My Lords, I was one of those who spoke on a number of occasions during the passage of the then Protection of Freedoms Bill on the issue of stalking. Like others, I welcome the implementation of that Act.
I endorse the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, but wish to add two or three more. In addition to the worry about the numbers of arrests and charges, the geographical data are also very patchy. There have been 133 arrests in the Met area but none in Gloucestershire. Lancashire has had 36 arrests, there have been 20 in the Thames Valley, 14 in Suffolk, 12 in Bedfordshire but just two in Merseyside. These disparities are also reflected in the actual charge rates, should the issue progress to that. What these data seem to be saying is that some forces have trained and prepared their officers for the new offence but others have not.
When the stalking clauses were discussed during the passage of the then Protection of Freedoms Bill, there was cross-party agreement that there would not be real change in stalking offences until the culture not just in the police but in the criminal justice system changed and they understood the new law and how to implement it. It is good news that the College of Policing will cover this training in the future, but can the Minister say where and how much training has been undertaken in the past 18 months since the legislation was concluded, so that those areas not implementing the new law are prodded into action?
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There is some evidence to show that the police and the CPS often choose the lesser charge of harassment in order to obtain a conviction, even though the intensity of stalking, repeat offences and the level of distress to the victim score highly. Can the Minister say what the department plans to do to change this and to ensure that serial stalkers are charged appropriately? It is not good enough to say that any conviction is sufficient when a community sentence or short custodial sentence mean that the stalker is free to resume his or her activities very quickly. Sadly, that increasingly happens.
There are also worries about sentencing, particularly with regard to suspended sentences. Have sentencing guidelines been updated since the introduction of the new stalking law a year ago? Further to that, is there a survey to check that court reports now look at the whole history of stalking for a particular perpetrator, rather than just the most recent offence? A recent shocking case six or so weeks ago in Cornwall appeared to take only one incident into account, and the stalker was released back to his home. That would have been logical if it had not been the house next door to his victim. There had been a long history of stalking behaviour in this case, and the sentence and his release home did not take into account the proximity of the victim.
The amendment calls for a review of progress and implementation of the provisions used by the police to address stalking, but I believe that it needs to go wider than that. As we have heard, Scotland has set the pace. England and Wales need to review the first year across the whole criminal justice system, not just the police, and to ensure that there is rapid and effective training so that stalkers are arrested, charged and, where found guilty, appropriately sentenced.
I support the proposal for a review but I particularly ask that comparisons are made with Scotland and other countries that have also introduced a specific offence of stalking so that our review, should it happen, is not done in isolation.