Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether her Department plans to take steps to increase protection for victims of stalking when the perpetrator has a mental health condition.

This Government is fully committed to tackling stalking and doing all that it can to protect victims and robustly manage perpetrators.

On 3 December, the Government announced a raft of new measures to tackle stalking by putting victims first and increasing the protections available to them. This includes plans to increase the use of Stalking Protection Orders (SPOs) by legislating to provide for the courts to impose them of their own volition on conviction or acquittal. Currently only the police can apply for an SPO to a magistrate's court.

SPOs are an essential tool designed to protect victims of stalking at the earliest possible opportunity and address the perpetrator's behaviours before they become entrenched or escalate in severity. They allow positive requirements to be imposed and this can include the perpetrator attending mental health support, but also a perpetrator programme to address the root causes of their offending.