rose to call attention to the Government’s record on the management and prosecution of sexual offences; and to move for Papers.

The noble Baroness said: My Lords, I am very grateful for the opportunity of holding this debate today, especially during White Ribbon Week and following the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women on 25 November. Yesterday the Map of Gaps document was launched by the Equality and Human Rights Commission and the End Violence Against Women coalition. It sets out geographical maps showing support services for women throughout the UK, or the lack of them. In addition, yesterday the Government issued their response to the consultation document, Convicting Rapists and Protecting Victims—Justice for Victims of Rape. It outlines the measures that the Government will take to further assist victims of rape and that we hope will result in a rise in the conviction rate. I am sure that my noble and learned friend will say a lot more about that later.

The UN definition of violence against women is:

“Any act of gender-based violence that is directed against a woman because she is a woman, or that affects women disproportionately”.

It includes rape and sexual violence, domestic violence, forced marriage, stalking, trafficking and sexual exploitation, forced prostitution, crimes in the name of honour, female genital mutilation and sexual harassment. Violence against women is endemic in every country in the world; women can go nowhere to escape it. It acts as a weapon to control women and as a punishment. Rape is used as a weapon of war in many conflicts in the world today.

The figures of violence against women make depressing reading. Three million women across the UK experience violence each year. Many more women cope with the legacies of abuse experienced in the past as children or adults. Almost half of women in England and Wales experience domestic violence, sexual assault or stalking in their lifetime. Convictions for rape are falling—just 5.3 per cent of rapes reported to the police result in a conviction—but I will say more about that later. Women represent around 85 per cent of victims of forced marriage. It is estimated that 33,000 young women and girls are at risk of female genital mutilation. Other noble Lords will speak about those matters today.

The effects of violence against women include physical injury, gynaecological disorders, long-term mental health issues, self-harm and suicide. This violence is also connected with women’s social exclusion—for example, that of women offenders. Histories of violence and abuse often form a pathway into their offending behaviour. Research for the Government estimates that, in England and Wales in one year, domestic violence alone cost £23 billion—£17 billion is a human and emotional cost and £6 billion is a direct cost to the state.

Violence against women is both a cause and consequence of women’s inequality. Under some measures men are more likely to be victims of violence, but it is not usually part of an ongoing or repeated pattern of behaviour as violence against women is. Violence that women experience is usually committed by men they know—partners, family members, friends or work colleagues. In addition, sexual harassment in public is widespread and contributes to women’s fear of crime and whether they feel safe in public places at night. Women are twice as likely as men to be worried about violent crime.

Violence against women is an issue that cuts through all walks of life. Girls and young women are more likely to experience sexual violence. Older women are more likely to be abused by carers than are older men. Women with mental health problems and learning disabilities are particularly vulnerable to sexual violence. Ethnic-minority women face additional barriers to access and support, and experience particular forms of violence such as forced marriage, female genital mutilation and crimes in the name of honour.

Violence against women is a violation of women’s fundamental human rights—the right not to be treated in an inhumane and degrading way, the right for respect for private and family life, and the right to life. There have been many good initiatives by our Labour Government over the last 10 years, and I feel proud of the measures carried out and the laws put in place. Much of that drive has been made by my noble and learned friend the Attorney-General, and I congratulate her on and thank her for all her efforts.

The acceptance of violence against women needs to be tackled. An ICM poll commissioned by End Violence Against Women showed that 42 per cent of young people knew girls whose boyfriends had hit them, and that 40 per cent knew girls whose boyfriends had coerced or pressurised them into having sex—yet there is minimal work with children and young people to challenge attitudes that tolerate violence against women.

Map of Gaps, the document that was published jointly yesterday of which I spoke earlier, has for the first time mapped specialist violence-against-women services across the UK. It shows that for the 3 million women across the UK who experience violence each year and for the many more coping with legacies of abuse, specialist services are essential for their access to safety and justice and their ability to move on with their lives. The document is a useful tool for determining where and what services are required and where more funding and support are needed.

Most women across the UK have no access to rape crisis centres; and less than one-third of local authorities have any sexual violence service at all. A very small proportion of the UK is currently covered by the existing sexual assault referral centres, though the Government are extending the network. These centres are a place where victims can receive medical care and counselling and assist the police investigation through a forensic examination. There were five centres in 2001, but today there are 19. By the end of financial year 2008-09, there will be at least 36 centres.

Fewer than one in 10 local authorities have specialist services for ethnic-minority women, services which could address forced marriage, female genital mutilation and crimes of honour as well as other forms of violence, or services for women in prostitution. The End Violence Against Women coalition and the Equality and Human Rights Commission yesterday called on national government and local authorities to take urgent action to ensure that there is consistent national coverage and funding of specialised third-sector support services for all women.

Rape is one of the worst offences against women. It is estimated that a minimum of 47,000 women in England and Wales are raped each year. Most rapes are committed by someone the victim knows, often a partner or ex-partner. Up to 95 per cent of rapes are never reported to the police. The number of rape convictions has remained relatively stable, but the number of rapes reported to the police has been increasing year on year. The result has been that the number of rapes resulting in conviction has declined from 33 per cent in 1977 to 7.5 per cent in 1999 and to 5.29 per cent in 2004. Although there is a steady increase in the number of reported incidents, there has not been an increase in the number of convictions. Overall, less than 6 per cent of cases reported to the police in England and Wales result in a conviction, though the figures vary across England and Wales.

I shall take the rape conviction rates for 2004 as an example. The overall figure for all police forces in England and Wales was 5.29 per cent, but in Northamptonshire it was 13.79 per cent; in Cumbria, 12.7 per cent; and in south Wales, 12.18 per cent. Those are the three highest. The lowest three were Cambridgeshire, at 1.75 per cent; Suffolk, 1.6 per cent; and Gloucestershire, amazingly, at 0.86 per cent. The consequence is that men who commit rape in those police force areas know that they will never have to worry too much about being convicted. I do not know why some police areas have a better conviction rate than others, but it would be good to discover why. Perhaps their methods could be used in other parts of the country. The chief constable in south Wales, with one of the three highest conviction rates, is Barbara Wilding, a wonderful woman who works very hard on these issues.

While I believe that it is so important to do everything possible to achieve a better conviction rate, I also believe that efforts should be made to try to reduce the number of incidents of rape. In January, Dr Katherine Rake, the director of the Fawcett Society, said:

“More fundamentally we need to change the public debate about rape in which violence against women is often seen as acceptable and victims of rape are frequently blamed or disbelieved. The Government must take the lead in exposing the realities of rape and challenging the myths and stereotypes that surround them”.

For example, an Amnesty International opinion poll showed that a third of people believe that the woman who is raped is partially or totally responsible if she behaves in a flirtatious manner or is drunk or wearing “sexy or revealing clothes”. It is an amazing assumption: when a woman is raped, she and not the man is to blame.

How can we change the culture of our society and give a clear indication that violence against women in all its forms is totally unacceptable? One method would be an education programme which starts at an early age and teaches children about respect, including respect, certainly, for girls and women. Good programmes already exist, such as those that have been promoted by WOMANKIND, which has for past three years led research into the prevalence of violence against young women in UK schools and the accompanying attitudes and beliefs. WOMANKIND will tonight be launching its findings and recommendations, and those have important implications for the Government, local authorities and teachers. I look forward to reading the conclusions of that research.

I should like to say a few words about the White Ribbon Campaign. I knew very little about this campaign until recently when, on 25 November, to mark International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, I was invited to a service in Llandaff Cathedral, where I wore my white ribbon for the first time. The campaign was started by men whose aim is to end violence against women, and the wearing of a white ribbon signifies a commitment never to commit, condone or remain silent about violence against women. Men and boys are asked to wear a white ribbon to show their support, and the campaign encourages men to talk in schools, workplaces and places of worship about the problem of violence. It deserves our support. When men show other men that violence against women is unacceptable, it is a step forward in changing perceptions and attitudes.

I wish to put a suggestion to my noble and learned friend, and I ask her to comment on it in her response. Does she agree that there should be a long-term and sustained campaign to highlight the fact that violence against women in all its forms is totally unacceptable? I am aware that it takes a very long time to change a culture—but let us consider other campaigns, such as the one to highlight the dangers of drink-driving. That long-term and sustained campaign brought home the dangers of drink-driving to both drivers and victims and people now regard such behaviour as unacceptable. It was the same with the campaign highlighting the dangers of smoking, and there is now a smoking ban everywhere in the UK; but it took many years of campaigning, highlighting the health dangers to smoker and passive smoker alike, to achieve it. One can think of other campaigns that have changed attitudes—on the wearing of seat belts, for motorcyclists to wear crash helmets, and the recent ban on the use of mobile phones while driving. Those were evidence-based campaigns in which Governments have undertaken over the years to persuade the public that a behaviour is unacceptable because it harms people or damages their health.

The same sort of campaign targeting violence against women could be carried out by central government, the devolved nations and local authorities, and through education at school. It is government, passing laws, who can help change the culture. The Government have a great record on supporting women who suffer sexual and domestic violence: passing laws and setting up institutions to assist and support women victims; ensuring better training for the police and a better understanding of the nature of violence against women. Women have benefited from the Government’s actions in the past 10 years, and changes are occurring in society as a result. Although we are still some way from addressing the present culture and attitude towards women and from bringing about a society where all are treated equally, I believe that we are starting to get there. I beg to move for Papers.

My Lords, I start by thanking the noble Baroness, Lady Gale, for initiating this debate. She is a most doughty fighter on a practical and theoretical level for equality of rights for women and is universally admired in this House on that basis. I particularly welcome the comments that she made in the last part of her speech about the need to educate the public about the evil of violence against women. I join her in asking the Government whether they will consider conducting a campaign of the sort that she suggested.

My noble friend Lord Thomas of Gresford will wind up on behalf of these Benches. His knowledge of the management and prosecution of offences is incomparably greater than mine, so I shall not trespass on what I consider to be his territory. Equally, new measures to be taken with respect to reforms of the criminal justice system for the benefit of complainants, announced yesterday by the Attorney-General’s Office, will no doubt inform the Minister’s response to this debate. I therefore propose to speak on a rather broader range of topics than might seem to be encompassed by a narrow interpretation of the title of this debate.

