logo
Inside evil Southport killer's cushy jail life where he STILL gets Maltesers, crisps & other treats despite guard attack

Inside evil Southport killer's cushy jail life where he STILL gets Maltesers, crisps & other treats despite guard attack

The Sun6 days ago

SOUTHPORT monster Axel Rudakubana can still buy jail treats such as Maltesers and McCoy's despite attacking a guard with boiling water.
The triple killer, 18, has them served by officers in his cell at London's Belmarsh Prison.
7
Child killer and jail attack fiend Axel Rudakubana last night faced calls for his canteen privileges to be stripped immediately — with a source saying: 'It's shocking and disgusting he still has these rights.'
Rudakubana — serving at least 52 years for killing three girls at a dance class — is also allowed to call family, have religious visits and receive money from relatives while at Belmarsh, South East London.
A source said: 'He's been spending £5.50 a week in the canteen since the attack, and can spend it on anything he likes as long as it's not dangerous.
'He's still allowed to buy things like Maltesers and Pringles crisps if he fancies them.'
Shadow Justice Secretary Robert Jenrick led outrage at the treatment of Rudakubana.
He said: 'I cannot believe this monster has been allowed to keep these privileges. It's a disgrace.
'He should be stripped of them immediately, no questions asked.
'It's the least the victims of his horrendous crime would expect. We've got to regain control of prisons before an officer is killed.'
Since the attack Rudakubana has been busted down to a 'basic' regime which means his TV has been removed and his time out of his cell has been limited.
Our source added: 'He is mostly confined to his cell. He fills in a sheet and stuff gets delivered.
Southport fiend Axel Rudakubana hurled scalding water over prison guard in 'terrifying' attack putting victim in hospital
'That means that prison officers, who are the colleagues of the guy he attacked, have to collect his canteen order and deliver it to his cell.
'Array of goods'
'It's made some angry and upset.
'The array of goods on the canteen list is quite staggering and it has all the decent brands.
'He can also buy toiletries, vitamins, drinks and biscuits.
'He's not spending much because he's on basic level and doesn't have a job due to the danger he poses.
'But the principle of it is shocking — and he's been spending what he can every week since the attack. It's very rare for a governor to completely strip a prisoner of canteen rights but I'd say this is an instance where it's justified.
'He's also been able to call his family and had a bit of money sent in to him despite the attack.'
Lags at Belmarsh can buy goods including Cadbury Twirl bars, Haribo Starmix bags, McCoy's crisps, Diet Coke, Vimto, vitamins, fruit and cereals like Shredded Wheat and Ready Brek.
Also on offer are 'I Love You' cards, draughts sets, prayer mats, cross pendants and prayer hats. But Rudakubana is barred from buying anything that could be turned into a weapon.
That includes tins of tuna, after the jagged edge of a can was used to slash Sara Sharif's killer dad Urfan at Belmarsh in January.
Rudakubana is also banned from buying butter or baby oil which could be heated for an attack.
Police are investigating the 'serious assault' he allegedly carried out at Belmarsh on May 8.
The fiend was allowed a kettle and is believed to have used it to boil water.
His supervision had been downgraded weeks earlier.
The officer was taken to hospital but escaped serious injury and is believed to have returned to work.
Rudakubana struck weeks after Manchester Arena terrorist Hashem Abedi, 28, stabbed and burned four officers at Frankland jail, Durham.
Rudakubana is also said to have had visits from an imam since his attack.
But he has been barred from religious ceremonies for fears he would be targeted.
Inmates in UK jails have rights including protection from bullying, access to a solicitor and healthcare plus the right to communication and to make complaints.
All other privileges have to be earned, and cons can have their time out of cells severely restricted.
Inmates who behave can become 'enhanced' prisoners and earn the right to spend more money and watch TV.
Another source said: 'It's fairly unheard of to strip someone of the canteen. But a lot of the public would think it should be done here.
"The issue they have is they need to keep him happy and stop legal complaints. Certain prisoners are experts at knowing their rights.
'They were planning to move Rudakubana but the transfer has been delayed by the lack of an alternative.
"The natural place would be the separation centre at Frankland. But, ironically, that's been closed down while the attack by Abedi is investigated.'
