Stalking Protection Bill

Mike Wood Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons
Friday 19th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mike Wood (Dudley South) (Con)]

It is a pleasure and privilege to take part in this debate on what could hardly be a more important subject, one literally of life and death, as has been said. I join hon. Members in congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston) on bringing the Bill to this point. Stalking is an horrific and devastating crime, which causes unthinkable suffering to its victims. It is also an unusual crime, in that the onus almost always falls heavily on the victim to provide the evidence to demonstrate that a crime has taken place and to support their case against the stalker. In few other areas of criminal law is that function left so heavily to the victim.

The Protection from Harassment Act 1997 was introduced to deal with many of the problems that have been covered in the debate, but it did not specifically name the offence of stalking. Sadly, it soon became clear that that Act was insufficient to deal with the scale and nature of the problem. The 2012 reforms that amended the Act and created the two new offences were an important and valuable step forward. The results can be seen in the number of prosecutions since the new offences came into force at the end of 2012.

At Christmas, West Midlands police launched a seasonal campaign on the crimes of stalking and harassment. The force campaigned to encourage victims to seek help by confiding in loved ones and reporting abuse to the police. The findings are as stark as they are horrifying. Of the cases reported, 57% were domestic-related. Much like other Members have said, victims typically suffered between 70 and 100 incidents each before they reported the harassment and stalking to West Midlands police.

The campaign coincided with the case of a West Midlands policewoman who had been the victim of harassment by an ex-partner. In support of the campaign’s launch, she said:

“When I reported it to police it felt like a weight lifted off my shoulders—and when an officer came around to my house, and realised the extent of the harassment,”

they wanted to arrest her ex-partner immediately. But, of course, things are rarely that simple in criminal law. The police have to build a case to be confident that they can bring charges.

The time taken and the burden of having to meet that level of proof often means that victims of stalking are left suffering further harassment, the consequences of which can be enormous. As the policewoman said:

“It felt as though he still had a hold on me and even months after we’d split up I could still sense him there. I used to dread opening letters and parcels in case they were from him—and I couldn’t enjoy my birthday or Christmas as he’d send gifts and notes saying how he wasn’t going to let me go. I felt on edge all the time.”

That type of behaviour, and its effect on victims, is exactly the kind of thing that the new civil protection orders in the Bill are designed to tackle.

In the past year, West Midlands police have received 290 reports of stalking, but only 61 people were charged, with others being cautioned or agreeing to out-of-court resolutions. That highlights the scale of the problem that makes the Bill necessary. We need new and more flexible measures and sanctions to deal with stalking, but although we need them to be simpler options, it is important that we make sure they are not taken as the easy option.

Civil protection orders must not replace prosecutions, so it is important that the CPS and other bodies continue to apply existing laws as fully as they can and as strongly as the law allows. This is not about replacing those prosecutions, but about the many instances of inappropriate, unwelcome and unacceptable behaviour that might not yet have escalated to that criminal threshold; about the early intervention that can change behaviour and change lives; and about protecting hundreds of thousands of men and women by preventing that stalking and harassment from spiralling into even more serious crimes. Applied properly, these orders could make an enormous difference to many lives, and that is why I am pleased to support the Bill today.

Stalking Protection Bill

Mike Wood Excerpts

3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Friday 23rd November 2018 Commons Chamber

[Nigel Huddleston (Mid Worcestershire) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friends the Members for South Suffolk (James Cartlidge) and for Torbay (Kevin Foster), and in particular my hon. Friend for Cheltenham (Alex Chalk), who speaks with great knowledge of these issues. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston) on introducing this very important Bill.

I would like to speak briefly to a few amendments. There is complete agreement among Members that stalking is an abhorrent behaviour that can have terrifying consequences for its victims. It can cause significant psychological damage and worse. Sadly, I have heard from constituents who have been victims of stalking just how it can take over their lives, not only when the stalking is happening but for years afterwards. It is therefore very important that we take action.

The House heard during our previous consideration of the Bill how the powers currently available to the police to intervene in stalking cases are insufficient. The responses to the Government’s consultation demonstrated that “stranger stalking” in particular is a form of crime that is not adequately addressed by existing laws. The passing of the Bill will send a very clear message to victims and perpetrators alike that stalking in all its forms is despicable, will not be tolerated and will have serious consequences.

Thanks to the excellent work of my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes, the Bill has cross-party support, as well as the backing of the Government, so there are very few amendments for me to address at this stage. However, I would like to talk about a few. I welcome the broadening of the Bill’s scope that amendments 1, 2 and 6 would bring. We all recognise that there is a gap in the existing protective order regime, particularly in terms of provisions for early intervention in stalking cases or addressing emerging patterns of behaviour. Under the current regime, it is difficult to take any action in cases in which the criminal threshold has not yet been met, as my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham articulated, in which the stalking occurs outside a domestic abuse context, or in which the perpetrator has not been intimately linked with the victim previously.

