Rape and Sexual Violence

Matt Western Excerpts

Tuesday 8th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Victoria Atkins]

May I correct the hon. Lady on that point about repeat offenders? People are managing it and monitoring it, albeit not through the scorecard. She will know of the offender management systems in place and the ViSOR—violent and sex offender register—system. She will also know, because we discussed it at great length during the passage of the Domestic Abuse Act 2021, of our programme to revolutionise the way the current system, MAPPA—the multi-agency public protection arrangements—works into MAPPS—the multi-agency public protection system—which will be able to track the most dangerous offenders in the ways both she and I want. We are offering these metrics precisely so that there can be scrutiny of the stages at which things are going right, or indeed wrong. Having produced national scorecards, we will soon produce local scorecards so we can look locally to see where good practice is happening and where other areas need to follow suit.

On the criminal justice system, we have recruited, as I hope the House knows, more than 11,000 police officers as part of our commitment to recruit 20,000 officers, and more than 100 prosecutors in the Crown Prosecution Service have already undertaken induction training on rape and serious sexual offences. On the point raised about mobile phones and the data strip search, again, having listened to victims, charities that support survivors and the Domestic Abuse Commissioner and the Victims’ Commissioner, we have in the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill set out the legal framework for digital data downloads. We understand how that can be so terribly difficult for victims and their willingness, frankly, to go along with a case.

The issue of specialism has been raised. That is why we are supporting Operation Soteria, a joint police and CPS programme of work whereby they turn the investigation on its head, from looking at the victim to looking at the suspect. That is clearly the way forward and we have committed to expanding the initial work from five areas to, in the next tranche, 14. We will be rolling this out nationally, but we have to do it through the staged approach because one can imagine, I hope, the differences between a huge metropolitan force and a much smaller, more rural force in terms of economies of scale and ways of working. We are doing it in an iterative, careful way so that when we make change we make effective change that has meaningful and positive consequences for victims.

We are focusing even more on victim support, too. We are putting victims at the heart of the system so that they get the support they need to continue with such cases. We are providing an unprecedented £150 million to victims support services this year, an increase of over £100 million on the budget in 2010-11, and we have committed to increasing funding for all victims support services to £185 million by 2024-25, including increasing the number of independent sexual and domestic violence advisers, because we know that victims who have access to IDVAs and ISVAs are nearly 50% more likely to stay engaged with the criminal justice process.

We are also commissioning a new national helpline and online services for victims of rape and sexual violence, which will be available 24/7. This is a real step forward. We want victims to be able to get help when they need it. We have seen the huge successes of the national domestic abuse helpline and I want to replicate that for victims of sexual violence.

[Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)]

Does the Minister agree that many police forces no longer have RASSO—rape and serious sexual offences—units? Does she think they should have them?

[Victoria Atkins]

We have different agencies involved in the criminal justice system. Sometimes, there is an understandable wish in the Chamber for us to be able to control everything from the Dispatch Box, but we have a strong tradition of chief constables directing their personnel, training and so on. I have to say that the reaction of the police to Operation Soteria has been truly committed. They want to make the sort of changes we are already beginning to see with Op Soteria. I genuinely believe that, through Soteria, we will begin to see real change in policing. With the roll-out of that in the pilot areas, national learning is already being shared and that will roll through forces—even those not in the next tranche of 14.

I am conscious about giving Back Benchers time, so I will pick up just a couple more points. I hope that the House supports our decision to include violence against women and girls in the strategic policing requirement, which means that it must be prioritised as other serious crimes such as homicide, serious and organised crime and terrorism are prioritised. Of course, through the Domestic Abuse Act 2021 and previous measures, this place has strengthened the law on things such as the so-called rough sex defence and the new offence of non-fatal strangulation. Indeed, the police Bill, which is in the other place, will increase the time that sexual offenders serving sentences for offences of particular concern must spend in prison from half their custodial term to two thirds.

We have heard about the roll-out of section 28, which, in fairness, I think the Opposition welcome. That is one of the levers by which we will really make progress on the timing of cases. If we can persuade the CPS and judges to permit victims to give their pre-recorded evidence at a very early stage in a case after investigation, that will help with timeliness. There is hope and expectation that that will increase guilty pleas, but also it will help victims to give their best evidence in a timely fashion, and juries will, in due course, be able to consider it. We will roll that out as soon as is practicable.

