End-to-end Rape Review

Statement

The following Statement was made in the House of Commons on Monday 21 June.

“I would like to make a Statement on the Government’s End-to-end Rape Review Report on Findings and Actions. Rape and sexual assault are some of the most horrific offences dealt with by our criminal justice system. They can leave devastating effects on victims for life. While the majority of victims of rape are women, this crime can have a devastating effect on male victims as well. Over the last five years, we have seen an alarming decline in the number of police referrals, charges, prosecutions and convictions for these sorts of crimes—a trend that the Government are determined to reverse with urgency. I want to pay tribute to the bravery of victims and to commend their courage in coming forward to report these crimes. It is crucial that the system gives all victims the reassurance that they will be believed and that they will receive the right support, right from the moment they report their crime through to the conclusion of their case and beyond.

In March 2019, the National Criminal Justice Board commissioned the first ever end-to-end review of how the criminal justice system handles rape cases. The rape review report and action plan outlines how we will act on its findings to deliver much-needed improvements, building confidence in the system and encouraging more victims to come forward. That will enable cases that are better prepared from the start, more prosecutions of rapes, greater encouragement of early guilty pleas, and fair and timely trials. This has been a collaborative effort between the Ministry of Justice, the Home Office, the Attorney General’s Office—I am grateful to the Solicitor-General for being here today—the police, the Crown Prosecution Service, and Her Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service, which is something that we believe will be crucial to its long-term success. Alongside the action plan, a government social research report outlining the underlying primary research in detail is also being published. I have laid that report before the House.

Our action plan sets out a robust and ambitious programme of work to improve the way in which the criminal justice system responds to rape at every stage in the process, so that victims are better supported to get the justice they deserve and so that all our constituents can have confidence that perpetrators of these sickening crimes will be rightly punished. As the House will know, this has been a priority area for government for some time, and I would like to take this opportunity to highlight some of the work already done, alongside the new actions that we are committed to delivering in the implementation of the review.

We appreciate that this is not the first piece of work in this area of criminal justice, and that both victims and stakeholder groups want change to happen as quickly as possible. The Government could not agree more, which is why the Minister for Crime and Policing will be personally pushing this work forward, and the Government will publish updates every six months detailing progress to ensure clear accountability. That will include scorecards monitoring progress against key metrics, including timeliness and victim engagement in each part of the system, and implementation of the action plan. Our ambition is for the volume of cases referred by the police for charging decisions and reaching court to return to 2016 levels by the end of this Parliament.

One of the key themes of the review is how we can create the conditions that will enable effective joint working between the police and CPS. It launched its joint action plan in January this year. That will enable both the police and CPS to work hand in glove to support rape victims and to secure convictions. In the implementation phase of the review, we plan to introduce joint decision-making guidance for CPS and police investigation teams that will be implemented as part of a necessary culture change. We will also build on the shared learning and development in the form of training and guidance around trauma, to develop understanding of its effect on victims right across the system. In the next 24 months, we will have a framework for a new operating model that can be adopted by forces nationally.

A key plank of our work to transform the way in which cases are dealt with is the pathfinder programme known as Operation Soteria, which is being launched to drive systemic and sustainable transformation in how the police and CPS handle investigations into rape and sexual offences. I am pleased to say that we have already begun to transform the support provided to victims by publishing a revised victims’ code, which sets out 12 clearly defined rights. We have invested record amounts in support over the last 18 months, including spending more than £70 million on rape and domestic abuse services in 2020-21 and £27 million on the expansion of the independent sexual violence adviser service—the ISVA service.

I accept that more needs to be done to reform support services to meet current and rising demand, and ISVAs play a crucial role. Research suggests that their involvement in the criminal justice system can make a victim 49% more likely to stay engaged and see their complaint through to its conclusions. With that in mind, we will shortly consult on a statutory underpinning for the ISVA role as part of the forthcoming victims Bill consultation. The police and CPS will work together to introduce minimum standards on how to communicate with ISVAs after a complaint is made, throughout the investigation process, through charging decisions and through court proceedings themselves. This will be done through a national framework to ensure that standards improve right across the country.

We are also committed to ensuring that no victim is left without a means of communicating through an extremely traumatic period in their life, which is why we are working to increase the capacity of the front-line technology used to examine digital devices. We will work with the mobile phone technology industry to support police efforts to provide swap-out phones for victims to use when their own devices are unavailable. Our ambition is that no victim will be left without a phone for more than 24 hours.

We recognise that the court experience can be particularly distressing. Last year, we rolled out Section 28 of the Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act 1999 to help support children and vulnerable adult victims and witnesses to give their evidence and be cross-examined sensitively. We are already piloting the same arrangements for intimidated witnesses and victims in three locations, and plan to increase that pilot to three additional courts. Subject to that evaluation, we aim to commence full rollout to all Crown courts for this group, and will consider whether any further legislative change is needed. We also plan to test the use of Section 28 in the youth court.

We will continue to explore how we can increase the use of special measures in rape trials, and will develop a best practice framework for rape and sexual violence cases during court proceedings. Additionally, we have asked the Law Commission to explore the use of rape myths and evidence about victim credibility at court to see whether there are changes we can make there to improve the experience for victims and give them the opportunity to present their best evidence. In addition, the CPS has updated its legal guidance to address rape myths and stereotypes.

