Protection of Freedoms Bill

My Lords, Amendment 70 would introduce a new criminal offence of stalking in place of the existing offence of putting people in fear of violence under the Protection from Harassment Act 1997, and would clearly define stalking behaviour in legislation while leaving scope for the inclusion of additional types of behaviour should evidence suggest that it was needed. The amendment would also increase the statutory maximum penalty for harassment from six months to five years, and it would allow cases to be tried in the Crown Court as well as the magistrates’ court. Before going any further, I wish to place on record my thanks to Laura Richards of the charity Protection Against Stalking and Harry Fletcher of Napo for their fantastic research and the briefing that they have provided to all noble Lords who are interested in this issue. I am also grateful to them for the independent people’s inquiry that they are undertaking. We have debated on many occasions the freedoms of defendants and, in some cases, criminals, but now we have the opportunity to debate the protection of the freedoms of victims of stalking, many of whom are women, who are insufficiently protected at present by the legal arrangements. The British Crime Survey for 2006 estimates that up to one in five people will experience stalking in their lifetime, and that there are about 120,000 separate incidents of stalking and harassment each year. The current law is patently not working and the state is failing victims, 80 per cent of whom are women, according to data from the National Stalking Helpline. The Protection from Harassment Act 1997 was brought in by the Labour Government to provide proper protection for victims from serious cases of harassment and stalking. However, those same victims who successfully campaigned for a change in the law back in 1997 now say that the law, when introduced, was too broad and did not go far enough to identify and prosecute the types of behaviour that distinguish stalking from other, milder cases of harassment. Tracey Morgan is one of those leading campaigners, and I commend her for the extraordinary courage and determination that she has shown over the past 15 years in campaigning to increase awareness around stalking and to ensure that other women will not have to endure the terrible experiences that she did. For those noble Lords who are not familiar with her story, Tracey was stalked for 10 years by Anthony Burstow. Aged 22 and happily married, Tracey had sympathy for Burstow, who was a colleague and whose wife was serving abroad, inviting him out several times with her husband Andy. However, Tracey began to be disturbed and increasingly frightened by the number of times that she bumped into him outside the workplace, and then she noticed him parked outside her home. It was a pattern of behaviour that escalated into a terrifying ordeal that lasted for almost 10 years. Tracey was one of the key campaigners for the Act and is now leading the voices calling for a change in the law to create a specific offence of stalking. She states: "““Victims are never taken seriously—from police forces, to courts, to the whole criminal justice system. Claire Waxman is saying the same thing I was 15 years ago. What’s changed? There needs to be a sea change in attitude. It's about murder prevention””." Leading campaigners such as Tracey and organisations such as the National Association of Probation Officers and Protection Against Stalking all argue that the law in its current form is not set up to deal adequately with cases of stalking. We therefore believe that the existing sentencing provisions must be changed to allow greater protection to victims and recognise the seriousness of the crime. The prosecution of stalking under the offences of harassment or putting a person in fear of violence rarely results in a prison sentence. Responses to Parliamentary Questions tabled in the spring of this year showed that of the 4,365 found guilty of the offence of harassment under Section 2, only 565 received a custodial sentence. The overwhelming majority of sentences were of less than 12 months and some were of a matter of days. Just as alarming is the lack of data on the true extent of stalking. Answers to Parliamentary Questions tabled this year reveal that the Government have no idea how many homicides were preceded by stalking behaviour, or how many domestic homicides were stalking-related, since probation reports do not routinely contain social histories but focus rather on the offence in front of them. A report on the Victim’s Voice survey of 143 victims, published by Protection Against Stalking, states that there is an overwhelming feeling among women victims in particular that, despite reporting numerous past incidents, which occurred time and again, these are not taken into account by the courts when assessing the seriousness of the indexable incident before them. Police, prosecutors and courts are in general incident-focused and so will look at the offence in front of them when sentencing, rather than draw conclusions from the pattern of behaviour that led up to it. However, we know from cases such as Tracey’s that it is this pattern of behaviour, escalating in threat and intensity, that provides the crucial warning signs of stalking that are all too often missed. The tragic case of Clare Bernal is a case in point. In September 2005 she was shot dead in a store in Knightsbridge by Michael Pech. He had stalked her after their three-week relationship ended, following her in the street and bombarding her with threatening calls and messages. However, after being arrested and charged with harassment, he was bailed and travelled back to Slovenia, where he purchased the gun that he used to shoot Clare while awaiting sentencing. We need greater clarity in the law to ensure that other women do not have to experience what happened to Clare. A report by Protection Against Stalking identified countless similar cases in which the law in its present form failed to protect victims—most of whom are women—and failed to intervene until it was too late. The amendment before us today would represent the first step in ensuring that the criminal justice system properly recognises and responds appropriately to cases of stalking, not only by identifying a clear definition in law but by ensuring that victims are properly protected from perpetrators by increasing the statutory maximum penalty for harassment from six months to five years, and by allowing cases to be tried in the Crown Court as well as the magistrates’ court. The changes would also mean that police had the power to enter properties and seize evidence such as computers, which are crucial to the prosecution of the growing problem of cybercrime. As I said at Second Reading, the Government seem to be very keen on the Scottish way of doing things in other areas of criminal law. Therefore, I hope that the Minister will support the amendment today. It replicates the offence of stalking and the accompanying charges and sentencing that were introduced in Scotland by the Criminal Justice and Licensing (Scotland) Act 2010. If ever evidence were needed of a successful change in the law, the experience in Scotland provides it. In the 10 years prior to the Act, an estimated 70 cases of stalking were successfully prosecuted. Following the introduction of an offence of stalking, 140 prosecutions were made in the first four months in Strathclyde alone. Following on from Scotland, a criminal offence of stalking was introduced in Sweden in October of this year. The people’s inquiry into stalking, the National Association of Probation Officers, Protection Against Stalking, many courageous women such as Tracey Morgan and the parents of stalked women, such as John and Penny Clough and Tricia Bernal, are all calling for a change in the law to create a specific criminal offence of stalking and increase the sentencing arrangements. We welcome the announcement of a government consultation on the introduction of an offence of stalking following calls from my right honourable friend Yvette Cooper at the Labour Party conference. However, we urge the Government to use this as an opportunity for a comprehensive root-and-branch evaluation of how the criminal justice system deals with vulnerable women and male victims of stalking and other related offences. An offence of stalking will not be sufficient in itself to provide the sea change in attitudes needed towards this hidden crime. Proper training is badly needed in order to ensure that stalking behaviours are identified early by the police and other front-line victim support services. Currently, officers in England and Wales receive no specific training in stalking and the CPS has only recently started issuing guidance to prosecutors on this issue. We also urge the Government to undertake work to develop and implement a proper risk assessment model for police forces. We know how risk assessment models work. The SPECSS model used by the Met to tackle domestic abuse and honour-based violence saw a 58 per cent reduction in homicide and serious incidents in the first four years. We believe that speed and time are of the essence and that the law needs to be changed at the earliest opportunity. The considerable evidence presented by the Protection Against Stalking’s Victims’ Voice survey, the National Association of Probation Officers, as well as the evidence from Scotland and Sweden, is in our opinion more than sufficient justification for a change to be made in the law now. To wait until the results of the consultation would mean asking victims to wait for another year or more before any change in the law was brought in. We do not know how many more victims of stalking may be killed in that time. Therefore, I hope that the Government will seize this opportunity to respond to calls across the board to change the law as a first step towards better protection for victims of stalking. I beg to move.