Asked by: Matthew Offord (Conservative - Hendon)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many cases of (a) rape and (b) serious sexual offences are outstanding 12 months after the accused was charged.
Answered by Laura Farris - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Ministry of Justice) (jointly with Home Office)
Our published data includes the number of cases outstanding at the court from the point of crown court receipt rather than charge. As of Q3 2023, there were 667 adult rape cases and a further 2,019 cases of sexual offences (excluding adult rape) that had been outstanding at Crown Courts in England and Wales for 12 months or more.
We recognise that lengthy waiting times can be particularly difficult for victims of rape and other serious sexual offences who wish to see justice done and move on with their lives. We are doing everything we can to address the outstanding caseload. We are taking action to maximise capacity and hear more cases so we can minimise the impact on victims. As part of this, we are:
We are also ensuring that all victims of rape and sexual offences are well supported throughout their engagement with the criminal justice system. This includes delivering our 24/7 helpline service for victims of rape and sexual violence; quadrupling victim support funding by 2024/25, up from £41 million in 2009/2010; and increasing the number of Independent Sexual and Domestic Abuse Advisors by 300 to nearly 1,000.
These actions have been delivered as part of our Rape Review Action Plan, which included ambition to return the number of adult rape cases reaching court to 2016 levels. This ambition was hugely stretching, as 2015 and 2016 marked the years where adult rape prosecutions and convictions were at their highest recorded levels.
We have exceeded this ambition well ahead of schedule. Across July - September 2023 we recorded 665 Crown Court receipts for adult rape, exceeding our original 2016 ambition of 553 by 20%. In practice, this means we have more than doubled the number of adult rape cases reaching court compared to when the Rape Review was first commissioned (2019). The number of people prosecuted for rape is 32% higher than in 2010.
Asked by: Christian Wakeford (Labour - Bury South)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what (a) support and (b) resources her Department provides to organisations to (i) address issues related to gender-based violence and (ii) support survivors.
Answered by Laura Farris - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Ministry of Justice) (jointly with Home Office)
The Home Office and wider government committed to over £230 million from 2022-2025 as part of the Tackling Domestic Abuse Plan, including £140 million for supporting victims. Funding for the National Domestic Abuse Helpline has been doubled, and funding for all the other national helplines supported by the Home Office has also increased.
As part of this commitment, the joint Home Office-Ministry of Justice VAWG Support and Specialist Service Fund will provide up to £8.3 million (in total) from 2023-2025 to ‘by and for’ and specialist organisations to support victims often facing the greatest barriers to getting the help they need.
Activity funded by the Home Office also includes £10.3 million across three years for the Children Affected by Domestic Abuse Fund and up to £1.4 million per financial year for the Support for Migrant Victims Scheme until March 2025.
In May 2023, the Home Office also launched a £300,000 ‘flexible fund’ trial in partnership with Women’s Aid Federation for England to make direct cash payments of £250 to victims and survivors of domestic abuse (£500 to those with children and those who are pregnant) to help remove barriers to leaving an abusive relationship. In November 2023, the Government commitment to support victims was renewed with a further £2m investment into the Flexible Fund until March 2025.
Asked by: Christian Wakeford (Labour - Bury South)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what (a) support and (b) funding his Department provides to local probation services in Bury South constituency to help ensure effective rehabilitation of people leaving the criminal justice system.
Answered by Edward Argar - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS) service delivery in Greater Manchester supports all Criminal Justice activity for the Bury Borough. This includes all aspects of Community and Custodial practice across public protection, sentencing, sentence management and delivery, resettlement and reintegration.
Greater Manchester Probation Service (GMPS) on behalf of HMPPS have a unique approach to commissioning rehabilitative services across the region. Services are co-commissioned with the Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA). There is a Memorandum of Understanding which sets out the principles of our approach, signed by both parties. There are also grant agreements in place which enable the co-commissioning to proceed in a way that provides both flexibility and assurance. These arrangements have enabled procurement of services at locality level, and there is specific activity across the Bury Borough.
From a wider partnership aspect, Reducing Reoffending is one of the six priorities of the Bury Community Safety Partnership (CSP), with the priority led by the local probation manager who chairs a multiagency steering group for this priority.