A report entitled Map of Gaps: The Postcode Lottery of Violence against Women Support Services was published yesterday. The work was carried out by the Child & Woman Abuse Studies Unit, published by End Violence Against Women and endorsed at its launch in a speech by Trevor Phillips, chair of the Commission for Equality and Human Rights. It highlights the patchy and inadequate provision of support services for the 3 million women who experience violence each year in the United Kingdom. Is not that in itself a rather frightening piece of information? Headline conclusions are that most women in the UK have no access to a rape crisis centre and that fewer than 25 per cent of local authorities have any sexual violence support service at all. Fewer than 10 per cent of local authorities across the UK provide services for black and minority ethnic women suffering from forced marriage, female genital mutilation and so-called honour crimes. I am sure that reference will be made to that later in the debate. London and the south-east are among the areas that are particularly ill served in this respect and, given the weight of population in those two regions, that is rather disgraceful.

In contrast to the rest of the UK, Scotland is singled out in the report for taking a strategic view of the problems of violence against women and for allocating core funding for specialised services to deal with it. Can the Minister tell the House to what extent the recently announced government measures to change court practice and to provide more support services to victims of violence at a local level are in response to the information collected in this report? Do these court reforms, inasmuch as they affect court practice, have the support of the judiciary? Is legislation required to implement them, and will the Government take note of the strategic and practical approach of the Scottish authorities?

Turning briefly to the issue of women in prison, which has been much discussed in the House in recent months, I simply remind the Minister that women are sent to prison for relatively minor and non-violent crimes, that they are far more likely to self-harm and commit suicide than male prisoners and that it is very widely held that the imprisonment of women is particularly damaging both to them and to their families. Furthermore, women committed to prison are apparently more likely than the general female population to have been sexually abused at a young age. Do the Government have any plans to address these apparent differences in sentencing practices?

The trafficking of women and children for sexual purposes has recently been described as a worldwide crisis constituting the highest ever level of worldwide slavery. It is plain that this phenomenon is proving extremely hard to tackle. It is controlled by criminal gangs aided by electronic communication, which is difficult to intercept. Trafficked women are, as the Minister for Women in the other place pointed out in a speech last July, openly advertised in personal ads in local newspapers. The women are appallingly badly treated by what I am tempted to call their criminal gangmasters. They do not hold their own papers or passports, they do not earn their money directly and they do not even get the financial rewards of their activities. If they escape, they are likely to find themselves put into detention while decisions are taken about their return to their country of origin as illegal immigrants.

Trafficked children are in an even worse position. Their detention has been condemned by United Nation officials as being incompatible with current UN declarations on these matters. Will the Minister say what the Government propose to do about these women and children who are the victims of crime rather than criminals themselves? Are the Government concerned about the criticism from United Nations authorities of the United Kingdom’s manner of dealing with these people? Is there any hope that the Government will start to treat trafficked children as children in care rather than as children awaiting punishment for crimes that are not their own?

My speech has been brief because I have looked at the list of speakers and have guessed—I hope correctly—that they will cover virtually every topic that could be covered under this title. I look forward to the rest of the debate and to the Minister’s answers to all our questions.

My Lords, I, too, congratulate my noble friend Lady Gale not only on initiating the debate but on the timing of it, coinciding as it does with the White Ribbon Campaign on violence against women. I also congratulate her on her persistence in pursuing this subject and on her opening address today.

The report published yesterday mapping out the services across the country for victims of violence, to which both noble Baronesses have referred, shows that only one-third of local authorities have any specialist support services for violence against women, even though one in 10 women in the country suffers from some form of violence each year. The End Violence Against Women coalition and the Equality and Human Rights Commission deserve great credit for instigating this important study. I hope that we might have time to have a full debate on the report in your Lordships’ House.

The Government’s recent announcement of the new public service agreement and the fact that national indicators will for the first time include violence targets should pave the way for improved and increased support by local authorities for women and child victims of violence. Today I will concentrate on two aspects of sexual offences: rape and offences against children. However, as has been said, they are only parts of the whole area of violence against women and children. Sexual offences are serious crimes against the person—crimes that deeply affect the lives of victims and their families. A number of pieces of legislation, particularly the Sexual Offences Act 2003, and supportive non-legislative initiatives have attempted to lay down acceptable standards of behaviour and outline the penalties if those standards are breached.

The crime of rape is an offence that is almost always carried out by men, mainly against women and girls and to a lesser extent by men against other men and boys. It is the ultimate expression of the power of one person over another. As my noble friend said, in the past five years the number of recorded rapes has nearly doubled from 8,593 in 2001 to 14,409 in 2005-06. Up to 95 per cent of rapes are never reported to the police. It is estimated that the total number is something like 47,000.

There are many reasons why victims decide not to go to the police, principally because they are uncertain of how the criminal justice system will treat them. Of the relatively few cases that are brought to trial, the 5.7 per cent conviction rate is lower than that for other sexual and violent offences. Eighty per cent of cases do not pass the investigation stage, with the CPS deciding that there is insufficient evidence to warrant a prosecution. Many cases also get withdrawn because people have little confidence in the system, as well as being concerned about going through what can be a humiliating and traumatic experience.

Measures to help jurors to understand the reality of rape will certainly help. The Solicitor-General’s announcement this week that every rape complainant will have the opportunity to have their final statement videoed and automatically admitted in court will help to reduce the amount of time during which she will have to relive her ordeal in court. More than that, the provision of advocacy and support is crucial. The introduction of specially trained officers, specialist prosecutors and the new sexual violence advisers should provide better support for victims before trial, as should the need for all police forces to develop action plans to implement improvements to rape investigations, as recommended in the guidelines Without Consent published in January this year.

However, the mainstay of support for victims of rape is rape crisis centres, many of which are facing financial difficulties resulting in closures and many women not having access to crucial support. In a recent press release, Rape Crisis says that it believes that part of its problems have arisen from the lack of local targets for dealing with sexual violence. The new PSA determined by the Government could, and I hope will, resolve the financial problems and ensure the continuity of these vital services.

Support also comes from the sexual assault referral centres, to which my noble friend referred. The first was established in 1986 and it is hoped that there will be up to 40 in about two years’ time. SARCs can be excellent in providing comprehensive care and multidisciplinary services, covering forensic examinations, counselling and working with the police. Few investigations into rape do not require some form of medical or forensic input, yet there is currently no formal specialist recognition within the medical establishment for forensic physicians who examine rape victims. Some police forces now outsource these services to commercial companies that employ doctors without the specialist knowledge, skills and attitudes to gather evidence objectively.

Well run SARCs can have a dramatic effect on conviction rates. The first SARC, St Mary’s in Manchester, is a centre of excellence and shows a local conviction rate for rape of 10 per cent, almost twice the national average. I ask my noble and learned friend whether there is not a case for speeding up the development of these referral centres, ensuring that they have the resources to be of a high standard, with fully trained forensic physicians and other staff working closely with the police to provide objective evidence for the courts.

A worrying trend is that the question of lesser sentences for so-called date rape is back on the agenda. Men must not be able to rape with impunity women and men with whom they have previously had sexual relations. Accepting a lift believing it to be the safest way to get home, or being invited in for coffee, is not consent or an invitation to sexual activity. The Government were right to resist pressure to distinguish differing types of rape, as they do not exist: rape is rape. The focus in a rape trial must be the legality of the conduct of the defendant, not the propriety of the complainant’s actions.

All sex crimes are abhorrent, none more so than those committed against children. Sexual health work with young people is complex and presents many challenges. I recently chaired a meeting for the FPA and the NSPCC on the subject of consent, power and coercion in relation to young people. We looked at the effect of the Sexual Offences Act and the 2006 revision of Working Together to Safeguard Children, which provide the legal and procedural framework for professionals working with young people. In spite of these and other guidance, the professionals present had a number of recurring concerns. For example, there is a lack of basic knowledge and understanding among young people about sex; some of them do not even know whether they actually had sex. That brings me once again to the need for statutory PSHE and SRE in schools, but that is another debate.

The major concern was around confidentiality. Concerns about confidentiality can deter young people from using sexual health services and can have a significant impact on the most vulnerable young people. Although a young person’s right to confidentiality is not absolute, protecting it can enable a young person to seek advice from a trained professional. However, some police forces are requiring professionals in their local area to report all young people under the age of 16 who are sexually active, regardless of whether the professionals think that they are at risk or whether both participants were of the same age and the sex was consensual. Whether we agree with it or not, it is a fact of life that young adolescents will engage in sexual behaviour. These police forces intend to keep a record of their investigations, even if they do not intend to take legal action. That can have an effect on those youngsters in their future life. I ask my noble and learned friend for a re-examination of the development of protocols in order to ensure confidentiality, as appropriate, and to provide greater safety for young people.

The Government have seriously attempted to reduce the level of sexual offences by a programme of legislation and guidance and they must be congratulated on doing so, but I end by asking my noble and learned friend whether that could not be taken one stage further by the development of a strategy and the suggestion of a campaign to bring together all strands of violence against women and children, whatever its form.

My Lords, like, I am sure, every Member of the House, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Gale, on her initiative in relation to this debate and on the measured and moderate way in which she presented her case.

I shall concentrate my remarks on rape. The field is so wide ranging that I am sure it is not inappropriate to do that. I agree completely with everything the noble Baroness, Lady Gould, said in her most effective contribution. Rape is one of the vilest offences in the criminal calendar. It has the effect of shattering and destroying a life and a personality. In the courts, I have often felt that of the two evils, in relation to women, rape is probably a far more dreadful experience than the worst case of attempted murder.

Like everyone else, I looked with disquiet at the statistics published by the Fawcett Society earlier this month. I appreciate that the figures are extremely distressing. In 2005-06, 14,449 rapes were recorded in England and Wales and there were 728 convictions. Whether the exact figure is 5.4 per cent or 5.5 per cent matters not. There is a huge gap between the totality of the problem and the small number of convictions. Having said that, the number of cases reported is a very different figure from the number of cases presented in court. I have no figures after 2004—no doubt the noble and learned Baroness the Attorney-General will assist—but I understand that the figure for convictions, which must have included pleas of guilty, for 2004 was 28 per cent. That is not very far away from the figure for other very serious offences, most of which go to trial. On the other hand, one appreciates that of the thousands of reported cases, many are withdrawn by the complainant herself, very often out of terror of reprisals, or a feeling of inadequacy to face the embarrassment of a trial with all the protections that exist at the moment, or an inability to face what is regarded as the crudity, with the best will in the world, of the system of investigation and preparation for trial.

One appreciates that special, if not unique, circumstances apply to the offence of rape. In nearly all cases, only the complainant and the defendant will be present. In many cases, they will have known each other. Those are the difficult cases, not the cases in which the rapist hides behind a bush or in a dark alley. They may very well have cohabited with each other. They may even be married to each other.