Rudakubana was jailed in January for the murders of .
The Prison Service said it did not comment on individuals.
7
7
7
Timeline of events related to the Southport stabbings
AXEL Rudakubana has pleaded guilty to the murders of Bebe King, Elsie Dot Stancombe and Alice Dasilva Aguiar, and 10 counts of attempted murder.
Here is a timeline of events relating to the case:
2002: Rudakubana's father Alphonse moves to the UK from Rwanda, according to an interview he gave to his local newspaper in Southport in 2015.
August 7, 2006: Rudakubana is born in Cardiff, Wales.
2013: The family - including Rudakubana's father, mother and older brother - move from Wales to Banks in Lancashire, a few miles from Southport.
July 29, 2024: Shortly before midday, a knifeman enters a dance class at The Hart Space in Hart Street in Southport.
Bebe, Elsie and Alice are fatally wounded. Eight other children are injured, as are instructor Leanne Lucas and businessman John Hayes.
Police say they have detained a male and seized a knife.
Within hours, claims spread online that the suspect is an asylum seeker who arrived in the UK by boat in 2023.
Some claims include an alleged identity.
July 30, 2024: In the evening, a peaceful vigil is held outside Southport's Atkinson arts venue, where flowers are laid in memory of those who died.
Shortly after the vigil, a separate protest begins outside the town's mosque in St Luke's Road.
People throw items towards the mosque, property is damaged and police vehicles are set on fire.
July 31, 2024: Demonstrators gather in Whitehall, London, for an "Enough Is Enough" protest.
Flares and cans are thrown at police and more than 100 people are arrested.
Disorder also breaks out in Hartlepool, County Durham, and Aldershot, Hampshire.
August 1, 2024: Police announce that Rudakubana has been charged with the murders of Bebe, Elsie Dot and Alice, 10 counts of attempted murder and possession of a bladed article.
He is not named by police because of his age.
He appears in court in Liverpool and Honorary Recorder of Liverpool Andrew Menary KC rules he can be named, as he is due to turn 18 in a week.
He initially smiled on entering the courtroom - then kept his face covered by his sweatshirt for the remainder of the proceedings before the case was adjourned.
Later that evening, demonstrators gather outside a hotel in Newton Heath, Manchester.
August 2, 2024: Three police officers are taken to hospital after disorder in Sunderland.
August 3, 2024: There are scenes of violence during planned protests across the UK, including in Liverpool, Hull, Nottingham and Belfast.
August 4, 2024: Disorder continues, including outside a Holiday Inn Express in Rotherham, South Yorkshire, where masked demonstrators launch lengths of wood and sprayed fire extinguishers at police officers.
August 5, 2024: The Government holds an emergency Cobra meeting in the wake of the disorder and Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer vows to "ramp up criminal justice".
That evening, a peaceful vigil is held in Southport, a week on from the killings. Police deal with disorder in Plymouth, Devon and Darlington, County Durham.
August 7, 2024: Prison sentences for those involved in the unrest begin to be handed out. Derek Drummond, 58, is the first person to be jailed for violent disorder at Liverpool Crown Court, where he is sentenced to three years.
More than 100 protests are planned for across the country, with counter-demonstrations taking place, but the majority of police forces report very little trouble.
October 29, 2024: Merseyside Police announces Rudakubana will appear at Westminster Magistrates' Court via videolink the next day charged with production of a biological toxin, Ricin, and possession of information likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing to commit an act of terrorism.
October 30, 2024: Rudakubana appears at Westminster Magistrates' Court via videolink from HMP Belmarsh to face the two new charges.
He holds his sweater over the bottom half of his face and does not respond when asked to confirm his name.
November 13, 2024: Rudakubana appears at Liverpool Crown Court via videolink. He covers his face with his grey sweatshirt and does not speak throughout the hearing.
About 20 family members of victims sit in the public gallery. The case is adjourned until December 12, when a preparatory hearing will take place.
January 20, 2025: Rudakubana appears at Liverpool Crown Court for the first day of his trial where he pleads guilty to all 16 charges, including the murders of Alice da Silva Aguiar, nine, Bebe King, six, and Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven.

Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

Highgate cemetery families confront bosses in row over new building
Highgate cemetery families confront bosses in row over new building

The Guardian

time34 minutes ago

  • The Guardian

Highgate cemetery families confront bosses in row over new building

Dozens of grave owners confronted Highgate cemetery's bosses and their architects this week in a growing row over a maintenance and toilet block in a part of the graveyard where almost 200 people were recently buried. The cemetery called Tuesday's private meeting in an attempt to placate objectors by setting out adjustments to a new building that is part of an £18m redevelopment of the graveyard. But the meeting descended into heckles, chants, a walkout, legal threats, demands for compensation and accusations that cemetery was putting the needs of tourists above mourners. A recording of the meeting, heard by the Guardian, revealed unanimous and often furious opposition to what grave owners have called 'the bunker'. The controversial block is due to be located on the mound, an area of the cemetery of about 170 recent graves including those of the sociologist Prof Stuart Hall, the artist Gustav Metzger, and the critic Tom Lubbock. Among those objecting were the actor Bertie Carvel, whose mother, Pat, was buried on the mound in 2019. He told the meeting it was 'crazy' to locate the 'brutalist' building in part of the cemetery 'most frequented by active mourners'. Pleading with the cemetery's managers, he said: 'I'm sure it is not deliberately insensitive but given the strength of feeling please, please, please will you stop. Go away and rethink.' His fellow actor Pam Miles demanded that the cemetery pay for the cost of exhuming the remains of her actor husband, Tim Pigott-Smith, if the scheme goes ahead. 'It leaves us no option but to exhume. In the circumstances it would be fair to expect you to repay us for these expensive graves.' Staff from Hopkins Architects, who designed the scheme, were repeatedly heckled and shouted down as they argued the building could not be placed in any other part of the 14.5-hectare (36-acre) graveyard. A lawyer, who afterwards asked not to be named, said he and others were planning to sue the cemetery for breach of contract. The man, who owns a double plot where his partner his buried, told the meeting: 'What we bought was a site with open views and you are changing that. You need to think about whether there are potential legal ramifications from people like me if you carry on with this.' Separately, a letter to the cemetery's trustees signed by more than 30 grave owners, claimed the charity had breached consumer rights of those who had recently bought plots by failing to inform them of the plan to redevelop the cemetery. It also threatened to report the trust to the Charity Commission over consultation failures and reputational damage to the cemetery. And it warned they were prepared to allege mismanagement to the National Heritage Lottery Fund, at a time when the cemetery is seeking £18m of funding for the redevelopment. At the meeting architects defended the building. One denied it was brutalist, saying: 'That's just not correct. There's more poetry to it than that.' One of the objectors shouted: 'Bollocks.' Undeterred, the architects outlined proposed changes to the block including removing an accessible toilet and reducing the height and width of the building. At this point Natalie Chambers, whose parents are both buried on the mound, left the meeting in protest. As she left she said: 'I'm appalled. You don't listen to us one bit. My father was in the Warsaw ghetto. And you are so disgusting I don't even want to come to the cemetery any more.' There followed a chant from the room of: 'We don't want the building.' A screenwriter, Anna Seifert-Speck, whose husband was buried on the mound in 2019, said: 'We are asking you to reconsider bulldozing over our complaints. Lowering the thing a little bit isn't going to work, it's not want we want.' Another grave owner said: 'It's a graveyard for us. It's not a tourist site.' A barrister said the mound area was the 'worst possible' location for the building. 'There is a concentration of nothing but contemporary graves there. That's why you have so many people in this room. My young daughter lies there. 'You must see that the notion of having toilets right next to the graves of loved ones causes pain and anguish. The solution is simple: don't build on the mound.' Speaking after the meeting, Carvel said: 'Mourning in a cemetery ranks higher than visiting a place of historic interest. The force of those arguments must have rung loud to anyone with an ounce of humanity. But we are also dealing with a corporate decision-making process and I remain somewhere between anxious and cynical about the extent to which that organisation will look itself in the mirror and admit it was wrong.' The architects and trustees agreed to reflect on the feedback and report back to the grave owners in the coming weeks. Elizabeth Fuller, the chair of the Friends of Highgate Cemetery Trust, acknowledged failures in the way recent grave owners had been consulted about the plans and pledged 'better communication in the future'. At the start of the meeting she said: 'As required by the planning process, and by [the] reality [of the site], we have had to balance the benefits and harms of all constituent elements. We will commit to amending our plans wherever possible.'

