Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Baroness Royall of Blaisdon Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 17th January 2022 Lords Chamber

I hope the Minister is able to help take this issue forward. Could she please say when is actually a good time to bring something forward? Ten years of warm words from Ministers is just not enough when staff in the criminal justice system are still not being trained even to recognise, let alone handle, stalking.

[Baroness Royall of Blaisdon (Lab)]

My Lords, I am proud to have added my name to this amendment, which I believe is vital. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Russell, for his kind words but, most importantly, for giving the stalking facts and figures, which are truly startling. The scale is huge and the complexity daunting, and he gave a brilliant and well-informed exposé of the problem.

It is true, as noble Lords have said, that great progress has been made in the last 10 years since stalking was first recognised as an offence. I am grateful to the Minister for her work and to noble Lords on all sides of the Chamber who have pursued this issue. I must also mention the indefatigable work and campaigning of Laura Richards, our mutual friend John Clough, the families of victims, and courageous survivors. My work at Oxford, for which I refer noble Lords to my interests as set out in the register, brings me into contact daily with staff and students who suffer from the insidious crime of non-domestic violence-related stalking. They live in constant fear alongside the 1.5 million other victims.

Among the progress that has been made, I am of course delighted that there is now a national strategy for the policing of violence against women and girls but, as has been said, that does not cover the vast number of people who are being stalked where the stalking does not relate to domestic violence. However, it is brilliant that violence against women and girls must now be a strategic priority for all police forces and that they will be assisted by a new local duty to tackle it as part of any work in partnership with other parts of the criminal justice system and all parts of the policing landscape. I celebrate that at last there is a truly national approach that should lead to the identification of the most dangerous and serial perpetrators of violence, more focused investigations, an increase in prosecutions and a reduction in the murder of women, serious harm and repeat victimisation.

Of course, there is a “but”, hence the amendment. We desperately need a strategy for all categories of stalking, and I endorse the comments made by the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, and the noble Lord, Lord Russell. When are we going to have a more global strategy in relation to stalking?

Strategies are crucial and welcome but, like legislation, they have to be implemented in order to have their desired, much-needed effect. That requires systematic specialist training. As noble Lords will be only too aware, my long-standing concern has been about stalking in all its forms, not just that which involves domestic stalking. Training must be provided relating to all forms of stalking. There must be a national approach so that no matter where a victim seeks help and reports an incident, and wherever a perpetrator is apprehended, those who answer the phone and take whatever steps are necessary to support the victim and investigate a case must have similar experience.

As we know from the excellent inspections by HMICFRS, reports by experts and the evidence of survivors and the friends and families of victims, to date that has not been the case. These women, and sometimes men, have been utterly failed by the piecemeal approach to training. It is no exaggeration to say that countless women, such as Hollie Gazzard, would be still alive if there had been appropriate training, if their calls had been responded to in the proper manner and if the people answering the calls had understood what stalking was. Helen Pearson called the police 144 times over five years. If they had understood that she was a victim and was not wasting the police’s time, her situation could have been properly dealt with.

My strong preference would be to have a regulation in the Bill to provide for mandatory training, but I know from long experience that that would not be accepted by the Government. I first spoke about this in moving an amendment in February 2012, supported by the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, when we secured agreement to create the offence of stalking. I have been told on countless occasions since then that the appropriate place for training requirements is in guidance—but guidance has ensured that only a few police forces have taken the need for training seriously and most have not, and women have been murdered and others have had their own lives and those of their families destroyed. Over the years it has been cruelly apparent that guidance is not enough.

With the ever-increasing focus on and understanding of the extent of the appalling violence against women and girls, including stalking, and with the appointment of Maggie Blyth to spearhead the policing strategy, I hope that the need for quality nationwide training will be understood and that it will be implemented. However, I would like an assurance from the Minister that the Secretary of State really will seek to ensure that the training takes place and, vitally, that there will be the necessary funding to enable it. I would also be grateful if she could explain what mechanism is or will be in place for that to be monitored, and how we as a Parliament can hold the Government to account on this vital issue.

[Lord Paddick (LD)]

My Lords, I pay tribute to the tireless work over many years of all three noble Lords who have spoken in this debate. Stalking remains widely misunderstood by many in the criminal justice system—specifically, how serious and complex it can be and how widespread it is, as noble Lords have explained. The amendment aims to remedy that situation, and we support it.