual violence often find it very difficult to report a rape to the police, and of course for those who have felt able to come forward, going through the criminal justice process can be an incredibly difficult and painful experience. Our focus is on the rights and welfare of the victim, and we are committed to ensuring that every victim of rape has access to appropriate support. In particular, we are looking at putting funding for rape crisis services on a more sustainable basis and at establishing new rape crisis centres where there are gaps in provision.
The Government Equalities Office is currently carrying out a consultation on a strategic action plan, including Government action on working with a more sustainable violence-against-women voluntary sector, based on cash, commissioning and capacity building. It closes on 23 July. The action plan suggests a capacity-building project to be carried out in partnership with the relevant umbrella bodies, to support their ability to represent Members and work together to influence the Government. The Home Secretary will be chairing a meeting of Ministers across government later this month to discuss how we tackle violence against women more widely.
We will not conflate myths and stereotypes about false allegations with our detailed work on the proposals for defendant anonymity. This debate is not about doubting victims’ reports or repeating uninformed arguments about false allegations. Baroness Stern has stated in her independent and impressive review that this is an area on which we need further research, and the Government are looking into this. I want to make it clear that Baroness Stern’s review of the evidence found that only a very few rape allegations are false:
“It is not possible to establish an exact figure and the research that is available gives a wide range of suggested percentages. Some research suggests that a figure of eight to ten per cent of reported rapes could well be false reports. However, those we spoke to in the system felt that there were very few.”
Mr Blunt
I will give way to the right hon. Lady, but I would like to get through the bulk of my remarks, and make clear the Government’s position and the explanation for it. I will then be happy to take further interventions. At this stage, however, I am happy to give way to her.
Caroline Flint
I am pleased that the hon. Gentleman has just put it on the record that, based on the available evidence, there is little evidence of a high rate of false allegations. In that context, will he speak to his right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, who did not help the debate when he said, having been questioned about falsely accused rape defendants:
“We know that a lot of people are falsely accused”?—[Official Report, 9 June 2010; Vol. 511, c. 328.]
Mr Blunt
I think that the right hon. Lady will appreciate what I am about to put on the record regarding the detail of evidence in this area. I am sure that the House will be pleased to hear that the Government will make a full response to Baroness Stern’s recommendations in due course. I want to make it clear that the issue of false allegations is not one of the reasons for considering changes to our policy on rape defendants. It would be were there strong evidence that a significantly greater number of false allegations are associated with rape than with other offences, but the Government do not believe that to be the case.
On that question, I remind the House again, as I did in the earlier Adjournment debate, that there are in fact two anonymity commitments in our coalition agreement. One relates to rape, the other—referring to no particular offence—to teachers. The House will wish to note that there is a specific reference in our coalition agreement to protecting teachers from false allegations, but no such linkage over rape complainants. It is therefore important that we distinguish between these two commitments. The criminal justice Departments will therefore need to carry out further work in conjunction with the Department for Education before we are in a position to provide a clear statement of how we intend to proceed on the teacher aspect.
The remainder of my remarks, therefore, are addressed to the issue that has caused the most controversy and interest in the House—the issue around rape defendants. However, we will listen carefully to any contributions today on teacher anonymity, which will help to inform our discussions with other Departments.
We are committed to supporting victims and improving the investigation and prosecution of rape.
Maria Eagle
No, I want to make some progress.
The coalition agreement set out the matter clearly. The proposal will not help to bring rapists to justice, and the apparently clear and succinct policy was in neither of the coalition parties’ manifestos. Therefore, it went from not even being important enough to mention when seeking votes from the public and a mandate from the electorate, to being such a major priority for the Government that it merited a specific mention in the coalition programme for government. Why was that? Nobody has told us. I am extremely grateful that we have this debate, which enables us to explore the matter in more detail. Where did the policy come from? Who suggested it? Who thought it was a good, or even workable, idea? Who, if anyone, was consulted about it? How did it go from being unmentioned at the election, by either the Conservative party or the Liberal Democrats, to being a top priority over the weekend of the coalition negotiations?
The Minister tried to explain the proposal in a little more detail, but I fear that he has only added to the enormous confusion. Many Opposition Members have raised the matter with a variety of Ministers ever since the coalition programme for government was published. The acting leader of the Labour party, my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman), raised it at the first Prime Minister’s Question Time of this Parliament. To say that the Government have responded with confusion and inconsistency is an understatement. It is not solely that Ministers from different parties say different things, but that the inconsistency and confusion, hardly helped by the Minister’s statement today, are much more widespread. To an interested observed such as me, it looks like the Government do not have a clue what their policy is, because they have not taken any steps to work it out yet.
