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Violence Against Women

The hon. Gentleman is generous for giving way so early in his speech. My lesson from that is a slightly ironic one: I doubt whether, in the days when he was in the police, those officers would have been disciplined at all for not taking sufficient notice of women complaining, as opposed to not taking sufficient notice of a black cab driver saying that he was not guilty. The other point that I want to raise with the hon. Gentleman is that it is increasingly important that we should emphasise the extent to which rape is becoming ever more clearly a serial offence. Many rapists are serial offenders. Women should be encouraged to see the issue in that light, and police should see it in that light, so that everyone collaborates to ensure that it is not just the individual who is at stake. She, and the police, should understand that there is a duty for the future.