A hypocrite’s charter?

by Stephen Gummer

Forget Trident or abstentions on nuclear power, one of the most startling pieces of the Con-Dem coalition is the decision to grant anonymity to men accused of rape. This is an odd policy indeed for a Liberal party that prides itself on its civil rights record and a Conservative Party that has expressed its intentions to cut down the options for those being accused of a crime using the Human Rights Act in their own defence. There is certainly the faint odour of hypocrisy in the air.

A lot has already been said about this policy and some have already gone so far as to describe this policy as a rapist’s charter. I think this is stretching the case a little too far. However the policy does raise some interesting question marks.
Yes rape is a heinous crime and a wrongful accusation of rape does irreparable damage to someone’s life regardless of the final verdict. But an accusation of murder is pretty bad, so too is an accusation of looking at child pornography, why has our new government only picked rape? The implication – whether tacit or not – is that an accusation of rape is somehow more likely to be false. There is not one single shred of evidence for this.

Perhaps the most disappointing part of this policy is that rape law is crying out for reform, the Con-Dem pact has just picked the wrong side to help. A truly progressive government would have focussed on the 94% of reported cases that do not end in conviction rather than the few that are false.

In the interests of balance I should note that the Con-Dem coalition deal does include funds for up to 15 new rape crisis centres. This is certainly money well spent. However with this new privacy proposal, the government have given with the one hand and taken with the other.

It is certainly no coincidence that this rather odd proposal has come from a cabinet with only four women in it. While representation may seem like an issue of optional aesthetics to some, this new proposal provides all the evidence you could possibly need that proper and equal representation of women in the political world affects the agenda’s content not just its presentation.

This last point isn’t even really meant as a criticism of the current male dominated government. The interests of modern Britain are just too vast and diverse to be represented properly by a cabinet dominated by one gender or one ethnic origin. It’s not that this government is particularly misogynist and consciously decides to malevolently punish women’s interests; it’s just that they aren’t capable of representing minority interests properly with so few minority voices present. The relevant issues just don’t occur to them. Speaking as a white, middle class male this is not the easiest thing to admit.

This new proposal is in many ways a helpful case in point: the next time someone attacks Labour’s all-women or all-BME shortlists by saying it’s not about equality but about getting the best person for the job I can point to a harmful policy such as this one and remind them that acting in the interests of equality is acting for the best outcome possible and the proof lies in the fact that a progressive and representative government would never have put a law like this on the order paper.

Debate on this policy is a very tricky area. The use of the term ‘rapist’s charter’ while perhaps helpful for building lobbying momentum against this proposal is not wholly accurate for it implies all defendants in rape cases are rapists. This is not true. While this new law will help thousands of rapists each year it will also serve to protect the wrongly accused and this point should be acknowledged.

This policy is not ill-spirited or even malicious and it’s not designed by people who just hate women. However the fact that the intention behind the bill is good actually makes the sub-text slightly more insidious. To put the point more candidly, it’s not that this privacy policy stinks it’s that it has a troubling aroma. The idea of giving anonymity to rape defendants is not in itself a bad one. The idea of giving anonymity to just rape defendants is. This policy comes with a tacit insinuation that women can’t be trusted and from a government formed in 2010 that is disappointing indeed.