UK: Violence Against Women and Girls

Lord Russell of Liverpool Excerpts

Thursday 29th June 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Warwick, for her comprehensive introduction, and I wish the noble Baroness, Lady Drake, well. I hope she will soon be back with us. I join the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, in her tribute to my noble and learned friend Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood and his wisdom and balance. You could often rely on him to say what you would not expect him to, and it really made one reflect and think again. He will be sorely missed.

I am going to focus on the subject of stalking in particular, because today it is not possible for either of the noble Baronesses, Lady Royall and Lady Bertin, to take part. The three of us are part of the National Stalking Consortium. I would like to thank the Suzy Lamplugh Trust and the victims’ commissioner for London for their help in preparing for today. I will fire a series of questions at the Minister. I do not expect detailed answers at the Dispatch Box. However, I ask the Minister to feel free to respond to me in writing, preferably in great detail, after the debate.

First, the National Stalking Consortium put a super-complaint forward last November, prompted in part by the fact that only 5% of reports of stalking to police result in a charge by the Crown Prosecution Service. While it is welcome that, as a result of the super-complaint, the IOPC, the College of Policing and HMICFRS are going to investigate a series of different police forces to understand the underlying issues, we will not have any findings until some time next year. One immediate action that His Majesty’s Government could take would be to urge the College of Policing to mandate that all officers who will deal with stalking complete specialist training. The Met, to its credit, has decided to do this voluntarily, but it is our contention that all forces should undertake this as soon as possible—an action that I suspect the noble Lord, Lord Patten, would approve of, given his comments about prevention, as well as the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, given her comments on the importance of training.

Secondly, I want to talk about imminent changes to the Home Office counting rules for different crimes. The National Police Chiefs’ Council is looking at four changes to the way in which crimes are reported: the threshold for cancelling crimes; the principal crime value; recording malicious communications offences; and recording Section 5 public order offences. I particularly want to focus on the second of those: what is the principal crime rule? Stalking, typically, is recorded as a type 2A offence; it is rarely flagged up as a type 4A offence. If what the police chiefs wish to happen happens—which is that the incidence of reporting is reduced—it is quite possible that the large number of stalking crimes will not actually appear and be recorded as such, because they will be subsumed among other crimes that are deemed more important.

The third point is about stalking legislation itself. In 2012, stalking was created in two separate types of offence: stalking that involves fear of violence or serious alarm or distress, and a lesser charge that is simply described as “stalking”. Confusion reigns as a result. The vast majority of prosecutions that are brought against stalkers are against the lesser category of stalking. A 2017 report found that stalking behaviours were present in no less than nine out of 10 homicides. Could the Minister undertake to investigate whether the time has come for this confusion to be ended? We need to establish a new stand-alone offence of stalking that adequately recognises the psychological terror it inflicts on victims. I look forward to the Minister’s detailed response.