The Labour Party will establish 80 new rape courts in England and Wales to speed up cases as part of wide-ranging plans to tackle violence against women and girls, according to The Guardian.
The courts will operate in unused space and spare capacity in every existing Crown Court to end a growing backlog that has seen 60 per cent of rape victims abandoned before their cases even start. Between the end of 2019 and the end of 2023, the number of adult rape cases in the Crown Court queue rose by 346%, leading to claims that rape is effectively being “decriminalised,” according to the Labour Party.
Labour leader Keir Starmer said he would halve violence against women and girls and increase penalties for rapists as part of his “missions” to the government. The party will also set up specialised rape units in every police station where officers trained in domestic violence will work with victims.
Shadow justice minister Shabana Mahmood underlined: “It is a stain on this government’s record that the victims of rape have been waiting so long to see justice done. Thanks to 14 years of Tory chaos, we are seeing unacceptable delays in the courts and 60 per cent of rape victims are dropping out. For too many, justice delayed has become justice denied.”
Starmer will unveil the Labour Party manifesto on Thursday as the election campaign enters a new phase based more on real policy commitments.
National Audit Office (NAO), prison overcrowding
Earlier, the National Audit Office (NAO) said it no longer believes the Ministry of Justice’s ambition to reduce the total backlog of cases to 53,000 by March 2025 is achievable. Of the 67,573 cases awaiting trial, almost a fifth (18%) are sexual offences.
The NAO say this is partly due to a sharp increase in rape cases, with the number of cases going to trial rising from 624 (1.6 per cent of all cases) in 2019 to 2,786 (4.1 per cent of all cases) in 2023. Rape Crisis, the charity, says there is also a shortage of lawyers, barristers and judges, a lack of contingency plans in the wake of the Covid-19 outbreak and cuts to court funding.
Mahmood pledged that Labour would address overcrowding in prisons. She stated: “The crisis in our prisons is a powder keg waiting to explode. We will build the prison places [the Tories] promised but never delivered and we will drive down reoffending. I am determined to fix the prisons crisis for the long term, not just push back disaster by another day, week or month.”
The Labour Party leads with 18 points, down two from a week ago. Labour 42% (-3), Tories 24% (-1), Reform 12% (+1) following Nigel Farage’s decision to run and lead the party, Liberal Democrats 10% (+2) and Greens 7% (+1). The majority of the research came before it emerged late Thursday night that Rishi Sunak had made an early exit from France’s D-Day celebrations.