I run a French university course on why Britain is such a mess – I won't run out of material
I run a French university course on why Britain is such a mess – I won't run out of material

Telegraph

time40 minutes ago

  • Telegraph

I run a French university course on why Britain is such a mess – I won't run out of material

Your 60-minute exam on 'Public Policy Failure and the British State: A History in Twelve Case Studies' starts…. now. Turn the page and read Clarissa Eden's diary entry for November 4 1956, in the midst of the Suez Crisis, and answer the question: 'Do the personalities involved in a given policy failure matter as much, if not more than, the ideas themselves?' Bon courage! For the past three years, 38-year-old Oxford academic Oliver Lewis has been teaching an oversubscribed course at Sciences Po – the Paris university that produced six of France's last eight presidents – while researching a DPhil (equivalent to a PhD) on UK rail privatisation as a 'case study in British public policy failure, 1985-1997'. The source of Lewis's inspiration, he believes, was his father's scientific expertise in materials failure. After earning degrees in History and Politics at the London School of Economics and King's College London – and a short stint in financial services – Lewis was unable to shake off his interest in a different sort of failure, dating back to his study of the privatisation of British Rail for A-level Economics. Having enrolled at Oxford for his DPhil, he won a year's fellowship to Sciences Po in 2021 as part of an exchange programme. The following year, he was asked to develop a 12-week course. It has now been taken by over 200 French, British and other international students at the university dubbed ' la fabrique des élites ' (the elite factory). 'Regardless of citizenship, there is a universal curiosity in a country that has gone from one of the richest in the world to a mediocre one,' says Lewis. 'There is definitely a general feeling that something has gone deeply wrong for Britain. When I tell people that my DPhil is on railways and public policy failure, they say, 'Well, you won't run out of material'.' There has certainly been no shortage of recent stories highlighting problems with Britain's rail infrastructure. In December, The Telegraph reported on an 18-mile line in Northumberland – a victim of the Beeching cuts in the 1960s – which took three decades to be rebuilt after plans for its reopening were first mooted in the 1990s. When work finally began in 2019, the £160 million project was due to be completed by spring 2023. It eventually opened in December 2024, by which time the estimated cost had nearly doubled to £298 million – and only two of its six stations were ready. Nevertheless, the curiosity displayed by Lewis's enthusiastic students appears untainted by any contempt for the country they have been studying. 'I have always been a fan of the UK,' says Milan Wojcieszek, a 23-year-old Polish student at the University of Amsterdam, currently on a year-long exchange at Sciences Po. 'I admire your newspaper culture and the civilised way in which you debate in Parliament. But for me, Brexit appeared an irrational decision in a country where everything seemed to be going right, and I wanted to understand the motivations behind it better. 'I still like the British attitude, but the course put an end to the picture in my head that people from western Europe have a superior intellect when it comes to statecraft. It raised my national self-esteem: if these guys can f--- up, maybe we're not so stupid.' But what about his French classmates, the Pompidous, Mitterands and Chiracs of the future? Did they enjoy a good laugh about l es Rosbifs while quietly taking notes on mistakes to avoid? 'I did not see a visible enthusiasm for smirking about their arch-rivals shooting themselves in the foot,' says Wojcieszek, who hopes to become an entrepreneur when he graduates. 'I guess what I saw was more sympathy and curiosity.' Wojcieszek's classmate Amélie Destombes, a second-year student at King's College London currently on secondment to Sciences Po, confirms the impression that Britain is a fascinating country to study – if not for the most reassuring reasons. 'I've had conversations with many French students who have brought up Rishi Sunak, Liz Truss or Boris Johnson – so there's a pretty bad reputation,' she says. Brexit is often the hook that attracts European students to Lewis's course – although many might be unaware that he stood for Reform, originally founded as the Brexit Party, in last year's general election for the Montgomeryshire and Glyndŵr seat, where he came second to Labour. Now no longer active in the party, Lewis adopts a rigorously apolitical stance in his seminars. 'Our duty is to truth, not to subjectivity or opinion,' he explains. In any case, he argues, 'it's too early to tell' with Brexit. Instead, he roots his teaching in historical method, blending aspects of anthropology and law, as befits Sciences Po's interdisciplinary approach. This results in a 12-part lecture series on the 'long 20th century' that seeks to understand 'how we got to this malaise,' what lessons can be learnt for other countries, and whether British decline is reversible. The course begins with the First World War, a well-documented event, before exploring three further foreign policy failures: appeasement in the 1930s, the Partition of India in 1947, and the Suez Crisis of 1956. It then shifts focus to domestic issues, covering Northern Ireland, comprehensive education, the 'financialisation' of the economy, the poll tax, rail privatisation – which Lewis estimates has cost taxpayers over £120 billion – and Private Finance Initiatives (PFIs). This shift in focus reflects the changing role of a state that, over the past 100 years, has been asked to do more with less. 