Prosecutions for Violence against Women and Girls: West Midlands

Lucy Rigby Excerpts

Wednesday 4th June 2025 Westminster Hall

[The Solicitor General (Lucy Rigby)]

It is a privilege to serve under your chairship, Ms Jardine. I start by commending my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton West (Warinder Juss) for securing this important debate, and indeed for contextualising its seriousness in our minds with his informative and very insightful opening remarks. He highlighted the gravity of violence against women and girls. I also extend my thanks to those who have contributed to this debate.

This Government were elected with a landmark mission to halve violence against women and girls in a decade, and we have been explicit in our prioritisation of tackling this deeply harmful form of offending. We have heard clearly in this debate about the wider issues in the criminal justice system, including the record court backlog and counsel shortages that we inherited from the previous Government. To effectively reduce violence against women and girls, it is important to apply a regional lens that takes into account the nuances specific to different areas across our country, as we are doing today. I am particularly aware of the challenges that my hon. Friend raises when it comes to the west midlands, for reasons I will go into.

As my hon. Friend said, and as other hon. Members have made clear, the Crown Prosecution Service plays a vital role in helping to deliver this Government’s VAWG mission, through the prosecution of offenders and by securing justice for victims. As Solicitor General, it is my role to guard the CPS’s prosecutorial independence, so that it is wholly free to prosecute offences independently of any interference. It is also my duty to help to ensure that the CPS is delivering on our agenda to halve violence against women and girls in a decade.

I will talk briefly about the specific actions that the CPS is taking in the west midlands, before I go on to cover, again relatively briefly, Government action on VAWG more broadly. The CPS has invested extensively in improving its response to VAWG through a number of initiatives, the impact of which is already visible in the west midlands. I recently met with Siobhan Blake, who is the chief Crown prosecutor and head of CPS West Midlands, as well as CPS national lead on rape and serious sexual offences, to discuss exactly that. I will see her again on Friday this week.

Last year, CPS West Midlands rolled out the joint national action plan and complementary national operating models with policing to improve outcomes for victims of rape. The impact of that is visible in the west midlands, where there has been an increase in the volume of adult rape-flagged cases resulting in a charge. In 2022-23, there were 168 charges for adult rape-flagged cases in the west midlands, and in 2023-24, there were 204 charges. In the rolling year to date, we are again seeing increases.

Although we are pleased to see more cases in the system, this clearly has a knock-on effect on caseloads, which have grown significantly in recent years, despite the CPS increasing resourcing in its RASSO units by around 100 prosecutors over the past five years. I am personally aware of the pressure that this can place on staff, and I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton West will be aware of that, too. The CPS national operating model has provided the framework to respond to this workload issue, and includes a wellbeing offer for all RASSO staff to ensure that they get the support they need.

I have talked about rape, but I turn now to domestic abuse. The CPS launched the joint justice plan, which similarly focuses on improving working relationships between police and Crown prosecutors. Just weeks ago, West Midlands police and the local CPS met to continue discussing this shared commitment to better joint working, and again the impact on local performance is already visible. In the west midlands, the plan has led to a 7% increase in the volume of domestic abuse-flagged prosecutions, and from quarter 2 to quarter 3 2024-25, there was a 12% increase in convictions.

Timeliness is a key priority under the joint justice plan, as we recognise the importance of domestic abuse victims and their families being able to get their lives back on track, without a trial and its associated pressures, as quickly as possible. The CPS continues to look for innovative ways to improve timeliness. A pilot is now under way across three CPS areas to improve the timeliness of investigations and the efficiency of charging decisions in domestic abuse cases. The impact of that is being monitored closely.

I want to explicitly acknowledge honour-based abuse. The CPS held a multi-agency conference in Birmingham—the very first of its kind—that I attended alongside the Minister for safeguarding, my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham Yardley (Jess Phillips). We engaged directly with local and national groups to set clear directions for combating these extremely harmful practices. At the conference, I shared my experience of overturning an unduly lenient sentence of a perpetrator in the east midlands—the first person in the country to be convicted of conspiracy to commit female genital mutilation. Having reviewed the facts of the case, I referred it to the Court of Appeal, which then increased the offender’s sentence to a total of seven years.

The CPS’s ongoing work across different aspects of violence against women and girls will be unified through its forthcoming VAWG strategy, which is to be launched internally. Work has already begun to deliver that activity from 2025 through to 2030. Our cross-Government VAWG strategy will set out the blueprint for halving VAWG, encompassing prevention, early intervention, responding to offences and supporting victims.

Prevention and education are fundamental to this approach, and we will tackle those crimes at their root, including by supporting our education system to teach children about respectful and healthy relationships and consent. I am especially dedicated to that as a member of the Government’s Young Futures board, chaired by the Department for Education, where I have raised the growing prevalence of child perpetrators in sexual offences. Our cross-Government strategy will unify work to address offending that disproportionately impacts women and girls, together with the existing changes that the Government are driving to strengthen the law and the criminal justice system to improve the prosecution of these crimes.

In the limited time I have left, I want to focus specifically on victims and the work being led across Government by some of my esteemed colleagues, such as the Minister for safeguarding and the Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice—both are Members for the west midlands.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton West rightly pointed out, earlier this year, West Midlands police became one of five forces to pilot Raneem’s law—a new Government-led initiative established in memory of Raneem Oudeh and her mother, who were murdered by Raneem’s ex-husband. It embeds domestic abuse specialists within 999 control rooms, who will be on hand to provide expert advice, specialist support and to identify missed opportunities to properly safeguard victims.

Last year, pilots of new domestic abuse protection orders began in three police forces, enabling them to provide longer-term protection for victims. There have since been multiple convictions for breaches of those orders, with some perpetrators already behind bars. We are also taking action on stalking by extending the reach of stalking protection orders so that they can be imposed by the courts upon conviction as well as acquittal. That will be backed by other measures, including statutory guidance to empower the police to release the identities of online stalkers, and conducting a wider review of stalking legislation to ensure that it is fit for purpose. Those are just some of the actions being taken by the Government to help protect women and girls from violence and abuse, and to deliver on our commitment to halve violence against women and girls in a decade.

I should say, in closing, that it is very important to be frank, as all contributors to this debate have been, about the challenges facing the criminal justice system. Court backlogs across the country, after a lack of action by the previous Government, mean that victims are waiting far too long to see justice, which is leading to rising levels of attrition when it comes to victims, as has been adequately covered.

We must strain every sinew to improve victim support. It is important that we respect victims’ wishes, and we must also ensure that, where they feel able to, victims remain engaged in the criminal justice process. Ultimately, our success will be measured by more victims coming forward and a sustained reduction in VAWG offending. To achieve that, we need more reporting, more cases being seen through to trial, better support for victims and improved public confidence in the criminal justice system as a whole.

Question put and agreed to.