The situation is further complicated by the element of drink. If drink has been taken in such a volume as to make it impossible for consent to be given, one appreciates that the reality of that consent is vitiated. Drink can affect a person’s memory of what exactly happened. It is also a great disinhibiter. There must be very many women who have consented to intercourse on account of drink when they would not have so consented without it. That does not make their consent invalid. That is a grey area, on which the jury must decide.

In my experience at the Bar, in most cases one was greatly impressed by the capacity of a jury to decide a case on the evidence, but rape juries were very often an exception. I do not know exactly why. I suspect that it may have had something to do with men who hated and despised women, women who hated and despised men, older women who did not like younger women, and so on. I suspect that it had much to do with a whole package of subliminal prejudices than it had to do, in some cases, with the evidence. One cannot change human nature in that way, but one can sometimes attempt to educate the community in that regard.

What are we to do? I suggest first what we should not do. There is no case at all for changing the legal definition of rape in the Sexual Offences Act 2003. That legislation was preceded by a great deal of consultation and study, and it is as clean-cut a series of issues to be put to the jury as one can have in any criminal legislation. Secondly, we should not for a moment contemplate having different levels of punishment. A wise judge looking at the facts as proven and as they appear to him or her in trying that case will be able to adjust the penalty properly in any conviction. Thirdly, I am somewhat horrified by the idea that the prosecution should be allowed to call expert evidence on the proclivities of men and women in this connection. If the prosecution is entitled to call such evidence, so must the defence. Before you know it, the jury will be cast adrift on a sea of uncertainty, dealing with all manner of irrelevant theorisations. Let us avoid that.

Nor is there a case for upping the penalties. The Leader of the Opposition in a speech a fortnight ago made that very point and, with great respect, I disagree with him. The maximum penalties are already up to ceiling height. The discretion allowed to a judge is total within his judicial capacity. Indeed, it would merely divert attention from the realities of the situation to think of adding to the penalties that already exist. Furthermore, they would make conviction less likely, rather than more likely, in most cases.

What is to be done of a positive nature? There is no panacean answer or comprehensive solution. I firmly believe that, as those who have preceded me have suggested, a great deal must be done to educate public opinion and young people in particular. There have been a number of surveys over the past five years. One of the most disquieting facts that I have seen is the number of young people who are blasé about having intercourse with a partner when that partner does not consent. I have seen figures of 40 per cent, 50 per cent and 60 per cent quoted: whatever the correct figure, it is extremely and shatteringly disquieting. Young people must be assisted to regard rape as utterly abhorrent and to have respect for their own bodies and their own lives, but, far more than that, to regard the lives and bodies of other people as sacrosanct. I know that it sounds very much like one generation preaching to another. These things, I have no doubt, have been said throughout history, but they are more relevant now than ever and the Government have their part to play.

I welcome the fact that women will be allowed to give video-recorded evidence. It has rather puzzled me why that did not happen earlier under the Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act 1999. It would be most proper for the evidence in chief to be the video-recorded complaint and for the woman to be cross-examined down the line by video link. More humane conditions and practices during investigations are certainly called for. We must reduce that huge percentage of people who see fit either not to complain or to withdraw their complaint at an earlier stage. There are many other matters to discuss, but time has forestalled me. I have no doubt that we shall return time and time again to this topic, which is one of the most violently disgraceful of criminal offences.

My Lords, that was a brilliant speech. I congratulate my noble friend Lady Gale on securing the debate. She will know, however, that while I want more convictions, I worry about false accusations. Earlier this year, a woman who had made a series of false allegations of sexual assault was named in Parliament, and there are many such cases. Recently, a Midlands businessman of impeccable reputation was released after three years of a sentence. His conviction was based on a tissue of lies. His accuser had a long history of false allegations and convictions for robbery. It was only following a referral from the CCRC and a police investigation that the accuser’s full record was exposed. Over 17 years and under eight different aliases, the accuser had made accusations of rape against her father in 1984, her step-father, a local boy in 1983 and further rapes and sexual attacks in 1998, in 1999, in March, July and December 2000 and in June 2001. On three separate occasions she alleged that she had been attacked from behind with a knife.

Astonishingly, the police had most of this information on file and hid it from the accused’s defence team. The woman was well known to the police as a serial liar. But for the diligence of a policeman and a barrister, Annie Johnston, the allegations would have destroyed his life. It was an outrage: but there is more. The accused then appealed against conviction. The CPS, which, unbelievably, was dissatisfied with the original sentence, applied in the name of the Attorney-General to have the sentence increased—I repeat, increased. It now argues that it was unaware of the reputation of the accused, but it should have been. Unbelievably, the sentence was increased to five years.

In 2004, the CCRC intervened. It was then that the whole sordid background of the accuser came out. It revealed that the police had hidden the truth from the defence and that an officer on the case had even been commended for his meticulous detective work. The law has become an ass. It is riddled with the potential for injustice. The police are cutting corners to secure convictions. The pressure for prosecutions and convictions is costing innocent men their liberty. Jurors—women jurors, in particular—are becoming suspicious. False accusers are gravely damaging the rights of women to have their cases properly handled by the police and the courts. We have to make it more difficult for women who lie. It is one way to restore confidence in the law.

The police need to carry out more detailed background checks on accusers. We should properly enforce with criminal sanctions the duty on the police to reveal evidence which is helpful to the defence: a few policemen in the dock might help. The right to lifelong anonymity for accusers under the 1992 Act should be amended. Under the law, the trial judge has, under a get-out clause in Section 3, discretion to remove lifelong anonymity. In the Court of Appeal the judge does not have that right. In the Warren Blackwell case, the judge wanted to name a serial accuser of rape, but could not do so. In that case, Lady Justice Hallett said:

“The judgment we have delivered gives rise to the concern that there may in the future be another case in which this complainant makes similar allegations against another man. If that were to happen, it would be in the interests of justice that the alleged attacker should be able to find out about, and use in his defence, the information contained in the report of the [CCRC] and referred to in this judgment. Parliament does not appear to have contemplated the risk of a complainant acting as this complainant is alleged to have done. We are concerned that there appears to be no means by which we can displace a complainant’s entitlement to anonymity in the interests of justice for any person against whom she may make allegations in the future”.

I am not arguing that anonymity of the accuser should automatically be lifted where a defendant is found not guilty. The rape may have taken place and acquittal may be as a result of insufficient evidence. However, in cases where evidence is fabricated, it is right that the trial judge should be able to lift anonymity. Surely it follows that this right should be extended to Appeal Court judges.

The question of prosecution for perjury by false accusers in rape cases should be reviewed. While the media now report more rape perjury prosecutions, there are inevitably cases which invite prosecution but where for medical reasons prosecution is inadvisable. In these cases a judge should direct that DNA is taken from the false accuser. While considering prosecution of the unfit we need, however, to recognise that many trials already take place where the defendant is not of sound mind. For example, if a defendant has a history of violence arising out of a psychiatric condition, he or she can still be prosecuted. If unfit to stand trial, the court already has the power to act under mental health legislation. I believe that a national register should be kept of persons deemed by the police to be false accusers. Where the identity of an accuser may be in doubt, DNA should be taken but destroyed if no match is found in the national database identifying the accuser as having made previous false allegations.

Innocent men should have the right to be protected from false allegations. Where accusers make false allegations and change their names to hide their identity, judges should be free to reveal all former identities. Without DNA safeguards and lifting anonymity, false accusers can run rings around the law and destroy lives. Why should a man who is found innocent not enjoy the same anonymity rights as a woman? Thanks to the 1976 Bill of my noble friend Lord Corbett, both men and women were given anonymity rights. In the case of men, anonymity would last up to conviction. But in 1988 there was a change in the law and the anonymity of men, once charged, was removed. It meant that thousands of men have had their reputations destroyed on the back of false allegations. The law now needs to change.

We also need new statistical data. The 5 per cent conviction rate is repeatedly used, while the 41 per cent rate for conviction is rarely mentioned—forgive me, but I have to dispute the statistics produced by my noble friend. That conviction rate is one of the highest in the criminal justice system. We need statistics on the number of allegations where no action is taken because the police disbelieve the complainant or where allegations are withdrawn because of a loss of confidence in the criminal justice system by the accuser. The work by Kelley, Lovatt and Regan, which I have always found very interesting, is immensely helpful in this area, but it concludes with the need for greater consistency in reporting statistics.

We need an in-depth investigation into the attitudes of juries to the issue of rape, but I know that it is difficult. Some jurors refuse to accept that date rape is on a par with rape with a knife on the towpath. For many, it is not “real rape”. “She asked for it” is still deeply ingrained in public prejudice. The fact that the trauma for the woman is the same is often not understood. No doubt the general public need to be educated and I am pleased that the response yesterday to the consultation paper did enforce that measure. Indeed, I agree strongly with what my noble friend Lady Gale said about these matters in her contribution. But jurors often recoil at the prospect of an eight-year sentence for rape where the parties are known to each other, and the police are well aware of that when deciding on whether to bring a case. The judges are well aware of the issue of gravity, and often set the sentence accordingly, but many jurors do not understand that when they are deciding on guilt.

We should consider the New Zealand practice where there are two different crimes: one of sexual violation, which would turn on the issue of consent, and the other of aggravated sexual violence, which would provide for even greater penalty and turn on whether the victim was unconscious, unlawfully detained, subject to a deception, unable to communicate a lack of consent, subject to a rape through impersonation, a minor or threatened with a weapon. This would avoid creating the lesser offence of date rape which many resist. Aggravated sexual violence could happen in all circumstances, whether it be date rape, marital rape or rape by a stranger. The conviction rates in New Zealand are far higher than ours.

The question remains: how many innocent men are now in prison for a rape they never committed and where the false accuser remains free? Far worse, how many guilty men are there out there who “got away with it”? We have a broken back system of investigation, prosecution and bad law. We need a rewrite of the law.

My Lords, I, too, congratulate my noble friend on her fortitude in the way she has championed women’s issues and for the clear and concise way in which she opened the debate.

Kofi Annan said:

“Violence against women is perhaps the most shameful human rights violation and it is perhaps the most pervasive. It knows no boundaries of geography, culture or wealth. As long as it continues, we cannot claim to be making real progress towards equality development and peace”.

Violence against women is widespread all around the world. Amnesty International states that between 20 and 60 per cent of women worldwide report to have been beaten by their partners; and between 40 and 80 per cent of all physical abuse suffered by women is at the hands of a close family member or friend. While the problem tends to affect the poorest most severely, it affects women of all classes and ethnicities; poverty and marginal isolation leave some women more vulnerable to violence. Without the right kind of assistance, it is difficult for those living in poverty to escape abusive situations, to obtain protection and to access the criminal justice system to seek redress.