One of the Bill’s most important benefits is the fact that it transfers the onus to take action away from the victim, giving other bodies—the police and the courts—the additional tools they need to intervene in stalking cases at an early stage. The amendments will ensure that access to the new tools created by the Bill is not limited solely to local police forces in England and Wales, but given to the chief constable of the Ministry of Defence police and the chief constable of the British Transport police. It can only benefit the victims of stalking if we ensure that those other branches of our police forces are able to act on their behalf.

The technical changes made by amendments 3 to 5 put in place important safeguards that should reduce the likelihood that perpetrators of stalking could evade the Bill’s provisions. As colleagues will be aware, the Bill creates a new civil stalking protection order that will enable the imposition of both prohibitions and requirements on individuals who are deemed to be perpetrators of stalking. One of those requirements, introduced by clauses 9 and 10, is that any person subject to a stalking protection order would have to give their name and address to the police by attending the local police station and also notify the police if their address changes. There was, however, a lack of clarity in the Bill about when persons subject to an order would have to notify the police of any changes to their registered details. Amendments 3 and 4 provide important clarification by requiring individuals to give notice of their intention to change their name or address, rather than being able to inform the police after the fact.

Under the Bill as originally drafted, there was a danger that perpetrators with no fixed address could evade the requirement to register their details with the police. Amendment 5 addresses that directly by explicitly catering for the possibility that a perpetrator may not have a home address. All the amendments are eminently sensible and receive my support. I support the Bill and I look forward to speaking on Third Reading.

[Mike Wood (Dudley South) (Con)]

It is a pleasure and privilege to speak on Report. I, too, congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston) on promoting such an important Bill. I steered a private Member’s Bill through this place in my first year as a Member, so I know the many demands that can suddenly appear in the inbox and arrive down the telephone line the moment one is drawn in the ballot, as there are any number of competing calls from non-governmental organisations and campaign groups. I can think of very few issues that are more worthy to pursue than the one that my hon. Friend has chosen.

It was a particular privilege to serve on the Bill Committee with my hon. Friend and to hear some of the examples from Members on both sides of the House. The core purpose of the Bill is to fill gaps in existing legislation and to ensure that our laws keep up with the changing pattern of stalking offences and developments in our understanding of them. It is a testament to the skill with which my hon. Friend has steered the Bill that it received overwhelming support from both sides of the House and that our proceedings in Committee were so straightforward. There was strong support for both the principle and the detail. She has rightly continued to work to ensure that every t is crossed and every i is dotted so that the Bill can fulfil its potential.

I join my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Worcestershire (Nigel Huddleston) in speaking very briefly to the amendments, which will make this very good Bill even better. I think that most Members will welcome amendments 1, 2 and 6 as common-sense clarifications. We would expect most applications for protection orders to involve police forces that cover geographical areas in England and Wales, but it would clearly be undesirable to allow specific cases to fall between the gaps purely because the jurisdiction they occurred under was covered by the British Transport police or the military police. As my hon. Friend the Member for Torbay (Kevin Foster) suggested, the Civil Nuclear constabulary would be a sensible addition to those bodies, should the opportunity arise at a later stage of the Bill’s passage. Those three amendments clarify that the orders are not confined purely to what we might think of as police forces, but cover all parts of our police service.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Worcestershire pointed out, when one of the core provisions of the orders is notification requirements, it is very important that those notification requirements are sensible and comprehensive. It would be frankly absurd to preclude people covered by the orders from being able to notify the appropriate authorities before they changed their name or address, but the Bill as originally drafted could easily have been interpreted as saying that the sole period within which people could make notifications was during the three days immediately after the changes came into effect. In tabling her amendments, my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes has provided clarification and brought forward what most Members would see as common-sense provisions. Similarly, there is further clarification on people without a home address—particularly those of no fixed abode—and clearly, it would not fit the purpose of the Bill if orders could not apply to people in such circumstances.

I think that this is an extremely important and welcome Bill, and the amendments will make it even better. I hope to catch your eye on Third Reading, Madam Deputy Speaker, to speak about the Bill more generally.

[Victoria Atkins]

May I say what a pleasure it is to support the Bill and these amendments today? The whole House thanks my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston) for her incredibly hard work on the Bill, helped by her members of staff. This has been a shining example of the House of Commons at its best: we have cross-party agreement; we know the direction of travel and the destination we want to get to; and we have had constructive criticism, questions and so on to help us to improve the Bill. In that spirit, I thank all Members who have contributed on Report.

If I may, I will reflect on my hon. Friend’s comments about Lady Astor being the first female MP. I have the pleasure of representing a seat for which the second female MP stood—we always remember the firsts for landmark events, but we tend not to remember the second. Margaret Wintringham represented the seat of Louth in 1921. She was the first ever British-born female MP—the second ever female MP—and she took a slightly different approach to campaigning than I or any of my colleagues, because she took a vow of silence during the campaign, which might commend itself to some of us in future.

In that spirit, I welcome these modest refinements to the Bill. Amendments 1, 2 and 6 will expand the list of chief officers who will be able to apply for the orders to the Ministry of Defence police and the British Transport police—we have heard from colleagues about the benefits that this could have—and they will be able to initiate related proceedings in connection with the variation and renewal of an order.