My hon. Friend the Member for Newbury (Laura Farris) highlighted the issue of cases being knocked off the list, floaters and so on. Again, we expect that section 28 will be able to deal with some of listing issues that she rightly raised..

--- Later in debate ---

[Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)]

I rise to speak in favour of this motion, on International Women’s Day. I recently held a summit on this issue, and the public made it clear to me that the Conservative Government are failing women. The consequence of this failure is felt on a personal level by women and girls. It erodes their confidence to be alone in public, in the dark, and it instils a fear that I find it hard to imagine many men would be able to comprehend.

Last autumn, I conducted a survey in my constituency on rape and sexual violence. Several hundred people responded and I was shocked to learn that 69% of respondents carried their keys in their hands on their way home; that 45% sent their current location to a friend or loved one; and that 66% would call someone while walking along. Although small in scale, these acts are, unfortunately, increasingly necessary, due to a rise in violence against women and girls; this is not helped by the flattening of rape prosecution rates, high-profile murders such as that of Sarah Everard and the cuts that have decimated our public services.

On a local level, Warwickshire police abolished their specialist RASSO unit nine years ago, in 2013. On a national level, the number of staff at the Crown Prosecution Service fell by a third between 2010 and 2019. Successive Conservative Governments have presided over a series of cuts at both ends of the national-local spectrum, which has eroded this country’s ability to counter VAWG. With two out of five police forces lacking a RASSO unit—I referred to that in my point to the Minister—these cuts have made securing justice for gender-based violence and sexual assault, in effect, a postcode lottery.

The results of the cuts make for grim reading. As we have heard, a mere 1.3% of rape cases are prosecuted, despite the number of rapes reported to the police being at record highs. I am appalled to confirm that Warwickshire is reported as having the lowest rape conviction rate of any county in England and Wales, with only seven of just 15 cases pursued by Warwickshire police resulting in conviction. It is no surprise that we see a strong correlative link between cuts to local services and stark decreases in prosecution and conviction rates. It has led to what the Victims’ Commissioner, Dame Vera Baird QC, has described as the “effective decriminalisation of rape.” That is a shameful record by any standard.

With a policing culture now accustomed to the effective decriminalisation of rape, it is particularly grotesque to see the ways in which certain elements in police forces perceive themselves to be above the law. A year after the tragic murder of Sarah Everard at the hands of the Met police officer Wayne Couzens, we are reminded of it by the revelations at Charing Cross police station and others. Indeed, a Warwickshire police officer currently faces allegations of inappropriate contact with a domestic abuse victim.

This matter needs to be treated with the urgency it deserves. It is unfathomable that the Government are preparing to close down the Nightingale courts, including the one in my constituency, when the average time taken in the courts to deal with a crime rose by 15% in the three months up to September 2021, to 620 days. This matter needs to be addressed through the education of boys and young men, but I do not have the time to develop that theme now. The Minister may well justify the backlog because of the temporary closure of many courts during the covid-19 pandemic, but the Government’s savage cuts between 2010 and 2019, when half of all courts in England and Wales were closed, allowed for 27,000 fewer sitting days than there were in 2016. The blame lies clearly at the door of successive Conservative Governments.

Labour would extend the use of Nightingale courts beyond April 2022, to begin to reduce the court delays and guarantee 33,000 extra sitting days to get the case loads down. To spur this initiative on, we would appoint a specific Minister for rape and sexual violence survivors. If victims have a specific voice in Government, fighting for their interests and turbocharging the required reforms, they will hopefully begin to feel that the law and the state are on their side.

In a victims-led approach to reform, we would introduce a victims Bill to establish the victims code in law. We would increase sentences for rapists and stalkers and create specific new offences for street sexual harassment and sex for rent. Making legal aid available to victims and fast-tracking rape and serious sexual assault cases through the court system would bring about much-needed justice—and fast. These are the elements for which the public are calling and the points that were fed back to me at my recent summit.

Having promised to introduce a victims Bill in 2016, the Government seem to have lost their grip on law and order, and in particular on violence against women and girls, which is increasingly endemic. The Government have had more than six years to bring a Bill forward, but it seems clear that only Labour has the drive, ambition and impetus to deliver justice for the victims of sexual assault and violence against women.