Protection of Freedoms Bill

The need for legislation to create a distinctive offence of stalking has been clear for some time. I therefore start the debate by welcoming the Government's willingness to respond to these calls for such legislation. Our amendments reflect the need to ensure that this opportunity for progress is not missed and that the evolution of these proposals continues so that they can truly meet the needs of those we wish to protect. To put this case, I want to set out why we consider that the legislation as currently proposed is limited in its ability to deliver this protection, and what we learn from that in scrutinising the Government's proposals that are on the table. We all now know that the Protection from Harassment Act 1997 has been unable to offer the protection from stalking required for its victims. It is estimated that there are currently 120,000 cases of stalking every year, but fewer than 4,500 were convicted of harassment in 2009; of those, only 565 were jailed. The current legislation is not able to cope with stalking because these behaviours cannot be meaningfully defined by specific forms of contact. Rather, this is an offence about the impact of conduct or patterns of behaviour by those individuals who fixate on others and seek to cause distress, fear or alarm. The current legislation offers only the same tools that we have at present to deal with disputes between neighbours—and it has struggled to cope as a result. The Protection from Harassment Act 1997 created two criminal offences of harassment and putting people in fear of violence, as well as providing for restraining orders, which are more well known, where a breach, in theory, can lead to an arrestable offence. We now know, however, that victims of stalking talk repeatedly about the frustrations caused by the police being required to see patterns of behaviour, examples of a breach or evidence that someone has repeatedly damaged property or acted in a certain way or created a fear of violence. Others have talked about the importance of training the police, magistrates and the Crown Prosecution Service to help them understand the range of acts that fall under stalking—including, especially, cyber-stalking. That is because it is a summary offence of harassment, and many felt that the police did not go far enough and did not allocate appropriate resources to investigating these cases, or frankly, that it was seen as simply not serious enough to warrant the effort. I shall return to the question of seriousness in a few moments. Little wonder that the recent inquiry into stalking found that 72% of victims were unhappy with the response they received from the criminal justice system, with the majority stating they had experienced stalking for over 18 months or more and through multiple forms of contact; yet only 47% said that their perpetrator was even charged. As Tracey Morgan, a key member of the inquiry panel into stalking has said:"““stalking is where domestic violence was 30 years ago. It's seen as a joke; a celebrity problem. Victims are told they should be flattered by the attention””—" but we all know of the reality. We have heard the stories of people like Tracey whose lives were torn apart by a person who fixated upon her. We have heard of the ex-partners who torment men and women online and offline; we have heard of women like Clare Bernal who was brutally murdered by her former boyfriend, despite warnings about his behaviour. We know from other jurisdictions how having a specific offence of stalking can help to address these concerns. In the 10 years prior to the introduction of the offence of stalking in Scotland, Strathclyde police reported a total of 70 stalking-related prosecutions. In the first six months after legislation providing for a specific offence was enacted, there were 140 prosecutions in Strathclyde alone, and it is estimated that there will be between 500 and 600 in Scotland as a whole by the end of the year.