Gender abuse is broad-based. It includes physical, sexual and psychological abuse—for example, rape, female genital mutilation, sexual harassment, sexual assault, trafficking, forced prostitution and female infanticide. The abuse of women has an indelible impact on many aspects of women’s lives, including their psychological well-being, self-esteem, bodily integrity, public participation, autonomy and the well-being of their children.

The UN declaration on the elimination of violence against women states that,

“violence against women is a manifestation of historically unequal power relations between men and women, which have led to domination over and discrimination against women by men … and that violence against women is one of the crucial social mechanisms by which women are forced into a subordinate position compared to men”.

For the enslaved African woman, this clearly was the case. In fact, it has its origins in the days of the enslavement of African peoples. It was common practice for enslavers to further abuse young African women by raping them and using them to give sexual experience to their sons. Sad to say, the descendants of the enslaved still carry on the practice. Hardly a week goes by when there is not a report of some young woman being so abused by either her peers, her father, a male relative or a family friend.

Let me inject a story here which follows well on the position taken by the previous speaker on men. Cassie was a highly intelligent young woman who was brutally murdered in her home by a sex offender. In October 2001, Cassie was alone at home; she was murdered and left to be discovered by her sisters, who still suffer from the sight that met their eyes. After months of police investigation, her ex-boyfriend was charged and brought to trial for her murder. The trial took place one year later and the accused was acquitted by the jury due to a lack of forensic evidence. The police had no other suspect. The investigating officers, friends and family still remain certain that it was her ex-boyfriend who carried out the brutal attack, but without forensic evidence the jury felt unable to find him guilty.

Cassie was aged 14 when she met her ex-boyfriend. She did not know that he had been involved in the criminal justice system and had served a sentence for rape. Cassie’s relationship, even at that early stage, had all the elements of violence; it lasted two years. It was only after the trial that the family was told of his violent and abusive behaviour towards women. In every violent relationship there are victims; unfortunately Cassie was no exception and she ultimately paid the price with her life. Her family, through loyalty to Cassie, did not tell anyone of the degrading violence she suffered; it was too horrific. Cassie’s attacker has since gone on to commit crimes of this nature and I am told he is awaiting trial.

The second case is that of a 10 year-old who was raped by two men. The judge in the case said this 10 year-old child dressed as a young woman. In his summing up he further said that the young child had regularly worn make up, strappy tops and jeans. He said that she was a very difficult and needy child; that she was sexually precocious and liked to dress provocatively; he said that she looked 16. In turn, the judge gave the attackers lenient sentences. One attacker received concurrent sentences of two years and 18 months; he was free after nine months. The other attacker was given nine months; he served only four weeks. The judge suggested that the child should be given money to buy a bicycle to take her mind off things.

This is why I believe the Government should consider encouraging courses where men can unlearn the way they are brought up to believe that their strength is a hallmark for obtaining sex or for beating women without any thought of how the victim feels. The judge showed more sympathy to the offenders than the 10 year-old child. More could be done to listen to the victims. The Minister may wish to take on board the fact that several years ago we began a movement in Britain teaching racism awareness that was very successful. We should consider how we can introduce awareness training in sexual offences so that not only those who commit the offence but those who are judging the offenders are aware of what they are really dealing with.

My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Gale, is receiving a bouquet of tributes today and I wish to add my own laurel. She has been a great champion of women. She is admired widely for her persistence on the subject, and I hope she is warmed by the great affection she is receiving today in this House.

I also congratulate the Government on the steps they have taken to deal with criminal justice issues affecting women. It cannot be sufficiently emphasised that no Government have ever been as active on the issues of rape, domestic violence, honour killing, prostitution, sex trafficking or sexual abuse. No Government have done as much as this one about that list of issues, and proper tribute should be paid to the Ministers who have struggled to find ways to improve the criminal justice system for the female half of the population.

Confidence in the law requires that the concerns of women are addressed. As the Attorney-General will confirm, whenever she or any woman lawyer addresses a public gathering, these are the issues that women raise and where they too often describe a negative experience. I have been speaking and writing on these issues now for some 30-odd years. I also remember that when I first wrote the book Eve was Framed back in the early 1990s—I recently rewrote it—I took part in many debates with judges and they would all insist that the law was gender-blind. I remember appearing with one such judge on a television programme and him saying to me afterwards, “Helena, I don’t want you to think that I’m against women. I voted for them to join the Kennel Club”.

I am afraid that even today there are still too many within the law who believe that the law is neutral—an objective set of rules. It is slowly being recognised that the law from the beginning of time was made largely with men in mind or from a male perspective. That was not a result of some act of male conspiracy perpetrated by men in long wigs. It was simply a reflection of the absence of women within the law and within Parliament because of women’s place within society. Women’s experience was absent from the law. That is why so many of us for so long argued for greater diversity within the judiciary or for steps to be taken to increase the presence of women in Parliament.

While the numbers game may encourage us to believe that discrimination is all in the past—women are now in the profession in significant numbers, and there are more women on the Bench—it has yet to be sufficiently acknowledged that legal cultures are still entrenched, as indeed are social attitudes, which are still premised too often on notions of good, bad and mad women, those who are worthy of the law’s protection and those who are less so. Women coming before the courts still too often encounter myths and stereotypes that disfigure the legal process. If a woman was drunk, has a history of mental illness or has been promiscuous, even today she might well forfeit the sympathy of the court, her testimony treated with caution and her account deemed suspect, however marauding her assailant has been.

Rape is the perfect example of the inadequacy of legal reform to challenge the more immutable forces operating in the law. All the changes designed to secure justice for women who have been raped, from removal of the corroboration requirement to restrictions on the right to cross-examine, have amounted to little, as the Fawcett statistics show. Despite all the efforts to improve the system, the stumbling block is that the woman knows that cross-examination will expose her to all the double standards that confront women and to all the ways she will be questioned differently from a man, and ultimately it will be her word against his.

Jurors hold complex and unspoken biases when it comes to issues of gender and sexuality. There are two important initiatives that have to be central to any cultural shift. I am glad that the Government have abandoned their interest in expert testimony to be called by the Crown, for all the reasons that have been described by the noble Lord, Lord Elystan-Morgan. I remember a book being published here called The Ultimate Violation, to which I wrote the foreword. It was written back in the early 1990s by an American lawyer and it advocated such a role for experts. I opposed it then and I oppose it now, for the reasons the noble Lord has given.

I welcome the efforts to improve judicial training in this sphere. That is one of the key initiatives. Too many judges still think that drunken consent is good enough. I also think it is vital that judges themselves are educated about the ways in which women often respond to rape. Many fail to report immediately because they are traumatised or ashamed. The stigma attached to rape still remains. Juries should therefore have it explained that a delay in reporting does not automatically mean the allegation is a concoction but may well reflect an understandable reaction. Women often confide in family or friends soon after the event but delay in going to the police, and that evidence of early reporting should be admissible, as the Government are recommending.

I also see the power of showing a video of the woman making her complaint. The reason why that can be so important is that by the time a woman comes to the witness box to testify, and I have seen this, she is often very controlled and unemotional about her experience—what psychologists describe as having “lack of affect”. That is because the only way to live with the trauma and emotional pain of so terrible an event is to distance yourself emotionally from what has happened. For juries, that can make the complainant very flat and uncompelling. Judges should be made aware of how rape operates on a victim and sum up to the jury accordingly.

There also has to be a greater campaign for public awareness. The Government should take every opportunity to raise understanding about the psychological effects of rape and other forms of violence. A public information campaign, particularly in our schools, would have more impact than any fine tuning of the law.

The question is still asked why reforms of the rape law never seem to have the impact we desire; they never seem to address such a serious injustice. One of the difficulties is that rape will almost invariably be a crime committed in private, as the noble Lord, Lord Elystan-Morgan, said. Often the incidents take place between people who are known to each other and juries are always reluctant to convict on one person’s word against another’s, especially where there is so much cultural and social baggage.

The gap in the provision of services that has been described by other speakers is sometimes reflected in the gap in policing responses around the country. To what extent is the CPS introducing specialist teams to deal with sexual offences?

I shall deal briefly with the issues raised by the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours. He has railed against injustice, as I do frequently. Of course there are occasions when false allegations are made. In my experience, they are rare. I am afraid that I disagreed with him before on the issue of anonymity, and I do so again. Anonymity is very important if we are to encourage women to come forward and seek justice for these offences. He has described police behaving unfairly to an accused. I am afraid that happens, and I hope he will have those thoughts in his mind when he is busy supporting identity cards and the erosion of civil liberties.

The reason for law reform’s failure is that rape is the ultimate buffer. It is where the law crashes up against the rawest display of the continuing power imbalance between men and women. It is where distorted notions of masculinity, misogyny and male entitlement surface. As our society becomes fairer, women are genuinely seen and treated as the equal of men and sex takes place in a spirit of real mutuality; it will be only then that we will see real justice for women. In the mean time, I applaud the Government for their latest efforts.

My Lords, I join others in thanking the noble Baroness, Lady Gale, and expressing admiration and respect for her. I express my admiration also for my noble and learned friend the Attorney-General. When I was a non-executive director in the Home Office, I witnessed her dedicated, persistent and creative approach as a Minister there. We have much to be grateful to her for, and I am proud of the Government’s record in this area.

The extent to which violence is perpetrated against women in our society is a stain on it. It is a stain of which we must be aware and which we must be unstinting in our efforts to remove, be it in the form of domestic violence against wives, partners and children, or of so-called “honour” killings, the dishonour of which shames those who do not condemn them, or of the violent pornography which is becoming all too common in many forms of our media, or of the despicable sexual violence against women, particularly those who have been trafficked, that takes place in the form of prostitution. There are many more examples. They are all issues which we must redouble our efforts to address.

I shall not speak for very long, because others have spoken with much more flair, energy and experience. I am grateful to those who have expressed some of my own ideas and thoughts. However, I ask the Government to make unlawful the purchase of sex. We should stand up and condemn the commodification of women through the purchase of sex, particularly since most statistics suggest that a substantial number of women are engaged in the sex trade not through consent or for any reason other than economic need or being forced by slave masters of one kind or another because they are trafficked. I ask the Government carefully to consider whether a new sexual offence outlawing the purchase of sex could be introduced. It has been done in Scandinavia to significant effect.