Caroline Flint
Much has been made of the report by the former Home Affairs Committee, and of the current Prime Minister being present when it took evidence. On 23 April 2003, however, when it took evidence on false allegations, he was not present. People must therefore be careful about laying claim to such knowledge and information.
Maria Eagle
I was not aware of that, but my right hon. Friend has put a lot of effort into dealing with the issue, and has raised it most consistently and effectively from the beginning of this Parliament.
It is important to clarify precisely what the Government’s policy is. According to the Minister’s statement today, the policy is to extend anonymity to defendants in rape cases up to charge. However, that has not been entirely evident from what Ministers have said. We have had answers from the Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister, the Home Secretary, the Justice Secretary, the Leader of the House, the Attorney-General, the Minister for Equalities and the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, the hon. Member for Reigate, which have all been different in substance and tone. When pressed, the Prime Minister said that he was in favour of extending anonymity only to charge. The Deputy Prime Minister, when pressed, retreated into immediate and wholesale abandonment of the policy, suggesting that the Government had merely “proposed the idea”, as if he were running an academic seminar rather than a legislative programme. He added:
“If our idea does not withstand sincere scrutiny, we will of course be prepared to change it.”—[Official Report, 10 June 2010; Vol. 511, c. 50.]
I hope that that, at least, still holds.
The Under-Secretary of State, until today, has made it clear that he wants anonymity up to conviction. Last month he said that
“it could go wider. There are reasons why it might also be applied to other offences.”—[Official Report, 7 June 2010; Vol. 511, c. 155.]
The Minister for Equalities has also supported anonymity up to conviction, blogging that
“a perpetrator would only be named if convicted.”
That seems to have changed today.
Meanwhile, the Justice Secretary, who appeared to be fed up with being asked the same question more than once, said in exasperation that it was all the Liberal Democrats’ fault anyway because it was their policy. The deputy leader of the Liberal Democrats had better get used to being blamed for everything by his so-called partners in Government. The Justice Secretary went on to say that it was not going to happen quickly, although that is not what we have been told by his Under-Secretary of State in the House today.
The Justice Secretary said that he favoured a free vote, or a “fairly free vote”, as he put it. I must remember to ask the Opposition Chief Whip exactly what a fairly free vote is—or perhaps I should ask the Government Chief Whip.
Compounding an already complicated and confusing picture, a number of Ministers, including the Under-Secretary of State today, have said that they will “bring forward options” or are “attracted by the arguments”. They have said, “We will debate it”, or have called for evidence. Perhaps I am missing something about the new politics that we are told we now have, but I had always thought that Governments did those things before deciding on policy, not afterwards. This Government appear to be indulging in prejudice-based rather than evidence-based policy-making.
Caroline Flint (Don Valley) (Lab)
It is a delight to follow the hon. Member for Broxtowe (Anna Soubry). I feel that it might not be too long before she is elevated to the Front Bench. In addressing the debate, she demonstrated what she brings from her experience, as well as her thoughtfulness.
I congratulate the hon. Members for Gillingham and Rainham (Rehman Chishti) and for Cannock Chase (Mr Burley) on making their maiden speeches. They chose an interesting debate in which to do so. May I suggest that the debate could, as they start their apprenticeships in the House, be seen as a master class in how not to develop Government policy? I thought that my hon. Friend the Member for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle) forensically took apart the Minister’s opening statement. As the debate is entitled “Defendant Anonymity”, I had hoped that the opening statement would allow discussions to go in a different direction. I thought that the Minister might say, “We’ve thought about this and we may have been wrong to single out rape defendants, so today gives us scope to talk about this on a wider basis.” Unfortunately, however, the Minister has reaffirmed the determination to focus on anonymity for defendants in rape trials, and that is regrettable.
We have had many debates in the House since the general election, including heated and passionate debates on how to cut the deficit, on electoral reform and on the number of MPs we should have, and only this week we have had the statement about which schools will go ahead in the Building Schools for the Future programme—or not, as the case may be. However, few of those issues have provoked the reaction that greeted the proposal to extend anonymity to defendants in rape cases. Little did right hon. Members who are now in government know, all those weeks ago when they were holed up in meetings in the Cabinet Office thrashing out the details of the coalition agreement, the maelstrom that nine words on page 24 would cause. I am afraid that the policy of singling out rape has little evidence to justify it, and that has been confirmed by hon. Members on both sides of the House. The policy, in isolation, really does not help the justice system or victims, and Ministers have been saying different things about it from one day to the next.
