Home Affairs Committee
Oral evidence: Non-contact sexual offences, HC 504
Wednesday 24 April 2024
Ordered by the House of Commons to be published on 24 April 2024.
Members present: Dame Diana Johnson (Chair); Lee Anderson; James Daly; Simon Fell; Kim Johnson; Tim Loughton; Alison Thewliss.
Questions 69 - 157
Witnesses
I: Deputy Chief Constable Maggie Blyth, Deputy CEO, College of Policing, NPCC Lead for tackling VAWG, Chair of the Violence and Public Protection Portfolio; Temporary Assistant Chief Constable Paul Furnell, Contact, Safeguarding, Crime & Justice, British Transport Police; Louisa Rolfe, Assistant Commissioner, Frontline Policing Metropolitan Police Service; Commander Ben Russell, Intelligence & Covert Policing, Metropolitan Police Service.
II: Laura Farris MP, Minister for Victims and Safeguarding; Joanna West, Director of Tackling Exploitation and Abuse, Home Office; Amy Randall, Director for Victims and Vulnerability Policy, Ministry of Justice.
Written evidence from witnesses:
Q69 Chair: Good morning and welcome to the Home Affairs Committee. Sorry for the slightly late start this morning. This is our last session on our inquiry into non-contact sexual offences. The aims for this session are to explore the current policing response to non-contact sexual offences—including the potential for data to inform that response and any challenges to utilising that data—to understand what more can be done across the criminal justice system to prevent these offences, identify perpetrators and bring them to justice, and provide effective support to victims and survivors, and then to question the Minister about issues raised so far during the inquiry and within her remit.
Welcome to our first panel this morning. I would like each of you to introduce yourselves. If we could start perhaps with Commander Russell, if you could just say who you are representing, that would be very helpful.
Commander Russell: Good morning, I am from the Metropolitan Police and I am the commander for intelligence and covert policing.
Deputy Chief Constable Blyth: Good morning. I am the National Police Chiefs’ Council’s lead on tackling violence against women and girls. I am also the deputy chief constable at the National College of Policing.
Temporary Assistant Chief Constable Furnell: Morning, I am at British Transport Police, and I am in charge of, and strategic lead for, VAWG.
Louisa Rolfe: Good morning, I am assistant commissioner from the Metropolitan police, responsible for frontline policing, and the National Police Chiefs’ Council lead for domestic abuse.
Q70 Chair: Thank you. We are very pleased to see you all today. I wondered if I could start us off with DCC Blyth. You are obviously the main person in dealing with violence against women and girls, and I wondered if you could just set out what your main achievements have been since you have been in post?
Deputy Chief Constable Blyth: Thank you very much, Chair, and thank you for inviting me to give evidence this morning. As the National Police Chiefs’ Council’s lead in tackling violence against women and girls, I would also emphasise I work across many other NPCC leads, such as assistant commissioner Louisa Rolfe; we very much co-ordinate together. What I would like to set out this morning is what we have done over the last two and a half years, but also the importance of the national co-ordination that we feel we need to maintain to provide a consistent and co-ordinated response across our 43 forces. It is also worth reiterating that as we tackle these crimes, we have to set out what the threat is, be really clear about the level of threat, and that is really well understood.
In the last couple of years we have published—we are doing this annually—a strategic threat risk assessment, in the same way that we tackle any other crime, like terrorism, serious and organised crime. That really has helped us draw out and focus on domestic abuse as a volume crime, rape and serious sexual offending, child sexual exploitation and abuse. That is important both in terms of the impact on victims, but also just the numbers of perpetrators we are talking about, and then the online threat. In pulling out and setting that threat assessment, we are quite methodical in understanding what we are dealing with.
I was going to share with you, as a starter, some of that headline data as well. If you do not mind me using the term VAWG—it is not always an easy acronym to explain—for those crime types that sit within this level of violence. It is really helpful to have VAWG placed within the strategic policing requirement because that has, again, allowed us to approach our policing response in the same way that we tackle counter-terrorism and serious and organised crime. Over the last two years, we have mobilised all 43 of our police forces around VAWG. We set our first national framework in 2021, setting out those key threats and expecting every police force to self-assess against that in preparation for inspection from HMICFRS. We have reinvigorated that framework in the last six weeks, using and adopting the police doctrine of a 4P approach, which is very much around pursue, prevent, protect and prepare, and again, very similar to how we approach terrorism and serious and organised crime.
It is important to have that national co-ordination and that national framework so that we can initiate consistency across 43 forces, and to allow the guidance, the training and the approach to be as consistent as possible in how we pursue largely the men who are violent towards women; not always, there are male victims too. But our data shows that this is predominantly a crime perpetrated by men. It has also allowed us to set out the evidence base, and a big part of that evidence base in the last two years has been initiated by Op Soteria, which I think, Chair, you and colleagues are familiar with as very much a new approach to understanding the perpetrators behind rape and sexual offending. And this is relevant to what we are going to discuss today. Allowing us to use that evidence base across other crimes that sit within VAWG, particularly domestic abuse: one in three rapes is domestic abuse linked, and we know that stalking and harassment underpin much of the sorts of crimes we are talking about. Having that evidence base set by Soteria, and using it to inform guidance and training elsewhere, has been really important.
