Stalking

Debate between Cheryl Gillan and Stella Creasy

Thursday 21st November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Cheryl Gillan (Chesham and Amersham) (Con)]

I could have done without the announcement of Royal Assent to a Bill that I think colleagues know causes a great deal of difficulty for my constituents.

I begin by apologising to the Minister and the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Mr Llwyd) that I will not be here for the wind-ups. I am afraid that logistics have defeated me this Thursday.

This is my first experience of a Backbench Business Committee debate, and I add my thanks to the Committee for granting this debate to the group of Members who asked for this topic to be covered, of which I was privileged to be part. The debate is particularly apposite because Monday is the first anniversary of the introduction of two new specific offences on stalking. Those two new laws are in no small way due to the tireless efforts of the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd. I am second to none in acknowledging the work that he has put in. I had the privilege of serving with him when my party was in opposition on the justice unions group. It was directly out of his work on that group that the investigation was set up, which has led to the Government’s strengthening the legislation, building on the legislation that was passed in 1997.

I also join the right hon. Gentleman in paying tribute to Harry Fletcher and Laura Richards. I have known Harry Fletcher for rather a long time. At one stage, I was seeing so much of him that I felt that he had become part of my office staff. That was in the days when I shadowed Home Office affairs. He has a formidable reputation for his work in this area, on probation and other matters, and he and Laura Richards now provide a tremendous service through Paladin, the organisation set up to provide a national stalking advocacy service. We are very fortunate that they help us in the all-party parliamentary group on stalking and harassment, and long may that continue. A lot of the work that has been done on this debate has come directly through Paladin and the work of the all-party group.

In my intervention I acknowledged that most Members of Parliament will come across cases of stalking and harassment in their constituency caseload. Indeed, colleagues have been stalked and harassed themselves. Most of us will remember the speech made in the emergency debate in October by my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) about the harassment, bullying, stalking and trolling of him and his immediate family and staff.

I do not know about colleagues here in the Chamber, but when I am approached by constituents and asked to take up cases I sometimes almost feel as though I am being used to continue the stalking and harassment. That is why I am pleased that the all-party group is considering issuing some guidelines and thoughts on how we can keep an eye on this as Members of Parliament to make sure that we are not being used and exacerbating the situation that suddenly arises in our constituency surgeries, where we are trying our very best to help. We do not want to become part of constituents’ problems; we always want to be part of a solution. I hope that the work we are planning to do on this will be welcomed right across the board.

For people watching this who may have a personal problem, I am going to give a small advert for the national stalking and harassment helpline: its number is 0808 802 0300. There is also the advocacy organisation, Paladin, which has on its website advice for victims and for professionals. There is assistance and help out there for people; they are not on their own. It is important for them to remember that those sources of help are available.

I want to start by looking at arrests and investigations. The new stalking laws were of course very welcome, but the figures for the number of persons arrested, charged and convicted in England and Wales under those laws have been made available only for the first six months. Those figures are disappointing and I do not think they reflect the seriousness of the crimes. We will be the first to appreciate that the figures are incomplete, and we know that it takes a tremendous amount of time to gather such information from the 42 police services. Nevertheless, I hope that in his winding-up speech, which I look forward to reading, the Minister will be able to respond to those initial figures and perhaps produce some updated figures with which to help us. I welcome him to his place on the Front Bench. He is not the Minister directly responsible for this and is standing in for another Home Office Minister, but I know that with his reputation for assiduous attention to detail he will produce a very good response to the debate.

By the end of June 2013, data from 30 of the 42 police services had been sent to the Home Office. From those data, we were able to see that there have been 320 arrests, with 189 alleged offenders having been charged. However, so far only 33 of them have been convicted of stalking. I recognise that the majority of these cases are still being processed, but the numbers of arrests do seem to be low. If the figures are representative, as they probably are, there will have been about 450 arrests under the new laws in that six-month period. However, in Scotland, where the new laws became effective at the beginning of 2011, there have been more than 1,450 detections of stalking in the first 30-month period, and I understand that so far about a third of those individuals have been convicted. During the first six months, Scotland saw about 250 arrests. A comparison of the figures suggests that those for England and Wales are quite low.

[Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)]

The right hon. Lady makes a point that very much troubles me. In the first six months of the offence being in place in Scotland there were 140 prosecutions in Strathclyde alone. Does she agree that it is very troubling that just one area in Scotland can achieve almost half the prosecutions we have achieved in England and Wales, and that that needs to be addressed?

[Mrs Gillan]

That is right, and I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention. That is the message that we need to send to the Home Office. We need to dig deeper into these figures and look at the efficacy of the laws and the ways in which they are being applied.

There seems to be widespread inconsistency between the police service areas in England and Wales. I have had a look at some of the figures. There were 133 arrests in the Metropolitan police service area, but in Gloucestershire there were none. In between those extremes, there were 36 arrests in Lancashire, 20 in my own Thames Valley police area, 14 in Suffolk, 12 in Bedfordshire, and just two in Merseyside. I think all Members would agree that there is something very challenging about those statistics. The number of people charged also varies. The Metropolitan police service is again on top with 71. My own Thames Valley police area had 12. In north Wales there were six, in Sussex eight, and in Leicestershire 10—I could go on. The number of those so far convicted is too small to be of any statistical significance whatsoever. I hope the Minister will be able to share some up-to-date figures that we have not yet been able to obtain.

I would also welcome an observation from the Minister on how we can improve the situation and on what the Government intend to do about their strategy and working with the police. Case material received by my office from Paladin seems to indicate that there are some major outstanding training needs, particularly in the understanding of the new laws. I think we need to consider all stalking behaviour when victims complain and the serious nature of such behaviour.

I hope that action will be taken with the police and crime commissioners, who are a new tool in our defence against crime. They should be specifically instructed to address the issue, produce up-to-date statistics and review the operation of the local police force within their purview, so as to enable them to improve what is happening in it. A large number of victims who expected more of the new law are still frustrated, angry and demoralised. The patchy provision across the country reflects my anxiety about the early stages of the law’s implementation and how it should be improved.

I want to talk briefly about some of the sentencing trends. Current sentencing decisions are inconsistent. Several of the jail sentences, which are rare in themselves, have been for only a few months, while suspended and community sentences appear to be commonplace. We need to revise those sentencing guidelines and reissue them pretty quickly to ensure some consistency across the board. I do not believe that the guidelines have been revised since the new laws came into place a year ago. Therefore, we have confusion at best; we certainly do not have the clarity envisaged when the legislation was introduced. There is no evidence that magistrates and judges have received adequate training on how to interpret the new laws. That is absolutely essential: our magistracy and judiciary need that training in order to understand what is, after all, a complex area of crime.

I echo the comments of the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd that, commonly, defendants are charged for just one incident when there has in fact been a course of unlawful behaviour over months and even years. It is all very well charging the perpetrator for the one crime that the Crown Prosecution Service can pursue, but the background of repeated behaviour—the pattern of behaviour—must be taken into consideration.

Court reports, which are commissioned by the court, tend to deal with only the most recent incident, rather than the stalker’s behaviour over a long period. I firmly believe that the court should always ask for the offender’s full social history. It is clear from the advice I have been given that that is not happening. Bail conditions and restraining orders are often not stringent enough. Exclusion zones are often too narrowly defined and bail often fails to provide for no contact. Both are frequently breached, without consequence to the perpetrator.

Paladin has provided me with a number of comments made by judges, Ministry of Justice officials and lawyers after trials have been completed. Because of the time constraint, I shall not repeat them but these quotes show real concerns which do not appear to be reflected in the sentencing outcomes. That underlines the urgent need for those revised guidelines, which should emphasise the extreme seriousness of the criminal behaviour.

I welcome the opportunity to raise these matters. They are of great concern to us and to a wider audience. The experience of victims of stalking and harassment over the past year strongly suggests that more training and guidance needs to be issued by the Sentencing Council without delay. We must ensure that sentencing is consistent and reflects the intention of the new laws and therefore of Parliament.