Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what steps she is taking to support victims of stalking through the criminal justice system.

The Government was elected with a landmark mission to halve violence against women and girls (VAWG) in the next decade. To do so, the Government is committed to better supporting and protecting victims and survivors of VAWG, including stalking.

The Ministry of Justice provides funding for victim and witness support services. This includes community-based domestic abuse and sexual violence services, in addition to the core funding the Ministry of Justice provides to Police and Crime Commissioners to allocate at their discretion, based on their assessment of local need. This can include services specifically for victims of stalking.

On 3 December, the Government announced a raft of new measures to tackle stalking by putting victims first and making sure they can be protected at the earliest opportunity. Through the Crime and Policing Bill, the Government is introducing provisions which, once implemented, would provide for the courts to impose Stalking Protection Orders (SPOs) on conviction and acquittal of their own volition. SPOs are an essential tool that are 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.

The Government is also introducing provisions to issue: multi-agency statutory guidance on stalking to set out for the first time a robust framework for how agencies such as the police, local authorities and healthcare should define stalking and work together to pursue perpetrators and support victims; and statutory guidance to set out the process by which the police should release identifying information about online stalking perpetrators to victims so appropriate safeguards can be put in place. In addition, the Government is conducting a review of the stalking legislation to determine whether the law could be changed to support a better understanding and better identification of stalking.