Victims and Prisoners Bill

Lord Russell of Liverpool Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 26th February 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

It is a great pleasure to move Amendment 148A and speak to Amendment 148B. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Russell, and the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, for their support in this suite of amendments, both of which deal with stalking. They insert two new clauses into the Bill, and they are part of the whole suite of amendments on this.

I will be brief because my noble friend Lady Royall is in the Committee today, and she has been tireless over the years in championing this cause and using every opportunity to find remedies to deal with this pernicious crime, almost always perpetrated by men on women, wrecking lives, sometimes with fatal consequences. These two amendments, and the group following this concerning MAPPS in the name of my noble friend Lord Ponsonby, seek to bring further coherence to law enforcement, record sharing and protection for these victims.

If only the police could see stalking for what it truly is—often a stepping stone on the route to murder—perhaps they would take it more seriously. At present, I am afraid they do not—certainly, it is patchy—and stalking victims are dismissed too easily and too often. They are told, “It’s just online. It will die down. Change your number. Delete your social media accounts. It’s just a lovers’ tiff”.

I will give just one example and then sit down. When the Derbyshire police accepted that they failed Gracie Spinks—who was murdered after reporting her stalker to the police—and when they apologised to her family and promised that lessons would be learned, I could almost feel the weariness of victims, their families, the campaigners and the Victims’ Commissioner in saying, “How often do we have to be told that lessons can be learned when they haven’t been?” That is what these amendments and the ones we have already discussed are about: they seek to make a change. I beg to move.

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, I was happy to put my name to these to these two amendments, and I am equally happy that the noble Baroness, Lady Royall of Blaisdon, is here. She will go into some current and fairly shocking detail about some recent examples of stalking that show that it is as pernicious and present as ever.

Both of these amendments are proposed in the clear and distinctly uncomfortable knowledge that I think all parties acknowledge: we have some way to go, to put it mildly, before we can say, with any degree of truth, that we have the measure of the huge and insidious problem that is stalking. These amendments propose some changes to MAPPA, including perpetrators in MAPPA, as a condition of potential release and licence, and the creation of a register to make perpetrators subject to notification requirements as a condition of release. The important common theme to both these amendments is the requirement for the Secretary of State to commission reviews to look at the issues and challenges around stalking in a comprehensive and informed manner.

But what is repeatedly and continuously frustrating is that we have proper on-the-ground evidence of approaches to stalking that are proving to be effective. In particular, there is the multi-agency stalking intervention programme—MASIP—which has marked a significant advance in our ability to anticipate, identify and tackle the complex issue of stalking. The MASIP model, thankfully funded by the Home Office, has pioneered this approach in London, Cheshire and Hampshire, and it works. Early evidence is compelling and extremely positive. So one just asks oneself: why is it not possible to do this more widely? The approach co-ordinates activity around both the victim and the perpetrator, and it incorporates an essential pathway to address the fixation and obsession in perpetrators that might be contributing to their stalking offending. The final evaluation proves that it works, so why is it so difficult, first, to acknowledge best practice when it is staring one in the face and, secondly, to implement it more widely?

One frustrating thing—here I refer to an article in today’s newspaper—is some news about the Government’s end-of-custody supervised licence programme, which was introduced in the autumn to relieve some of the huge pressure on our overcrowded jails, enabling perpetrators to be released earlier than their recommended sentence. It was put in as a temporary scheme, but it has apparently now been extended indefinitely. That does not mean for ever; it just means that the Government have given no indication of how long they intend to continue to allow this degree of leniency, the sole reason for which is the huge pressure on our prisons.

The Government rather inelegantly call this the problem of demand and supply in the prison population. If you were to try to explain that terminology to victims, they would find it slightly difficult to understand why supply-side economics should govern the early release of some perpetrators, particularly of domestic abuse and stalking, in many cases without the victims knowing what is going on.

We will make concerted progress only when we acknowledge the complexity of stalking and finally design a proactive and joined-up approach that is implemented consistently across all jurisdictions and agency boundaries and effectively identifies, outlaws and penalises any evidence of the unfairness and madness of what we are allowing today—effectively, a postcode lottery for victims.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, I have signed Amendments 148A and 148B in this group. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, for her introduction and look forward to hearing from the noble Baroness, Lady Royall. The first amendment sets out an important addition to the arrangements for Multi Agency Public Protection Arrangements, or MAPPA. We will hear about the detail of these amendments from the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, but I want to add that, throughout this Bill and its predecessors in your Lordships’ House, including the Domestic Abuse Bill and the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, we have repeatedly asked for more protection for people who have been victims of serial domestic abuse and, in particular, stalking.

Laura Richards’s ground-breaking work over many years in developing the dashboard profiling and documenting the most serious repeat offenders has changed the way in which specialist police teams view these perpetrators, but—I hesitate to say this for probably the third Bill running—MAPPA are still not applied consistently across police forces. One of the aims of these amendments is to make sure that happens. As we have heard, repeat perpetrators are far too often allowed to commit further crimes, including murder. Shockingly, a couple of years ago police research found that one in 12 domestic rapists was raping outside the home. A violent and controlling man leaving a partner does not mean that the violence ends. Many have extensive histories of abusing multiple women.

