Jo Stevens
Main Page: Jo Stevens (Labour - Cardiff Central)Department Debates - View all Jo Stevens's debates with the Attorney General
(8 years, 2 months ago)
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The Solicitor General
I am grateful to the hon. and learned Lady for raising that matter. The scale involved in England and Wales is slightly bigger, so they have taken the regional unit approach, but I entirely agree with her about the need to standardise practice. The Attorney General and I are always very conscious of that in our conversations with the Director of Public Prosecutions and the chief executive of the Crown Prosecution Service, and work is being done to improve that standardisation.
Jo Stevens (Cardiff Central) (Lab)
In the latest thematic review of rape and serious sexual offence units, the CPS inspector found that the care given to victims of rape and sexual assault
“fell well short of what is expected”.
Is the Solicitor General concerned by Kevin McGinty’s findings that in some areas the CPS has stopped giving early investigative advice to the police because resources are overstretched?
The Solicitor General
I remind the hon. Lady that that report related to a particular period from a year to 18 months ago, and since then the CPS has taken huge strides both in increasing the number of prosecutors and in improving the methods by which cases are assessed and managed.