Q71 Chair: That sounds very impressive. Lots of strategies and reinvigoration, and lots of the four Ps, and Operation Soteria we have heard lots about. Drilling down, then, into this particular issue that we are concerned about, the non-contact sexual offending. How does that fit? All that framework you have around it, what does it actually mean in terms of police response to non-contact sexual offending?
Deputy Chief Constable Blyth: It is really important to set out that framework because it evidences the level of the epidemic. Our data has shown that one in 10 people are victims of the crimes that sit under VAWG. We estimate that one in 15 people are perpetrators of these types of crimes.
Q72 Chair: Sorry, one in 10 people, we are talking about women, are we not? One in 10 women—
Deputy Chief Constable Blyth: Not entirely, because if we look at under-16s we know that some victims are boys, and we know that some victims of these types of crimes are male as well. We know it is predominantly affecting and impacting women, but not entirely. We also know that predominantly the perpetrators are male.
Q73 Chair: You are saying one in 15?
Deputy Chief Constable Blyth: In terms of an estimate against the scale of what we are dealing with, and I wanted to start with the scale because that includes non-contact as well as contact. If we are looking at all those crimes that sit within VAWG, from child abuse, exploitation, through to domestic abuse, to rape and serious sexual offending, to the online threat, looking at ONS data, looking at the data we are collecting, we are really, really concerned about the scale that we are dealing with. That is important, then, for the policing response. Largely around pursue, Commander Russell will talk about some of the approaches the Met is taking around going after the men that commit these crimes using a data-informed approach. But the scale is so huge to include non-contact and contact that it requires more than just a policing response. We have to be held to account on our response, but we urge the panel to understand the scale that we are dealing with.
Q74 Chair: One of the problems we have come across is the lack of data on non-contact sexual offending, for various reasons, which I am sure we are going to come on to. But you are saying VAWG is an epidemic?
Deputy Chief Constable Blyth: Yes, absolutely.
Q75 Chair: I have said before, I think most women would say at some stage in their lives they have been subjected to non-contact sexual offending. Either a man exposing himself, or something, exposure is the main one. What would you say about that, in terms of whether most women would say they have been subject to that?
Deputy Chief Constable Blyth: You are absolutely correct in saying, again, we only know what is reported into policing, and we accept the scale of non-contact sexual offending is wider than what is reported into policing. We cannot find research that demonstrates an absolute correlation between non-contact sexual offending and going on to commit more serious sexual offending. But my professional advice is, and colleagues here today will also say, “Absolutely, there will be some link.” It does not necessarily mean non-contact offending determines an absolute escalation to go on to commit more serious sexual offending. But looking into patterns of offending would indicate that those, again, largely men who commit non-contact sexual offending, may have a propensity to go on to commit more concerning offending. It is something that we need to be able to target. We need to be able to understand, as we would in approaching any other investigation, that there will be red flags should, for example, somebody have committed indecent exposure and then gone on to commit other types of crime.
Q76 Chair: I am going to move on to James Daly in a moment, but why do you think it is that the police have been so poor at dealing with non-contact sexual offending in the past? Why have they not recognised it as a problem?
Deputy Chief Constable Blyth: There are three things here. First, policing reflects society, and as a society we have not placed weight on these crime types. Since the pandemic, and since some of the awful murders of women that have increased understanding across the public, things are changing. Secondly is the scale, and the scale that we are talking about means more than just a policing response. Thirdly, we are recognising this is now a threat like terrorism, but we recognise we still have an enormously long way to go.
Q77 James Daly: Deputy Chief Constable, I just have to pick you up on one of the statements you have made. It may well be true; it is very depressing if it is true. But if we are in this position because the police effectively have not taken the offences we are talking about seriously, that is a great indictment of the police over the last decade, is it not?
Deputy Chief Constable Blyth: I think, and the evidence that I was putting forward suggests, that in our society, these crimes that often happen behind closed doors—some in public spaces but often behind closed doors—we have not had an understanding of those. And we have not been equipped in how to deal with them, not just in policing but within society. I believe that is changing.
Q78 James Daly: I appreciate that, but that is just an excuse, is it not? To say that the police reflect society’s faults or whatever is a very sad state of affairs. You are law enforcement officers who have offences to prosecute. I do not know whether you would call it institutional misogyny or a lack of taking offences seriously, but I think it is a disgrace, personally. And the public have been badly let down by the police, have they not?
Deputy Chief Constable Blyth: We absolutely know that we have a significant way to go in improving our policing response to these crime types. But I believe we are changing, and I have worked in this field of public protection all my career, and society is changing in the same way. Crime is evolving all the time. Particularly the online crime is something that 10 years ago, we would have not had the knowledge of in the way that we do now, and how some of the underpinning concerns around stalking and harassment are utilised and how online crime perpetuates that.
