Oral Answers to Questions Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateVirendra Sharma
Main Page: Virendra Sharma (Labour - Ealing, Southall)Department Debates - View all Virendra Sharma's debates with the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport
(2 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberThat is a very important point. Through the Football Foundation in particular, we work closely with local authorities and clubs to help them work collaboratively. That includes working with multiple clubs to share facilities, because that makes sense. We are also investing £205 million to build or transform up to 8,000 multi-use sports facilities and £21 million to refurbish park tennis courts.
As I said, I will be meeting UK Music and I am happy to discuss this matter with it. We have provided a huge amount of support to the live music industry throughout the pandemic, including a really successful reinsurance scheme, but I am happy to take the hon. Gentleman’s points away.
The unduly lenient sentence scheme affords the Law Officers an important power. The judiciary generally gets it right in the vast majority of sentencing decisions. In the few instances in which Law Officers, after careful consideration, consider a sentence to be unduly lenient—when there has been an error—the case is referred to senior judges in the Court of Appeal to look at the sentencing exercise and reach their own conclusion.
Tackling violence against women and girls is a central mission of this Government and, indeed, of independent prosecutors. More than 10,400 suspects were charged with domestic abuse offences in the most recent quarter for which data is available, with a conviction rate of more than 75%. Following a successful spending review, the Crown Prosecution Service is recruiting prosecutors and other staff to ensure that even more victims see justice done.
One of my constituents has provided multiple pieces of video evidence and repeatedly reported indecent exposure by a neighbour, aimed at his young daughters. The police repeatedly changed the staff who were handling the case, and then the CPS declined to prosecute for lack of evidence and because the flasher had moved. Will the Attorney General empower the CPS to prosecute more such crimes so that women and girls can have faith in the justice system to help them?
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for raising that important case. Under the victims code that we introduced in April last year, victims have the opportunity to seek a right to review—in other words, a right to ask the CPS to reconsider a decision—and I know many individuals will take up that opportunity. We have outlawed several offences, such as upskirting, coercive control and non-fatal strangulation, to ensure that more victims get the justice they deserve.