Angiolini Inquiry Report

Wendy Chamberlain Excerpts

Thursday 29th February 2024 Commons Chamber

[James Cleverly]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. When I talk about that cycle of confidence, women need to see that when these crimes are reported, they are investigated and the perpetrators are brought to justice. Only then will they feel confident in coming forward. These are serious offences; they are not trivial. She is right to say that not everyone who is a flasher, not everyone who has made unwanted and inappropriate sexual advances to women, goes on to become a rapist or a murderer. None the less, the more people who are dissuaded from that behaviour because of swift and professional criminal justice, the more people we can prevent from getting to those later stages. That is why this is so important. That is why that cultural change needs to be driven through the whole system. A number of the Angiolini recommendations are for Departments other than the Home Office and for public bodies outside Government—all of us have to take this incredibly seriously. This is a whole of society approach, and that will remain the fundamental philosophy that I use to underpin the work of the Home Office in this area.

[Wendy Chamberlain (North East Fife) (LD)]

I associate myself with the comments for the Everard family and with Lady Elish Angiolini. Her report today is a continuation of her reports that have highlighted failures in our criminal justice system.

In the Home Secretary’s statement, I noticed mention of funding for the National Police Chiefs’ Council for the flagging of police officers in the vetting system. My own experience in the police service is that IT system improvements take a long time and are complex, so I suppose my first question for him is: what timescales do we have in mind for those improvements? Secondly, what engagement is happening with Police Scotland, because police officers transfer to forces in and outwith the UK? Finally, if today a serving police officer were found in a concerning situation that requires input into the intelligence system and they do not identify themselves as a police officer, are we confident that they would be dealt with accordingly?

[James Cleverly]

The hon. Lady makes a number of points about the implementation of the changes that we are making. I cannot give precise timescales at the moment, because this piece of work is ongoing and recently initiated, but my desire is for these things to happen as quickly as possible. She is absolutely right that IT and systems changes are not instant, and I am impatient to get improvement, which is why I keep saying that we are not waiting for these things to go forward. They are amplifiers and accelerators of what should be a fundamental change that we are looking to drive through immediately. The earliest conversations that I had when appointed as Home Secretary were on this issue with the College of Policing and with Lady Elish herself. One of those first meetings I had on my appointment was with Lady Elish about this report and the work that we could do to get ahead of the findings that she has put forward.