9. Ms Hunter asked the Minister of Justice to outline what further reforms are being considered to support rape victims during a trial. (AQO 593/22-27)

I am planning a range of reforms that will add to the supports for rape victims, such as the establishment of remote evidence centres, advocacy and sexual offences legal advisers (SOLAs), which my Department has already introduced. Those new measures include legislation to provide for greater regulation of the use of victims' private information within the criminal justice disclosure process and to clarify when and how pre-trial third-party representation for victims of serious offences may be enabled. Those measures will support victims who wish to object to applications for the disclosure of their personal information, such as medical or counselling records, or to applications to admit evidence of their previous sexual history at trial.

Subject to funding, I hope to launch a pilot to test pre-recorded cross-examination, before the end of the mandate, and to establish SOLAs for child victims. I look forward to receiving a report on some ongoing research into attrition in serious sexual offence cases and will use the findings to develop further measures to increase victims' confidence to be able to report sexual crime and to remain in the criminal justice system until the conclusion of their cases.

I recently met a fantastic sexual offences legal advisory team that does incredible work to support rape victims in Northern Ireland. That team said that there is no mandatory policy by which the Public Prosecution Service (PPS) is notified about a rape case. Could you make that mandatory in this mandate? Also, I welcome the news that you are looking at providing SOLAs for under-18s. Do you have a timeline for that?

I would be interested to meet the Member to further discuss that first point. That issue has not specifically been raised with me through the Department, but I would be keen to address it if there is a gap in provision.

We had hoped to provide the children's sexual offences legal adviser (CSOLA) this year, but we did not get the resource budget that we bid for in respect of that project. We will continue with the work that is being done as part of the under-13s pilot, hopefully extending it to under-16s in order to expedite those cases through the justice system to give as much support as we can and continue to work with others to secure the additional funding needed for the CSOLA.

Will the Minister outline what support is in place for rape victims at trial?

A range of support is available for people who go to trial in rape cases. One of them is that people have the right to seek special measures that mean that they do not have to go to the court and give their evidence in public.

Some of the reforms that Sir John Gillen's review proposed have been implemented and are having a positive effect. Disclosure is obviously one of the areas that we wish to address, because we believe that some issues around disclosure have been negative. The seeking and use of victims' third-party material has also been a concern for victims' rights advocates. We ensure that victims are informed of the SOLA service and can self-refer to legal advice prior to making a report. Finally, the provision of remote evidence centres is hugely important to ensure that victims can give their evidence in safe and comfortable surroundings away from the court building. We have excluded the general public from the court room at trial, and we continue to implement other Gillen recommendations to reduce delay, improve training for front-line staff who deal with victims and improve achieving best evidence procedures and disclosure processes to help with the experience of victims of sexual crime.

The most powerful thing that we as an Assembly can do is not what we do to support the victims of crime but what we do to change our society so that people are less at risk of becoming victims of crime. I look forward to seeing the strategy for ending violence against women and girls being published soon in order that we can refocus on preventing victims being created rather than simply focusing on the supports that we can offer people once their life has been, often, irretrievably destroyed.

We will move to topical questions.