I support those noble Lords who have asked for a campaign to highlight the horrors and extent of sexual violence against women. However, the campaign should emphasise not so much the victim and how awful they feel—although we have all been made aware in graphic terms of that today through stories such as those related by my noble friend Lady Howells, which fill us all with shock and upset—as the violent impulses of men who perpetrate violence against women. Most men are good, decent human beings—indeed, I am married to one, as is my daughter, and I would recommend it highly. However, there is a small proportion of men whose masculinity has become so distorted by the oversexualisation of our society and the extent to which violence is seen as a solution to many problems that they are desperately in need of help. Any campaign that raises awareness of the extent of sexual violence against women should emphasise in particular the need for men to readdress the violent aspects of their nature.

My Lords, I am glad that my noble friend Lady Gale has given us the opportunity to discuss this important issue, and I am delighted that my noble and learned friend Lady Scotland will respond. She has always been sympathetic to representations made to her on sexual offences, and I look forward to her response today. It is a subject that we should all keep on the agenda.

I shall speak about young people and sexual exploitation, and include briefly the issue of trafficking. As my noble friend Lady Gould said earlier, the exploitation of children is particularly horrendous. Sexual exploitation is the use of children for the sexual satisfaction of adults. Unequal power relations are implicit in this, and the child is exploited for her or his youth and sexuality, as set out by the UN in 2001. Sexual exploitation involves a sexual component without consent. Sexually exploited children and young people are victims of abuse. They should not be treated as offenders in relation to prostitution. This has been clearly stated in the Department of Health’s guidance for safeguarding young people, and by the Association of Chief Police Officers and the Home Office.

There has been much research on exploited children. I am grateful particularly to Professor Jenny Pearce, who is chair of the National Working Group for Sexually Exploited Children and Young People, for sharing her thoughts with me. She points out that those young people who persistently return to selling sex are the most vulnerable, most damaged and most in need of welfare services. They are most likely to be trapped in abusive relationships with paedophile rings. Criminalising young people does not help. What they need is support; what they need is therapeutic secure provision. I know that this matter has been put to the Department for Children, Schools and Families, which is rewriting guidance. I look forward to seeing that guidance at a later point.

The National Working Group for Sexually Exploited Children and Young People supports 129 projects across the country. It recommends the removal of all forms of criminalisation of offences related to prostitution involving children and young people, and the removal of the use of ASBOs in such circumstances . I quote from Dr Pearce:

“All sexually exploited children and young people, especially those whose behaviour is challenging and difficult, need to be understood as victims of sexual abuse. Their challenging behaviour is a result of abuse and they should be worked with through the child protection welfare procedures”.

Every local safeguarding children board should have a strategy on this. It would mean addressing the need for local therapeutic services and secure therapeutic services for the most damaged and vulnerable young people. They must not be criminalised.

Research suggests that support for such vulnerable young people at an early stage of risk can prevent a descent into prostitution. Barnardo’s has recently carried out a cost-benefit analysis. Early prevention can halt escalation of young people’s use of intensive support services, which can cost more than £300,000 a year.

Local safeguarding children boards need a protocol for safeguarding sexually exploited children and young people, which includes identifying how risk assessment is carried out. Each board needs a multi-agency subgroup which focuses on reviewing and developing care plans. They need also a dedicated service that can undertake outreach work for sexually exploited young people. Research and practice have shown that if such strategies are in place, children will be better protected—and there is good practice around; for example, in Blackpool, Sheffield, London and Derby. I repeat: these children are not criminals; they are children in need.

Inspectorates need to identify and review progress of each local safeguarding children board in relation to their protocols for sexually exploited children and young people. Particular attention needs to be given to those young people at the extreme edge of exploitation: those selling sex, living away from home, often in an abuser’s accommodation, or suffering self-abuse and drug and alcohol problems. Often all these problems apply to one child. Multi-agency work must be encouraged, particularly between police and child protection services and between child and adolescent mental health services and safeguarding children boards. I know that ongoing research funded by the Home Office is looking into improving practice on gathering evidence against abusers and taking cases to court. There is legislation which enables this—for example, the Child Abduction Act 1984 and the Domestic Violence, Crime and Victims Act 2004. I understand that the Sexual Offences Act 2003, while being welcome, is underused. How might the Government pull together various departments to tackle the issue of sexual exploitation of children? Also, will the 2001 national plan on safeguarding sexually exploited children and young people be updated, as it is seriously out of date?

On the trafficking of people for sexual or other purposes, the majority of the 800,000 people who are trafficked are women, especially for the sex industries. Women trapped in poverty and denied education are more likely to be desperate and to be misused in this way. Many are the victims of abuse and rape. According to the UNHCR one in five women are victims of rape and between 40 per cent and 60 per cent of these are against girls under 16 years of age. Organisations such as Plan International and Stop the Traffik and other humanitarian organisations give many examples of the dreadful abuse of young men and women when trafficked either internally or across international borders.

In the case of trafficked young people, research suggests that better provision of interpreters at airports and reception points is essential. A review of the “going missing” population suggests that over 50 per cent of trafficked young people placed into local authority care go missing within 72 hours. This can be tackled by better interpreter provision, specialised foster care provision, a review of private foster care arrangements and specialist youth services that can support the young person. There are examples of good practice in Sheffield, Hillingdon and Croydon. There is research and guidance—for example, by the NSPCC and the Department for Children, Schools and Families. Could cross-government initiatives be instigated? Such children should be helped and supported, not criminalised. Child protection, in whatever form it takes, is a serious issue for all government departments. I look forward to the Minister's response.

My Lords, I join others in congratulating my noble friend on securing this debate and on her indefatigable pursuit of related topics, especially her defence of women who have been raped. We all have cause to be grateful to her and to a Government who take this subject so seriously and have done, and are doing, so much in legislation and public education, as personified by my noble and learned friend the Attorney-General, who will be replying to this debate.

I am sure that we were all delighted with Wednesday’s announcement about the guidance to be given to courts on the treatment of woman who have been raped. I am as shocked as any feeling person must be about the low rate of conviction for rape and, indeed, about the extraordinarily low rate of reporting this terrible crime When I was in New Zealand earlier this year, where the conviction rate is much higher, as my noble friend said, I was struck by the difference in attitudes to women who are raped. There, attitudes start with sympathy, understanding and belief, rather than an attempt to apportion blame to the woman because of her perceived complicity, either because of her dress, because she has been drinking or because of her sexual history—all attitudes with which we are sadly familiar in our country. So I very much welcome the new proposals.

Today I shall focus on pornography—its availability, its effect and the Government’s efforts to control it. In the early 1990s, I attended one of the Civil Service top management programmes. I remember a session on the future of IT and how it would transform all our lives. It seems incredible now but back then we had not yet come to see the internet as such an integral part of our lives; in fact, I may just have been struggling to come to terms with faxes. I remember the lecturer telling us that by far the majority of what we now call “hits” on the internet were then, and in his view always would be, to access pornographic sites. I remember how shocked and disbelieving all the participants were, taken up as we were with the possibilities for increasing the sum of human knowledge that the internet offered and its ability to educate and inform and to increase participation in just about every way you can imagine.

Later in the same week, we moved on to one of our case studies—the Metropolitan Police—where we were exposed to the widespread use of the internet among paedophile rings for the exploitation of women and especially of children. I am a social worker and have worked in very rough areas of the country and among very distressed people, but I was shocked by the films and photographs that the police had to monitor and very glad that they were doing it so that others did not have to.

Since then, how much worse and more widespread this has become. I am thankful for the filters that our IT systems provide in your Lordships’ House, but I know that most people are bombarded with the offers that pop up constantly on their screens, offering access to images that once were available only through great effort and through channels that were sufficiently risky as to put most people off. I do not wish to sound unduly censorious on this matter. I suppose what adults do in the privacy of their own homes is their business and anyone who has ever been engaged in counselling work or sexuality workshops, as I have, knows that fantasies can work wonders for a couple’s fading sex life. But most pornography is not about what most of us would call “normal” sex; it is about violence, humiliation and exploitation of one human being by another and we have a duty to protect its victims.

There is little reliable evidence about whether viewing pornography leads to sexual offences, but I do not find it difficult to conclude that the very availability of such material must inure people to its existence. The fact that you can access this stuff in the total privacy of your bedroom so that no one need know and you do not run the risk of being found out must mean that the moral censure that we all fear does not exist as a restraining factor. Moreover, the constant viewing of women or, worse, children—the so-called PTHC factor; in case your Lordships are not familiar with that acronym, I am afraid that it stands for “pre-teen hardcore”—being abused must surely to some extent numb one to the outrage of such behaviour.

We must never forget that behind most pornographic images of children is an abused child and that, like women who have been raped, they will suffer for years, probably all their lives, not only from the offence itself but from the knowledge that such material will be pored over for years by viewers. According to the Internet Watch Foundation, access to this type of material has quadrupled over three years and the more serious degrading images are growing in number fastest. Of course, the police are overwhelmed by the time taken to track down those who download this stuff, but there is an increasing understanding that we must also devote time to discover the producers, often part of big international concerns, not just the distributors and buyers. We cannot ignore the part that poverty plays in this; when people are poor they are, as we know, driven to desperation, which leads to them being vulnerable to abusers.

The Sexual Offences Act 2003 has succeeded in providing a clear legal framework to tackle sexual offending in the 21st century. The extension of what constitutes the offence of rape and the introduction of other offences was very much to be welcomed. In particular, it offered a coherent regime of offences to tackle sexual offending against children, especially those aged under 13. This ability to offer greater protection to vulnerable members of the community, especially children, was a great step forward, particularly identifying predatory acts such as grooming.

Through the Internet Watch Foundation, progress has continued to be made in regulating the internet. Perhaps we can find some small measure of comfort in the fact that less than 1 per cent of child abuse content appears to be hosted here in the United Kingdom. Recently, there have also been welcome signs that internet service providers are taking a more proactive approach themselves. Of course, the Government actively support efforts within the European Union and more widely to combat child pornography on the internet.

The recently introduced criminal justice Bill, now in its Committee stage in the House of Commons, is also to be welcomed, as it covers aspects of pornography such as the possession of images that are both extreme and pornographic. The proposals are based on extensive consultation, but I am afraid that they are still subject to criticism about what constitutes “extreme” or indeed “pornographic”.