Q79 James Daly: Can I ask the other members of the panel, and in respect of various offending types, I ask variations of this theme, because when you look at the data that is put forward, especially in respect of rape—we are not talking specifically about that, but it falls within the type of offending that we are all discussing here today—the charging rate is ludicrously low, and there may well be many reasons for that. But if I just give you an example, and I will come on to data in a second, at the end of March 2023, according to the figures that I have here, there were approximately 68,949 rape offenders reported to the police. There were 1,685 convictions. Now that is what I am reading here now, and that is from the internet, but if you put that into context that is beyond belief. It is literally beyond belief, that is not even charged outright, that is convictions. So out of the 68,000 people in the year 2023, only less than 2,000 of them had a conviction.
Now there is a huge problem with how these matters are prosecuted and your relationship as police officers with the Crown Prosecution Service, and it presents barriers which are very difficult for the police to overcome. I have spoken to police officers in this area who say that essentially for offences of this nature the Crown Prosecution Service is requiring evidence that amounts to a slam dunk; that unless you have the effective confession signed in blood, or very strong evidence, there is little chance of a charge. And I just wonder whether you feel that is impacting how seriously these matters are taken by the police?
Louisa Rolfe: Chair, if I may? Operation Soteria gave us a really good insight into what is going on here. The national lead for Rape and Adult Sexual Offences is Chief Constable Sarah Crewe from Avon and Somerset: I know she has previously spoken to this Committee about that work. But Operation Soteria identified a number of things. The Crown Prosecution Service has been working closely with policing on a joint national action plan, and I agree with you, the prosecution rate is far too low, and there has been work together to improve that and significantly address it. In the Met alone, in the last year 500 more cases of rape were prosecuted than the previous year. But also policing managing a significant increase, a 244% increase in reporting—
Q80 James Daly: In terms of non-contact sexual offences, if there has been an increase in prosecution in respect of rape, has that been reflected in the offences we are talking about here today?
Louisa Rolfe: I would need to come back to you on the increase, but I know the data in terms of reporting of exposure and voyeurism in the last year: 1,566 offences and a positive outcome rate, so a charge of 10.9%. We would like it to be more. But if I may go back to Operation Soteria and its key findings for policing nationally; forces have really grasped this, and through Maggie’s leadership and working with her and Sarah and their teams, they are really understanding. We have an adversarial justice system—I am sorry, I know you know this—where the burden of proof is on the prosecution to prove beyond all reasonable doubt that a crime has occurred. It is not always suited to behaviour-based crime, and particularly we find the conviction rate for stranger offences is higher than for offences that occur within a relationship. I know as the domestic abuse lead, there is a one-third overlap between domestic abuse and rape and sexual offences. We also know that often sexual offences are a way that perpetrators will seek to control their victim. It is a horrific thing. But we have also found that our adversarial justice system was leading police and prosecutors to be overly focused on the veracity of a victim’s account, and insufficiently focused on the behaviour of perpetrators. And therefore, we might be—
Q81 James Daly: Can you explain what that means?
Louisa Rolfe: Yes, of course. If the burden of proof is on the prosecution to prove beyond all reasonable doubt that an offence occurred—
James Daly: The comment you made regarding the veracity of the complaint.
Louisa Rolfe: Yes, so actually ensuring that the case you put forward is watertight, and this comes out in society as well. You will all recall the news about celebrity cases and then the media’s intrusive focus on whether the victim is perfect, rather than the offender’s behaviour.
Q82 James Daly: I have to say, I completely agree with you. You explained it far more articulately than I did, but that has to have an impact. One of the things when we are talking about this debate, is conviction rates in court are not really the issue because the conviction rates are, I will not say acceptable, everything can always be improved. But the major problem is the referral rate from the police to the Crown Prosecution Service for these types of offences. Temporary Assistant Chief Constable Furnell, I just wonder what your general view is in respect to this, because I take the view—unless I am wrong—that police want to prosecute people if they think there is evidence that they should go before a court, but this is not happening. Why?
Temporary Assistant Chief Constable Furnell: Yes, absolutely. I would echo both Maggie and Louisa’s comments around a societal problem needing a societal response. I agree totally with that. One of the impacts of those rates that you have just referred to is a lack of confidence in the public, in victims and survivors of those offences, in reporting. British Transport Police is the 44th force, so 43 plus one, we are obviously outside the Home Office jurisdiction. And we recognised that in 2019 and did some academic research at the time to understand what we could do to increase reporting around non-contact sexual offending. I am pleased to report that we have doubled our figures over the last four or five years in non-contact reporting. That has had an impact on our solve rate. They are nowhere near where we as British Transport Police or UK policing want it to be, but that increased confidence and staying with those investigations has been really critical for us.