GMPS is an active participant in the Bury Community Safety Partnership, which encompasses work to tackle drug & alcohol related harm; involvement in the Prevent Partnership and Channel Panel (as part of CONTEST Counter-terror duty); involvement in the Domestic Abuse Partnership Board; involvement in the Bury Serious Violence Duty Steering Group and is the lead agency for actions in emerging Serious Violence Duty Delivery Plan to reduce serious violence related harm (offending and related hospital admissions).
GMPS lead engagement with the Creating & Maintaining Safe Spaces subgroup on Community Payback opportunities to link into local environmental improvement works.
Bury CSP (through GMCA core grant to CSP) have funded the Gateway project to break the cycle of substance misuse and offending,
Through the Co-commission approach outlined, approximately 60 services across the GM Region have been procured in this financial year, all of which support reducing harm and reoffending activities.
There has been investment and collaboration where appropriate with local authorities to procure services and ensure alignment with local Criminal Justice Priorities.
HMPPS delegate 4 reducing reoffending budgets into the GM region which are for the specific purpose of reducing reoffending in the region. These are Community Accommodation Service Tier 3, Community Rehabilitation Service, Integrated Offender Management and Regional Outcome and Innovation Fund. The Bury Borough are provided with services from each of these budgets, and this equates to roughly a 10% share.
Specifically, rehabilitative services in Bury cover the following: services for women; services for accommodation; services for training, education and access to employment; peer mentoring; drug and alcohol interventions; wellbeing support for improving physical and mental health.
The question specifies 'people leaving the criminal justice service’. GMPS has formal responsibility for those within the system and this answer details the offer in this context. However, given close integration with GMCA and local authorities, the intention is to provide a link to continuity of help in local areas like Bury, beyond the period someone is subject to probation supervision.
Asked by: Liz Twist (Labour - Blaydon)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment he has made of the impact of extreme weather on the risk of intimate partner violence.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
The Home Office has not made any formal assessment on the impact of extreme weather on the risk of intimate partner violence.
The prevalence of domestic abuse has remained relatively stable over recent years, but there was a decline seen between the year ending March 2020, a year largely unaffected by the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, and the most recent figure for the year ending March 2023.
The government are taking important steps to tackle intimate partner violence, including implementation of the Tackling VAWG Strategy, Tackling Domestic Abuse Plan and the Domestic Abuse Act 2021.
Asked by: Janet Daby (Labour - Lewisham East)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many foreign national offenders there are in the youth secure estate; and if she will provide a breakdown of those figures by offence type.
Answered by Edward Argar - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
As of 30 November 2023, the latest date for which figures are available, there were 71 foreign nationals in the youth secure estate. A breakdown by offence type is given in the table below.
Table 1: Number of foreign national children and young people by offence group, 30 November 2023
Offence Group 1 | Number 2 |
Breach of statutory order | * |
Domestic burglary | * |
Drugs | * |
Other 3 | 10 |
Robbery | * |
Sexual Offences | * |
Violence Against the Person | 44 |
Total | 71 |
Notes:
Data Source: Further breakdown of youth custody data for November 2023.
Since 2010, we have removed over 55,000 foreign national offenders from our prisons, immigration removal centres and the community. Between January 2019 and September 2023, we returned 16,676 FNOs.
Asked by: Lord Dobbs (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask His Majesty's Government, in each of the past five years in England and Wales, how many prosecutions were brought for rape and serious sexual assault; how many allegations of rape or serious sexual assault reported to police have not been taken to prosecution; and what percentage of prosecutions have resulted in conviction.
Answered by Lord Bellamy - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)
This government is committed to increasing the volumes of rape and serious sexual offence cases that reach court.
In 2019, we commissioned our end-to-end Rape Review to better understand the justice system’s response to adult rape. Published in 2021, our watershed report set stretching ambitions to return the volumes of adult rape cases being referred by the police, charged by the CPS, and reaching court back to 2016 levels by the end of this Parliament. In practice, this meant more than doubling the number of adult rape cases reaching court compared to when the Review was first commissioned, in 2019.
The latest data shows that we have exceeded each of these ambitions ahead of schedule. In July – September 2023, we recorded:
In addition, the number of people prosecuted for an adult rape offence went up by 54% in the last year (12 months to June), rising from 1,410 to 2,165. This is 32% higher than in 2010 (1,644).
But we are determined to build on these successes, and continue to make excellent progress in delivering our Rape Review Action Plan to support victims throughout the criminal justice system:
As far as possible, we have provided the requested data in Tables 1-3. Please note that each table contains data extracted from different administrative systems, and for different operational purposes. Whilst every effort has been made to answer the question and keep the data similar it is important to note that the data presented is complementary, rather than directly comparable. Below is a summary of each table and its contents, including a final Annex table (Table A1) which specifies how offences for rape and serious sexual assault have been captured.