'For most of its history, the British state dealt only with defence and with imperial concerns,' explains Lewis. 'Its culture and institutions were designed to serve a different purpose. They are, therefore, not terribly efficacious when it comes to solving domestic problems. Britain is in a uniquely unfortunate position because its global role coincided with a domestic economy that could not shoulder its defence burden.' This, Lewis says, did deep, long-term damage, meaning the country 'could not adjust to its drastically reduced role post 1970, with the result that domestic public policy has been poorly planned, poorly executed – and at times poorly financed too.' Prof Sir Ivor Crewe, a distinguished political scientist, is the author of The Blunders of Our Governments, which features on the reading list for Lewis's course – alongside films such as Rogue Trader (the Nick Leeson biopic), and The Navigators, Ken Loach's story of Sheffield rail workers affected by privatisation. 'It's hard to say if Britain is appreciably worse than other countries such as Italy, France or Germany,' he says. 'But it's difficult to imagine students in Britain being very interested in the mistakes of those countries.' The Blunders of Our Governments, co-authored with the late Prof Anthony King and published in 2013, includes well-known British disasters such as the Millennium Dome and membership of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism, as well as more niche blunders like New Labour's individual learning accounts and the Child Support Agency spending two years chasing a childless gay man over a daughter who didn't exist. The book argues that the British political system suffers from a dwindling talent pool, limited understanding of project management, ineffective checks and balances and inconsequential penalties for failure. Although decisive governments can make effective policy, it is just as easy for incompetent ministers to make bad decisions – a problem that has worsened since the Thatcher and Blair governments. 'With the best will in the world, I have found it difficult to identify successes since 2010,' says Crewe, who is currently working on a new edition of the book covering fresh blunders such as austerity, High Speed 2 and Covid. 'Even when I ask Conservative commentators, it's pretty thin gruel.' Lewis's course at Sciences Po concludes with the Iraq War, before devoting the final lecture to a handful of public policy successes, including PAYE and Bank of England inflation targeting, followed by a plenary discussion on the past and the future. 'My main takeaway is that, when we make policy, it impacts real people,' says Destombes, who hopes to work in British public policy after graduating. 'There needs to be better research on the communities that are affected.' Gabriel Ward, a third-year student at the LSE who took the course at the same time, cites Nicholas Ridley – the Cabinet minister responsible for introducing Thatcher's poll tax (and the son of a viscount) – dismissing people's financial worries by saying, 'Well, they could always sell a picture.' 'There's a disconnect between policy makers and those who would feel it most,' says Ward. 'I was constantly struck by the gap between ideology and practicality.' Wojcieszek's conclusion is that even a strong political system can lead to bad decision making. 'It reinforced my belief that what really matters is visionary leaders who can propose something unpopular,' he says. Lewis wants his students to 'leave with a knowledge that ideas can be as dangerous as they can be powerful.' But inevitably, he has some interesting ideas himself on how Britain might extricate itself from problems that began last century and have worsened since the millennium. 'I used to think that dealing with Britain's 'issues' would be a 30-year project,' he says. 'I now think it's a 50-year one. In the short run, the solution is attracting the best human capital into politics. In the long run, it's education. The education of our future political elite is a massive burning platform.' Lewis is an admirer of the French lycée system, as well as the strong sense of national pride at Sciences Po, where 'virtually every corridor has a tricolour and its primary duty is to the people of France.' Dismissing claims in a recent book that Sciences Po is a hotbed of woke radicalism – 'This obviously afflicts all institutions' – Lewis applauds 'the genius of de Gaulle and the reset of the 1950s,' which Britain has never had, with the possible limited exception of the Northcote-Trevelyan Civil Service reforms of the 19th century, aimed at moving away from patronage and towards a meritocratic system. 'Our electoral system creates a duopoly in which there's no market for ideas,' he says. 'We've never really had a proper conversation about the role of the state in our lives. 'An absence of vision and standards seems to affect every branch of the British state. It's now at emergency levels. Britain's standard of living is on course to be overtaken by Poland's by 2030. The electorate is not going to accept that decline. Something will have to give.'

