Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what most recent steps his Department has taken to improve the (a) prosecution and (b) conviction rates for rape in (i) Newport West constituency, (ii) Wales and (iii) England.

The Government has recognised that the decline in the number of rape and serious sexual offences being prosecuted in England and Wales is a cause for significant concern and has carried out an end-to-end review into this topic.

The review revealed wide-ranging reasons behind the fall in cases reaching court, including delays in the investigation process, a lack of specialist and consistent support for victims, and an increase in invasive requests for their personal data. We have published an ambitious Action Plan seeks to directly address these issues and increase the number of cases being referred by the police, referred to the CPS and getting to court, no matter where they are across England and Wales.

Steps being taken include better data extraction technology, launching new pathfinder projects that involve greater focus on perpetrators’ offending patterns and further piloting of pre-recorded cross examination.