We listened to the survivors and victims’ voice during that period, and one of the things that was critical, coming back to your point, Chair, was that some of the feedback we had from survivors was that not everyone in the non-contact space wished to pursue a judicial outcome. One of the major things that we have concentrated on in British Transport Police is listening to that voice and creating different pathways of reporting and recording from the traditional one route only into a prosecution. Currently as a force, you can report non-contact sexual offending anonymously and in confidence to us. And we will honour the confidentiality of that reporting because our priority is focusing our attention on identification of the perpetrator and looking at early identification intelligence programmes to deal with that perpetrator. That may be through civil orders, it may be through criminal orders, hopefully.
One of the benefits we have seen in that, is we have also developed an offender management programme that is outside the ViSOR programme of high-harm offenders, with RISE in partnership, looking at some of the behaviour. Because we are not saying that every man in the non-contact space is a sexual predator, because some are not. Some is about behaviour change and identification of the risks that they present, and our intelligence programme over that five years has been able to identify those through a streamlined process.
Q83 James Daly: Thank you. Just one very brief question for Commander Russell. This is in terms of your experience of prosecuting the offences we are talking about here today, and the relationship with the Crown Prosecution Service, because I am assuming that you have some form of oversight in respect of what happens in the Met in respect of that. If a victim comes forward and the evidence is a witness statement to say, “This has happened to me,” is it generally the case that the Crown Prosecution Service will say that a witness statement with nothing else is not sufficient to mount a charge?
Commander Russell: I do not think we can generalise that much.
Q84 James Daly: That is the case in many circumstances, is it not?
Commander Russell: All on the panel have probably seen circumstances where you look at a case, and you think it is a very good one, and it has not gone the way you want it to go. Every case will be different, but we can all probably think of those cases. Probably the only other thing I would add is that I completely agree with all my colleagues, it is not all about prosecution; often our goal is around just reducing harm. As my colleagues said, civil orders are really powerful. Another thing is even when people are in prison, sometimes they keep offending. We know of offenders who continue to harass their victims even from within prison. We have to look at the whole life cycle of an offender and the needs of a victim quite a bit more in the round. I completely take the point you are making, but it is not always about prosecution.
Q85 James Daly: I understand, but you are not a social worker, are you? You are there to enforce the law. Much as I appreciate that, that is all great, if somebody commits an offence, they should go before a court, should they not?
Commander Russell: Yes, and one of the good things we can do is with civil orders, we can take a case to court on the balance of probabilities rather than on beyond reasonable doubt and have much more chance of success. When putting restrictions around someone, we can put in place restrictions where they cannot form a relationship without permission from the police, where they cannot approach women in the street. There are very strong powers that we can use—others on the panel will know more about this than me—that are really powerful, and probably we want to make more use of them as well as prosecute and take more cases through the criminal justice system.
Q86 Kim Johnson: Good morning, panel. DCC Blyth, you mentioned in your opening comments about violence against women and girls reaching what you described as an epidemic. I would be curious to know, in terms of the work that is being undertaken across the country in the 43 forces, you mentioned that they undertake a self-assessment. In terms of consistency and of monitoring of that approach, who does that and how well is it working?
Deputy Chief Constable Blyth: Thank you, that is a really important question. With 43 forces, there are many different ways of responding and approaching. We have wanted to look at consistency. The answer to your question is HMICFRS, the inspectorate. Those self-assessments are of interest to inspectors when they come in to do what are called PEEL inspections on general effectiveness. They also sometimes do deep-dive inspections into particular areas they have just completed, in terms of rape and serious sexual offending. We have worked hand-in-hand with colleagues in HMICFRS to ensure that the stick element of setting out guidance, the enforcement element of making sure that this remains a priority, is undertaken through inspection.
Q87 Kim Johnson: In terms of non-contact sexual offences, we have heard that the collection of data is not great, and part one of Angiolini talked about raising the profile and raising awareness. Again, how are those 43 forces looking at doing that in practice?
Deputy Chief Constable Blyth: In two ways really. One through the work that we are doing under the umbrella of VAWG, of recognising that non-contact offences committed by a perpetrator are part of the intelligence gathering. The golden-hour investigation when anyone, a PCSO, anyone at local level, has turned up to respond. So making sure that the perpetrator behaviour is understood. In the same way that we are looking at organised criminality, looking at terrorist profiles, we are wanting to ensure that that skills training is understood at the frontline. That is one way.
The second way is actually encouraging and ensuring that people report it in. The challenge we have with non-contact sexual offences is we only know part of the picture. At the moment, we accept a loss of confidence from our public reporting these crime types in. We want to encourage women and girls and anyone, boys and men too, to report in and to continue to build up that picture from data. But our data is still quite poor in this area.
Q88 Kim Johnson: And do you believe that people have the confidence, in terms of reporting in, that action will be taken? Because we heard from police last week in terms of poor resources, in terms of dealing with retail crime, for example. Does the same apply to this particular type of offence?