Table 1 – Volume of defendants proceeded against for rape or ‘serious’ sexual assault offences, year ending June 2019 to year ending June 2023, England and Wales
The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) publish the data set out in Table 1 in Criminal Justice System statistics quarterly: June 2023, in the Outcomes by Offence data tool (last updated 18 January 2024).
The MoJ tool contains data on the volume of convictions, but it is advised these are not used to calculate conviction rate (the number of convictions as a proportion of the number of prosecutions). This is due to the Court Proceedings Database counting two separate records at two separate stages (one for prosecution, one for conviction). An individual may appear at each court in separate years, or for a different principal offence at different stages. As a result, this rate is not an accurate measure of the proportion of prosecutions that result in a conviction and we recommend table 3 for that purpose.
Table 2 – Rape and ‘serious’ sexual offences (RASSO) recorded by the police that were not assigned a charge outcome, as a proportion of all RASSO cases closed each year, year ending June 2019 to year ending June 2023, England and Wales
The Home Office (HO) publish the data set out in Table 2 in the quarterly publication Open Data Tables, in the Outcomes Open Data files (last updated on 25 January 2024). It is important to note that the Home Office do not hold data on prosecutions, but publish data on recorded cases that do not receive a charge outcome, presented in Table 2.
Table 2b – Number of reported incidents of rape (excluding offences recorded by the police) and cancelled rape offences, year ending March 2019 to year ending March 2023, England and Wales
Since April 2015, the police have been expected to record all allegations of rape that are reported to them as soon as they are received, unless they are immediately recorded as a confirmed crime. These are recorded under the reported incidents classification. Reported incidents of rape are then either confirmed as a crime and re-classified accordingly (as recorded offences) or are retained in the police data as an incident. Table 2b shows a total of reported incidents that do not go on to be recorded as a crime, and cancelled rape offences. An incident does not go on to be recorded as a crime if the victim or third party reporting the incident cannot confirm it or cannot be traced, if credible evidence to the contrary exists, or if it is transferred to another police force. These data are published here: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/652eaab16b6fbf000db75843/prc-rape-incidents-2016-2023.ods). Rape allegations are ‘cancelled’ when there is additional information to confirm the offence did not take place or where the entry is made in error (such as a duplicate of an existing allegation). Home Office can be contacted directly for further comment on these data.
Table 3 – Conviction rate for suspects with a rape flagged offence, year ending June 2019 to year ending June 2023, England and Wales
The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) publish the data set out in Table 3 in CPS quarterly data summaries (last updated on 18 January 2024). Prosecution crime type data tables were used to extract conviction rates for rape flagged cases. Due to the nature of CPS systems, the conviction rate based on rape flags will include cases where the eventual outcome is different to the flagged offence of rape.
Table A1: Definition of rape and 'serious' sexual assault by organisation (MoJ, Home Office, Crown Prosecution Service)
This table sets out how rape and ‘serious’ sexual assault offences have been selected for each of the tables. The most substantial difference is between CPS and MoJ/Home Office data, as the CPS rely on the use of flags and do not record offences by detailed offence code in the same way as the MoJ/Home Office (meaning detailed offences would need to be extracted manually, and are not published). Home Office and MoJ offences broadly correspond but, due to differences in recording practices and operational uses some of the offences follow different description conventions.
Asked by: Ruth Jones (Labour - Newport West)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what discussions he has had with the Welsh Government on steps to increase charge rates for serial perpetrators of (a) domestic abuse and (b) sexual violence in (i) Newport West constituency and (ii) Wales.
Answered by Laura Farris - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Ministry of Justice) (jointly with Home Office)
The Home Office engages regularly with partners, including the Welsh Government and Police and Crime Commissioners, on policing priorities. This includes improving the response to domestic abuse, sexual violence, delivering the commitments in the Tackling Violence Against Women and Girls Strategy (2021) and the Tackling Domestic Abuse Plan (2022), and bringing more perpetrators to justice. Policing is a reserved matter, and the existing governance and partnership arrangements provide a significant level of integration and autonomy.
