Stalking Protection Bill — House of Commons, 2018-01-19
Topic: Law and Crime
Alexander John Gervase Chalk (Conservative, Centre-right): It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion), who made some powerful points I am delighted to support this Bill, which represents a key piece of the jigsaw in terms of how we ought to approach the scourge of stalking. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston) for her efforts, determination and leadership on this important issue The issue is very close to my heart, and I was grateful for the opportunity, together with my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham) and Members across this House and in the other place, to play a part in addressing the problem of inadequate sentencing. But if sentencing is principally about protecting victims after stalking has spiralled out of control, the SPOs are about arming the courts with tools to address this behaviour beforehand; they are about prevention as well as protection Before examining the SPOs in detail, I want to say a little about the context. Attitudes have changed. Gone—or almost gone—are the days when this was thought of as a bit of a joke or just a case of overly enthusiastic romantic advances. Lest we forget, the crime of stalking did not exist until 2012, and it is only thanks to the bravery of so many people—usually, but not exclusively, women—that we have been educated on this shocking phenomenon. We now increasingly appreciate that stalking is a horrible, violating crime that rips relationships apart and shatters lives. Inevitably, it is the cases involving celebrities that hit the headlines, but it is important to emphasise that this phenomenon is no respecter of fame or fortune. It is far more indiscriminate than that, and anyone can be a victim. I want to mention two examples, if I may Dr Eleanor Aston was a constituent of mine. I say "was" because she has now left the United Kingdom. She was a successful and popular GP, as Gloucester Crown Court was later to hear, and she was stalked over a nine-year period. This bears out the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton Deane (Rebecca Pow) that these incidents often last for many years. Dr Aston was stalked by a patient who first attended her surgery in 2007. As is often the case in this type of offending, it began innocuously enough. A few cards progressed on to inappropriate messages, then messages started to be left on her car windscreen. It then became more serious, with the stalker attending the surgery more than 100 times. He vandalised it and posted foul items through the letterbox, and then began to attend her home. He attended a children’s party that her daughter was at, and her water supply was even interfered with. The situation escalated to the point that the police advised her to change her name and address, and even come off the General Medical Council register. She was off work for many months and was later diagnosed, perhaps unsurprisingly, with post-traumatic stress disorder. The stalker spent some time in prison, but when he was released she received two packages: one contained standard abusive material; the other simply said, "Guess who’s back." The second case relates to the 20-year-old hairdresser, Hollie Gazzard, who was murdered in 2014 by an ex-partner. The point was ably made by the hon. Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) that stalking is all too often a gateway offence—if I can use that expression—leading to something even more serious. Indeed, some particularly powerful individuals have referred to it as murder in slow motion. Out of the tragedy of Hollie Gazzard’s death, her inspirational family—her parents Nick and Mandy and her sister Chloe—have set up the Hollie Gazzard Trust in Gloucestershire to improve protection for the victims of stalking in Gloucestershire and beyond. I am grateful to the mayor of Cheltenham for including the trust as one of her charities Those are just two examples of ordinary people from just one county, Gloucestershire, so it is no surprise that research carried out by the Suzy Lamplugh Trust in 2017 showed that a staggeringly high proportion of homicides against women were preceded by behaviour that could properly be characterised as stalking. In that context, the stalking protection orders set out in the Bill will provide a powerful tool to be used while a stalking investigation is ongoing. They will give the magistrates courts a larger and better equipped toolbox with which to tackle such behaviour at an early stage and to protect victims. An order will be able to prohibit acts associated with stalking or require an individual to "do anything described in the order." That can be used to impose positive obligations, which is an important difference. Ordinary bail conditions can say, "You must not go within a hundred yards of that address" or "You must attend court on such and such an occasion", but this order could impose positive obligations, including an obligation to attend drugs or alcohol programmes. As we have already heard, the orders will have criminal sanctions. In plain English, if you do not comply, you will get locked up That is all welcome, but if I may, I will add a couple of notes of caution. First, it would really help if, as part of the positive obligations, the court could require an individual to undergo psychiatric evaluation. One of the things that makes victims’ testimony even more disarmingly powerful is that they often show a measure of compassion towards the people who have tormented them to their wits’ end, and even sometimes close to the point of suicide. They recognise that they are often struggling with their own mental health problems. It would be helpful if the courts could have, in the toolbox that I mentioned, the power to compel individuals to undergo psychiatric evaluation The second issue is that, if the SPOs are going to work, they will have to be deployed quickly. If there is too much delay, there is a risk of the behaviour becoming entrenched and therefore far more difficult to address. Why do I say that? Because my experience as a prosecutor in court, prosecuting offences of this nature and speaking to witnesses and victims, tells me that committed, entrenched stalkers show themselves unwilling to comply with orders of the court, or even incapable of so doing, even though that might lead to imprisonment. Very often, by the time someone gets to the long process of prosecution, the stalker will have ignored the police officer who told them to stop, and they will have ignored the harassment warning and the bail conditions that ordered them to stop. If a solution is to work, the problem needs to get nipped in the bud early, which will require police officers to take matters seriously. I am grateful for the fact that a huge amount of work has been done in Gloucestershire to ensure that police officers have the tools they need to recognise stalking and to act on it expeditiously, which is vital Orders must be imposed early, and before the inevitable delays that come from investigation, charge and trial. Conscientious and attentive police officers will be vital to the process, and changes could be made to allow individuals to play a greater role in gathering evidence and reporting it to the police in a way that serves the needs of victims, instead of the process being labour intensive and sometimes difficult. However, that is something to be discussed in detail on another day. For present purposes, I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes on taking up the baton in such a spectacular and effective way. I am grateful to hon. Members across the House, and I am delighted to support the Bill.