Member News
Rapists are now convicted at a significantly increased rate, the solicitor general has said.
Vera Baird told the Commons yesterday that "women—and, indeed, men—have the confidence to report, and do not feel that they will be put through the mill again".
The conviction rate from charge to conviction is 58 per cent.
Baird said that represents "a significant increase on what the rate has been historically".
"By analogy, 65 per cent is the conviction rate for robbery."
She added: "There is obviously still room for improvement, but things are going in the right direction.
"There is still a large drop-out rate between complaint and getting to court, but we are trying to tackle that in a range of ways.
"We now have 30 sexual assault referral centres, and a whole phalanx of independent sexual violence advisers who befriend and support a complainant from the minute they come to the police until the end of the case.
"This gives the complainant better sustenance than they would have had before."
The solicitor general also defended plea bargains in fraud cases.
Her Conservative shadow Jonathan Djanogly said fraud costs the United Kingdom about £30 billion a year, compared with an estimated £13 billion three years ago.
"It seems that the SFO is increasingly using plea bargaining as a tactic to move its cases along," he said.
"Does the solicitor general accept that our current statutory framework is in need of reform to accommodate that?"
Baird said there is no need to amend the framework.
"A new framework set up by the Law Officers has been accepted and taken forward by the SFO, and is currently very much in play.
"I do not think that he should take the view that fraud increased from £13 billion to £30 billion between the two assessments, because they were done on wholly different bases—the second one postdated the setting up of the National Fraud Authority, which has done a far more thorough job because it has had the resources to do so."
She agreed that fraud is "a real problem in this country today" but said plea bargaining has a role to play in the "quick dispatch of cases, but it always has to be made clear that people who commit fraud will be punished severely by the courts and will not be able to buy their way out of trouble".
Rosie Cooper (Lab, West Lancashire) asked about the effectiveness of the Action Fraud helpline.
Baird said it has been in operation since October, offering a central point for individuals and small to medium-sized businesses that have been the subject of fraud.
"We need to promote it region by region, so that instead of it being inundated with complaints straight away, they come in at a rate such that it can expand to meet them," she added.
"Although the helpline started in the midlands, it is now in the north-west, where my hon. friend’s constituency is, as well as the north-east, where mine is.
"The helpline will offer information to prosecutions, if that is practical, as well as victim support, and it will absolutely ensure that evidence of fraud brought by individuals goes into the intelligence that we use to try to wipe out fraud more broadly."
Dods Parliamentary Communications Ltd