To improve conviction rates and understanding of why domestic abuse cases do not progress, the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) and the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) are developing a Domestic Abuse Joint Justice Plan (DA JJP). The DA JJP is welcomed by the Home Office and is expected to be published in March 2024.
In addition, in 2021 we published the Rape Review Action Plan and set out a series of commitments to deliver cross-system improvements in the criminal justice response to rape. One such commitment was Operation Soteria, a joint policing and CPS programme, to develop new national operating models for the investigation and prosecution of rape and support police and prosecutors across England and Wales to ensure investigations follow rigorous procedures directed at the conduct of the suspect.
Asked by: Seema Malhotra (Labour (Co-op) - Feltham and Heston)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Minister of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, whether he has had recent discussions with his Israeli counterpart on the cost of (a) domestic settler violence to Palestinian property and (b) trends in the level of insurance coverage for Palestinians in the West Bank.
Answered by Andrew Mitchell - Minister of State (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office) (Minister for Development)
We have urged Israel to take stronger action to stop settler violence and hold the perpetrators accountable; extremist settlers, by targeting and killing Palestinian civilians, are undermining security and stability. Both the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary have emphasised to Prime Minister Netanyahu that it is critical that Israel acts to reduce tensions in the West Bank.
As the Foreign Secretary said on 14 December, we are preventing those responsible for settler violence from entering the UK.
Asked by: Rachael Maskell (Labour (Co-op) - York Central)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what steps he is taking with Cabinet colleagues to provide women and girls with trauma-informed preventative care through the criminal justice system.
Answered by Laura Farris - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Ministry of Justice) (jointly with Home Office)
Our Female Offender Strategy and its Delivery Plan set out the steps we are taking to ensure we provide gender-specific and trauma responsive care to women at all stages of the system. The Delivery Plan is backed by almost £30m in investment to both improve community support for women in or at risk of contact with the criminal justice system, and improve outcomes for women in custody. Recognising that this requires cross-Government action, MoJ has worked closely with other Government departments and agencies to produce a National Concordat, including an agreed set of actions and desired outcomes to ensure a joined-up approach to addressing the challenges faced by women in the system.
We recognise the value of preventative care for those entering the criminal justice system at a young age. Turnaround is a youth early intervention programme led by the Ministry of Justice. The programme provides multi-year grant funding to Youth Offending Teams (YOTs) across England and Wales until March 2025, enabling them to intervene earlier and improve outcomes for children on the cusp of entering the youth justice system. From December 2022 to September 2023, YOTs report that we have had around 13,000 referrals, carried out 6,000 assessments, and started 5,200 interventions. Girls make up around one quarter of all referrals, which is higher than in YOT's usual statutory caseloads. Youth Justice practitioners have reported focusing on building positive, trusting relationships with girls through Turnaround, led by trauma-informed practice.
We are also taking action to ensure that our response to violence against women and girls is robust, effective, and meeting the needs of victims. Critical to this is making sure that police and prosecutors have the right skills and knowledge to respond effectively to violence against women and girls. The CPS requires all prosecutors to complete training on domestic abuse, and has revised its guidance on Domestic Abuse, Stalking, and Controlling or Coercive Behaviour. The Government recognises the vital role that support services play in helping victims, including women and girls, during their engagement with the criminal justice system. This is why we are using additional ringfenced funding to increase the number of Independent Sexual Violence Advisors (ISVAs) and Independent Domestic Violence Advisors (IDVAs) by 300, to over 1000, by 2024/2025 – a 43% increase on the number of advisors over this spending review period.
Asked by: Ruth Jones (Labour - Newport West)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps he is taking to help protect victims of domestic abuse in Newport West.
Answered by Laura Farris - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Ministry of Justice) (jointly with Home Office)
Victims of domestic abuse in Wales, including Newport West, have access to a range of support and protections as a result of the Domestic Abuse Act 2021 and our Tackling Domestic Abuse Plan (2022).
The Plan invests over £230 million of cross-Government funding into tackling this crime. This includes up to £140 million for supporting victims, and over £81 million for tackling perpetrators and to support policing. Funding which may support victims in Newport West from this plan includes, but is not limited to:
From 31st January 2024, victims can benefit from direct payments to victims flee abuse or build a sustainable future due to an additional new £2 million investment into the Flexible Fund.
This funding is alongside measures to protect victims and pursue perpetrators, such as adding violence against women crime types – including domestic abuse – to the revised Strategic Policing Requirement, elevating it to a national threat for police forces to respond to accordingly.