Stalking

Elfyn Llwyd Excerpts

Thursday 21st November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Priti Patel (Witham) (Con)]

I, too, commend the opportunity to speak in this debate, and congratulate those who secured it. This is an immensely important issue, and those of us in the House this afternoon will agree that more often than not, we do not spend enough time focusing on many of the challenges associated with the horrific issue of stalking, the impact it has on victims, and the processes that victims endure on their journey through the criminal justice system. I pay tribute, as all speakers have, to the work of Harry Fletcher and Laura Richards of Paladin national stalking advocacy service, and that of many others.

I would like to consider the experience of the victim. As co-chair of the all-party group on victims and victims of crime, I have been exposed to all sorts of horrible stories relating to stalking and other crimes, which have shone a spotlight on the process that individuals must go through, in addition to the personal suffering, trauma and emotional distress. It will not surprise the Minister to hear me say that I have long believed that victims’ voices should be at the centre of the criminal justice system, and I pay tribute to the Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice, my right hon. Friend the Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling) for supporting the work of the all-party group.

It is clear from everything we have heard today that the voices of stalking victims are not represented effectively in the criminal justice system. The issue is not just about going to court, but the entire process: engagement with the police, how cases are treated, the thoroughness of investigations and whether complaints are taken seriously. It is fair to say that the process is ad hoc. There is not enough consistency and victims are being let down. It is excellent that new stalking laws are in place, but it is clear to all of us that much more needs to be done to assist victims properly.

To focus on the level of victims’ dissatisfaction with the criminal justice system process and with the professionals in it, I shall refer to the briefing from Paladin. Laura Richards produced a study that revealed the deep dissatisfaction felt by victims of stalking and the secondary victimisation that occurs—a very important point—when reliving the trauma of horrific experiences. We hear time and again about victims’ lack of confidence in the long judicial process, which does not acknowledge their emotional distress. Stalking is life-changing for victims, and the injustice has numerous psychological and physical aspects that affect their ability to engage and function socially. Irrespective of whether there has been a physical assault, there is psychological and emotional trauma.

Offenders are treated in a totally different way from victims. We need balance and fairness, and we must focus on fairness for the victims. I think the point has already been made this afternoon that victims tend not to report to the police after one or two incidents, but after the hundredth incident. There are many experts on this subject. We know that perpetrators are serial offenders, that they are persistent and malicious, and that they inflict as much psychological damage as possible and, in the worst cases, physical damage and the ultimate harm. The offending is relentless, but the system—the police interventions, the criminal justice system, the whole process—does not know how to address these issues. Much of it is down to how an officer responds on the scene or interacts with victims in the first instance. The situation is dreadful and something has to change.

Paladin is very good at providing victims’ anecdotes and comments. As ever, it is the victims’ stories that will make us sit up and listen and understand the extent of the trauma.

[Mr Llwyd]

The hon. Lady is a real fighter for victims and has done a lot of work in this area, and I respect her for that.

We would not have got this far without the evidence of witnesses who had suffered at the hands of perpetrators. I am talking not only about the victims, but sadly about families who have suffered bereavement because victims have been offended against several times and ultimately murdered. Without their bravery and emotional guts in giving evidence, we could not have got this far, so I am very interested in the hon. Lady’s remarks.

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

It is pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Madam Deputy Speaker, for the first time, and I hope it will not be the last.

I rise to speak about a particular issue that follows on from what the hon. Member for Witham (Priti Patel) said about the need to hear victims’ voices in this debate as we evolve the way in which we address stalking within our society. I shall speak about my personal experience of these issues. I thought long and hard about whether it was appropriate to do so and came to the conclusion that it was—even though some might accuse me of abusing my position as an MP in putting these issues to Ministers—because of the concerns I have as someone currently experiencing some of these behaviours.

Before I do that, I want to add my personal tribute to the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Mr Llwyd)—[Interruption.] The right hon. Gentleman says “10 out of 10” from a sedentary position, so I thank him for that. I am in awe of the work he has done through the independent inquiry into stalking. I add my heartfelt thanks, too, to people such as Harry Fletcher and Laura Richards for their work. In three short parliamentary years, we have seen a powerful advocacy process, with the independent inquiry and changes made to the law. That has, for me, been phenomenal. It is a test for all of us to see whether we can match that.

