A Labour MP has waived her anonymity to reveal she was raped after an event that she attended as a member of parliament and said she waited almost three years for a trial.
During a debate on the Courts and Tribunals Bill on Tuesday, Labour’s Warrington North representative Charlotte Nichols said she waited 1,088 days for her case to get to court as she spoke out against plans to curb access to jury trials.
Ms Nichols explained that she wanted to share her story because “experiences like mine feel like they’ve been weaponised and are being used for rhetorical misdirection”.
She accused justice minister David Lammy of using rape victims as a “cudgel” to drive through reforms to jury trials.
Under the bill, jury trials would be limited to cases with a likely sentence of three years or more. Instead these would be heard by a single crown court judge.
Additionally, magistrates’ courts would be able to take on cases with a likely sentence of up to two years.
In a powerful speech, Ms Nichols said “the Government’s framing and narrative has been to pit survivors and defendants against each other in a way I think is deeply damaging”.
Reflecting on her almost-three-year wait for her trial, she said: “Every single one of those days was agony, made worse by having a role in public life that meant that the mental health consequences of my trauma were played out in public, with the event that led to my eventual sectioning for my own safety still being something that I receive regular social media abuse from strangers about to this day.”
“But here’s the kicker: in this debate, experiences like mine feel like they’ve been weaponised and are being used for rhetorical misdirection, for what this Bill actually is,” she added.
Ms Nichols argued that the justice system needed to be truly victim-focused.
“It is because I have endured every indignity that our broken criminal justice system could mete out that I care what kind of reform will actually deliver justice for survivors and victims of crime more widely.”
She added: “There is so much that we can be doing for rape victims that isn’t the Lord Chancellor using them as a cudgel to drive through reforms that aren’t directly relevant to them.
“As a starting point, Rape Crisis England and Wales have called for five key demands in their Living in Limbo report. Don’t say that this Bill helps deliver justice for rape victims, until it actually, materially does.”
Ms Nichols said the man who raped her was acquitted in a criminal court.
She was given compensation after a civil case found she had been raped, she told MPs.
The reforms passed their first parliamentary stage on Tuesday despite criticism from a significant number of Labour backbenchers. Kingston upon Hull East’s MP Karl Turner branded the changes “unworkable, unpopular, unjust and unnecessary”.
The Commons voted 304 to 203, majority 101, to pass the Bill at second reading. Ten Labour MPs voted against the Bill, while 90 had no vote recorded, according to Parliament’s data.
Lammy had pleaded with MPs to support the reforms to address rising court backlogs.