Deputy Chief Constable Blyth: It is really important that women and girls, and members of our public, feel that they can report these in and feel confident to report to us. I talk to stakeholders all over the country, for different organisations that represent members of the public, and this is top of the agenda: the trust and confidence element. We want to work with stakeholders nationally, but also forces at local level have their own links and engagement. Some interesting examples of where we are trying to improve that trust and confidence are through independent advisory groups, working with local members of the community to come in, and in some forces actually look at decisions that have been made by policing around these crime types. So trying to encourage a greater understanding of what we do and why we think it is important.
Q89 Kim Johnson: AC Rolfe, we know that the accessibility of online porn has contributed to a rise in sexual offences, and particularly in terms of young males having access. I was just curious whether any research is being undertaken, in terms of the progression from non-contact sexual offences to other more serious offences, and whether that is available?
Louisa Rolfe: Thank you for the question. I know that there is research from many years ago that identifies a clear link between exposure to extreme pornography, and particularly pornography that includes violence against women, and it having a dehumanising impact, and people seeing violence against women as more acceptable. In terms of recent research that shows that non-contact offending definitely leads to contact or harmful offending, at the moment there is a gap, and there is a mixed picture. Of course, we in policing would love for there to be more research that could help us, but also there is plenty for us to be getting on with.
We have been doing an awful lot of work in London, I am working closely with the College of Policing and the national Violence Against Women and Girls Task Force, to understand how we really pick up those findings from the Angiolini report about our officers being professionally curious for focusing on offenders, the findings from Operation Soteria about focusing on offenders, finding the links, the patterns. We have ensured that we are reviewing our information about cases so that we are looking at patterns of offending, linking cases, being really clear about our commitment to attend incidents of indecent exposure, or voyeurism, or other non-contact sexual offences, and tracking that attendance closely, tracking our response to victims. So an awful lot to help us understand the picture, but fundamentally to ensure that victims receive the right and the best service from policing, and that we are very offender-focused, and can identify those escalations. And we have had some really notable success: the work that Ben is leading, in terms of understanding our data and who is posing the greatest threat, and who should we prioritise our resources and focus upon. A lot of work is in development, but at the moment there is certainly a gap in that independent academic research.
Q90 Kim Johnson: Commander Russell, in terms of the Met, do you have dedicated teams that are looking at these types of crimes? And how frequently is training rolled out to officers to make sure? Because I am aware that officers tend to move to different teams on a fairly regular basis.
Commander Russell: In terms of dedicated teams, it will depend on the type of offending. Definitely at the most serious end, that is the case. One of the things we have done recently is with indecent exposure cases—actually not that recent—we have moved all those investigations into our specialist CID teams, so they would get a more specialist response than they are used to. The reality, though, is of course investigating these offences is the job for every police officer, so it is a scale.
Q91 Chair: Can I just be clear then, the specialist team, is that the specialist RASSO team that you are saying?
Commander Russell: Yes, that is an example. Yes, exactly.
Q92 Chair: That is an example. Before I move on to Tim, can I just ask DCC Blyth, not all police forces have specialist teams, do they?
Deputy Chief Constable Blyth: That is absolutely correct, yes.
Q93 Chair: And they should?
Deputy Chief Constable Blyth: We definitely want a cohort of investigators specially trained to deal with these crime types. The challenge with specialist teams for some of our smaller forces is a capacity issue. There are examples now of collaboration across a regional area. I would want to promote that, because specialist training is really important, but we cannot dictate one model on the different 43 forces. And that is largely geography as much as anything.
Q94 Chair: Are you able to tell us which forces do not have RASSOs? It sounds like the smaller ones.
Deputy Chief Constable Blyth: I could certainly provide that information to you separately. But it tends to be smaller organisations, where if you create a specialist team you are taking officers off another response activity.
Q95 Chair: They should all do what the Met has done, which is to put these non-contact sexual offences into the RASSO specialist teams, to deal with this issue of being able to see patterns and identify what is going on.
Deputy Chief Constable Blyth: We are really promoting bringing together experts in domestic abuse, RASSO, under the umbrella of public protection, and beefing up our public protection response so every force has a public protection unit. We want to ensure that those public protection units are adequately trained and supported.
Commander Russell: Just to be really clear, rape and serious sexual offence teams will deal with rape and serious sexual offences. What I was trying to say is separate to that, we then have frontline officers who will pick up volume crime. We also have CID, so more complex crime. What we have done is we have not moved indecent exposure into the RASSO teams, we have moved it into our complex crime CID teams.
Q96 Chair: There is a view that that should happen, because then you would be able to have that experience and knowledge about how indecent exposure and other non-contact offences could feed into the broader picture. But you are saying not in the Met, it goes to CID?
Commander Russell: It is a volume problem, yes.
Deputy Chief Constable Blyth: The other issue we can overcome with this is ensuring that there is adequate training, specialist training programmes that those individuals who are working in a particular area can undertake and become accredited for. And that is certainly the approach we have taken with RASSO and want to replicate.