Of course, some will see such proposals as a restriction of personal freedom and will tell us again that there is no firm evidence that possession of such material is bound to corrupt. For my part, it is self-evident that when the general tendency is to be more accepting of pornography than we have ever been—where images once available only in back rooms in hushed tones now scream at you from your local newspaper shop—that is bound to lead to a loss of inhibition and increased leniency about what is and is not morally acceptable. I believe that this is liable to damage not only the potential victim but the potential perpetrator; it damages overall the community and its moral standards. I hope that when the Bill comes to this House, which I believe will be in January, we will give it a very positive response. I also hope that the Government and all those who have anything to do with lawmaking will continue to be vigilant in tackling this horrendous issue.

My Lords, it is not unusual for me to speak on female genital mutilation in your Lordships’ House, but I believe that putting an end to it is so serious and important a goal that raising the subject frequently is essential. Indeed, I am very grateful to my noble friend Lady Gale for giving me the opportunity to do so once again by instituting this debate and I congratulate her on all aspects of what she said.

Sexual offences against women are a wound on the body of our society, and none more so, I suggest, than genital mutilation, which is literally a wound that never truly heals in the whole of a woman’s lifetime. It is a rape of the grossest kind, for it is always performed either against a woman’s will—more probably a small female child’s will—or with a reluctant consent that she sees as inevitable. I have gone into the cruel and ugly details of this procedure here in this House too often to enter into them again. Suffice it to say that once a woman—or baby or infant, no matter which so long as she is female—has undergone this brutal procedure, she will suffer from its effects for her whole childbearing life and beyond. Her risk of giving birth to a dead child will be increased, as will her own chance of dying, apart from the degrading results present in all aspects of her sexual and reproductive existence. At present, the most reliable figures obtainable show that 15,000 women and girls are, as my noble friend Lady Gale pointed out, at risk of undergoing the mutilation of their sexual organs; this is not in Africa, where the threat is far higher, but here in the United Kingdom.

Immigrants from Africa, particularly the Horn of Africa, practise FGM. Most of them carry it out with the mistaken aim of benefiting a daughter or granddaughter. They believe that only by these means can they guarantee a girl a husband and, in their eyes, a husband is essential to a woman’s well-being and sometimes, indeed, to her survival. She will be told that only in this way can she “become a woman”. Her contemporaries will ask her, expecting a positive answer, whether she has been “cut”. In Somalia, for instance, the FGM rate is as much as 99 per cent of the female population. Immigrants bring the custom here. When health professionals first saw the results of FGM in immigrant women in the 1970s, they believed that they were looking at a congenital malformation of a woman’s sexual and reproductive organs. Only its prevalence and their experience taught them that this was the result of mutilation carried out with a sharp stone or an often infected knife and without anaesthesia. Incidentally, the procedure is carried out by women, never by men.

Governments have not been slow to introduce legislation making this procedure, in its various forms, illegal. The first legislation was the Prohibition of Female Circumcision Act 1985, which was superseded 19 years later by the Female Genital Mutilation Act 2003, introduced as a Private Member’s Bill and supported by the present Government. This provided a maximum penalty of 14 years’ imprisonment for anyone carrying out the procedure or taking a woman or female child out of this country to have it performed overseas where it may not be against the law.

That is an excellent measure, yet under it no prosecution has yet been brought. This, I now believe, is in no way due to lack of effort on the part of the police or the social services, though it is true that still too few teachers in primary schools are aware of the threat to their small female pupils and too few nurses and midwives yet know what FGM is and what they should be on the watch for. There are still only a very few local authority-maintained refuges available to women trying to escape FGM, although the appalling fact is that, even if there were hundreds, most victims would be far too young to have recourse to them.

Last summer, the Metropolitan Police offered a reward of £20,000 to anyone giving information that would lead to a successful prosecution for FGM. However, although we hear of ongoing investigations, no prosecution has yet been brought. Twenty thousand pounds is a substantial sum, large to anyone, but enormous to most of those living in the probably straitened circumstances of African immigrant communities. Yet there has been no prosecution. That leads us to believe what we had already begun to suspect, which is that people who practise this rite—I hurry to say that I spell the word RITE—hold it almost as an article of faith that their practice must at all cost be kept secret and, indeed, never be spoken of.

Does my noble and learned friend agree that this is a taboo that must be broken and that those who speak, in this particular instance, of ancient traditions being respected must not be listened to? As recently as the spring of this year, at a conference in Kenya, Sheikh Harun Rashid spoke for Muslim leaders when he said that,

“circumcising girls is not a requirement in Islam”.

Sheikh Mohamed Abdi said:

“The practice has done a lot of damage to our girls”.

FGM is supported by no holy book and by no religion, only by a custom whose origins are lost in the mists of time.

In ridding this country, if not the world, of this practice, we have a hard task ahead of us—a task for the Government, social services, the police, schools, hospitals and ordinary people who may be neighbours or friends of those perpetrators who are themselves often ignorant of the law and perceive themselves to be innocent of wrongdoing. I have spoken to women who have voluntarily taken on the task of telling other women in their community what the law is and what the penalties involve. This is essential because many speak no English and even in their own language lack terms for sexual organs and sexual practices that we, in ours, have come to take for granted. They are making some headway. One woman with whom I had a conversation told me that, by persuasion and an explanation of the law, she had prevented a neighbour from taking her five daughters home to Somalia for FGM.

Persuasion and enlightenment must continue, because it is inconceivable in a civilised society that women should continue, in the 21st century, to have their married lives made shameful and ugly and their childbearing an agony through damage intentionally carried out in their defenceless childhoods. The truly sad thing is that this damage is the result not of wanton cruelty or uncontrolled vengefulness, as rape is, but of a mistaken kindness and desire to secure a young girl’s happiness and the approbation of the society in which she lives.

My Lords, it must be heart-warming for the noble Baroness, Lady Gale, to note that this very important debate has ranged widely over issues such as pornography, criminalising the purchase of sex, trafficking, and genital mutilation. All those are very big subjects. I hope that your Lordships will forgive me if I do not pursue each and every one of them but focus instead on rape and the announcements made yesterday by the noble and learned Baroness the Attorney-General.

I concur wholeheartedly with the description of that crime given by the noble Lord, Lord Elystan-Morgan, in his brilliant speech. I am proud that I voted for him in 1964 when he was a Plaid Cymru candidate in my home town. I want to focus on the unacceptable rate of attrition of rape complaints which has led to low conviction rates. It is disappointing that that attrition has not improved with the passage of the Sexual Offences Act 2003. I declare an interest as a practising criminal advocate who has perhaps prosecuted more often than defended and sat on many rape trials.

There is a very serious problem to be addressed. Jurors who come blinking into the jury box will never have had any experience of a rape or child case. They find themselves plunged into an alien environment which is very unsettling. Many come with fixed views which the more enlightened among us may find unacceptable. These are the subliminal prejudices to which the noble Lord, Lord Elystan-Morgan, referred. The problem is that this is the way that a large number of the public think, and we have to face that even though it may not be politically correct for them to do so.

Prejudices exist as much as, if not more, among women, as the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, conceded. Often they harshly criticise the behaviour of other women. The sort of comments that we hear in the courts include the following. “Partner rape is not really rape”. Provocative clothing: “What did she expect? What is a man supposed to do?”. Drunkenness: “What did she think she was doing getting into a state like that?”. Accepting an invitation to coffee at 3 am and consenting to being kissed: “What did she expect?”. “She must have consented; otherwise she would have been injured”. “Women are emotional and hysterical”. “If she didn’t shout and scream it can’t be rape”. “Why didn’t she tell her mum straight away?”. “Women are filled with malice towards their past lovers”. And so on. All these are subliminal prejudices. They are entrenched views. Many people with such views become jurors. It is important that we address this problem, but how do we deal with it?

No option should be entirely ruled out but experience tells me that the danger of stereotyping a victim’s response to rape should be addressed at the very beginning of the trial before the case is opened and before the complainant gives her evidence. This rules out comment by the prosecutor or directions by the judge in his summing-up towards the close of the trial—the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, suggested that this might be a way forward—by which time the jurors will already have made up their minds about the credibility of the complainant based on their prejudices. Those prejudices need to be countered from the outset. That is why there has been discussion about expert evidence being called in court on oath.

The introduction of an expert to give evidence in the course of a trial gives rise to what we call a satellite trial. Who is an expert for these purposes? It is not like a pathologist, a scientist specialising in DNA or a fingerprint expert, who look at something that has occurred in a case. Who do you call—a social anthropologist? I once called one to explain the habits and customs of the Dinka tribe in the Sudan. However, I do not think that we need to have one to tell a Swansea jury about the habits and customs of the people of Swansea.

Should a statistician be called? Noble Lords will remember the Sally Clark case, where the pathologist Sir Roy Meadow said that the chances of two children dying by chance were 73 million to one. In the appeal the Royal Statistical Society determined that the true figure was 200:1. So we should call experts in what—statistics? An expert’s evidence would obviously have to be tested by the defence. The reliability of his opinion and of the statistics he produced would be subject to challenge, and the defence would be entitled—as the Government’s consultation document issued last spring conceded—to call another expert in rebuttal. The conflict between experts would become inextricably mixed up with the real issue: was the complainant raped, or was there consensual intercourse? I am happy that the Government have already rejected that idea, and I note that those with experience of rape trials who have spoken today have all agreed.

I favour the production of a standard video in the form of a neutral public information film which should be shown to juries at the very commencement of the trial and before the case is opened by the prosecution. The film would fully and fairly address prejudices and stereotypes and require jurors to approach the case they are about to hear with an open mind and not with the baggage that they have brought with them. In the interests of fairness such a film would obviously have to refer to the fact that false allegations of rape are sometimes made, an issue which the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, spoke about. The statistics show that about 12 per cent of complaints are not “crimed” by the police—that is, a fair proportion—because they have verifiable information that no crime took place. A significant number of false accusations arise for all sorts of reasons which I shall not go into at present.

If there was a standard and agreed production, a video would not give rise to controversy, and its contents could, where relevant, be referred to during the trial by the prosecution, the defence, and indeed by the judge. We should start by facing the jury with the prejudices that they might have. We should face them with that and tell them that they have to judge these cases with an open mind.

The noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, referred to the broken-backed system of investigation and prosecution and mentioned New Zealand. He will recall, as may others, that I put forward the New Zealand model in the course of the Sexual Offences Bill but that it was rejected. One of the unintended consequences of that legislation was that the two Peers leading from the Liberal Democrat Front Bench got married; that is, myself and my noble friend Lady Walmsley.