Amendment 148A sets out the licence conditions for serial and serious harm domestic abuse and stalking perpetrators, saying that anyone so identified should be part of a MAPPA. Proposed new subsection (4) sets out the definition of a relevant domestic abuse or stalking perpetrator. Similarly, the other amendment says that we must have an effective register. Non-domestic stalkers always seem to be left off. I always raise this problem in your Lordships’ House; there is an assumption that stalking is carried out only by a current partner or an ex-partner—or somebody who would like to be a partner and is therefore regarded as domestic—but about 40% of stalking cases have nothing to do with that at all. As we see from many stories in the papers day after day, these days people such as celebrities face massive amounts of stalking and do not get protection. Often, when people are arrested, it appears that they have stalked others as well.

The noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, made passing reference to the Gracie Spinks case. Derbyshire police and the police force that investigated its failings have learned from that, but we need consistency. I will give one recent example from Laura Richards. Last month a victim, Sadie, had been back in contact with her about her living hell over seven years. She is terrified that her ex will kill her children. In 2018 he was arrested for battery of her eight year-old daughter and an assault on her while she was holding her other daughter. He was convicted in 2019 and received a suspended sentence and restraining order. The police did not arrest him for stalking or coercive control. They told her that, because she had moved away, they would not arrest him for stalking and they would amend the restraining order to a lifelong RO. He has repeatedly breached it. As we discussed on earlier amendments, he then started family court proceedings.

I will not go on, except to say that she has had to flee three more times, and each time has hit problems with the new police force. There has been no consistency. He has a history of abusing others—exactly the point I made about police research finding that one in 12 domestic rapists rapes outside the home. This woman has no solution nearby to stop him continuing to behave in this way and mess up her life and those of her children. We need MAPPA to work effectively. These amendments are the first step in that direction.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, I would like to put my name to this amendment, because it is a continuation of the theme around stalking which we have repeatedly returned to in the Bill, as indeed we went on at length about in the Domestic Abuse Act.

In listening to the reply of the Minister to the last group of amendments, I was trying to imagine what a robust list would look like. I was somewhat puzzled as to how it would really have any effect at all. I was also pondering the term “discretionary management”, given that if only 1.4% of stalking cases actually end up in a successful prosecution, it is quite easy for the advisers who are writing the Minister’s brief to talk about percentage increases in performance. If one knows anything about mathematics, it is relatively easy to get rather spell-binding percentage increases in performance by starting from an exceedingly low base—a base of 1.4% of stalkers being successfully prosecuted, I am not a fan of percentages in a situation like this.

As the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, said, effective multiagency co-operation is clearly not working at the moment. This amendment gives the Government the opportunity to provide the single most important thing to make multiagency co-operation work: clear, outstanding, determined and consistent leadership. Leadership which transcends politics and different Ministers being responsible for the same area as the ministerial merry-go-round continues is incredibly important. The attempts by MAPPA to create an effective multiagency co-operation environment are so far not compelling. This amendment is an invitation for the Government to sit down and reflect on the lessons of what has not been and is not working as we would wish it, to create something more fit for purpose, and—in a non-political environment—to create a form of new MAPPS which is nothing to do with politics.

If the Great British electorate—of course, we are not allowed to participate—decide on a change of His Majesty’s Government at some point in the next 12 months, I hope that the department can come up with a form of multiagency co-operation which an incoming Government, should they be of a different political persuasion, would be positive about and could run with and make effective, rather than starting the clock all over again and losing valuable time. During this time, goodness only knows how many more victims will fall to the pursuit of stalkers, many of whom have been operating and stalking for many years, and many of whom are known all too well to the victims, but whom various multiagency authorities seem to be wilfully blind to.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, I have also signed Amendment 148C and thank the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, for introducing it, and the noble Lord, Lord Russell, for his very eloquent contribution just now.

I too return to the Minister’s remarks at the end of the previous group, because it will help with this amendment. Part of the problem is that those of us who raise these issues about multiagency protection have assumed the corporate knowledge of the House about the previous six days and of all the amendments we have debated—in particular, those relating to domestic abuse and stalking. I fear that is not the case. One of the reasons we need this report is to ensure that Ministers and officials absolutely see what is happening in the data and bring it to Parliament to be held to account for it.

When I gave an example of a live case, I used the term “restraining order”. In his response to me, the Minister talked about a “stalking protection order”. They are completely different tools. An SPO is given by the police as a sort of special caution. It identifies the crime and says to the offender—there may not even be an offender at that point—that they have to mend their ways. A restraining order is given by the courts—it can happen at various levels of the courts—and is much more serious.

Most stalkers who are on restraining orders now will have been through the earlier processes, including, I am afraid, a number of stalking protection orders. While they may be a useful tool for the one stalker who is obsessed with one person but can get over it, the group of people that we are talking about in the MAPPA arrangements are completely and utterly different. They are extremely obsessed and manipulative people, who are physically dangerous in some cases, and certainly through coercive control. Not only are they a danger to the person for whom a restraining order may have been given but, in all the examples I gave in my speech on the previous group, they are known to be likely to offend with other people and to move around the country to get out of trouble and get away from the police force taking notice of them.

Given that we are talking about the most serious level of offences, whether it is domestic abuse or stalking, we need a consistent system across the country. Amendment 148C, through the report, would hold the Government—whatever Government, of whatever colour—to account, forcing them to produce data to show that they understand the difference. Until that happens, there will be Members of your Lordships’ House who will return, Bill after Bill, with horror stories of murders, attacks and everything else, but nothing will have changed.