When the law on giving anonymity to defendants in rape cases last applied, it created a legal quagmire. It was a mess, where those accused of inciting rape were given anonymity but not those who conspired to it. The names of defendants charged with aiding and abetting rape were known, but not the names of those charged with burglary with intent to commit rape. The public knew the names of those who had planned to rape but failed, but did not know the names of those who had succeeded. It is an incredibly complicated area, not only for rape but for other offences, should we go down that route—I have sympathy with the suggestions made by the hon. Member for Broxtowe on expanding that aspect. Let us be in no doubt, however: any movement on the issue, in any direction, will create a lot of controversy. We must be careful about unforeseen consequences.
No one seems able to explain why we need to give rape suspects anonymity in the first place. As has been said, singling out rape defendants sends a devastating message to the victims of rape—that, uniquely, among all other complainants, they are not to be believed, even when Home Office research shows that false allegation rates are no higher for rape than for any other crime.
The proposal touches on what is meant by false allegation. Philip Rumney, of Sheffield Hallam university, provides the best definition I have come across. He says that
“a false allegation can be defined as the description of an event that the complainant knows never actually occurred”
suggesting
“a conscious or malicious motive on the part of the complainant.”
Those two elements—the fact that the complainant knows that what she or he is alleging never actually happened and the malicious motive—distinguish genuine false allegations from other cases when the complaint is withdrawn rather than retracted, when there is insufficient evidence, or when as we know, sadly, that owing to mental health problems the complainant genuinely believes that they have been attacked.
We have not even talked about other vulnerable victims, who often face cynicism about their complaint. Many people with learning disabilities have not been believed. Elderly people suffering from Alzheimer’s or dementia may find it hard to convey what has happened to them and—I am sorry to say—may be dismissed when they come forward or talk to family and friends about what they have experienced.
There is already evidence that too many cases are wrongly classified as false allegation. That is a problem and we need research to make sure that recording is clear, not only for rape but for other crimes too. I think that the police and prosecutors have made huge progress in that area, particularly when they have specialist training, so I do not want the House to misinterpret what I am saying. However, Home Office research in 2005 found that the police displayed
“a tendency to conflate false allegations with retractions and withdrawals,”
thereby feeding a damaging culture of scepticism, which deters victims from coming forward to seek justice. The proposal is likely only to harden such attitudes, when we should be challenging them.
The only other possible justification for the proposal is that the damage associated with being accused of rape is of a completely different order to every other crime. Members have cited other crimes when a person who was falsely accused felt justly aggrieved and distressed, and the result was suicide or other action that caused distress to their family. It is not credible to suggest that being accused of rape is uniquely devastating, in a way that being accused of domestic violence, murder, sexually abusing children, or even defrauding a popular charity are not.
We have witnessed the rather bizarre spectacle of Ministers coming to the House, or writing to Members, asking them to provide evidence to support the Government’s policies. I know that times are hard and Departments are facing cuts of up to 40%, but if the Government are not able to find evidence to support their own policies, it is not our job to do so. Indeed, a month ago the Minister wrote to me requesting evidence and asked me to provide it within a week. I am pleased to tell the House that I was able to meet his deadline, but I am less pleased to have to inform the House that I have yet to receive a reply. Perhaps I should have insisted on a deadline for comments from the Minister.
In response to my Adjournment debate, the Minister said that the Government would proceed on the evidence, and no one doubts the need for more and better research. Baroness Stern made that point very eloquently in her review earlier this year; but she said that the evidence needed to be looked at before the policy is decided. The coalition has committed itself to granting anonymity to rape defendants before even looking at the evidence. That suggests to me that the Government are proceeding not on the evidence, but on the basis of a misconception.
Mr Blunt
If I have not formally thanked the right hon. Lady for the letter, let me put that on the record now. I assure her that I was not anticipating evidence from her in support of the Government’s position; it was really a challenge for her to come forward with evidence, on the basis of the issues that I raised in the Adjournment debate and have repeated today. If there is evidence that would cause us to rethink, let us have it. We are looking for it and we will publish our analysis by 28 July.
