End-to-end Rape Review

Edward Leigh Excerpts

Monday 21st June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Robert Buckland]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman and, again, I pay tribute to the work that he has done on victims’ issues. Even though he has other responsibilities, I know that he will want to engage in the ongoing victims’ law consultation. I readily acknowledge some of the pressures and financial issues that have led to some services not being there, but some services were not even there in the first place. The number of ISVAs in the country is too low and that has historically been the case. I want to see not a return to a previous number but a new departure in the scale of support for victims. He will note the funding that I announced this year, which I want to follow up: I will continue to make the point and make the case that we need a sustained improvement in services to see long-term results. The hon. Gentleman’s voice is being heard.

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

None of what has been said so far is going to get us very far. It is absolutely intimidating for a woman—an alleged victim of rape—to have to go through a traditional court procedure. Can we not think, in really radical terms, of replacing this confrontational system with something more like the family courts? In the context of alleged rape, it is quite right that the victim has anonymity, but if the perpetrator had anonymity as well—if the case was not going forward in a blaze of local or national publicity—we might actually get closer to the truth.

[Robert Buckland]

My right hon. Friend posits a very interesting point about the merits of perhaps a more inquisitorial or consensual system than the adversarial system, but I remind him—of course, he was a practitioner as well—that allegations of a criminal nature have to meet a high standard of proof, and the burden of proof is on the prosecution in these cases. There is no getting away from that, which is why, progressively over the years, we have done everything we can to improve and to allow the best evidence to come forward from complainants through the use of special measures, remote technology and, indeed, the TV link, which has been around for 30 years. I want to go further with regard to that and make sure that evidence can be dealt with as early as possible. I will no doubt have further discussions about this issue with him, but at this stage I believe that we can seek improvement through the existing system while, as I say, dealing with some of the unfortunate consequences to which he rightly alludes.