HMICFRS Recommendations

Tim Loughton Excerpts

Tuesday 1st March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Rachel Maclean]

I welcome the hon. Lady’s response to the fact that we have made this momentous change and added the issue of violence against women and girls to the strategic police requirement. I think she has broadly welcomed this very important step. It is vital to point out to the House how significant it is: it is putting crimes of violence against women and girls on a par with terrorism, serious violence and drug offences. That is an enormous change to the policing operation in this country. Members across the House will, I am sure, reflect on the fact that policing in this country is independent from Government, so it is vital that we work across the entire system to make sure that the police have the funding, the resources and the legal powers they need to do their job. This Government have put record funding into the police, supporting them with an uplift programme of £15.9 billion and recruiting additional officers to be able to tackle these crimes wherever they occur. We are absolutely focused on driving out these crimes from our society.

I noticed that the hon. Lady did not refer to the communications campaign that we launched last night. That is a shame. I would be grateful if she could confirm, as I think she is doing, that she will share that widely with all her colleagues. In that room last night, there were charities, campaigners, victims of extremely serious crimes and people who have worked on the frontline, and they told us that they have been calling for exactly such a campaign for decades. Education is vital. We need to make it as unacceptable to be calling out and harassing women and girls on the streets as it is to drive without a seatbelt. Today we are taking the first step to doing that, and I know that everybody in the House will welcome it.

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

I welcome the seriousness with which the Minister is taking this issue and the fact that the Government are adopting the recommendations of the inspectorate. She will be aware that the Home Affairs Committee is looking into violence against women and girls and the low level of rape case convictions. Two of the key findings that will improve the situation are, first, the quality and appropriateness of the initial police reaction to reports, particularly with certain cohorts of people such as deaf women and those who do not have English as their first language; and secondly, the delay between an initial investigation and its ever coming to court, if it does—so many women drop out of that process because of the continued hassle overhanging them of having to go through the investigation. Does she agree that we absolutely urgently have to get those two things right?

[Rachel Maclean]

It is a pleasure to respond to the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee, and of course it was a pleasure to appear before him—[Interruption.] Oh, the interim Chair: my apologies to the Chair, the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson), who is in her place. That is mortifying; I do apologise. Nevertheless, I look forward to appearing in front of the Committee, no doubt, in future.

The issues that my hon. Friend raised are vital. He is right to point to the challenges faced by women and girls, and of course men, who come from backgrounds of disability or other circumstances that make it harder for them to engage with the criminal justice system. That is exactly why we are expanding our groundbreaking programme, Operation Soteria, which looks in detail at the issues that he highlighted about the delays in rape case prosecutions. These issues are systematic and actually go back decades. This is a very important point. We are now prosecuting rape and these crimes in a very different age—in a digital age. People now have evidence on their phones. They have gigabytes and terabytes of information in the cloud, all of which, at times, needs to be introduced into an investigation. That must be done in a proportionate and sensible way. That is why I think my hon. Friend will welcome the work that we are doing in Operation Soteria to tackle another issue that has often been raised with us by victims—that of people having their phones taken away from them.