Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, pursuant to the Answer of 28 May 2021 to Question 4059, what steps her Department has taken to improve investigation of allegations of rape to help increase the proportion of cases that result in charges being made.

Rape and sexual violence are devastating crimes that impact on victims for the rest of their life.

The Government has long recognised that the decline in the number of effective trials for rape and serious sexual offences in England and Wales is a cause of significant concern.

As a result, we commissioned the end-to-end rape review in March 2019 to look at evidence across the system, from reporting to the police to outcomes in court, in order to understand what is happening in cases of adult rape and serious sexual offences being charged, prosecuted and convicted in England and Wales.

The review represents a serious commitment to change by the Government and our partners. At its heart are a set of actions that will drive system and culture change to improve the quality of investigations, reduce the number of victims who don’t feel able to engage with the criminal justice process, and to ultimately put more rapists behind bars.

We intend to publish the review shortly.