Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, with reference to the oral contribution of the Minister of State in response to the Urgent Question of 28 June 2022 on prosecution of incidences of rape, what steps he is taking to help ensure that evidence submitted to rape cases passes CPS thresholds.

Taking rape and sexual violence is a key priority for this Government.

Through the Rape Review, we took a hard and honest look at how the entire criminal justice system deals with rape and in too many instances it simply has not been good enough. Our accompanying Action Plan set out a robust programme of work to drive the necessary improvements in the criminal justice system’s handling of adult rape cases.

Our action includes investing £6.65 million in Operation Soteria (2021-23) which will inform the development of a national operating model for the investigation of rape by the police which will be available to all forces in June 2023. This includes work to raise the quality of police case files. For example, enhanced scrutiny panels with representatives from both the police and Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) have been in established in Operation Soteria areas to scrutinise casework and check whether quality decisions on individual cases are being made. The CPS will over the next 6 months be developing a file quality metric which will measure the quality of file cases and will provide insight on where issues need to be addressed.

The most recent figures show that police recorded offences of rape increased by 21% across the whole year ending December 2021 and now stands as the highest ever recorded annual figure to date (67,125 offences). We welcome the fact that more victims of sexual offences, which are all too often hidden crimes, are coming forward and reporting these crimes to the police.

In addition, we have started to see some increases in the number of referrals of adult rape cases from the police to the CPS (from 2,513 in the year to September 2021 to 2,736 in the year to December 2021), and in the number of charges (from 1,160 in the year to September 2021 to 1,243 in the year to December 2021).