A year ago, when I was part of the shadow Home Affairs team, I was honoured to work on the changes to the legislation. Never in a million years did I think I would have to know the details of this legislation so thoroughly to deal with something that was happening to me. I was particularly struck at the time by the importance of bringing the victim’s voice into these issues and the need to create an offence in legislation that looked not at the particular behaviours of the offender, but at the experience of victims and the impact the offence had on them.

I was struck by what my hon. Friend the Member for Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock (Sandra Osborne)—only nine out of ten for my pronunciation this time—said about obsession, how society should regard the impact of one person fixating on another and what that might mean for the people involved. Impact matters because much of our criminal justice system nowadays is about watching and waiting. The hon. Member for Witham spoke about that, too—that we can see that someone might be at risk, yet we look for escalation. The impact on an individual changes that conversation. The individual voice needs to be heard not just in sentencing, but in the prosecution, in trying to address these issues and trying to understand the risk that someone might face. Having spoken to victims of a whole range of different types of stalking, I know just how important it is for their voice to be heard. A lot of stalking is about control; it is about silencing someone. It is crucial that we now have legislation that makes victims’ voices part of the prosecution process.

Like many other Members today, however, I am concerned that, a year on, we may not be making as much progress either in prosecuting or in changing the culture, which is what the legislation was designed to achieve, so I want to add my voice to those encouraging the Minister to look at not just what he can do with the police, but at what can be achieved by colleagues across government in dealing with some of these challenges.

Before the legislation was drafted, figures suggested we were looking at about 120,000 cases a year, but I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock that that understates the amount of pressure and the number of cases that need to be dealt with. I agree, too, with the comments of the right hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs Gillan)—I am sorry she is no longer in her place—about learning the lessons from Scotland and using this legislation, now that we have it, to prosecute people effectively.

The work of Paladin is truly transformative. I encourage the Minister to go and sit with Paladin, to listen to the cases, go through them and hear about the experiences people are having, now that the legislation is enacted. It is not just the volume of cases that is important because we need to be able to address the different kinds of issues and different kinds of behaviour that come up and their impact on victims.

I would particularly encourage the Minister to sit with the independent advocates. I have worked with one of those advocates not just in supporting victims of stalking generally, but in respect of my own case after my experiences. I cannot over-emphasise how important it is to have such a person with you. However strong someone is, this kind of behaviour is distressing; it is designed to take out of people the fight and the fortitude that might help them to deal with the problem themselves. The independent advocates are vital. We have been talking about the work done by Harry and Laura and others with the legislation, but we also owe them a debt of gratitude for putting in place a support process for victims. We must ensure our police are able to work with that, and Members have highlighted the low take-up of police training on these issues. It is crucial that the police understand the new legislation and how to enforce it.

I must tell the Minister that my personal experience of this and my experience over the summer of trying to support people who were being victimised online has been very mixed. That is reflected in the conversations I have had with the police and those in the criminal justice system; there was a lack of awareness about the powers they now have and the nature of this crime, such as the concepts of escalation and control and how to respond to them. I am talking here about practices such as treating incidents in isolation, issuing lesser cautions, and minimising behaviour rather than addressing it and thereby keep victims safe. That lack of training leads to a lack of understanding of just how serious this issue can be.

I must also put on record my concern about the increasing evidence that police forces are moving away from the DASH—domestic abuse, stalking and honour based violence—risk assessment in respect of domestic violence. I am exceedingly troubled by that as a constituency MP who has used that assessment method myself in working in particular with women who are victims of domestic violence. As somebody who has been a victim of stalking in a non-domestic violence case, I am also concerned about the lack of training and understanding of what such behaviour could mean.

I have spoken previously about Caroline Criado-Perez receiving 50 rape threats an hour. We did not know whether they were coming from one person, 50 different people or several different people. Each incident would require a different level of risk being applied based on the person involved. I have to be honest with the Minister: an understanding and comprehension of that range of scenarios was not there within the police force. I believe this kind of training will help police forces understand the different levels of risk people might be facing, and help to prevent, rather than just monitor, these offences.

I also recognise that the training of the police is only 50% of the story. I am deeply distressed by the delay in the CPS picking up this issue and understanding its role in making sure this legislation is effective.

