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Professor Liz Kelly has argued that what is needed is not discipline (which “would make the police angry”) but supervision of officers and lawyers and monitoring against performance levels. But how do performance levels hold anyone to account if nothing happens when their performance is poor?

The Government has trumpeted the introduction of specialist police units and specialist rape prosecutors. Mrs Freeman said: “In my daughter’s case the Sapphire Unit police — London’s specialist rape team — took three months (and a threat of legal action) before arresting the man (who was known to them!), failed to interview witnesses, and lost the mobile phone evidence — and they didn’t even tell my daughter they had done so. You don’t have to be a specialist to know you should gather the basic evidence and make sure it is presented in court, or that you should arrest a man accused of raping a 15-year-old schoolgirl. It’s common sense. What training do they need for that? What’s the point of having specialists if they’re not doing their job?”

Again and again we hear about specialist police who do not get clothing forensically tested or gather CCTV or phone evidence; specialist prosecutors who turn down strong cases on the flimsiest excuse; rape-ticketed judges who appear unsympathetic to the prosecution case. How is it possible that no one in Government (or Opposition) has noticed?

The problem is not a lack of skills. Sexism appears to be institutionalised in the criminal justice system. Certainly, some women and men in the police force and the CPS really want to get rapists convicted; but too many others block change. Often, instead of being disciplined, they are promoted.

Why shouldn’t they be disciplined or dismissed?

You said: “I don’t think the odd disciplining of the odd officer would make much difference.” How would you know if it has hardly been tried? If a painter-decorator does an appalling job he doesn’t get paid. The civil servant who lost the CD with 25 million child benefit cases was suspended within hours. What makes police officers, prosecutors and judges immune?

It does not require hundreds of police officers, inspectors and commanders and prosecution lawyers to be sacked for standards to be raised. Even a few sackings will help to concentrate minds. Pauline Campbell, who has campaigned for penal reform since her 18-year-old daughter died in Styal Prison in 2003, quoted Lord Ramsbotham, former chief inspector of prisons as having said that it would take just one prison governor to be jailed for corporate manslaughter for the entire culture within penal institutions to be changed.

If you were to send a clear message that the management has changed and that negligence in the investigation and prosecution of rape will no longer be tolerated, the attitude and behaviour of men and women in the system would change rapidly.

They are waiting for the victim to give up.

On Radio Wales (November 12), you told Lisa Longstaff of WAR, “If there are real complaints to be made, they will be heard.” Well, maybe they are heard, but it seems that nothing is done about them.

Some of our members have taken their complaints to the highest level — in one case to Scotland Yard’s Gold Group, where, after an appallingly negligent investigation by a London police force, the woman was promised action and a new investigation and that steps would be taken about the officers on the ground. Instead, the key officer was promoted.

Scotland Yard police did indeed do a new investigation, only for the police to be turned down by the CPS. As Mrs Freeman says: “You are made to jump one hurdle after another, and they get higher and higher, until you can’t reach any more. They are waiting for you to give up.” And of course, many do give up: we have children and others to care for, livings to earn. It is not our job to prosecute rapists. But it is yours.

According to Beatrix Campbell, writing the New Statesman last April, unpublished research commissioned by the Metropolitan Police shows that: “More than half of the men accused of raping women who had been drinking, where the cases were ‘not crimed’, had a history of sexual offences against women.” She continued: “A third of suspects whose victims were under 18 were not investigated, but had histories of violent offending.”

Why has this research not been published?

Serial rapists and killers usually have a history of escalating violence that has gone unprosecuted. Perhaps the victims of Peter Sutcliffe, Anthony Hardy, Ian Huntley and others would have been saved if the men had been prosecuted for previous sexual violence against women and girls, starting with wives and girlfriends.

In response to the shocking murders of five young women sex workers in Ipswich, women are asking why, whatever our profession or behaviour, we remain so vulnerable, and unprotected from violent men. We know that while prostitute women are not safe, no woman is safe.

We know that every time the legal establishment allows a rapist to go unconvicted, almost inevitably it is condemning other women and children to become his victims. Why then is this, decade after decade, not a government priority? You know the reality, why won’t you act?

Ms Baird, you have seen the evidence, not just now but over years. You have yourself spoken in Parliament (March 2006) about the double standards in the way rape is investigated. Why then avoid dealing with the problem now that you are Solicitor-General? How can you expect attitudes to change when the system collaborators are at best allowed to get away with it, at worst encouraged with promotion?

For more details of the event, visit www.womenagainstrape.net or telephone 020 7482 2496

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