Stalking Protection Bill — House of Lords, 2019-01-18
Topic: Law and Crime
Gordon Wasserman (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I commend my noble friend Lady Bertin for agreeing to steer this short but extraordinarily important Bill through your Lordships’ House. I draw your Lordships’ attention to my entry in the register of interests, in particular, my interest in police technology One of the reasons I am such an enthusiastic supporter of the Bill and the new stalking protection orders it introduces is because I believe that these orders could provide the basis for permitting the police, with the permission of the courts, to use the latest technology to tackle the scourge of stalking. I will say more about this later. I want to begin, however, by expressing my disappointment about how long it has taken to get this important Bill to this stage on its route to the statute book. The process of developing legislation to tackle stalking began a long time ago. In December 2015, the Government launched a public consultation exercise with a view to understanding better the nature and scope of stalking, particularly stranger stalking, and whether a new civil stalking protection order would be useful in dealing with this problem The Government’s response to this consultation appeared in December 2016. At that time the Government stated clearly that a gap had been identified in the protections available to the victims of stalking and that there was strong support for a new stalking protection order. They promised to legislate, "as soon as Parliamentary time allows … The order will address the legislative gap and allow the police and the courts to intervene early" However, sadly, the Bill was not introduced in another place until 19 July 2017 and did not have a Second Reading until January 2018. Its Third Reading did not take place, as noble Lords know, until last November. During this time tens of thousands of innocent people have become the new victims of stalkers. Their lives have been made a misery on an almost daily basis. I have direct personal knowledge of cases where individuals have had to move away from their jobs, their families and their homes in an attempt to get away from a stalker who had become obsessed with them, despite the fact that they had had no previous relationship whatever with their stalker. Every day that the passage and implementation of the Bill is delayed is another day on which the police are deprived of this tool to help them deal with such offences. I very much hope, therefore, that the Bill can be dealt with expeditiously and can be fully operational before the summer, at the very latest While preparing for this debate, I read a fascinating article in the October-November 2018 issue of Magistrate magazine by Katy Bourne, who has already been mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Royall. She is the police and crime commissioner for Sussex. I am very sorry that this short but important piece is not mentioned in the excellent briefing produced by our Library. Katy Bourne has a passionate commitment to keeping her community safe and she has been doing a great job since becoming Sussex’s first PCC in November 2012. When it comes to stalking, particularly stranger stalking, her passion and determination are most clearly demonstrated. She probably has a greater understanding of the scourge of stranger stalking than anyone else in authority and a stronger commitment to tackling it. This is because she was herself the victim of such stalking for six long years. As she says in the article to which I referred, her stalker waged, "a 6-year relentless and fixated campaign against me that has been truly awful. At first I was prepared to ignore the false, offensive postings of a local man who set himself up to hold me to account. Perhaps because I didn’t respond or complain, his postings became more extreme, including accusations that I was responsible for murder and child abuse. He began a concerted campaign to ‘bring me down’ that also involved a group of like-minded individuals. After five years of relentless online and social media harassment and two incidents of being followed and filmed, I was granted an injunction against him. I had also made a criminal complaint but, despite hundreds of pages of evidence showing a sustained five-year campaign, the Crown Prosecution Service said there was insufficient evidence. Some of the material has now been taken down from online platforms but enough remains to appear in search engines as a damaging, distressing presence. The Committee on Standards in Public Life said that online and social media platforms had a responsibility to act more quickly and I would urge them to do so. It seems wrong that, despite an injunction, I still have to prove to the online providers that my stalker’s postings breached their guidelines" Incidentally, her stalker breached the injunction which PCC Bourne had been granted against him and in October last year received a four-month custodial sentence, suspended for two years. As a result of this horrible experience, Katy Bourne really understands the psychological and physical costs of stalking. As she goes on to say in the same article: "Many people think stalking is confined to spurned lovers or obsessed fans: sad, slightly pathetic but relatively harmless. Although reports of stalking have rocketed, it is still regarded as a nuisance rather than a crime. Too often, victims are told ‘don’t look at the online abuse’ or ‘just ignore it, they will get bored and go away’ or ‘somebody keeps leaving you flowers and chocolates? What’s not to like?’ But if you were subject to a cumulative pattern of unwanted attention, as I was, relentlessly repeated by an obsessive, fixated individual, you wouldn’t appreciate the attention and would probably be fearful" At the beginning of this speech, I said that I believed that technology could play an important role in tackling stalking. What I have in mind is GPS proximity tagging, of the kind that is in widespread use around the world in the context of domestic abuse. Such tags, worn by perpetrators, coupled with a piece of kit carried by the victim, notify the victim, the police or any other monitoring agency when the perpetrator is about to breach the conditions of his or her order in relation to entering certain locations or areas where the victim resides, works or frequents. This equipment is well tested and, as I said, is in widespread use abroad. A large number of companies can supply it, and experience has shown that it saves lives I very much hope that the use of such tags will be permitted as part of the stalking protection orders provided for in the Bill. I say this because Clause 1 states that the SPO could prohibit the defendant from doing something, as far as is necessary, to protect the other person—the victim—from the risk of stalking. According to the Explanatory Notes, among the things the order can prohibit is, "entering certain locations or … areas where the victim resides or frequently visits" The Explanatory Notes also state that the SPO could require the defendant to do something, "to protect the other person from risk of stalking" Examples of such requirements are attendance at an intervention programme or a mental health assessment. But surely it is not unreasonable for the Bill to permit the SPO to require the defendant to wear a GPS proximity tag to ensure that he or she does not enter locations or areas where the victim resides or frequently visits. Without such technology to enforce it, the requirement to keep out of the way of the victim is a hollow threat I very much hope that once the Bill is on the statute book, the Government will encourage the police to learn how to use proximity tagging and will ask the courts to include such tagging as a requirement imposed on the defendant as part of their stalking protection order. But first, we must get the Bill on to the statute book. To that end, I urge the House to give it a Second Reading.