[Mr Llwyd]

The hon. Lady is making a powerful speech, and it is very interesting to hear her personal perspective.

This morning I was interviewed on a radio programme. The interviewer said, “Well, let’s be fair: it’s only been 12 months since the law’s come in, so you can’t really expect the police to be au fait with it just now.” I replied, “When I was a law student we were expected to know new laws within a month of their coming in, so that’s no possible excuse.”

[Stella Creasy]

I agree with the right hon. Gentleman and he will have heard the voices of other victims. People have said to me, “The only reason there is police interest in your case is that you are a high-profile person.” I think that is an honest assessment, and I have said that that should not be why there is interest in any case.

We heard from the family of Clare Bernal and the Clough family during the inquiry, and Sam Taylor, who was a victim of stalking, is an amazingly inspiring woman for her fortitude in dealing with this. The police need to understand the range of behaviours and identify the different types of risk people face.

I will talk about online activity shortly, but first I want to point out that victims must also be asked about what they think should happen. When people are under this sort of pressure, we should not flinch from saying that the impact on the victim is paramount. Therefore, if someone is distressed, that is reason enough for the police to act and the CPS to be involved.

We also recognise that insufficient resources are put into this. There is a fear that we might open the floodgates, but if there are floodgates to be opened, we need to address that. That is one of the challenges we face.

I feel I can add a little insight in terms of online forms of behaviour, and I am very mindful of the fact that 50% of stalking cases involve both online and offline behaviour. That is part and parcel of modern life because we now spend our lives both online and offline. Our freedoms are involved in that, too, and, as I have said, stalking and harassment is about curtailing people’s freedoms and inciting distress in them, and therefore making it impossible for them to lead their lives as before. I direct the Minister to the work of Claire Hardaker, at Lancaster university, who is trying to understand online harassment and stalking. She was recently commissioned to do such research, and it would send an incredibly powerful message if the Home Office looked at it.

In my own case, the difficulties the current legislation has in dealing with the world online became powerfully obvious. The legislation refers to a “course of conduct” or a consistent type of behaviour, and the question is whether the same metrics for that course of conduct can be applied to the online and offline environments. When the Opposition were scrutinising the legislation, we tried to get the Government to think about a list of types of behaviour that we, the CPS and the police might be looking out for, because we recognised that as life evolves and people have a life online and a life offline it is important to ensure that we are not missing particular types of behaviour.

Although the legislation refers to sending e-mails, it does not even begin to deal with the very different types of behaviour that occur in the social media that are now so much part of the modern world, such as the ways in which and ease with which people can be contacted, and the ways a victim can express concern and displeasure about the messages they are receiving and behaviour they are experiencing. My concern is that the attempt is being made to apply the “course of conduct” test to the online and offline worlds in a similar way. There is the sense that if someone is experiencing serious alarm or distress online, it is somehow less serious. Instead, we need to understand that, if that person is experiencing such pressure, and if it is coming from someone whom they have told—whether online or offline—they do not want to have contact with, we should not see it as being any different.

The course of conduct deadlines need to be updated for both the CPS and the police, so that the different ways in which the online world works are recognised. One example is the different time periods relating to a course of conduct. Offline, we might be talking about a contact period of days or even weeks; online, an hour is a long time. Both Caroline and I experienced people setting up accounts in order to send us rape and death threats, causing us harassment and severe distress. We publicly said that this was causing us severe distress, and they had their accounts suspended, although they started new ones. However, the question whether each incident is seen as a separate course of conduct, or something that took place over the course of an hour, cannot be dealt with under the current legislation. That example makes a powerful case, which my right hon. Friend the shadow Home Secretary has also made, for cyber-awareness within the police force—for understanding that these are the ways in which online behaviour works.

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[Helen Jones (Warrington North) (Lab)]

I congratulate all Members on both sides of the House who have spoken in this thoughtful and well-informed debate. I pay particular tribute to the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Mr Llwyd), who not only has the privilege of representing one of the most beautiful parts of north Wales, but has done sterling work with the all-party group on stalking and harassment to bring the offences into law. He gave a powerful introduction to the debate.

The right hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs Gillan), who is no longer in her place, made some important points about the role of the courts, the sentences handed out and the need for better training. My hon. Friend the Member for Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock (Sandra Osborne) made some useful comparisons with the situation in Scotland, which I think we can all learn from. She also made a powerful plea to recognise stalking for what it often is: a version of violence against women, in particular, which we must not tolerate.

