Women Offender One-stop Shops

Bridget Phillipson Excerpts

Wednesday 11th May 2011 Westminster Hall

[Mrs Moon]

It is not just the public we must convince; we must convince the courts, and ensure that they know of the centres’ work, their success, and that turning a life around is a hard choice. It is much easier to remain in the victim status, and to live life in that way. We all know that. If someone has been the victim of sexual abuse, been physically abused, or has a mental health problem, or a drug or alcohol problem, tackling those issues is not a soft option. It is a hard option, and that is what we are asking the Government to make available—not a soft option, but a hard option. I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention because it is crucial to get the message across.

The sort of work carried out by one-stop shops for women offenders is clear, as is the fact that they are effective at reducing reoffending and improving the lives of these women, and that they are cost effective. Evaluation in 2009 found that between July 2007 and July 2008, only four out of 87 women who accessed the Evolve integrated women’s project at Calderdale women’s centre reoffended. The rate of self-reported reoffending in the first year of operation of the Together Women projects was 7% in the north-west, and 13% in the Yorkshire and Humberside region. That compares with a national reoffending rate of 33%, and is a clear demonstration of success.

The SWAN project in Northumberland has achieved a 70% reduction in the rate of reoffending by women who have engaged with the project. The sort of intensive support that is provided in these projects needs specialist training and specialist resources. That is why, although there are huge savings to be made, they require investment. We cannot afford to lose the skills base in those centres. We cannot afford to see people moving away from working in those centres to other areas of the criminal justice system because of funding instability.

[Bridget Phillipson (Houghton and Sunderland South) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important debate. My experience of women who are released from custody and the associated costs is that it is often difficult to find accommodation for them. When I managed a women’s refuge, we would often take women released directly from prison, who may have had electronic tags or other reporting requirements. The difficulty is that when those women have a prison sentence behind them, many accommodation projects will find it difficult to accommodate them, and will refuse them, thus compounding the damage that can be done.

[Mrs Moon]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and what is so sad is that when they go to prison, some of those women have accommodation where they can look after their family and children. Instead, they lose that accommodation, and build up debt, which makes them unattractive to landlords in the future. Their children go into care, sometimes at a cost of up to £30,000 a week per child. All that could be saved if, instead of a prison sentence, those women could stay in the community and tackle the issues that led them into crime.

It can cost £50,000 a year to keep a woman in prison. The cost to taxpayers and society through the criminal justice system, policing, social services and the benefits system of not addressing the problems that bring women into offending is enormous. Research has shown that intensive community order support costing £15,000 can save the public purse up to £264,000 over five years.

What I am looking for today is a consistent source of funding, so that projects can be established and maintained with the confidence that they are sustainable. Funding for most existing centres for 2011-12 has been secured through the Ministry of Justice and the Corston Independent Funders Coalition, and I am extremely grateful for that. The National Offender Management Service will be responsible for commissioning those services in 2012-13 if the centres are shown to be effective in diverting women from reoffending. But we do not have information about when and how decisions will be made, and what criteria will be used for assessment. The centres do excellent work, and the women who benefit from them need to know as soon as possible what measures they will be being judged against.

Prisons are not an optional extra in the criminal justice system, and we do not expect them to have to fund themselves year on year to keep going. Women’s centres should not be considered to be optional extras, or be funded in that way. They need to be part of the bedrock of our criminal justice system, with continuous funding guaranteed for those centres that are working well. I am more than happy for them to be judged against criteria. They should be inspected, and they should demonstrate that they work, but their funding should be assured within those parameters.

The recently announced national liaison and diversion service for mentally ill people in the criminal justice system should use women’s centres as a foothold to promote the agenda more widely, and not sideline them as an experiment. We have a fantastic joint commitment from the Ministry of Justice and the Department of Health. Women’s centres should be used as a model to move forward, and they should be expanded so that we do not start from scratch in 2014, but have a bedrock and a base that we could be utilising now. The women’s justice task force, which was established by the Prison Reform Trust, is due to publish its findings shortly, and I hope that the Minister will read them carefully, and provide leadership, as my hon. Friends the Members for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) and for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle) did under the previous Government.

The previous Government were quick to accept the findings of the review showing that intervention and support in the community is more effective than prison, but they were too slow in coming forward with sustainable, increased funding to put the policy into practice. The Justice Secretary bought a lot of good favour in the sector with his warm words last summer, but unless the Green Paper acts on those words he will have wasted a golden opportunity. Will the Minister take the opportunity today to detail how the network of women’s centres will be put on a sustainable footing with funding secured for the future so that they can expand, how the Government will provide leadership, how the network of centres will be made accountable to the Ministry of Justice with a system of assessment and inspection, and how the courts will be provided with more information about women’s centres so that they can use community sentences with confidence, and so that we do not carry on with the waste of human lives which is represented by the number of women and their children who are damaged by involvement in the criminal justice system?

Defendant Anonymity

Bridget Phillipson Excerpts

Thursday 8th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Maria Eagle]

Not at this point.

In fact, people accused of sexual crimes should not be treated any differently from other defendants. If the Under-Secretary singles out rape from all other sexual offences, let alone offences of violence, he will send a clear signal that there is a reason for his action. That will impinge on victims’ capacity to come forward and the likelihood that they will do so, which will in turn impinge on the conviction rate.

