Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Robert Neill and Laura Farris

Tuesday 21st November 2023 Commons Chamber

[Sir Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)]

I warmly welcome my hon. Friend to her place on the Treasury Bench; it is much deserved, and she was a distinguished member of the Justice Committee. She will know from that time that much work has already been done, following on from Operation Soteria, to improve investigation, conviction and prosecution rates and the victim experience in relation to rape and serious sexual offences. Will she also bear in mind that there are further opportunities, which we highlighted as a Committee in our scrutiny of the victims element of the Victims and Prisoners Bill, to improve the victim experience and ensure that it is consistent across the whole country?

[Laura Farris]

I thank my hon. Friend for his question and applaud all the work he does as Chair of the Justice Committee. It is undoubtedly true that the Victims and Prisoners Bill plays an important role in putting the victims code on to a statutory footing and giving victims enhanced rights, including a right of review and a right to make an impact statement, which we have supported. I also draw his attention to not just Operation Soteria but the fact that we are training 2,000 specialist police officers in rape and serious sexual offences, as well as the national roll-out of section 28 evidence procedures, which enable victims of these hideous crimes to give evidence early, privately and behind closed doors, to completely change their experience of the criminal justice system and keep them engaged in the process.

Tackling Violence Against Women and Girls

Debate between Robert Neill and Laura Farris

Wednesday 2nd March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Laura Farris (Newbury) (Con)]

There is, I suppose, a grim sense of bookending in this debate. We all know that we are very close to the anniversary of a particularly appalling murder—one of the most appalling crimes that I can recall. It was a grotesque breach of trust by a serving Met police officer. Most recently, though, there was the admission of guilt by the murderer of Sabina Nessa, who we now know drove miles from his home, found her at random, killed her in the most brutal and degrading way and pleaded guilty at the Old Bailey last week. There is no doubt that there is an epidemic of violence against women and girls.

I understand why the Opposition have brought this debate to the Chamber, and I respect their reason for doing so. I think it is reflected in the tone that everybody has taken so far that it would not serve well to use this debate as a political tit for tat. The truth is that, when we debate these issues, it is always the same faces who are here, and we know that it will be our collective endeavour, if anything, that will improve the situation.

I want to align myself with the remarks made by my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill), who said that finding out what is happening and how we improve it is complex and difficult. I think that that was revealed a little bit on Monday night when we debated making misogyny a hate crime. I heard the impassioned speech of the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy) and what she said about women’s safety, but, as a matter of law, she did not engage at all with the issue of whether all violence against women and girls is motivated by hatred, or whether there are other more complex causes, and how, if at all, it fits within the framework of section 28 of the Crime and Disorder Act 1998, which governs all hate crimes. She also could not explain why the reporting pilot that had been conducted in Nottingham had not actually resulted in any more prosecutions or convictions. I do not believe—I say this very respectfully—that there was consensus on the Labour Benches about whether it should be made an offence. Even if I am wrong about that, and there is no desire here to humiliate, it exposes the fact that there are complex questions about causation and legal framework that are not that easy to resolve. Even people whose mission is the same will disagree on the mechanics of how we get there.

Before I get into the substance of the debate, I want to spend a moment talking about what I think the Government have achieved, because it is quite easy to overlook that. I am not just going to give a shopping list of the things that the Government have criminalised, from stalking to coercive control and to revenge porn, because everybody is familiar with that and most people have participated in debates where we have talked about that. One thing that we have achieved in the past 10 years is looking at violence against women through a much more expansive lens. In the old days of domestic abuse, for example, many will recall the shorthand of “knocking her about”—think how far we have come from that. We do not even see it as just a question of violence. We view these crimes as issues of power, control, obsession, jealousy, and a desire for revenge. We recognise that coercive control is a criminal offence, even if the relationship has long since finished. We recognise that revenge porn, something that would have been the shame of the victim for many, many years, is actually the crime of the perpetrator. We have tackled toxic assumptions. It was the Mother of the House who used the phrase for the first time, “the nagging and shagging defence” that used to be frequently and successfully deployed in the criminal courts. We have also dealt with the fact that there is no such thing as consent to rough sex as a defence for sexual violence. I think that we can probably agree that we still have further to go on some of this.

The Centre for Women’s Justice has written very recently that we still have issues around culture. One thing we need to be careful about in the “she was just walking home” labelling is that we are not saying that there are deserving victims and that the woman who was out getting drunk or even looking for sex or doing something that is not seen as ladylike is not a deserving victim. That is all still there, I think.

What we are doing on rape is important. I understand the collective concern on that issue. Section 28 procedures —the ability of a victim to give evidence behind closed doors with counsel and to be cross-examined without having to wait for trial—have made a huge difference. Members of the Home Affairs Committee—I think that this only applies to the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) on the Front Bench—will recall that, when the chairs of the rape reviews for Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales gave evidence, they did not agree on everything, but the one thing on which they did agree was how important section 28 procedures are, and I am so glad that the Justice Secretary is now rolling them out nationwide.

I also have to mention criminal justice scorecards. I am not sure whether we are using that official language yet, but, about four weeks ago, I was contacted by a young lady in my constituency who had recently been raped outside the constituency. When she approached the force where it had happened, her treatment was lamentable. The rape statistics of that force had been published and were in the public domain. When I wrote to them—a letter of complaint essentially on her behalf—pointing out their absolutely diabolical rape prosecution rates, they responded to me the next day with an extremely helpful and supportive letter, setting out what they would do and making contact with her, and I think we turned it around.

[Sir Robert Neill]

My hon. Friend is making a most important point and I entirely agree with her. Does she agree that that links into the importance of proper, careful and sensitive investigation by the police? We will increase the rate of charging only if, in a sufficient number of cases, there is admissible evidence that affords a reasonable prospect of conviction, and it is the evidence gathering, therefore, that must be tackled. It is the failure to gather sufficient admissible evidence to give a reasonable prospect of conviction that means that a person cannot be properly charged.

[Laura Farris]

I accept that. I also accept the point that my hon. Friend made. Members of the Select Committee will recall Mary Prior QC saying emphatically that we need continuity of counsel, but the judicial listing function is detrimental to that.

There are three points on this issue.