Defendant Anonymity

Debate between Anna Soubry and Glenda Jackson

Thursday 8th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Glenda Jackson (Hampstead and Kilburn) (Lab)]

The hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes) hopes that this will be a non-partisan debate. The speeches that we have listened to this afternoon have been non-partisan in a party political sense. However, in relation to the policy that his Government are presenting, there is a marked lack of evidence that the proposed change is necessary, or that it would bring about any kind of improvement in convictions for rape, which, if I understood him, was at the centre of his argument.

The hon. Gentleman also hoped that given the amount of time the Government are affording to the debate, decisions would come about by consensus in the House and the country. How can there possibly be any consensus in the country if his Government do not enter into the widest, deepest and most detailed consultation? The question remains: why have his Government selected the offence of rape? Why should alleged perpetrators of rape alone, among alleged perpetrators of other crimes of violence, be afforded anonymity? Answer has come there none.

As we heard in the excellent speech by my hon. Friend the Member for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle), the implications of that proposal are wider if we go down that road. She touched on the issue of affording anonymity to teachers, and the hon. Gentleman’s Government have again come up with no detail of the alleged offence that a teacher might have committed. She gave the graphic example—and we all know about this—of children who had been abused not only by teachers, but by members of their family or other people in authority, and the automatic response of society at the time had been to disbelieve the children, with the result that the abuse continued in an ever wider circle. I refer to the past, but from contemporary reports we know that this still goes on. The scandal of what has happened in the Catholic Church continues to reverberate. The central essential there was the idea that secrecy was all, and so the imbalance of power between the abused and the abuser was reinforced. That is my fear about this proposal and the selection of rape as the only violent act that is afforded this kind of anonymity.

In his opening remarks, the Minister said—forgive me for paraphrasing, but I cannot remember his exact words—that it is now an accepted absolute that acts of violence against women are anathema, and that everybody in this country, this House, the criminal justice system and the police service are automatically appalled by acts of violence against women and, as a result, are immediately on the front foot, exercising all their abilities, talents and resources to track down whomsoever commits such heinous acts. We all know that that is absolute fantasy. We are witnessing at the moment one of the largest manhunts that this country has ever seen to try to track down a man who, it is alleged, has murdered one individual and shot at and injured two others. He boasted before he left prison of what he planned to do. I have no doubt that prison officials were very busy, but I am equally sure that it went into that little pocket—although it is getting bigger and bigger in my view—of something called “a domestic” in the criminal justice and police system. All it needed was for those officials in the prison to take the threats seriously, to ring the alleged perpetrator’s local police station so that the police there could take those threats seriously themselves, and perhaps the largest manhunt in British history would never have needed to take place.

There is still, as I said in an earlier intervention, a prevailing view in this country that incidents of rape, for example, are the fault of the victim—[Interruption.] Members opposite may groan and moan, but it is not so long ago— I remember it distinctly—that a judge who summed up in a rape case advised the victim of the rape that she should perhaps have worn a longer skirt. I am sure that that would never happen now, but I think that people still have similar thought processes.

[Anna Soubry]

We all agree that there should be more argument based on evidence. Where is the hon. Lady’s evidence for the assertion that people still have those views of those who make complaints of rape?

[Glenda Jackson]

I am sorry, but I did not catch the end of the hon. Lady’s question. I will give her direct evidence of a constituency case of mine, in which a woman had been systematically abused by her partner. The law acted and an injunction was laid, meaning that the perpetrator of the offences was not allowed within a certain distance of their home. What happened? His brothers took over. It is a fantasy to think that everyone in this country regards acts of violence against women as totally beyond the pale. Let us take honour killings, for instance. Does she seriously think that people who are genuinely opposed to acts of violence against women would enter into an honour killing?

--- Later in debate ---

[Glenda Jackson]

With all due respect to the hon. Gentleman, the evidence presented in the Chamber—obviously he is not the only person on the Conservative Benches obsessed with evidence-based decisions—shows that rape is exercised almost exclusively against women, so there is a gender base.

