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4.57 pm
Vera Baird (Redcar): I congratulate the Home Secretary on a Bill that will significantly clarify and update the law on sexual offences. I am pleased to follow the hon. Member for Tatton (Mr. Osborne), who said that legislation on its own is not always the complete
answer. That is true when one considers rape. However, before I contextualise the new changes and outline what I hope the changes to rape law will bring, I congratulate the Home Secretary on the insight that underpins the new way in which the Bill defines the offence of rape.Rape is an important and serious problem in our society. It is thought that one in five women and a number of men suffer rape or sexual violence at some time during their lives. Although it is well understood that rape is under-reported, rape reporting is currently at an all-time high. There were 3,391 reports of rape in 1990 and the figures for 2001, which are the latest figures that I have been able to get hold of, show that there were 9,008 reports in that year. The number of reports has more than doubled and almost tripled during a decade. However, the conviction rate was 25 per cent. in 1990—no one suggested that that was too high. Given that the conviction rate was only 5.8 per cent. in 2001, I think I can say that the conviction rate has slumped.
Last April, Her Majesty's Crown Prosecution Service inspectorate and Her Majesty's inspectorate of constabulary produced a joint report on the way in which rape is investigated and prosecuted. The report said that rape was the most traumatising of offences and noted the profound impact that it has on victims' lives. It is, indeed, a travesty that so few examples of that serious offence result in a conviction. There is, of course, no deterrence in a very low conviction rate, so the changes to the law are especially important.
However, compared with other crimes, far fewer complaints about rape get to court. There is a big drop-out rate, some of which is due to women withdrawing their complaints. A lot of research confirms that part of the reason for that is that they fear that the details of previous sexual history—true or false—will be put to them. They are also worried about being asked whether they were wearing a short dress or scarlet lipstick, with the intention of showing that that licensed the attack or that they are promiscuous and not worthy of belief. As I said to the hon. Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey (Simon Hughes), the Government wisely and effectively sought to abolish the admissibility of previous sexual history to show consent as long ago as 1999, but it is still admissible, even as we discuss clause 1, to show that the defendant believed that the complainant was consenting.
On the drop-out rate, there is much less point in changing the law if we cannot get women to court to sustain complaints to trial. I acknowledge that the Government have done much to get more women to court, but for clauses 1, 75 and 76—the rape-related clauses—to be effective, there is more that they should do. They have encouraged excellent police initiatives to train front-line staff to be supportive to rape complainants in a way that they were not before. Project Sapphire, run by the Metropolitan police, has an active investigation policy for rapes. As well as giving support to complainants, the key to rape convictions is to find corroborative evidence so that the deadlock of his word against hers, and vice versa, is broken. The Government have encouraged that approach through excellent initiatives.
However, the amount of moral support and help a complainant—male or female—gets at the outset is in direct proportion to his or her ability to sustain a
complaint to prosecution and for it to be held up in court. Although that is well known, when we discuss clauses 1, 75 and 76, we will have to face the fact that four rape crisis centres have closed for want of funds in the past 18 months. If the Bill is to work, and as women will only sustain complaints if they are given support at the outset and throughout their trauma, it is essential that the Government establish a clear, strong and well-resourced policy of support for rape complainants.The Government should do more to encourage the creation of sexual assault referral centres. Those are usually adjacent to hospitals. The units are run by specialists for the benefit solely of the victims of sexual assault. A woman can go there with the police, or on her own, or she can phone and be brought to it. She is treated as a patient rather than a witness. No decisions are forced on her and no detailed statements are taken; just enough to allow the relevant health checks. She is encouraged to give samples in case she wants to prosecute, but with no obligation to make the decision to do so then. She is examined by an expert who has the expertise to give evidence about findings, going way beyond that of most forensic medical examiners at police stations who are GPs with generalised experience. Counselling can be arranged. A change of clothes can be arranged. She can be taken home. The police can be brought in the next day to take a statement if that is what she wants. It will, of course, be a specialist-trained officer who liaises with the sexual assault referral centre.
SARCs offer the best kind of support. One in every major urban centre would reduce the drop-out rate significantly and enhance the impact of the changes in the law. At the moment, however, there are only six sexual assault referral centres in the country, so in many areas such as mine on Teesside, complainants cannot receive the support that such resources can supply.
Cleveland police—my local force—and I are organising a conference of stakeholders for September in order to consider creating a Teesside SARC. That requires input not only from the police, because such centres aid detection, but from health trusts, because the after-effects of rape are a major health issue. Most of all, there is a need for finance or a definite prioritising by the Home Office of police and health funding. Not a large amount of money is needed to run a centre. REACH, the excellent centre in Newcastle upon Tyne, runs on about £250,000 a year.
SARCs should be linked to the national rape helpline, to which my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary rightly referred, so that by calling a single number, a woman can receive local help wherever the traumatising crime occurs. Project Sapphire, which works closely with The Haven, a sexual assault referral centre in south London, is sure that its next figures will show a lower drop-out rate and a better conviction rate owing to that liaison.
Getting women to court requires such a step to be taken, and to be taken now. There is little point in improving the law on rape, which ought to encourage more women to come forward, if they are not given support when they do so. If what has been done and what is still to be done succeeds in getting women to court, what happens? At the moment, there is a 45 per cent. conviction rate for rape cases that arrive in court.
