Source · Select Committees · Home Affairs Committee
Recommendation 4
4
Deferred
Paragraph: 57
Unclear how Government will hold partners accountable for increasing rape prosecution volumes
Conclusion
We are encouraged by the commitment to measuring progress through the performance scorecards and progress updates. However, it is unclear how the Government will hold operationally independent partners to account for their role in increasing the volume of rape prosecutions, even though the Government has said that, if outcomes don’t improve, it may look at reform of the way independent operational partners are held to account for delivery of operational improvements.
Government response summary AI-generated
The government did not address how it will hold operationally independent partners accountable for increasing rape prosecutions, instead detailing its work on strengthening victim support services, including publishing a refreshed National Statement of Expectations and VAWG Commissioning Toolkit.
Summary of the government's response below — read the verbatim text to verify.
Paragraph Reference:
57
Government Response
Deferred
HM Government · verbatim extract
Deferred
The Action Plan recognised that transparency and greater scrutiny would be critical in driving improvements to the system. We have put in place clear cross-system governance structures to track progress and hold partners to account for delivery. This includes the Ministerially chaired Rape Review Taskforce, and the Rape Review Steering Committee, which is chaired by the Deputy Prime Minister and attended by Ministers from the Home Office, the Attorney General, Solicitor General and the Director of Public Prosecutions. In addition, as the Committee is aware, we have worked collaboratively with partners across the criminal justice system to develop the criminal justice system (CJS) delivery data dashboard (previously referred to as scorecards) for all crime and recorded adult rape offences. These are published quarterly, which is a greater frequency than the commitment made in the Rape Review. The first national dashboard was published in December 2021 and represents a transformative change to the way we understand data in the CJS. By closely monitoring this data on a quarterly basis, we will be better able to identify, implement, and evaluate interventions to drive improvements and share best practice. In March, we published the second national dashboard and the first local dashboard, and on 16 June we published the third national and second local data dashboard. We know rape cases, which are among the most complex, take time to investigate. We also know that the cultural change needed—both within the criminal justice system and more widely in society—is significant and that it will take time. Although we are seeing a slow initial increase in the number of charges, we expect this increase to gather pace as the actions being taken forward by the Government and operational partners begin to bed in. We use the CJS delivery data dashboards and the Rape Review governance to work collaboratively with operational partners and hold each part of the system to account.
Read the full response on Parliament ↗