Angela Rayner accuses Dominic Raab of ‘failing rape victims’ during fiery PMQs

‘Over 98% of rapists will never see the inside of a courtroom, let alone a prison,' Ms Rayner told the Commons.

Dominic Raab has been urged to apologise to rape victims who have been ‘denied justice’ because of his ‘failures’ as Justice Secretary.

During a fiery exchange in the Commons, Labour deputy leader Angela Rayner took Mr Raab to task over the backlog of sexual violence cases, which has seen only 1.6% of rapists face charges for their crimes.

Filling in for Keir Starmer at PMQs, Ms Rayner told Parliament: ‘A woman goes through the worst experience of her life. She summons up the courage to relive that horrendous experience, to tell the police in detail about her assault, but she only has a 1.6% chance of action being taken.

‘Over 98% of rapists will never see the inside of a courtroom, let alone a prison and the rest of those brave women, Madam Deputy Speaker, they keep looking over their shoulders and hope the perpetrator doesn’t choose tonight to take their revenge for reporting the incident to the police.’

She added: ‘In the last 13 years of the Tory government, more than half a million cases of rape have been recorded by the police but the charge rate for those attacks have collapsed.

‘He has served under five Tory Prime Ministers and had three years as Justice Minister, and on his watch, rapists are left to roam the streets. So will he apologise to those victims who will never get justice because of his failures?’

Mr Raab responded by saying that tackling rape is ‘one of our top priorities’, telling MPs: ‘She asks what we are doing about it, since 2019 police referrals of cases have doubled, CPS (Crown Prosecution Service) charges have doubled, she asks on my watch what has happened, the volume of convictions in rape cases has increased by two-thirds.

‘If she really wants to protect vulnerable women whether it is from rapists or other serious crimes they will back our parole reforms, which will mean ministers are able to prevent them being released into the public and cause more threats.’

But Ms Rayner countered: ‘He hasn’t answered my question because he is too ashamed of the answer: 1.6% of rapists faced being charged for their crime – 1.6%. Let that sink in.’

Mr Raab replied: ‘The conviction rate measured by the CPS – the leader of the Labour Party used to be in charge of the CPS, he might want to point this out – has gone up, it’s now at 69%.

‘We are doing much more to support the victims of rape as they come forward.

‘They (Labour) are talking a good game, in fact we have quadrupled funding for victims since 2010. If she looks at the latest data, the time it has taken from charge to completion of a rape case has come down by 10 weeks or 70% in the last three months alone.

‘She should get her facts straight, particularly when talking about such a sensitive issue.’

Ms Rayner countered: ‘He won’t apologise for the Government’s failures on charge rates and 69% of 1.6%, is that really something to boast about?’

She added: ‘On his watch, rape survivors are waiting on average more than three years for their cases to come to court … 10 weeks is not anything to boast about.

Those three years from the day of the assault to the final day of court, is it any wonder that from April to September last year 175 trials for rape and other serious sexual offences have had to be dropped because the victim could no longer cope with the delay.

‘So let me ask him, when will he apologise to all those women denied justice because of his failure to sort the court backlog?’

Ms Rayner’s comments come following the release of a bombshell report, titled ‘Breaking Point,’ from the charity Rape Crisis, which revealed a record high backlog of 7859 sexual offence cases and 1851 adult rape cases in the Crown Courts.

The Breaking Point report shows that victims and survivors of rape and other serious sexual offences are waiting for the longest out of everyone to have their experiences heard in court, with an average wait of 839 days from report to completion in court.

During a case study in the report, one survivor shared how after waiting years for justice she no longer felt able to continue with the process.

‘For the process to take 8 years…truly anyone with any kind of humane understanding would appreciate this is not acceptable?’ They said.

‘And who is checking on this case…why did it truly take this long? They didn’t give a jury a chance to make their own minds up about this, because they took too long without courtesy contact and support.’

Elsewhere in the report is exclusive data from a Freedom of Information request to HM Courts and Tribunal Service which showed that the number of vacated and ineffective rape trials more than doubled from 2019-2020 to 2021-2022.

In a breakdown of reasons for ineffective trial listings given to the Justice Select Committee, 1,925 cases were due to the prosecution advocate failing to attend  an increase of 1722 in just 2 years.

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