Q97 Tim Loughton: AC Rolfe, can I pick up on what you have just been saying? The main reason we launched this inquiry was we were concerned with the very high levels of non-contact sexual offences that were not being pursued and resulting in criminal action, including, unfortunately, police officers who had serious form in exposure and other lower level non-contact offences and went on to commit some very serious sexual offences.
You just described that sort of progression as a bit of a gap and a mixed picture. How does it actually work at the moment? If you get random reports of an individual exposing himself in a public place or privately, but without a lot of evidence to go with it—i.e. photographs and multiple witnesses—where does that lead? Will you do some greater analysis to put those different reports together of, “Hold on, he was doing that there, and somebody else was reporting that there; there appears to be more to it than just an odd incident”?
Louisa Rolfe: I could probably best illustrate with an example. An indecent exposure was reported to us about 18 months ago, I think it was in the Maida Vale area of London, near Paddington Basin. One of our crime intelligence analysts spotted that there had been a couple of similar offences nearby. We looked at the pattern of offending, identified a number of linked offences, and found some ANPR camera footage that identified a moped ridden by a food delivery driver. We were able to pursue some other lines of inquiry, and we then found a series of linked offences that matched this delivery driver’s working pattern of deliveries, and we were able to charge and prosecute that individual because of joining the dots.
This is the key finding from Operation Soteria and the recommendation from Angiolini of clearly joining the dots and ensuring we use our data to be really clear about patterns of offences. The Met has just moved to a new system based on a poll database for the recording of crime and intelligence that enables us to connect people, objects, locations, and events, which will be identified and flagged if we are seeing a series. If something had a similar registration number, a similar modus operandi of an offender, in a similar location, or a similarly described person, we would be in a position to identify connections and pursue lines of inquiry.
The wonderful thing about working in a big city like London is there is so much CCTV footage, ANPR cameras, Ring Video Doorbells; things that our investigators can pursue. We make no secret of the fact we have a lot of work to do, but we are determined to be really focused on ensuring we do not miss these opportunities and the learning from those horrific cases you described, whether that is offending behaviour—we are very focused on ensuring there is no place for abusers within policing—or in terms of tightening our vetting, pursuing cases, learning from the events of the past, and investigating cases.
Q98 Tim Loughton: That all sounds as though it has worked very well. My concern is when a dot then becomes part of a pattern of dots that you proactively try to join up, and the capacity you have for that sort of analytics. As constituency MPs, I am sure we all get complaints about a crime that has been reported to the police—there may even be video evidence—but the police are reluctant to take it forward.
In the past, there have probably been cases where somebody took the trouble to report to the police that somebody exposed themselves in front of them, and the response was, “Do you know who it is? Do you know where he’s from? Have you seen him do it several times? Is he from there?” and so on. If the answer to most of those questions is no, it is usually a case of, “Don’t call us, we’ll call you,” rather than, “We’re going to check all the VT possibly available for cameras in that area.”
What has changed now—if anything—for you to be more proactively saying, “Thank you very much for that evidence; let’s see if we can match it up with other evidence”? We now have this whizzy analytical, and you launched this V100 initiative in the Met as part of an action plan announced at the end of last year. Why is this more likely to lead to greater investigation that may then lead to action against a specific potential high-level offender who is a low-level offender at the moment?
Louisa Rolfe: We have been really clear in terms of our commitment to attending incidents when they are reported; attending the scene, speaking to witnesses and victims, and encouraging and supporting our officers to be professionally curious. At the outset, Maggie mentioned the scale of offending; I mentioned an increase of 244% in reporting rape to police; domestic abuse is now more than 11% of emergency calls into policing; more than 30% of violence with injury is reported to police, and more than 50% of violence experienced by women in London is domestic abuse.
From Operation Soteria, we also know the impact upon our investigators of repeated exposure to these traumatic cases; that all adds up to a difficult leadership challenge for us in policing. But we are really determined about prioritisation; we are working with every call handler in the Met who is trained to apply a threat, harm, risk, investigation, vulnerability and engagement assessment at the point of call, and the Inspectorate of Constabulary assess how well we are doing that when they inspect our effectiveness. We seek to identify the difference between someone reporting a confused person who left their home not properly dressed and somebody committing an aggressive offence of indecent exposure in public and the risk associated with that, to apply the right resources, and join the dots between offending.
Q99 Tim Loughton: Can you explain how the V100 initiative works? It is overseen by the Met’s chief scientific officer and supposedly utilises, “Data analytics to identify and target the 100 men who pose the most risk to women.” How big a difference is it making? It requires quite a lot of analytics and people trained and able to identify individuals who have the potential to become serious sexual offenders. It has not been a priority for the police in the past to the extent that a lot of women do not report it because it will almost be laughed off, “Oh, it’s old such-and-such; he always does that on a full moon,” or whatever, just to be flippant about it. Are the police really taking this seriously now? If so, what changed?