Caroline Flint
I certainly was not seeking to provide evidence to support the Government’s position. I was providing evidence to explain why the Government’s position was wrong. What I have failed to receive is evidence from the Government as to why they are pursuing this singular policy of anonymity for rape defendants.
In one of Baroness Stern’s 23 recommendations—I hope that the Government will give the other 22 equal time and priority—she asks that there should be research, and
“that the Ministry of Justice commissions and publishes an independent research report to study the frequency of false allegations of rape compared with other offences, and the nature of such allegations.”
She was saying that the matter should be looked at in the round.
As I said earlier, I am sad today that the opportunity was not taken by the Government to knock this coalition proposal on the head and move us into an area where we could find some consensus and agreement across all parts of the House.
Simon Hughes
In that context, if the evidence that Baroness Stern and others have asked for is forthcoming, in the form of further research, would the right hon. Lady be prepared to look at an idea that goes more broadly than rape? Is she willing to accept, at least in principle, that there may be a case for anonymity in other categories, not single-offence categories?
Caroline Flint
I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. I actually made that point in my contribution to the Adjournment debate a few weeks ago, and I am open to that. What I am not prepared to accept is moving in that direction until the coalition Government have clearly stated that it was wrong to focus on rape, and that they have learned from the contributions and the pressure and the lobbying from Members in all parts of the House to change that viewpoint. That is because I think that it is really important to send a message to the country that when someone gets something wrong, they should say that they have got it wrong. A lot of organisations, which are listening to this debate, are very concerned about the message that was sent from that coalition agreement about the attitudes to victims when reporting rape, and the assumption that they, more than for any other crime, might be guilty of making false allegations.
An issue has been raised in this debate about equality between defendants and complainants. In a report in The People on 27 June, it was stated that the Government planned to extend anonymity to defendants in all cases where the victim is not named, under the cover of ensuring “equality before the law.” Equality before the law does not and cannot mean identical treatment for defendant and complainant. There is a vast array of ways in which the criminal justice system already, and rightly, treats defendants and complainants differently. Both should be treated fairly, but that does not mean identically; if that were the case, presumably we would no longer afford the defendant the advantage of the burden of proof, and complainants would have to be held on bail or in custody before their case came to court. The suggestion betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of why victims of rape are given anonymity in the first place, and that has been expressed very eloquently by colleagues in today’s debate.
It is not credible to suggest either, as the Lord Chancellor has done, that protecting the identity of the defendant protects the identity of the complainant. Just because most attackers are known to the victim does not mean that the victim would be immediately identifiable from the attacker’s name being known. It could be a boss at work; it could be someone they meet on the bus every day; it could be someone they know in the nightclub, or a friend of a friend.
It is in the public interest that the victims of rape come forward and report their crimes, so that rapists do not escape prosecution and are prevented from attacking other victims. There is no equivalent public interest in allowing defendants to remain anonymous. That does not mean that I do not understand the damage that false allegations can cause. We have already heard during today’s debate about a case where someone was tried for making a false allegation and—I think that I heard correctly—got two years in prison. That is a serious sentence for a serious crime.
As I have said, there may well be a case for looking at whether all defendants—not just those in rape cases, or even in cases that involve sexual offences—should be afforded anonymity until they are charged, but I am afraid that that was not the coalition’s proposal. I am still not clear whether the Government will pursue that proposal. Certainly, one thing is clear: if we wanted to consider that wider debate, the way to start it was not to focus on rape at the outset. That has been completely unproductive. The only way that we could start such a debate is for the Government to make a clear statement—today offered the ideal opportunity to do so—accepting that they were wrong to single out rape defendants and acknowledging the damage that that has done.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Garston and Halewood said earlier, there have been very real improvements in the way that victims of rape can expect to be treated in the criminal justice system, but there is some way to go. As Dave Whatton, the chief constable of Cheshire constabulary and the senior police officers’ lead on this matter said at the all-party meeting yesterday, the single biggest challenge that the police face is still the lack of confidence among victims, which stops them reporting their attack and prevents rapists from being brought to justice.
The Government must surely now realise that their proposals would make women less likely to come forward and, I am afraid, embed a dangerous culture of scepticism, when so much has been done to improve trust between the victims of rape and the criminal justice system. We need an informed debate. There should be at least a Green Paper, so that we can discuss the issue in detail, and I hope that the Minister will deal with that in summing up.
Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op)
At the nub of this debate is the question of whether the police should be allowed the discretion to release the identity of people who they believe are serial rapists, with a view to getting more victims and more witnesses to come forward and provide more evidence to facilitate prosecution. That point was touched on in an excellent speech by the hon. Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston), who obviously has a great deal of experience in this area. We have heard good debating points, but we really need to get to the nub of the issue, because I fear that if the anonymity proposal for rape defendants goes through, we will end up tying the hands of the police.
We are not talking about allowing all the names of all the people ever accused of rape to go out to the media before charge. Rather, we are talking about whether in certain instances, where people are known to be serial offenders but have not been successfully prosecuted, the police should be allowed—given the statistical background we have discussed—to facilitate the process of getting more people to come forward. I believe that if the anonymity proposal is pushed through, we will simply end up with more rape—particularly by serial rapists—less reporting and fewer convictions.
In my area of Swansea West, as elsewhere, there is serious and widespread concern about this issue. I know that some Members have said that it is not political, but I have encountered people saying, “Look, I voted Liberal Democrat, and I did not vote for hiding the identity of prospective rapists and increasing the number of rape victims. I did not vote for that.” This policy emerged, of course, from a Liberal Democrat conference resolution in 2006. To be fair to the Conservatives, in 1988 the veil was pulled and hidden identity was thrown away under pressure from the police, who said that anonymity was preventing women from reporting. That remains the case, so I hope that the Conservatives will go back to their previous position. I realise that some sort of deal has been done on VAT and everything else, but let us not allow it to get in the way of the rights of women and their protection. Disclosure generates confidence—confidence to stand up and be counted against serial offenders.
Most crime generally is serial crime. We all know that the vast majority of crime is perpetrated by just a few people—and that is certainly the case with rape. Like other Members who have spoken, I have had the great pleasure of witnessing a presentation by the chief constable of Cheshire, Dave Whatton, who showed evidentially the relationship between disclosure, witnesses coming forward and subsequent convictions. The reality is that a person comes up for a rape trial, often on their own, but with disclosure, others might come forward. As I mentioned in an earlier intervention, in some cases, evidence from the first victim might not be sufficient for conviction, but it might be with the collaborative evidence of others. Without that additional evidence, the case is likely to fall and more serial rape is likely to be the result.
Caroline Flint
My hon. Friend makes an important point about the opportunity for the press to publish information about defendants, which could strengthen the case if more women come forward. Their cases might not get on the charge sheet, but even if it is the first time that they have come forward, it would help to give them closure, in that they would know who their attacker was and their additional evidence would hopefully contribute to a successful conviction and their attacker going to jail.
Geraint Davies
That is absolutely right. We talked earlier about the problem of putting things in boxes and isolated cases. Some women go through thinking that they have contributed to the incident or even that it is somehow their fault, but if they knew that the person had a consistent pattern of behaviour in raping women, they would no longer think like that. Sometimes a woman—or a man—does not want to stand in front of a court; a difficult case might fail completely because no one else comes forward and the evidence is insufficient. In those circumstances, the victim could end up being branded as a woman—sometimes a man—who makes false accusations. They have told the truth, but on the balance of evidence available from only one witness, the accused is found not guilty, and the woman then becomes “a liar”. What signal does that send when we want to encourage more witnesses to come forward?
I appreciate that the point was made seriously, but I do not agree with my right hon. Friend the Chairman of the Home Affairs Select Committee—the point about Google raised by the hon. Member for South Swindon (Mr Buckland) was well made—that there is an equivalence between the psychological and reputational difficulties of the accused, although they certainly exist, and a lot more women being raped. There is no qualitative equivalence between them. Quantitatively, the number of malicious, false allegations is minute, whereas the number of unreported—certainly unconvicted—rapes is massive. On the balance of the argument, qualitatively and quantitatively, the case for anonymity is not made.
Michael Ellis
Nothing I say is designed to make it more difficult for women to make a complaint of rape. I accept and understand from my professional knowledge that it is an extremely difficult thing for women and men to do. However, my example showed how that offence is treated differently by the law. When Opposition Members ask why I say that such cases are different from all others, I fear that their argument is weakened by the provisions in their 1999 Act.
We are not talking about false allegations of rape as such, but it is right to bear it in mind that we have a system that we must cherish: a person is innocent until proven guilty. I accept that there must be no barrier to people making a complaint, because it is already extremely difficult for them to do so; but Her Majesty’s Government are not trying to do that in this proposal. Rape is uniquely stigmatising, so much so that if one goes to prison, as I have done—obviously to see clients—one can see what happens there. Prisoners charged with rape—never mind convicted—are treated differently from other prisoners. The sad reality is that a person charged or convicted of murder or a serious offence of violence can actually be respected in the prisoner context, but those accused of rape have to be segregated. There is a unique stigma.
