Campaign Success and Support Campaign: England and Wales Rape Anonymity proposals

Wednesday, 4th August, 2010

From Rights of Women:

Thank you for supporting our campaign against the coalition government's proposals to give those who are investigated and prosecuted for rape anonymity.

After a lot of hard work we have been successful as Crispin Blunt MP, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice, has stated that the Government is now only considering "non-legislative options" on this issue.

This means that the government is no longer proposing to bring forward legislation giving suspects anonymity in the autumn. In a written answer to a question asked by Caroline Flint MP, Crispin Blunt MP said:

" As I made clear at the all day debate on this subject on 8 July (Official Report: columns 533-602), the Government will consider over the summer recess how best to go about strengthening anonymity up to the point of charge and will bring proposals to Parliament in the autumn. The Government is only considering non-legislative options on this matter and, as I said in the House on 20 July (Official Report, Cols. 160 & 161), we are trying to find the best non-statutory solution."

This is the first policy from the coalition agreement that has been dropped and is a considerable victory. Thanks go to all those individuals and organisations who campaigned against anonymity and to the MP's who lead opposition in the House of Commons. However, the government has said that it will publish an assessment of the existing research and statistics on ‘false reports' in September, so while we can celebrate our victory, we need to remain alert to the fact that this is an issue that could resurface.

Consequently, we are still asking organisations to endorse our position statement and individuals to contact their MP and ask them to sign Fiona MacTaggart MP's Early Day Motion (you see who as signed it by looking here ).

We are hoping to have over a hundred signatories to our position statement before the research is published in September.

Take action: Sign the position statement attached below to add your organisation's support.

Further Info: Read the Rape Crisis Scotland Blog The case against anonymity for rape defendants