[Anna Soubry]

Some 40% of all rape complainants are either male or children, and of the 60% who are aged over 16 and female, we do not know—we do not have the statistics—how many made a complaint about something that happened to them when they were children. It is unfortunate that we do not have those statistics after 13 years of a Labour Government.

[Glenda Jackson]

We have already established that, as far as children are concerned, we are all in absolute agreement. That is why the question has been asked: why has an alleged rapist been afforded the privilege of anonymity, but someone who, for example, has been downloading child pornography has not? It has not been explained to me why rape is the act being afforded this particular privilege. I would argue that, if the Government go down this road, they will deeply undermine the concept of the unacceptability of rape and general acts of violence against women. Far too often, we hear of cases in which, for example, a woman has laid before the police the serious threats she is facing daily from an ex-partner. We then read that the police did absolutely nothing about it. We know of terrible incidents—one cannot say it is more terrible than when children are killed—in which such women and their children have then been killed by those partners. I have already given the example of honour killings.

In a recent, highly publicised case of the most heinous crimes, every report began not with “Three women were murdered”, but with “Three prostitutes were murdered”. I return to what I believe is still a central issue here, and a reason I am so opposed to the Government’s proposal: there is still the belief that attacks on women are engendered by the women themselves.

[Anna Soubry]

indicated dissent.

[Glenda Jackson]

It is no use the hon. Lady shaking her head. We both know of incidents in which people have not reported an incident of rape because they were drunk at the time, and they know that they would be castigated for it. Equally she knows that when women do come forward claiming to have been raped, the initial response in quite a wide circle is that they are making it up, which is why we have to be exceedingly careful about going down this road of putting rape in this special category that other violent crimes are not granted. If the Government were arguing that all violent and violent sexual crimes should be afforded anonymity, and if there were sufficiently wide consultation on the proposal—not just in the House, but in the country at large—I would be prepared to consider the Government’s central argument, which is that a false accusation can damage an individual’s life, their family’s life, and, in some instances, their professional life. However, I entirely agree with the point that if we go down that road, we will be undermining one of the basic concepts of our criminal justice system, which is that accusation and argument in criminal cases should take place in public. I would be extremely chary of moving away from that position, but what the Government are proposing and their lack of commitment to wide consultation cause me grave concern.

My hon. Friend the Member for Garston and Halewood, speaking from the Opposition Front Bench, made a salient point when she raised the issue of freedom of the press. That is another issue that we must consider deeply before we make any changes. However, I return to the point that I made slightly earlier, and which reinforces my contention that we are still insufficiently adamant or active and that insufficient resources are put into tackling the broader issue of acts of violence against women. I gave the example of the recent incident where three women were brutally murdered and every single news outlet began its report of the event with the words, “Three prostitutes”.

I also think that Dr Shipman would perhaps not have got away with his mass murder if his victims had been young women, as opposed to middle-aged or elderly women, because there would undoubtedly have been a desire on the part of the press—well, perhaps “desire” is an extreme word—to present the case as though these particular acts against women had a sexual undertone. In my view there is still this prevailing attitude—it might not be directly acknowledged, but it permeates so many aspects of the criminal justice system and law enforcement—when it comes to acts of violence against women, for the immediate reaction is to say, “We have to be careful about this.”

Hon. Members will know the argument about malicious accusation, but I have seen too many constituency cases and too many women and their children who have been brutalised because not enough people have taken what has been said to them sufficiently seriously, often ignoring the evidence before their eyes. The hon. Member for Gillingham and Rainham (Rehman Chishti) made a salient point in his maiden speech when he talked about the different approaches to such crimes in Europe, where there are special courts that are properly financed, with support for victims. That is a lesson that we should be learning in this country far more quickly than we are. I absolutely admit that we have made strides in that direction, but we need to make bigger strides and more of them.