Louisa Rolfe: Yes. I have worked as a national lead for domestic abuse since 2013, for 10 years. I have seen a lot of change in that time, and greater investment in our understanding of the risk inherent in violence against women and girls. Sadly, two women a week die in the UK at the hands of a partner or ex-partner through domestic abuse alone.
Q100 Tim Loughton: Can I stop you there? I entirely understand that, and domestic violence is a huge problem that is taken much more seriously. This is different; these are usually strangers exposing themselves to completely random and unknown victims, mostly women, and are harder to identify, unlike domestic violence where we know who is doing it, but it is a question of whether the victim is brave enough to come forward and shop the known partner or whoever it is. I am not interested in this scenario about domestic violence; it is completely separate.
Louisa Rolfe: I understand, although we do see a huge overlap in offending. While we say much happens within the home, predatory perpetrators will sadly offend against many victims in the home and outside. Ben Russell is leading the work on the V100, so he is the best person to describe it, but it is a really effective tool that we are determined to exploit and make the most of.
Tim Loughton: The baton has been passed, Commander.
Commander Russell: No problem. There are probably two different problem sets, and I want to differentiate between the two. We have a problem with a disproportionate amount of harm against women being caused by a relatively small cohort of offenders, and the theory behind the V100 is you target the small cohort of offenders and prevent a disproportionate amount of harm. That is slightly separate from the problem you have spoken about of escalatory behaviour, where something might start as you describe and end up in very serious contact offending.
Our Strategic Insight Unit is working with Maggie’s team on an algorithmic, more complex approach that will try to build something that says, “Could we spot the people early on who we think are on that pattern?” but we are not there yet. We have a bit more to do. The challenge of London is volume, but the benefit is you have a lot of data.
With the V100, you have to know the name of the suspect otherwise you cannot have an offender focus. We have about 33,000 named suspects of VAWG offences from the last year alone in London. We take those 33,000 and say, “How are we going to adopt a triage process where we focus on those who we think are causing the most harm?” We look at the recency of their offending—whether it is in the last year—severity, whether they are named as a suspect in that offending, and frequency. Partly because of the challenges we have heard about the criminal justice system, this is about suspects; we are focusing on people who are named for suspicion.
We then chuck as many resources as we can find at it. If you were investigating a murder, you would have a detective chief inspector leading that investigation, and it is the same for one of these cases. Our approach is, if we can prosecute for anything, we will. A significant number of these people are also involved in other crime, so if you are on our top 100 stack, we will investigate you for whatever you are involved in.
Q101 Tim Loughton: So this 33,000 will include people who have never been charged or prosecuted but have been reported as likely to have been offenders.
Commander Russell: Exactly. This is not the police; the vast majority of this data comes from what the public is telling us. We join the dots and pull those cases together. Quite a lot of people at the top of our stack are offending against multiple victims, in different parts of London. There are potentially many years of historical information about these people, there are often complex mental health needs, and addiction challenges; they are really complex and challenging cases. Our approach is to use the data to spot the people we think are behind the most harm and throw everything we can at them.
Q102 Alison Thewliss: I have some questions for TACC Paul Furnell. British Transport Police obviously have operations in Scotland as well. I saw the Railway Guardian app that you have been working on with Crimestoppers. How successful has that been? How many reports have you had, and how many convictions have led from that?
Temporary Assistant Chief Constable Furnell: I will have to come back to you on reports at a later date. Going back to the 2019 research, we heard from survivors about the importance of speed and access to reporting to allow anonymous and confidential intelligence and reporting. So the simplest way was for us to develop an application for British Transport Police that was national and reached across three countries.
The Railway Guardian app has now been up and running for a couple of years. We have over 300,000 users at the moment. You can traditionally report to British Transport Police as you would report on Single Online Home to a Home Office force and you can report intelligence information. Equally important for us and the transient population we are dealing with—both offender-based and victim-based—is that we get access to that information fast time.
Within there, you will be alive to 61016, the text service for British Transport Police, which is a unique service in policing. It goes live time into a control room, and we deploy resources as soon as we get that call as if you were ringing the police. As soon as someone—a bystander or a victim of offence—texts us or reports via the app, we will deploy resources to the next station of that train to deal with the information on the description or location of where the reporting is.
We also use the application to push and pull a lot of information and data around information sharing on non-contact. We have done a lot of campaign material around describing what sexual harassment is. We have been talking about some of the high-harm offenders, but also the volume-based offenders; we have had to tackle the threshold of reporting that has been lost over many years of perhaps, “Will the police take this seriously? Should we report?” It has not been reported, and we have spent many years through the campaigns asking the public to report every single bit of information. It paints a picture for us.
Coming back to Ben’s point, we can only proactively target offenders if we can identify who they are and where they are operating, and I suspect it will not be a stand-alone offence. So the app has been very successful, but it is still at quite early stages. I am having quite a lot of dialogue with Maggie about the national VAWG work and with the Police Digital Service to try to tie that into Home Office forces because we do not have a resident population.