The hon. Member for Witham (Priti Patel) talked about the personal suffering of victims. My hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy) outlined clearly what she suffered as a result of what is—let us give it its proper name—online stalking. The hon. Member for Castle Point (Rebecca Harris), in a short but useful speech, pointed out the manipulative behaviour of many perpetrators and how convincing they can be. She also referred to the need for relationships education in schools to tackle the problem, a point I will return to in a moment.

My hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) made an important point about the role of the justice unions group in highlighting the issue. We often hear Government Members telling us what they think is wrong with trade unions, but we should also hear about their important work in such areas. I also congratulate those who worked hard to get the offences on the statute book: not only the all-party group, but my right hon. Friend the shadow Home Secretary and my noble Friend Baroness Royall, who campaigned for that relentlessly.

However, it is not enough just to put an offence on the statute book; it must also be enforced. We have heard clearly this afternoon that the law is not being enforced properly. The freedom of information request passed to Paladin, which was referred to earlier, showed that from 25 November 2012, when the law came into force, to the end of June this year 320 people were arrested for stalking offences. That was all. Of those, only 189 were charged. That is very worrying because unless there are lots of spurious complaints—no one is arguing that there are, least of all me— there must be a real problem with the training of the police and Crown Prosecution Service, which needs to be addressed. It is even more worrying when we look at the completed cases—I accept that there are few at the moment. In those cases completed by the end of June, six people received custodial sentences, and 27 were dealt with by means of a community disposal. I want to make it clear that, except in very exceptional cases, community sentences are not appropriate to deal with stalking. Stalking wrecks lives, it damages people psychologically, it affects their physical health, and it affects their social well-being. Stalking is not something that takes place at a distance. Stalkers enter people’s homes, they get into their workplaces, and they go to the places where they socialise, so a victim of stalking cannot feel safe in any aspect of their life.

Stalkers often issue threats. What is more, half of those threats are carried out. In that sense, stalking behaviour is a strong predictor of future violence. It is even stronger in cases of very serious violence, with 40% of domestic homicides following stalking behaviour that has gone unchecked. In dealing with stalking, therefore, we are not just helping today’s victims; we may be preventing serious violence and often homicides in the future.

[Mr Llwyd]

The hon. Lady is making a powerful and a fresh point. I should like to inform the House through her that there are many criminal psychologists in the UK who are able to treat these people. They say that roughly 95% are treatable and can be turned away from this obsessive behaviour. That adds to the point that the hon. Lady makes.

[Helen Jones]

The right hon. Gentleman makes an interesting point, which I will come to in a moment when I talk about prevention.

The appalling feature is the huge variation between the arrest and prosecution rates in police forces. Some examples have been given, but let me touch on a few more. Northumbria force arrested eight people and prosecuted seven. Powys arrested three and they were all prosecuted. The Met arrested 132 people, but only 71 were prosecuted. That is profoundly unsatisfactory. Whether victims receive justice should not depend on where they live. We cannot have a postcode lottery in law enforcement, and that, I am afraid, is what we are seeing at the moment. Part of the reason for that seems to lie in the failure to train police and Crown prosecutors adequately.

The National Policing Improvement Agency has produced a 20-minute online package of training—very little in itself—but up to the end of June only 27% of eligible officers had seen that package. The rates of training vary hugely among police forces, even neighbouring forces. In Greater Manchester, for example, 5,000 officers had seen it; on Merseyside, only 76. In my own area of Cheshire, it was 57. One can see a similar process with the CPS. Training has begun only this autumn, nearly a year after the law was put on the statute book.

I do not blame the front-line officers or the prosecutors for that. The blame actually lies squarely with the Home Office, which has to admit that if it cuts police numbers, as it has, there is less time to take officers off the front line for training or to update their skills, and that if it cuts 25% of the CPS’s budget, the CPS has to manage its caseloads differently and there is less time to develop training packages or to let people take time out for training. That is what we are seeing, and it is time that the Government started to take it seriously.

