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Defendant Anonymity

I begin by welcoming both the Under-Secretaries of State for Justice to their ministerial places to discuss this extremely important matter, in which there is much interest on all sides of the House and outside it. The Under-Secretary of State for Justice, the hon. Member for Reigate (Mr Blunt), made an interesting speech, and I intend to take up some of the points he raised, but let me say that we do not disagree in this respect—rape is a heinous crime that wrecks lives and causes many victims unending suffering. Rape is a more prevalent crime than often imagined in the public consciousness. I have here some figures derived from official statistics. Every week, up to 2,000 women are raped, up to 10,000 are sexually assaulted, and between 75% and 95% of rapes are not reported to the police—these are figures taken from the joint inspection of the Crown Prosecution Service and Her Majesty's inspectorate of constabulary. More than a third of all rapes recorded by the police are committed against children under the age of 16. As I think the Minister recognised at the beginning of his remarks, all that shows that this is a matter of huge import, not only to Government and Opposition Members but to all our constituents—and particularly, I might say, to women. Although men are subjected to rape—about 7% of victims are male—it is overwhelmingly women who the victims of this particular offence. I do not intend to ignore the fact that it is not only women who are involved in this type of offence, but, as I say, it is overwhelmingly women who are affected. Looking back at the history of this crime over many decades, it is clear that there has been agonised and sometimes passionate debate—in this House and in the wider society—about how best to deal with rape, how best to make sure that perpetrators are brought to justice and how best to assure women and others that they can be protected by our society's statutory authorities from being subjected to this crime. Despite the terrible figures, there is some cause for optimism. Following a great focus on improvements, the last decade or so has seen some forward movement, and a great deal of effort has been put in by partners, statutory and otherwise, across the criminal justice system who have done good work to bring together their input to focus on the key question and to tackle low levels of reporting and low levels of conviction. Labour Members accept, as we did when we were in government, that more needs to be done. We can say that reports to the police have doubled in the last 10 years, which is a good thing. We can say that there has been a 50% increase in the level of convictions—and the Minister's figures implied that, although he did not put it in that way. From charge to conviction, about 58% more have been convicted of rape or other sexual offences.