The noble Baroness, Lady Gale, referred to variations in rape convictions in different police force areas, and the noble Baroness, Lady Gould, said that South Wales and Manchester had a better conviction rate. There is no substitute for the careful building up of a case. I am indebted to Judge Roger Dutton, who specialises in rape and sexual offences cases on the Wales and Chester circuit, for a whole series of practical recommendations. Unfortunately, the clock is against me. However, I should mention the need for the accurate recording of a complaint; the accurate recording of recent complaints from witnesses; the taking of quick action to obtain material for the purpose of scientific examination; and obtaining a proper video recording that is short and to the point and does not involve lengthy cross-examination of the victim by inadequate police officers. Young witnesses should be prepared for giving evidence. The first time that anyone openly doubts the word of the witness, it often comes as a serious shock and leads to tears, and the case is stopped. One problem with the Government’s proposal for having a video of the evidence in chief is that the first time that the witness is asked a question, she is being challenged on her account. I am not sure that that is the right way to go about things.

We must deal with the issue of inexperienced prosecutors. In the old days, when Silks appeared on both sides and High Court judges tried rapes, cases were handled rather better than today. The Government suggest that pre-trial witness interviews should be introduced widely; I agree. The purpose of interviewing the complainant is to enable the prosecutor to assess the reliability of the evidence that they can give or to understand complex evidence. Provided that the purpose is strictly adhered to and an audio copy of the video is made available automatically to the defence as unused material, it is unobjectionable.

This is a big topic. I am sorry that I have gone over my limit. I end by again thanking the noble Baroness, Lady Gale, and emphasising the need for education—attacking those hidden prejudices and bringing about a change in attitude to the relationship between a man and a woman in our society.

My Lords, I too congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Gale, on the persistent—indeed, tenacious—way in which she has stuck to her guns on these issues over the years. The House owes a great debt to her.

As your Lordships are all aware, the debate happily coincides with the Government’s response to their 2006 consultation on the offence of rape, to which I will turn in a minute. However, it is vital to emphasise, as many of your Lordships have done, that rape is just one example—although a particularly dreadful one—of our more general and mounting alarm over the growth of violence against women in our society, of which domestic violence is a significant factor. Indeed—again, as many of your Lordships pointed out—a high percentage of rapes are inflicted on victims who are in some kind of relationship with the perpetrator, often a very close one.

We cannot escape the conclusion that much of that growth in violence is explained by changes in our society’s culture, often exhibited on television and in films. The media frequently portray young women, principally or sometimes exclusively, as sex objects. This reflects a deep cultural malaise to which there is no short-term solution. Perhaps our best chance of success is in our schools, as the noble Baronesses, Lady Gale and Lady Gould, suggested. They emphasised that respect for women should be a crucial ingredient in children’s education. Indeed, my right honourable friend the leader of the Opposition, David Cameron, said on 12 November that we would never make progress in this area until we were prepared to teach values in school.

Much has been made of the statistics for rape. It was pointed out by the noble Lord, Lord Elystan-Morgan, among others, that whereas there is a low rate of conviction in the context of reported offences, nevertheless, if you put convicted perpetrators in the context of the number of cases brought to trial, we are talking about a respectable success rate. I have seen different statistics; some have been as high as 50 per cent, some as low as the early 40s. These are by no means unfavourable in comparison to murder, for example.

Rape cases present particular evidential difficulties, as a number of your Lordships have explained, because there are usually no witnesses to the offence and because there is often no forensic evidence that is admissible in court. As noble Lords know, over the past decade there have been a number of substantial changes in our evidential rules. I shall briefly remind the House of what they are. There has been a change in the definition of consent in statutory law. An “honest belief” that consent was available is now replaced by the expression,

“no reasonable belief that consent was given”.

Parliament has widened the circumstances in which hearsay can be admissible. It has limited the circumstances in which a victim’s previous sexual history is admissible in court. It has expanded the circumstances in which evidence of the defendant’s bad character is admissible in court, and now we have experiments in pre-trial interviews with witnesses by counsel. Those have made some changes to the conviction statistics, but not dramatic ones.

The Government have come forward with a number of suggestions to which many of your Lordships have referred; I should like briefly to touch on them. I hope that the noble and learned Baroness will not think that my remarks are conclusive of our views, because we must wait to see what proposals the Government come up with. I shall, telegraphically, indicate how we are thinking.

First, I respectfully say to the noble and learned Baroness that we think that the Government are right to leave the issue of capacity to the courts. There has been a recent case that I am sure that she considers helpful. Society would be best served by the development of the concept in the courts rather than trying to set down a rigorous rule in statute.

Secondly, one issue that we have debated today is that of the victim who is reluctant to talk about the event at an early stage, either to her family or to her friends, and equally does not go to the police until a rather late stage. The Government propose that hearsay evidence, at any stage between the act and the prosecution, in principle, ought to be admissible in the proceeding. I assume that the noble and learned Baroness will contemplate adding to that proposal the normal limitation that a judge may in his discretion decide that a particular item of hearsay evidence is not admissible, even in this context.

The third question is that of video-recorded evidence for adults. Again, we are not in principle against that, but the noble and learned Baroness will agree when I say that here, above all, the devil is in the detail. For example, we do not know whether additional questions in chief may be put by the prosecution to the alleged victim in court, or whether the only evidence in chief will be that on video. We do not know when the video recording will be made. Will it be at the time of the alleged victim’s first interview with the police, or later? If it comes later, will that be after the CPS has been involved? What role will the CPS have in the preparation of a recording? I am asking these questions because the Government will have to address them before they come up with a statutory provision.

On the final matter, which has received the most attention in your Lordships’ House, to introduce what has been referred to as general expert material to dispel myths about rape victims’ behaviour, again I am neutral on that until I see what the Government have proposed. I very much take the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, about the subliminal factors that might influence the way in which a jury might approach a particular case, which would prejudice it in principle against a conviction. Difficult though it is, I can see circumstances when, if the right sort of document is produced, it could play a constructive role. It would, however, have to reflect prejudices or otherwise against both parties in the litigation.

These proposals will undoubtedly increase the conviction rate to, I suspect, only a modest degree. The real difficulty is the period between the reporting of an offence and the conviction. That is where the failure of the system lies. I shall be most interested to hear what the noble and learned Baroness has to say about that in her final remarks.

Rape crisis support centres have been referred to by a number of noble Lords. I know that noble Lords will agree that they are proving vital in helping women to overcome what has happened to them. But there are far too few of them; and those that exist are undermined by short-term, usually annual, funding, with funding often having to be decided half way through the financial year. Many of them face the constant threat of imminent closure. We need more of these institutions, and we need to give them the support that they deserve. Among other items in his speech on 12 November, my right honourable friend David Cameron, the leader of the Opposition, announced that a Conservative Government, when elected, will replace annual funding decisions with a three-year funding cycle.

My Lords, I add my voice to all those who have commended my noble friend Lady Gale for instigating this timely and really excellent debate on this most important of issues. I commend all sides of the House for taking up arms against this monstrous sea of troubles in an attempt to bring it to an end. This debate has done something quite extraordinary, which I hope that all sides of this House will have noticed. Through the debate, my noble friend has managed to get assent and consent from all the lawyers who sit on each of the Benches in this House. I do not know whether that is a first, but it certainly feels like one.

I agree with the way in which the noble Lord, Lord Elystan-Morgan, described the offence of rape. It is truly the vilest of offences. As my noble friend Lady Kingsmill said, it is a stain on our country and it is something that we absolutely must address. I also take the opportunity to warmly welcome what was said by the noble Lord, Lord Kingsland. We know of his commitment, but I celebrate the fact that his right honourable friend in the other place has finally made his party join the party. It is very warming indeed at last to hear from him the voice of the Conservative Party on these matters, which our party has struggled so long to highlight, improve and change. It is a very welcome moment, which I am sure that all on our Benches will savour, when we have at last assent from that side too.

Sexual violence is one of the most feared and damaging crimes in our society. It is more prevalent than most people think, and I was glad to hear that echoed in the comments that were made. Five per cent of women and 0.4 per cent of men have been raped as adults, and it devastates the lives of victims, who are often some of the most vulnerable people in our society. The harm caused can be severe and long-lasting, affecting the sexual, physical and mental health of the victim.

I thank those in the House who have commended me for the efforts that I have made, but as I look around the Chamber I see many people who have been on this journey with me. Over the past 30 years, my noble friend Lady Kennedy of The Shaws and others on all Benches, including all those who have spoken in this debate, I count as journeymen on that path. As my noble friend Lady Kennedy of The Shaws said, it takes enormous courage for a victim of sexual violence to report the crime, and they deserve to be treated with dignity and respect and to see justice done. It is right that the noble Lord, Lord Kingsland, said that the period between making the statement and the matter being brought to court is vital. He is also right to say that the details will have to be very carefully examined.

That is why the new public service agreements will for the first time make it clear that tackling serious sexual offences must be a priority across England and Wales, and it is why we have worked in consultation with our stakeholders to develop a cross-government action plan aimed at preventing sexual violence, increasing access to support for victims and improving the way in which cases are investigated and prosecuted. My noble friend Lady Gould was right to say that this vehicle could be used and should be successfully used to bring about the change that we all want to see.

I would like to take the objectives in turn and explain some of the significant progress that has already been made, as well as the work that we will be taking forward in the future. All noble Lords who have identified prevention as being of critical importance are right. I was pleased to hear that alluded to by my noble friends Lady Gale and Lady Kennedy of The Shaws, the noble Lord, Lord Elystan-Morgan, and many others. Ultimately, it must be our aim to prevent sexual violence occurring. We must challenge the culture which tolerates sexual violence, we must support those at risk of victimisation or, in domestic cases, of revictimisation and we must manage the risk posed by those who have committed a sexual offence. My noble friend Lady Howells highlighted and gave us some graphic examples of why that must be so.

A survey published by Amnesty International in 2005 revealed that around a third of people in the United Kingdom believe that a woman is partially or totally responsible for being raped if she has been flirting, drinking or has worn revealing clothing. From the experience of the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, it is clear that is what we see worked out in our courts across the country day after day. The perpetuation of those unacceptable, stigmatising stereotypes can create a culture where sexual violence is seemingly legitimised.

I absolutely agree with all of those who say that addressing those attitudes must start in the education system. All secondary schools are required to deliver sex and relationship education, and by the end of 2009 we expect all schools to qualify as “healthy schools”. That means that specific standards must be met for personal, social and health education, including on sex and relationships and emotional health and well-being. We must challenge also the behaviour of the minority of men who think that it is okay to have sex without consent. Last year the Government ran a hard-hitting and effective campaign stressing the importance of active consent to sex and earlier this week my colleague Vernon Coaker helped to launch the Men’s Coalition, a group of leading men’s organisations which aims to provide a male voice to challenge the culture that colludes with all forms of violence. We will continue to look at what more can be done to support this work.