We will go further than the work outlined in the review; later this year, we will publish a new strategy to tackle violence against women and girls, and we will consult on the new victims Bill. I am sure that the whole House will join me in acknowledging the many people and organisations who are working tirelessly to improve the way in which these cases are handled. I thank the organisations in this field. Their expertise, research and challenge is invaluable. I am incredibly grateful to Emily Hunt in particular, who has been working as an expert adviser on the rape review, and ensured that the voice of victims was heard loud and clear as the Government considered their approach.

I reassure the House that if the proposed actions do not yield sufficient change in the timescales that we have set out, the Government are prepared to look at more fundamental changes to the criminal justice system, including measures to strengthen accountability and governance more widely. The review represents just the beginning of this work. We must continue to challenge the entire system to deliver urgent and sustained change. We owe that to every victim of these terrible crimes. Every part of the system can and must do better; now is the time for it to deliver. I commend this Statement to the House.”

The issue about the extent to which rape is properly prosecuted in this country is now a real one. The Lord Chancellor rightly apologised for the lack of prosecutions, yet did nothing to deal with the problem properly. He announced a sum of money, in the region of £150 million, most of which went to refuges. Refuges are very worth while but will not deal with the problem of the lamentably low rate of convictions for rape. The average amount of extra expenditure on rape cases, if one applies it to the number of rape cases the Government estimated last year, is £15 a case.

Why have the Government not made more resources available, if their apology is serious? Why have they not rolled out Section 28, which allows for victims of rape to give evidence as soon as possible after the crime has been committed and for their evidence to be recorded?

I congratulate the authors, researchers and statisticians who have contributed so much to this comprehensive and excellent review. I trust that the Government will fully resource its recommendations, but agree with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, that there is no sign of it so far.

I focus on one of the review’s findings—namely that, in 57% of all adult rape cases, the victim feels unable to pursue their complaint. Given that in 90% of cases the victim knows the perpetrator—as a member or friend of the family, fellow student or worker, friend or acquaintance—that may not be too surprising. I strongly suspect that very few of those withdrawals concern the small minority of cases where the perpetrator is unknown. I am interested to know whether the Minister has a figure for the percentage of withdrawals in cases of stranger rape.

So, what are the reasons for disengagement by the victim? First, there is delay. Giving evidence is always a stressful experience, as I know well. Standing exposed in a witness box with one’s honesty, accuracy of recollection and motives challenged is not pleasant. Giving evidence about intimate sexual encounters must be agonising and overwhelmingly stressful. Only those with a high degree of courage and persistence can be expected to stay the course without considerable support. I very much welcome the pilot schemes for the recording of evidence and cross-examination early, well before trial. How soon can those pilots be evaluated and rolled out? Months, if not years, of waiting for a trial must disincentivise victims pursuing their case.

Secondly, there is the intrusion into privacy. In January 2018, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Morris of Aberavon, introduced a debate on this topic. I suggested an algorithm which would require the defence to co-operate by setting out their case in a defence statement and, at that point, indicating keywords for the search of mobile phones. The revised Attorney General’s Guidelines on Disclosure, published in 2020, set out such a system and it is now operational. The review recognises the importance of privacy by its requirement that mobile phones be returned within 24 hours. If that is done, I hope this disincentive to reporting rape will be removed.

My Lords, I turn first to the points raised by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer of Thoroton. First, I should repeat the apology that the Lord Chancellor gave in the other place yesterday, setting out by reference the reasons why he gave it, given the time.

As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer of Thoroton, said, it is not right to criticise the Government’s response to the rape review for lacking in ambition. On the contrary, we have set out clear ambitions for rape cases with the police and the CPS, and we have set out actions against which they, and we, can be held to account. We want to return the volume of trials for rape to pre-2016 levels, with corresponding expectations for police referrals and cases charged. We want to ensure that no victim is left without a phone—noble Lords will appreciate how important the data found on phones these days can be in these prosecutions—for more than 24 hours. We should not underestimate how difficult it can be for a victim to hand over her—it is invariably her—phone and to know that it will be looked at. We will also publish updates every six months, detailing our progress against our expectations, with scorecards monitoring progress against key metrics, including timeliness and victim engagement in each part of the system. That will enable us to provide information on a regional and local level, to see where things are working well and where there is room for improvement.

I turn to the other substantive point that the noble and learned Lord made, about Section 28 of the Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act, which enables people to have their cross-examination recorded in advance. The pilots of this provision have focused on complainants for sexual and modern slavery offences. We are extending them from three to six Crown Courts. I want to increase the availability of Section 28, but we need to do this properly. This is a radical departure from the normal court process, where evidence is given at the same time, in front of the jury. The pilots enable us to understand the impacts of this way of giving evidence—not only the impact on the evidence itself but the operational impacts on the courts, because they have to set out, and set up, a bespoke hearing for such evidence to be given.

We come to the 20 minutes for Back-Bench questions. I ask that questions and answers are brief, in order that I can call the maximum number of speakers.