Rape victims can challenge dropped cases after sexsomnia fiasco
Rape victims can challenge dropped cases after sexsomnia fiasco

Telegraph

time40 minutes ago

  • Telegraph

Rape victims can challenge dropped cases after sexsomnia fiasco

Victims of rape and serious sexual assaults will get the right to challenge prosecutors' decisions to drop their cases. Labour is to pilot a scheme in which rape victims can secure an independent review if prosecutors are planning to abandon their case because they believe there is insufficient evidence. Under the current system, criminal cases can be stopped at any point if a prosecutor decides there is no longer a realistic prospect of conviction. Under changes announced on Thursday, victims of rape or serious sexual abuse will be offered the right for a different independent prosecutor to review the evidence before any final decisions are made. If that prosecutor determines there is enough evidence, the case will continue. The move follows a campaign by Jade Blue McCrossen-Nethercott, 32, after her rape case was dropped amid claims that she could have had an episode of 'sexsomnia'. An 'important first step' Ms McCrossen-Nethercott received £35,000 in compensation and an apology from the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) for its decision to drop the case before the evidence had been tested in court. She contacted police in 2017 because she thought she had been raped while asleep. She said she had woken up half-naked, finding her necklace broken on the floor. But charges were dropped by the CPS days before a trial was scheduled to begin after lawyers for the alleged perpetrator claimed Ms McCrossen-Nethercott had sexsomnia – a medically recognised, but rare, sleep disorder that causes a person to engage in sexual acts while asleep. She welcomed the pilot scheme to be run in the West Midlands as an 'important first step'. 'It can't undo the harm already done to victims like me, but it's real, tangible progress, and I hope it marks the beginning of a fairer system, one where victims' voices are not just heard, but acted on,' said Ms McCrossen-Nethercott. Victims already have the right to challenge a decision not to charge suspects once it has been taken, but the pilot scheme will extend that right to before prosecutors decide to drop a case. 'Make Britain's streets safer' Lucy Rigby, Labour MP and Solicitor General, wrote in an article for The Telegraph: 'The existing scheme is already an important tool in delivering justice, but this new commitment from the CPS will extend that right, so that victims are further empowered to question decisions made in their cases, resulting in fewer cases falling through the cracks and more offenders brought to justice. 'Beginning on Friday, the pilot will become operational in the West Midlands. If it is a success, we will look to extend this across the country to support all victims of rape and serious sexual assaults. 'We know there is much to do to fix the justice system. But this is a vital step towards building the system that victims deserve and ultimately make Britain's streets safer.' Just one in 40 (2.6 per cent) rape offences resulted in a charge in the year ending March 2024, up from 2.1 per cent in the previous year, but a fraction of the 12 per cent charge rate in 2014. Labour has committed to halving violence against women and girls and will publish its strategy on how to achieve that this summer. The plan has inherited a series of initiatives by the last government and police, including an overhaul to focus investigations on perpetrators rather than testing the credibility of victims. Police chiefs have pledged to apply the same investigative and disruptive tactics to rapists as they do to organised crime bosses, where they are pursued by police even if victims withdraw their complaints. We can't leave victims to go on suffering Our broken criminal justice system is in dire need of repair, which is why our pilot scheme aims to empower victims of rape and sexual assault to question decisions made in their cases, writes Lucy Rigby KC MP. Too often, victims of violence against women and girls are let down by our criminal justice system, compounding what is already a traumatic experience. I have strong