For all other offences, there is a 73 per cent. conviction rate. In all judgments made, from the woman involved deciding whether to proceed, to the judgment of police on whether to proceed, to the Crown Prosecution Service deciding whether to proceed, what will happen in court plays a major part. The low conviction rate becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.Clause 1 can make a significant difference in court. As most people are beginning to realise, 90 per cent. of rape is committed by people who are acquainted with the complainant—not by strangers. That means that, inevitably, the issue is consent and whether the defendant believed that she was consenting. It is to the second test that clause 1 brings a change.
At present, the second test is totally subjective. "Are you sure", the jury is asked, "that he did not, however unreasonably, believe that she was consenting?" Owing to comments made in the other place, I want to make it clear that the defence of believing in consent is always—I repeat always—run at court. Doubt was cast on that by some of their lordships. Such a defence is especially run since the admissibility of previous sexual history was limited in 1999 to supporting the defence of consent. The way to get round the prohibition is to run belief in consent because previous sexual history is still admissible in order to support it. If, in a rape trial, a man goes into the witness box and says, "She was consenting," which of course he must do in every case, the defence that he believed that she was consenting is automatically raised and the judge has a duty to leave that belief to the jury for its consideration.
The present law allows that to happen. A woman may say that she had sex forced upon her and protested at the time, and a jury can believe her. However, if the defendant says, "I'm sorry, I honestly believed that she was consenting," it is difficult to gainsay that and convict him. There is therefore a situation in which women have had sex forced on them, but no one is convicted. The current rule—I do not think that this is putting it too strongly—licenses the assumption of consent by the defendant, irrespective of the complainant's wishes. She, of course, has a duty to make herself clear, but in those cases she will have done so. He, however, has a duty to ascertain that the sex is mutually consensual, and the current rule does not impose such a duty on a man.
If the Bill is enacted with clause 1 in its current form—I compliment those who have had input in refining it and making it better in the other place—when the issue at court is whether the defendant believed that the complainant was consenting, he can still say that he did, but will now have to show that that was a reasonable belief. That will have an impact that goes beyond court cases—it will become a normative or standard requirement. Men who get to know about the rule will understand that they have to behave reasonably when involved in sexual relations and must ascertain properly that the woman is consenting. I have to say that that is not much to ask.
The structure of clause 1 is excellent because in assessing whether the defendant's belief is reasonable, all the circumstances have to be looked at, including a scrutiny of any steps that the defendant took there and then to ascertain whether the complainant was consenting or not. The requirement that the defendant is to be asked in court about the steps that he took to
ascertain consent will have another excellent impact on the way in which cases run in court. It will diminish the admission of previous sexual history to support an honest belief in consent. At present, for example, someone can argue, "If my friend told me something about her and what she likes, or if I heard it on the grapevine, that might have influenced me to believe that she would consent, and helped to close my mind to what was actually resistance."Imposing a slight duty on the man to behave reasonably, and making him aware that he will be asked about the steps that he took, even though he believed that consent had been given, to check that his state of mind was correct at the time, ought to focus the court's attention much more on the situation in the bed, on the floor or wherever. What he heard about the complainant's previous sexual history and the way in which she might react if he approached her will be far less central to his state of mind at the time and, in many cases, will be so remote from the here and now that it will not be relevant enough to be admitted at all.
Clause 1, buttressed by clauses 76 and 75, is a good move in three ways. It has the two advantages at court that I have explained—first, it will require reasonableness, and secondly, it will diminish the admissibility of previous sexual history. Thirdly, it will establish a norm for the way in which men are expected to behave. Because it has that normative quality, it is important to publicise the change in the law if and when it occurs so that, in all fairness, men know that there is a further test and so that women are encouraged to appreciate that they have the extra protection provided by those first two changes.
Two years ago, I had a conversation with the then director of the major female equality pressure group in the UK and with a famous woman broadcaster—virtually a household name. We discussed whether we would report a rape done by somebody we knew. We were not convinced that it would be worth the cross-examination, perhaps about a fictional previous sexual history; the possibility of the man saying, "Okay, she didn't consent, she was protesting, but I thought she did consent," and being acquitted; or the thought of having to go it alone, perhaps with a disbelieving police force and a disinterested Crown Prosecution Service, facing the near-inevitability of an ultimate acquittal. We all agreed that if we had been raped by somebody we knew, we would not report it—middle-class, middle-aged, confident women like us. How much worse is the predicament for the less articulate, less confident, less secure younger women who live on the poorer estates—for example, in my constituency, Redcar?
When clauses 1, 75 and 76 come through, and the other good steps that I mentioned which the Government have taken start to bear fruit, and in particular if they drive forward the policy of rape support embodied by sexual assault referral centres, I think that reflecting on the position, I and my two friends would change our minds. We would say that it would now be worth making a report. It would not only change our minds but it would enable us to encourage those less advantaged women to do the same.
For those reasons, I believe my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary has greatly taken forward the cause of justice for women through these changes to rape law. In fact, I can go a little further. For the women
campaigners who have campaigned for the 27 years since 1976 to reverse the ruling in the case of R v. Morgan that allowed an honest, even if unreasonable, belief in consent to be a defence, there is a real possibility that this Home Secretary will become a feminist hero.
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