Stalking

Baroness Barran Excerpts

Tuesday 20th November 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I share the noble Lord’s point. The more registers there are, the more propensity there is for people to fall through the gaps. The crucial thing is that the registers and databases that we have work effectively.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, does my noble friend agree that it is crucial not just to manage the behaviour of serial stalkers and perpetrators, the majority of serial stalkers being domestic abuse perpetrators, but to engage with them to help them to change their behaviour? If she does, perhaps she could share what plans the Government have to build on some of the emerging practice in this area. In my experience from running the charity SafeLives, fewer than 1% of perpetrators got any intervention to change their behaviour. Without that we will never reduce the scale of the problem.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I commend my noble friend on the work she did with SafeLives. I have seen some of its work at first hand and the emphasis it puts on addressing the problems of perpetrators. The proposed domestic abuse protection order would enable courts to impose positive requirements on abusers to challenge them to change their behaviour, such as requirements to attend a perpetrator programme or an alcohol or drug treatment programme. Through the police transformation fund and the VAWG service transformation fund, we have invested in a number of new approaches to manage perpetrators of domestic abuse. I thank her for all the work she has done to this end.