The argument that there should be anonymity for defendants because there is anonymity for complainants is a false one. There is a public interest in bringing rapists to justice. A victim is a witness to a crime, not simply another party to a family law case or a civil case in which some kind of equivalence might be seen between parties. Rape is often a serial crime, and it is often only after many crimes that a perpetrator is brought to court. Previous victims often come forward at that point. That can be essential to the securing of a conviction, but the Under-Secretary’s policy is likely to make it less efficacious.

Many organisations have contacted Members about the proposed policy, including Rights of Women. It has endorsed a statement signed by 50 leading women’s and human rights organisations, including many rape crisis centres and organisations that deal with victims of rape. It believes that giving suspects anonymity, whether until charge or until conviction, will hamper police investigations, enable serial offenders to evade detection—thus placing more women at risk of sexual violence—reinforce erroneous and harmful myths about the prevalence of false reports of rape, thereby deterring women from reporting it, and send a clear message to women that they are not to be believed. It calls on the Government to drop their proposals on anonymity, and instead to focus their energy where it is needed by concentrating on securing sustainable services for survivors of sexual violence and improving the investigation and prosecution of rape.

The ACPO lead on rape, Chief Constable Dave Whatton—who knows a thing or two about the subject—has said

“The proposal to extend anonymity in rape cases beyond victims would require primary legislation. ACPO has yet to see the detail of the proposals but would welcome being part of the formal consultation process.”

Well, apparently there is not going to be a formal consultation process, although the Under-Secretary did say that he would talk to ACPO, which is at least something.

Chief Constable Whatton also said:

“The welfare of rape victims needs to remain a priority. Our main concern would be in regard to the impact any changes on anonymity would have on victims, in particular on their confidence to come forward and report rape.”

It seems to me that the entire focus of the Under-Secretary and the Government on the issue of anonymity for defendants in rape cases rests on the level of false reports, although the Under-Secretary said that it did not. I think that one of the strongest arguments advanced by Members on the Government Benches who favour the proposal is the idea that there is a lot of false reporting. The last Home Office research on that was in 2005 and it suggested that the true figure was closer to 3% than the 8% to 10% that has been stated. However, false reporting is obviously a concern for those who are falsely accused, and it must be tackled. There is no disagreement between us on that. The question is whether the best way to tackle this is to allow anonymity for anybody who might be accused of any kind of offence, including all the people who are guilty. We argue that that would lead to less reporting and less ability to convict the guilty.

[Bridget Phillipson (Houghton and Sunderland South) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that it is important to draw a distinction between acquittal and false allegation? Rape is a difficult crime to prosecute and juries will sometimes not convict, and that is right, but that does not mean that the complainant lied.

[Maria Eagle]

That is right; my hon. Friend makes an extremely important point. There are very few examples of malicious reporting. When the public talk about false reporting, they are often really referring to malicious reporting, which we all agree is a perversion of the course of justice, and can be, and is, charged as such where it is discovered.

We must make it clear that in the current context anonymity in effect means reporting restrictions. What we are talking about, therefore, is not an objective descent of anonymity on to a named individual, but inhibiting our free press from reporting matters of public interest. I had a word with the Newspaper Society about what it thinks about that.

Oral Answers to Questions

Bridget Phillipson Excerpts

Tuesday 15th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Meg Munn (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab/Co-op)]

9. What evidence he took into account in deciding to propose to grant anonymity to defendants charged with rape.

[Bridget Phillipson (Houghton and Sunderland South) (Lab)]

11. What evidence was considered before the announcement of proposals to introduce anonymity for defendants in rape cases.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Clarke]

As the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for Reigate (Mr Blunt) reasonably said in the Adjournment debate, we are looking at evidence and seeing how many cases are multiple offenders, and in what particular cases that might have led to further complaints and detection, but I point out that 53%—I think that is the figure—of those accused in serious rape cases are known to the person making the accusation. They are usually ex-partners or ex-husbands. In those cases, where the person sometimes gets anonymity if they are the husband, not granting it might betray the identity of the complainant, and sometimes the person accused does not get anonymity, if they are the partner. There is a perfectly serious case to be made on both sides of the argument, and the coalition agreement has contemplated going back to anonymity. I had to look up which way I voted the last time the question was before the House. Other hon. Members would probably have to do the same. I voted in favour of anonymity then, but we are now listening to the arguments.

[Bridget Phillipson]

I have worked with victims of sexual violence and know how difficult it is for women to come forward and report offences. The right hon. and learned Gentleman is right that the issue is not about party politics; it is about protecting very vulnerable victims of crime. If the Government intend to press ahead with those proposals, will he outline how they intend to encourage women to report rape offences and what measures will be brought forward to drive up the conviction rate in rape cases, which remains significantly lower than it should be?

[Mr Clarke]

The Government are committed to providing up to 15 more rape crisis centres. I agree entirely with the hon. Lady that, obviously, nobody is questioning the long-standing decision that anonymity be given to all victims making allegations of rape. It is obviously important that everything possible be done to encourage more women who have suffered from that crime to come forward and seek the prosecution of the perpetrator.