Noble Lords will know that we believe that awareness-raising campaigns, mentioned by a number of noble Lords, are of great importance. In the past few years, we have run a number of campaigns aimed at addressing attitudes and behaviour regarding violence against women. We have had the Consent campaign aimed at men obtaining consent, the Enough campaign aimed at third parties reporting domestic violence, and a kerb-crawler campaign aimed at deterring men from kerb crawling. I am confident that these campaigns will go on. We need to do this, just as we have eventually brought about change regarding other pernicious forms of crime that we have campaigned on for a number of years. I can assure noble Lords who have spoken that we will look at this very seriously indeed. We will continue to look at what more we can do, working with our partners, to raise awareness of these crimes.

We know that some groups in society are particularly vulnerable to sexual violence, such as people with a learning disability or those involved in prostitution. We have introduced specific offences in the Sexual Offences Act 2003 to offer additional protection to these groups, and continue to support initiatives, such as schemes to share information on sex buyers who are violent, and personal safety training for women involved in prostitution. I say to my noble friend Lady Kingsmill that we recognise that there is considerable support for our work on tackling the demand for prostitution and the impact that this work has on trafficking. Earlier this week, my colleague Vernon Coaker announced a short-term review of what more we can do in this area. This will involve further exploration of approaches adopted in other jurisdictions—including Sweden, which has a specific offence of paying for sex—and consultation with stakeholders. We expect this work to take about six months.

Those who commit sexual offences face a tough regime. The average length of sentence for rape has doubled since 1984 and we have introduced indeterminate sentences for public protection. On release, serious sex offenders are managed through Multi Agency Public Protection Arrangements—MAPPA—by the police and offender management services. The evidence shows that MAPPA works, because in 2006-07 only 0.08 per cent of high-risk offenders managed within MAPPA were charged with a serious further offence. The police have a range of tools to help minimise risk of reoffending, including sex offender registration, civil orders and information-sharing systems. But sex offenders should also be offered treatment to try and reduce the motivation and opportunity to offend. We are delivering sex offender treatment programmes to more than 1,000 sex offenders in prison and to some 1,200 sex offenders in the community every year.

The noble Lord, Lord Kingsland, and my noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours—for different reasons—indicated that the figures are not as bad as they might appear at first blush. I should say immediately that they are certainly not as acceptable as any of us would like and need to get a lot better. As a number of noble Lords have said, rape is a very difficult offence to prosecute. According to the British survey of 2001, some 54 per cent of rapists were current or former partners of the victim and only 17 per cent were strangers. So for the very reasons that have been mentioned today, these offences are incredibly difficult to prosecute.

One thing we must do is enable more people to come forward; we should celebrate the fact that many more people are having the courage to come forward, because the real problem was not people lying about these terrible, vicious offences, but the fact that they have been too frightened and intimidated to say anything at all. We need to direct our attention to changing that balance. Therefore, all the things that we have done in providing health and support services—the £10 million to increase the opportunity to give that support—are important.

My Lords, this seems a logical moment to ask the noble and learned Baroness about that period between the person having the courage to come to the police and the trial. I entirely agree with her that there are considerable difficulties regarding people coming forward, but it seems that the deficiencies are really stark where, once a report has been made to the police, in the end only a small percentage of such cases are tried. She may be about to address that point, but I hope that it will not escape her during the remainder of her speech.

My Lords, that is why we have properly concentrated on the work of sexual assault referral centres and the support from the Independent Sexual Violence Advisory Service, whose advisers walk with the individual. One of the big issues is that, even after someone comes forward, the enormity of what going to court actually means can so oppress the victim that they do not have the courage to go further. Thereby, all the things that we are doing in that regard have become critical.

Sexual assault referral centres were first created a while ago and represent a holistic approach to meeting the support and health needs of victims and the evidential needs of the police. As my noble friend Lady Gale said, there are now 19 SARCs with a further 17 under development, supported by funding from the Home Office. The evidence shows that these centres work and ultimately we want to see access to a SARC for all victims of serious sexual assault. The Home Office is also funding and evaluating 38 independent sexual violence advisers, based in SARCs and voluntary organisations. These trained professionals carry out risk assessments for victims of sexual violence, help them to access the services they need and ensure that clients who go through the criminal justice process are supported from start to finish.

Noble Lords will know that we took such action in relation to domestic violence. We created independent domestic violence advisers, who I refer to always as “divas”, because they are so wonderful—and we have male and female divas. They have massively improved the ability of the victim to remain engaged in the process and have supported and enabled victims to go right the way through. We see creating a specialist sexual violence voluntary sector as crucial in the provision of therapeutic services for victims. The Home Office has supported the sector through the Victims Fund during the past four years. We recognise that sustainability for these organisations continues to be an issue and we are working with our stakeholder advisory group on sexual violence to look at how we can increase stability and capacity in these services. We are already implementing some of its early recommendations. We have funded two national umbrella groups—Rape Crisis England and Wales and the Survivors Trust—to strengthen support for the sector and are working with them to develop national service standards, commissioning guidance for local authorities and primary care trusts and an indicator for local strategic partnerships, all aimed at increasing access to these services for victims of sexual violence.

I turn now to the delivery of justice for victims of rape. If we are to improve the criminal justice response, it is important to understand what underlies the low conviction rate. The first and greatest cause of attrition is in the decision by up to 85 per cent of victims not to report the offence to the police, in some cases because they fear they will not be believed or lack confidence in the system. As I have already indicated, the willingness of victims to report and stay in the system is one of the most important things.

Therefore, we have invested not only in support for the victim but also in training and support for those who carry out other duties within the system. Specially trained officers and specialist rape prosecutors have been introduced across England and Wales, and we continue to improve training and guidance for the police and the Crown Prosecution Service. We are now working with the Bar Council to deliver accredited training to all counsel who act in rape cases, be they for the defence or the prosecution. We have overhauled the procedure in a way that we think will strengthen the opportunity for a successful prosecution.

I heard the concerns expressed by my noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours about the system and his condemnation of the law but I have to say to him that the assessment of the noble Lord, Lord Elystan-Morgan, was right. We now have the system—the law and the structure—about right.

My Lords, yesterday’s response document, says that appropriate specimen directions on the issue of capacity of consent would be necessary. If those directions included references to alcohol, would that not mean that we were effectively rewriting Section 30(2) of the 2003 Act because we would be bypassing a debate in Parliament? I am not convinced that Parliament would support what those appropriate specimen directions might include. In any case, what is the intention of Parliament? The document refers to “operated as intended” by Parliament. Where is what Parliament intended on these issues defined?

My Lords, because he follows these matters very closely, my noble friend will know that the Court of Appeal had an opportunity, in a case called Regina v Bree, to look at the definition given in the 2003 Act. That case settled the issues quite well and clarified precisely what was meant in the 2003 Act. On that basis, we felt that there was no need for further legislative change because that matter had been clarified. There is now an opportunity for training from the Judicial Studies Board and others to ensure that it is followed through.

Many issues have been raised in the debate, all of which I agree with—for example, the matter of female genital mutilation raised by my noble friend Lady Rendell. It is absolutely right that these issues should be looked at and I agree with the calls that she made.

In relation to a point made by my noble friend Lady Massey, although the national plan has not been formally updated, it has been implemented and a number of improvements have been made. In April 2006, we saw the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre publication—the main inter-agency guidelines. It is important not just to update but to implement that plan to ensure that our aspirations are followed through.

We agree with my noble friend Lady Pitkeathley on the issue of pornography. We have continued to address these matters rigorously and believe that they need to go further.

I am sorry that I have run out of time—

There are another four minutes.

My Lords, I thought that I was limited to 20 minutes but I am glad that I can say a little more.

As I said, the importance of these issues cannot be overstated. The work of the umbrella groups and the strengthening of that work, together with investigation and prosecution, will be of enormous importance.

The increase in the willingness of victims to come forward has meant that we have seen some improvement, and I want to say a word or two about the figures. The conviction rate, which stands at 5.7 per cent for 2005-06, represents the percentage of convictions against reported crimes. Although it is right that the overall conviction rate has fallen since 1997 from 9.3 to 5.7 per cent, that has to be seen in the light of a significant rise in the number of reported cases. They rose from 6,628 in 1997 to 14,449 in 2005-06 and that is indeed welcome.

The importance of all the participants in the criminal justice system playing their part cannot be overstated. Your Lordships will know that the report on rape published in January by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Her Majesty’s Crown Prosecution Service Inspectorate made a telling observation. It said:

“In many respects, the policies are sound and in place. It is not a question of changing the approach, but of ensuring that what should be done is actually done in practice and that full effect is given to the existing sound good policies and good practice”.

The recommendations from the inspection focused on the importance of the police and the CPS working together to build cases, on ensuring that cases are effectively supervised and reviewed, and on learning lessons from case outcomes. Every police force has put in place an action plan to implement the recommendations from the inspection, assisted by an operational support team funded by the Home Office. The CPS has established a Rape Delivery Unit to ensure that the prosecution recommendations are delivered, and rape co-ordinators from every area now provide a quarterly report to chief Crown prosecutors and to headquarters identifying trends, good practice and aspects for improvement.

It is also vital that we in central government understand and manage performance effectively. We have established a Cross-CJS Rape Performance Group, which monitors the performance of police and the CPS and raises any concerns with chief constables and chief Crown prosecutors. In turn, they are provided with support by the operational support team that I mentioned earlier to address the particular issues facing their area. The criminal justice strategic plan, published earlier this month, makes it clear that local criminal justice boards should include a key focus on the most serious offences, such as rape, that cause the most harm to victims.

I hope that all those matters will ensure that we do not have a postcode lottery and that all victims in our country will receive a similar standard of support.

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have taken part in the debate. As the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, said, we have covered a very wide range of topics under the title of sexual offences. I thank my noble and learned friend Lady Scotland of Asthal for her excellent response and for reminding us of the work that the Government have already done and will do, I know, in the future. Many suggestions have been put to her and I hope that she will look at them and come back to us. If what my noble and learned friend said about having chalked up one first today is correct—that is, agreement among all the lawyers—that is absolutely fantastic.

Once again, I thank everyone. I am sure that this is a topic that we shall come back to at some point but, for now, I beg leave to withdraw the Motion for Papers.

Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.