For us, every offender and victim is a resident of a Home Office force area. The key intelligence sharing to identify risk from British Transport Police into our Home Office to manage that offender is critical. The national work is really helping with that consistency of operation because we operate through all 43 forces, so we have to have a consistent approach to our offender management and our service to victims.
Q103 Alison Thewliss: It would be useful for the Committee to get some of the stats. You have 300,000 people using the app; how regularly are they using it? Have they downloaded it and never used it or looked at it? How does that work as a follow-up? If I were on public transport and an AirDrop popped up on my phone and I reported that to you, what would then happen?
Temporary Assistant Chief Constable Furnell: The app is on about its fourth version; we are always adding. When we developed the app, we were really keen to buy into a relationship for it to evolve. It has the ability to upload images from your phone that have been sent to you, for example, via AirDrop, as you mentioned, which is quite a prolific offending on the rail transport infrastructure. You can also capture video and audio on the app as it is happening and it will come straight through to us. You will get a reply text message via 61016 from our controller letting you know what is happening.
From a safety perspective, if the perpetrator is nearby, a benefit is you are not picking up the phone and making a call to the police so the perpetrator knows you are doing that. We are encouraging bystander information and bystander advice through the app. We have all sat on a train and seen behaviour we are not comfortable with. We added an I to VAWG—it is VIAWG for us—because we talk about intimidation and behaviour on the train that might escalate around that, so we concentrate heavily on responding, in dialogue with the person on the end of the phone or application.
We are very keen to look at the data with the provider. You are right: we need to understand how many people are using rather than just downloading. We all have apps on our phones that we never use, so it is really key for us to make sure we are capturing the use of that. The fact we have doubled our report around non-contact offending and sexual assault offending shows something in our campaign through app or text is having an impact on confidence in reporting, but I still think it is the tip of the iceberg.
Q104 Alison Thewliss: Doubled could go from two to four; that is doubling, but it is still very low. I had a look to see if I could find any stats on this for Scotland particularly, and there was an FOI to the British Transport Police in Scotland that said only three offences were recorded between 2019 and 2023, which is nothing compared to the scale of this, is it?
Temporary Assistant Chief Constable Furnell: No, absolutely not.
Q105 Alison Thewliss: If a third of women are being sexually harassed on their commute, three reports over four years is nothing.
Temporary Assistant Chief Constable Furnell: I will check the data and write to the Committee to confirm those figures, but we are certainly seeing an increase across the UK. I will also look at the Scotland figures.
Q106 Alison Thewliss: Finally, on a technical aspect, if I am on the West Coast Main Line and I receive an AirDrop in Penrith, how is that recorded? Will somebody be there in Glasgow, and how does that work with the different legislation in Scotland and England?
Temporary Assistant Chief Constable Furnell: We will try to define exactly where the offence took place. Obviously, you might be travelling at quite a speed through different jurisdictions. Historically, British Transport Police has had to really work hard on that because we ended up with recording end of route, and that is not ideal from an analytical perspective.
Alison Thewliss: It seems as though everything is happening in Glasgow, does it not?
Temporary Assistant Chief Constable Furnell: Exactly. If you look at our data, you will often see the major hubs around the country as historically being the place. We have done a lot of work through our reporting mechanism to try to identify and geolocate exactly where that might happen. Technology can assist us with that—with the permission of the victim and survivor—and then we will record the offence where it took place and respond in that way.
Q107 Alison Thewliss: That kind of thing—it is not quite called cyberflashing—has been an offence in Scotland since 2009 under the Sexual Offences (Scotland) Act 2009.
Temporary Assistant Chief Constable Furnell: I am attending Scotland in a couple of months to look at where the slight difference is in legislation. For me, it does not change our definition of what we look through; it is just the technical recording and prosecution of those offences. We are very much concentrating on sexual harassment being the same in England, Scotland and Wales. The technology and details around the prosecution are slightly different.
Q108 Simon Fell: TACC Furnell, I would just like to follow up a few questions there. Travelling on the tube and mainline rail, I cannot help but notice the sheer number of adverts at the moment explaining the bounds of acceptability and where to go if people are straying beyond that. I know you have covered some of this with the conversation about the app, but what is the impact for you on that increased visibility on public transport in terms of reports made to you and also the demands on your resourcing?
Temporary Assistant Chief Constable Furnell: We are heavily behind those; they are in joint campaigns across the country with the rail operators, TfL, and so on. From the outset in 2019, I said to Lucy D’Orsi, our Chief Constable, that success for us initially is going to be a significant increase in reporting, and we are not there yet. I do expect short-term success is going to see a significant increase in demand for policing.
Yes, it has increased our demand. We are at the highest reporting we have ever had as an organisation through 61016, and we are preparing ourselves for further increases. Section 4B— the dedicated offence around