Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Victoria Atkins and Caroline Dinenage

Tuesday 5th July 2022 Commons Chamber

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Victoria Atkins)]

A huge body of work is going on across every part of the criminal justice system, from the police to the Crown Prosecution Service and through to the courts. It involves the recruitment of more independent sexual violence advisers, who can make such a difference not only to victims’ recovery, but to their willingness and ability to continue with a prosecution. In particular, we are introducing enhanced measures for specialist support within three pilot courts to support victims who are taking forward these very difficult cases. We are working with the judiciary, the police and the CPS to ensure that we measure and identify what is working so that we can replicate it across the country.

[Dame Caroline Dinenage (Gosport) (Con)]

When it comes to female offenders, trauma-informed and gender-responsive programmes are the only way to break a cycle of crime and incarceration. Tomorrow, the brilliant charity One Small Thing will be here in Parliament to discuss the latest research on the intergenerational traumatic impact of maternal imprisonment. I would really love all Justice Ministers, but particularly my hon. Friend the Minister of State, to come along and hear how the justice system could better be formatted to support women and children.

[Victoria Atkins]

I thank my hon. Friend for that kind invitation; I would be delighted to attend. On the impact of intergenerational trauma, one of the many reasons we are piloting the first residential women’s centre in Wales is that we want to see how women who should not be receiving the very short sentences that can be imposed can benefit from an intensive residential course rather than prison. I will be watching the results with interest.

Rape: Criminal Prosecutions

Debate between Victoria Atkins and Caroline Dinenage

Tuesday 28th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Victoria Atkins]

I thank the right hon. Lady for raising those historical cases. They are in the system and the injection of investment—£477 million in the overall Crown court system—will help with those particular cases. One of the reasons we selected the three pilots as we did—I should say that the Lord Chief Justice very much worked on this—is that we looked at the backlog of sexual violence cases within courts. For those courts with a lot of sexual violence cases—through no fault of anyone; we are not alleging that there is any fault within the system—and with these backlogs, we hope that this enhanced specialist support will give us some evidence as to whether these measures work, with a view to going further if need be.

[Dame Caroline Dinenage (Gosport) (Con)]

I have absolutely no doubt of my hon. Friend’s commitment and dedication to this cause, and I am grateful to her for that. A lot of the figures she quotes are encouraging, but the fact is—she says it herself—that we have a long way to go. As she said, key to this is confidence in the system. Victims need confidence to come forward in the first place and then confidence to stay the course through the process, which can be fairly punitive, as she would be the first to admit. What more can she do to drive that confidence among victims?

[Victoria Atkins]

There are many ways in which we can support victims. One is through specialist support such as ISVAs and the victims charities that do such a vital job of working with women and victims of sexual violence. Another thing that we are in the process of setting up is a 24/7 support line for victims of sexual violence, and I am extremely grateful to Rape Crisis for its help on this. We are testing it carefully over the next couple of months to ensure that we understand when peaks and flows will necessitate proper staffing, but we are absolutely committed to providing those services so that victims can get the help they need when they need it.