Rape and Sexual Violence

Rachel Maclean Excerpts

Tuesday 8th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Rachel Maclean)]

It is real privilege to be able to close this debate and, in particular, to follow the speech by the hon. Member for Cardiff North (Anna McMorrin). It is the first time that I have heard her story, but I am sure that she will have made an enormous difference by speaking out today in the way she has, and I commend her courage. She is absolutely right to say that she will be changing attitudes by addressing the stigma and breaking the bias, so I want to thank her, as will, I am sure, every Member of the House.

It is a real privilege to close the debate on International Women’s Day, and I associate myself with all the remarks that have been made paying tribute to President Zelensky and the incredible women and girls of that amazing country, Ukraine. We stand with them. I never thought when I entered Parliament that I would be addressing the House after a speech such as the one I heard today. None of us has been left unmoved by it.

It is right that we focus on how we support victims and bring perpetrators to justice. I thank everybody who has brought before us the experiences of their constituents and told their stories. Listening to those victims and their experiences is how we drive the change across the justice system that all of us in this House are passionate to achieve, in order to build a fairer society for women and make our streets safer.

Yesterday, many of us attended an event run by Women’s Aid—it was a pleasure to see so many Members there. The comments made at that event chimed with me and many others. One of the Spice Girls, Mel B, stood up and said that she had no problem at all standing on a stage at Wembley stadium, singing and performing in front of hundreds of thousands of people, but that was nothing compared with the trauma of having to tell her story about her abusive marriage and everything she has gone through. Continuing to allow these victims and these incredible survivors to come forward, supporting them, and working to achieve the change we all want is how we will change the system.

I thank all Members who have spoken in this debate. They have raised a number of points. Time does not allow me to address all of them in detail, but I will start with the issue of stalking, which has been mentioned by many Members. Stalking is a very serious matter that has a broad spectrum of manifestations. We are, of course, looking at this issue in the context of domestic abuse, and also of harassment. That is why we awarded £11.3 million to police and crime commissioners to fund programmes for domestic abuse perpetrators and perpetrators of stalking, whether or not it takes place in a domestic abuse context. A wide range of sentences are currently imposed for stalking offences, reflecting the broad spectrum of manifestations of this behaviour. The most serious offences could result in a maximum of 14 years’ imprisonment.

We have discussed extensively in this Chamber the issue of stalking protection orders. As hon. Members know, I recently wrote to all police forces making clear where they are not using those tools appropriately, and that they need to use the levers at their disposal in order to properly keep women and girls safe. The grant rate for those orders is very high, and where they are being granted, the police feel they are a very useful measure, but there is more we can do.

We have also discussed the issue of spiking. We have all become familiar with these new and concerning reports of needle spiking, which is a terrifying experience—something that I think we all find appalling, frightening and disgusting. It is a reasonably new phenomenon, which is why my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary is working with the police to better understand the exact nature of spiking; what is actually happening with that crime? We are working to make sure we record these incidents through the crime recording framework, and are also urgently considering the case for a criminal offence targeting spiking directly. There are already a range of offences on the statute book that the police can use to prosecute this behaviour, but we are all concerned with making sure that those offences are used and we will not hesitate to legislate if necessary.

[David Johnston]

My constituent Sharon Gaffka is involved in a campaign on spiking, having been spiked twice herself. She now has more than 1,000 testimonies from people ranging from the age of 14 to 65. It is not always a sexual offence—sometimes friends do it to each other because they think it is a bit of a laugh to get a reaction—but I wonder whether I can get my constituent to share those testimonies with my hon. Friend to help inform the Government’s understanding of what is going on here.

[Rachel Maclean]

Of course. I thank my hon. Friend very much and I would be delighted to do that. I am working across Government with colleagues in the Department of Health and Social Care, the Ministry of Justice, the Department for Education and so on to have a cross-Government response to this matter.

Members have raised the issue of sentencing in a range of contexts. It is important to note that the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, which is passing through the House, will ensure that serious sexual and violent offenders serve two thirds of their sentence in prison, instead of half. Indeed, a number of other measures in that Bill strengthen the management of sex offenders, including by enabling electronic monitoring requirements to be imposed on those who pose a risk through sexual harm prevention orders and sexual risk orders, if necessary.

It is important that our criminal justice system catches up from the impacts of the pandemic. Our decisive action in the courts has kept justice moving. That is why we invested a quarter of a billion pounds to support recovery in the last financial year, and 30 Nightingale courtrooms are to be extended until March next year as we work across Government to continue our efforts to tackle the impact of covid-19 on the justice system. The new victims Bill, which we are introducing as quickly as possible, will bring about a cultural shift so that victims’ experiences are central to how our society thinks about and responds to crime. We want to ensure that the Bill tackles the things that victims most care about.

Members have referenced health, which is a vital component of our strategy to provide the tailored support that victims of rape and other serious sexual offences need. Through the work being carried out by my colleagues in the Ministry of Justice, the victims Bill consultation is looking closely at the commissioning of community-based services, including the role of health bodies. That consultation is now being analysed and we will bring forward a draft Bill as soon as possible.

I will reference an important piece of work from my colleagues in the Department of Health and Social Care through the women’s health strategy. The Department will appoint our first ever women’s health ambassador for England, whose role will be to focus on raising the profile of women’s health, increasing awareness and bringing in a range of collaborative voices. Members will know that I work closely with Women’s Aid, which is campaigning on better mental health support for victims of trauma and sexual offences. That forms another important component of the domestic abuse plan that we are bringing forward.

It is important to reference that we on the Government Benches fully accept that the current data shows that the system is not working as well as it could be. We have consistently been honest and transparent about that. It is only by doing that that we will be able to bring about the change that is desperately needed.

[Sir Robert Neill]

I am glad that my hon. Friend references data. Will she take on board the fact that the joint thematic report from the two inspectorates specifically references the need to do more on data in this field and ensure that that is in the Government’s response?

[Rachel Maclean]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. We are reviewing those reports and others to ensure we have that data at our fingertips and bring forward the response that is required for victims. We are not complacent. We know there is more to do. This is the third time in the space of a week that I have personally stood in this Chamber discussing these very important issues. I am happy to continue to do so, because the work we are doing through Operation Soteria and some of the other workstreams is groundbreaking. I am proud to be associated with it, but we will not rest until we get the result that we need.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House commemorates International Women’s Day; regrets that under this Government conviction rates for rape have reached a historic low and that the typical delay between reporting an offence of rape and the completion of the resulting criminal case is over 1,000 days; calls on the Government to introduce minimum sentences for stalking and rape, to raise minimum sentencing for spiking and to implement Labour’s survivors’ package for victims of rape and serious sexual violence to restore trust in the criminal justice system; and further calls on the Government to begin an immediate assessment of the impact of setting up specialist rape offence courts on the significant Crown Court backlog of rape cases, as recommended by HM Crown Prosecution Service Inspectorate.