views on the reasons why. Chief among them: 14 years of governments whose approach was nothing short of negligent. This resulted in too few bobbies on the beat, overflowing prisons and a record backlog in our courts, leaving victims of very serious crimes waiting years to see perpetrators in court. In short, a broken criminal justice system in desperate need of repair. The impact on victims and public trust in the justice system was significant. A creaking criminal justice system undermines one of the basic principles fundamental to our democracy: the rule of law. That is to say the law applies to everyone equally and all must have access to justice. This happened despite the work of thousands of dedicated public servants to protect us all. I've met many of them – including the prosecutors from across the country that dedicate their careers to sifting through evidence, often in harrowing crimes, to build a case and pursue justice on behalf of victims. Empowering rape victims This Government has begun the difficult task of fixing our criminal justice system as part of the Plan for Change, in which we pledge to halve violence against women and girls in a decade. To achieve this, we are putting domestic abuse specialists into 999 control rooms, introducing new Domestic Abuse Protection Orders, doing more to effectively tackle spiking, stalking and coercive behaviour. That means better support in place for victims and giving them the confidence that specialists are helping them. These changes will also see more police on our streets, locking up abusers, but importantly – getting quicker justice and support for those suffering at the hands of perpetrators of these horrific crimes. As Solicitor General, I've heard heart-wrenching accounts of women's experience of the criminal justice system – sometimes lasting years – which have seriously impacted their mental health, wellbeing and relationships. We cannot let this go on, which is why we are ensuring that adult victims of rape and serious sexual offences will have access to a dedicated victim liaison officer, as well as pre-trial meetings, so that they feel more prepared for court. The right to question But we have to do more. In particular, it is vital that our criminal justice system further empowers victims to best navigate it. It was Prime Minister Keir Starmer who, as the director of public prosecutions, launched the Victims' Right to Review Scheme in 2013, to give victims and bereaved families the right to challenge decisions not to charge suspects or drop cases. Leading victims' rights voices, like Jade Blue McCrossen-Nethercott, the Centre for Women's Justice, Dame Vera Baird and Claire Waxman OBE, the Victims' Commissioner, have recognised the success of this scheme and that is why we are extending it to better support more victims. A new pilot launched this week will give survivors of rape and serious sexual assault the right to have their case reviewed before CPS makes any final decisions. Currently, criminal cases can be stopped at any point if a prosecutor decides there is no longer a realistic prospect of conviction. For the first time, survivors of rape or serious sexual abuse will be offered the right to request a review by a different prosecutor before their case is dropped. Where a review finds that the initial decision was wrong, the case against the accused will continue. A system victims deserve The existing scheme is already an important tool in delivering justice, but this new commitment from the CPS will extend that right, so that victims are further empowered to question decisions made in their cases, resulting in fewer cases falling through the cracks and more offenders brought to justice. Beginning on Friday, the pilot will become operational in the West Midlands. If it is a success, we will look to extend this across the country to support all victims of rape and serious sexual assaults. We know there is much to do to fix the justice system. But this is a vital step towards building the system that victims deserve and ultimately make Britain's streets safer.

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into the world of global news and events? Download our app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store