Another factor that needs to be clearly stated is that stalking is largely a crime against women. Yes, there are male victims and they suffer just as much as anyone else, but 80% of stalkers are men and 80% of victims are women. As such, it has to be seen as part of the continuum of violence against women—because stalking is violence. It is psychological violence that can spill over into physical violence, and it is part of the same perspective of harassing women and preventing them from speaking out, as we have seen online recently, and treating them as though they have no right to an opinion but are there merely to be controlled.

That is why I say to the Minister that although it is nice to see him here—he is a very good Minister—it would have been even better to see the Minister responsible for this area, who is the Minister for Crime Prevention, the hon. Member for Lewes (Norman Baker). The Minister we have here is responsible for immigration; his colleague, who is not here, is responsible for antisocial behaviour and violence against women and girls. He is fast becoming the Scarlet Pimpernel of the Home Office. We see him in Committee and he disappears halfway through the debate; today, for a debate on his own area of responsibility, he is not present. The Government have to take this issue far more seriously than that.

The root cause of this sort of behaviour is an attitude prevalent in some sections of our society that, sadly, sees women as objects to be controlled and manipulated—as people who should not have an opinion of their own and do not control their own destiny. That is why the Government must not only deal with this crime but look at how to prevent it. They must consider having a proper, and compulsory, package of sex and relationships education in schools. I am sorry that they rejected our amendment to the Children and Families Bill to make it compulsory, because without teaching young people from the start that this sort of behaviour is not the norm and is not acceptable, we will never solve the problem.

The second plank of prevention, as the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd suggested, is in mental health services. There is no doubt that a small minority of stalkers are psychotic, and there is evidence that some might have a personality disorder, so their first contact with the criminal justice system ought to trigger a mental health referral. Mental health treatment will not be suitable for everybody, but there ought to be an assessment to see whether it is the appropriate way forward before someone’s behaviour spirals out of control and perhaps into violence.

The third thing we would like the Government to do is to make sure that sentencing guidelines are updated, because they have not been updated since 2008, and that police officers and Crown prosecutors are trained to ensure that the law is enforced. We cannot say to the victims of this crime, “You must simply put up with it”, or, “It’s not very serious.” We can no longer keep saying that there is no action we can take. This is the 21st century, not the 19th, and nobody should be subjected to this behaviour without the right of redress.

The Government have done the right thing by putting this law on the statute book in response to the campaign but, given that most victims face 100 incidents of stalking before they even report it, it is not lack of evidence that is preventing this crime from being prosecuted; it is lack of training and lack of will, and that is what we have to address. I hope that the Minister will be able to encourage us that the Government are moving towards doing so, because, to be frank, women in this country—and it is largely women who are affected—deserve better than to be told that this is behaviour that they just have to put up with. It is not, we will not and it needs to be addressed.

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[Mr Harper]

I will come on to the guidelines issued by the CPS, but that matter to some extent depends on the details of individual cases. Normally, decisions are based on how realistic a prosecution is and what evidence there is, as well as the public interest test. I do not know whether different prosecution rates relate to the ability of the police to put cases together, or whether some forces are more likely to make arrests than others. Without looking at the information, I simply do not know the answer to the question.

An advantage in the devolved criminal justice landscape —the hon. Member for Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock referred to the experience in Scotland—is that police forces in England and Wales could look at the Scottish example to see what lessons can be learned. The systems are of course different and not directly comparable: the criminal justice legislation is different and, for example, harassment legislation has not been put in place in Scotland. We should, however, look at whether different parts of the UK are doing things better, and if they are, we should happily learn from them. That is a benefit of devolution of which we should take advantage.

[Mr Llwyd]

As I would expect, the Minister is trying to engage constructively in the debate, which is how he always deals with these matters. I suggest that another contributor to the variation in prosecution levels is, sadly—I am a great supporter of the police, and I come from a police family—that some police officers are under-charging under the old 1997 Act, because it is far easier to do the paperwork and get rid of it.

[Mr Harper]

I defer to the right hon. Gentleman’s detailed knowledge of this area. One purpose of the College of Policing is to have consistency in training and to share best practice. To be fair, this is about ensuring that police officers, as well as the CPS, have the necessary knowledge and understand what works and is successful. The College of Policing can help share best practice, which is one advantage of having set it up. The Government will keep that under close scrutiny—the Home Secretary takes this area very seriously—and we will take steps if it does not succeed.

