Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what recent estimate he has made of the proportion of victims of rape who are offered the support of an independent sexual violence adviser at (a) reporting stage, (b) trial and (c) in-between the reporting of a case and a trial commencing in each of the last five years.

We do not collect specific information on when a victim is offered the support of an Independent Sexual Violence Advisor (ISVA); however, we know that ISVAs positively impact a victim’s experience of the criminal justice system. For example, research involving 585 reported rapes found that victims who received support from services such as ISVAs were almost 50% less likely to withdraw from the criminal justice investigation process compared to those who did not receive support. This is why the 24/7 Rape & Sexual Abuse Support Line includes signposting to ISVA services as well as vital information on emotional support, to ensure that ISVAs are signposted at the earliest opportunity.

In addition, we have quadrupled funding for victim and witness support services including using additional ringfenced funding to increase the number of ISVAs and Independent Domestic Violence Advisors by 300 to over 1,000 by 2024/2025 - a 43% on the number of ISVAs and IDVAs over this spending review period (2022/23 to 2024/25).