Jackie Doyle-Price
Main Page: Jackie Doyle-Price (Conservative - Thurrock)Department Debates - View all Jackie Doyle-Price's debates with the Ministry of Justice
Rape: Criminal Prosecutions
Jackie Doyle-Price Excerpts(2 years, 5 months ago)
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Victoria Atkins
A male Member of the House is shouting at me across the Dispatch Box while I am trying to explain. This is a deeply serious subject, and it must be—I would hope—a matter on which we can find measured and constructive ways of working together in order to improve justice for victims, because that, surely, is what we should all be focusing on.
Jackie Doyle-Price (Thurrock) (Con)
Support for victims of rape is essential to ensuring that more of these crimes are brought to prosecution, but rape victims often say that, having gone through the trauma of the assault, they are then dehumanised by being treated, effectively, as a piece of evidence when they report it, and then have to prepare themselves to be traumatised yet again when they appear in court. What discussions is my hon. Friend having with the Department of Health and Social Care to make good the NHS’s commitment to giving all victims of rape a lifetime care pathway, so that they can be confident enough to appear in court?
Victoria Atkins
I thank my hon. Friend for identifying not just the immediate impacts of sexually violent attacks but the lifelong impacts that they can have. The Department of Health and Social Care and NHS England are involved in all the discussions that the Deputy Prime Minister and I have on this. NHS England is particularly keen to roll out support to victims longer term as well as short term, and also to roll out the further provision of more independent sexual violence advisers, which we have committed to do by 2024-25, bringing the total to more than 1,000 ISVAs nationally. They will be critical as part of the recovery process. Having met many of them recently, I understand how valuable they can be for victims both in their recovery and in giving them the support they need to take these important criminal cases forward.