Rape is uniquely stigmatising and it is already treated differently by the law. I give an example, from my legal knowledge. A 17-year-old military recruit and a younger girl, aged 16, made contact via the internet. He travelled to meet her and they had sexual relations. He drove her home, by which time her father was out looking for her; indeed, she saw him in the car. At her doorstep, the mother asked, “What has he made you do?” The girl had some psychological problems and it was clear from computer conversations with friends that she was very frightened, but it was also apparent that the case was prosecuted wholly partially, with officers repeatedly reassuring her at interview that she had done the right thing. Of course, they wanted to do the right thing for her, but one has to ask whether it was doing the right thing by a complainant to reassure her repeatedly and not put her, or him, to the test on the quality of their evidence. It will be explored in court proceedings, which puts the complainant under even more pressure.
In the case I am describing, the young man was remanded, released on bail and remanded again. The case came before a Crown Court judge and when counsel—not me—asked the first question, “He didn’t rape you, did he?”, the answer was “No”, and the case was dismissed. I regret to inform Members that such cases happen on a regular basis.
Caroline Flint
The hon. Gentleman suggests that such cases happen on a regular basis, but there is no evidence for that—it is anecdotal. One of the things Baroness Stern was asking for was better evidence of false allegation in all crimes, including rape. We need to get the data and evidence right, because such phrases do not help the debate at all.
Michael Ellis
In the absence of statistics, one can only go by one’s anecdotal experience, and it is reasonable for barristers who have worked in the Crown Court daily for many years to draw on that experience. I differ from what the hon. Member for Llanelli (Nia Griffith) said about the number of cases prosecuted as perversions of the course of justice or malicious reporting of rape. That number will be very much lower than the average. That is because it is very difficult to prove a negative, and one would normally have to ascertain that the complaint was made in wholly and probably dishonest circumstances—for example, it might later transpire that the complainant and the victim were in two different locations. But it is illogical for the hon. Lady to draw the conclusion that because there are X prosecutions for perverting the course of justice, there are not that many false accusations. The two are totally different.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Jonathan Djanogly)
I agree with the shadow Minister that we have had a good, informed debate, with tremendous contributions from many informed people. It was excellent to hear so many good contributions from new Members on both sides of the House. Generally, the debate has been non-partisan, which, given the subject matter, is healthy.
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Gillingham and Rainham (Rehman Chishti) on an excellent and thoughtful maiden speech, which let us in on the lasting effect of his having had a single-sex education. My hon. Friend the Member for Cannock Chase (Mr Burley) made an eloquent maiden speech, and his proposals to beat the fear of crime through a community-led approach were well put. We will forgive him the Simply Red concert last weekend.
The hon. Member for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle) made a strong opening speech, but it was sometimes based on proposals that are simply not the Government’s position. She said that we were not saying what the Government’s position is. In response to her, and to the hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Meg Munn) who made the same point, I say that the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for Reigate (Mr Blunt), made our position clear in his opening remarks. Let me repeat what he said: we intend to strengthen and formalise the current arrangements for anonymity up to the point of charge in rape cases. We will publish an independent report of existing research on rape before the summer recess, and following the request of the hon. Member for Garston and Halewood, we will consider whether new research is required to supplement it. Obviously, we will make a further announcement in the autumn.
The right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz) questioned the independence of the report commissioned. I assure him that the report will be peer-reviewed by two independent, external experts, that their comments will be addressed by the report authors, and that the process will be rigorous.
To be fair, as the hon. Member for Garston and Halewood noted, we set aside a whole day in Government time for this debate. I trust that that leaves the House under no illusions from the outset about the importance with which we regard this issue, our desire to give direction on what is required, and how we will move the issue forward. Hon. Members, not least the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy) and my hon. Friend the Member for South Swindon (Mr Buckland), made many helpful general points on dealing with rape, which were slightly off the specific topic of the debate but none the less helpful.
Caroline Flint
I appreciate the time and I appreciate the hon. Gentleman giving way. Am I right in thinking that the Government intend to look at the issue of anonymity with regard to rape only? Clearly, most Members, in all parts of the House, did not want such exclusivity.