It is important to talk about victims and their experience of the criminal justice system. We have consulted on a revised victims code to give victims clearer entitlements. It was published at the end of October, and will be implemented next month. It includes information on the victim personal statement, which lets victims explain the impact of the crime on them. That will be of particular benefit in stalking cases, where much of the issue relates to the emotional and psychological impact of the offence on the victim.

The hon. Member for Walthamstow made that point strongly. She spoke about seeing the powerful effect on victims of advocates’ listening to them explain their cases. Enabling the voices of victims to be heard is clearly very beneficial. My hon. Friend the Member for Witham, who is in her place, made exactly that point. I know that she has worked on and published this year a report called, “Rebalancing the Scales”. She edited it, and the foreword was by the Lord Chancellor. The chapter on stalking, which was prepared by the ubiquitous Harry Fletcher and Laura Richards, highlighted the voices of victims and their experience in the criminal justice system, an area on which I know my hon. Friend has campaigned.

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[Mr Llwyd]

The generous words to me with which the Minister began his speech actually made me shiver. I will be around for a while yet to create a nuisance, so do not think I am going to ride off into the sunset just now. To be fair, the Minister has engaged thoroughly with this debate. I am pleased with his response and I am sure we can pore over the detail in the coming days.

The debate has been characterised by its being of the highest standard, and we have had six Back-Bench speeches of the highest calibre—well researched, well thought out, thought provoking, and each with a different slant. The right hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs Gillan), despite being a little thrown by the sudden appearance of the High Speed 2 Bill, referred to Harry Fletcher, Laura Richards and Paladin, and we all thank them for the work they have done. She also referred helpfully to the national helpline, and I pay tribute to her for her work to get us this far.

The hon. Member for Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock (Sandra Osborne) also referred to Harry Fletcher and Laura Richards, and, interestingly—and very importantly —she was able to draw comparisons between the current law in England and Wales and the law in Scotland. That showed that numerous things need to be put right, and highlighted some of the issues about which we in this Chamber—and beyond, I am sure—are concerned. She stood her ground. She was nearly blown away by Madam Deputy Speaker asking her to speak for longer than she intended—one of those unusual quirks of this place. I have to say that it has never happened to me, for obvious reasons.

The hon. Member for Witham (Priti Patel) made a wide-ranging, thought-provoking and well-researched speech. I know of the work that she has done with victims. It was important for her to take that angle, because the victims are why we are here and why the law was introduced. She referred to the empowerment of victims, the need for police and crime commissioners to get involved and the need to redress the balance. I am sure that all those issues are appreciated fully by Members on both sides of the House. I thank her for her contribution.

The hon. Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy) made an impassioned and well-grounded speech, some of which was based on personal experience. We are all concerned on her behalf. She also referred to the need for victims’ voices to come to the fore. Crucially, she referred to Clare Bernal and Sam Taylor, two of the cases considered in the evidence-based report produced by the Committee. Without their help, and the help of others, we would not have got this far. She raised the challenge of online behaviour, which the Joint Committee will be looking at next, and the need to deliver on a promise we made a year ago. She is absolutely right and I can put it no better than that.

The hon. Member for Castle Point (Rebecca Harris) made a short but well-thought-out speech that introduced matters not considered previously. For example, relationship education in schools is crucial.

My hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell), in a typically well-researched speech, referred to the need for a national strategy. He is absolutely right. We will need two: one for Wales and one for England. He made an important point about the speed with which the Offender Rehabilitation Bill is jetting through the House. We are reminded of the saying about legislating in haste and repenting at leisure. He also raised legal cuts and other points—all of which are different aspects to this problem.

This has been a useful debate. We have had a positive response from the Minister. He is not in his comfort zone, but no one would have thought so from the way he dealt with his brief. Twelve months ago, we brought in the law based on evidence that was presented to us by experts and people who have suffered themselves, not least those who have lost loved ones in horrible incidents. This is the time to pay them back for the bravery they have shown. We need to get our act in order. I am sure that with Members on both sides of the House working together we will succeed.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House notes that 25 November 2013 will mark the first anniversary of the new laws on stalking coming into force; is concerned at the lack of progress made on training of criminal justice professionals in the new laws, particularly in the police and the Crown Prosecution Service; and recognises the impact this is having on the confidence and wellbeing of victims of stalking.