House of Commons Hansard Debates for 17 Dec 1996 (pt 17)

Mr. McNamara: The hon. Gentleman talks about all the extra powers for local authorities, but local authorities will not get the extra money that they need to use those powers to enforce the legislation, or to employ the necessary people.

Sir Ivan Lawrence: That, as the hon. Gentleman must be aware, is totally irrelevant to the point that I am making. Perhaps he can raise it on the Adjournment of the House. He certainly may not raise it further in the middle of my speech.

I especially welcome the Government's move to deal further with the scourge of racism. The 1994 report by the Select Committee on Home Affairs made 38 recommendations for dealing with that serious problem, and I remember taking action against my own Government for not going far enough in accepting those recommendations, and for not proposing to deal more strongly with racism in response to our report.

Our recommendation 29 reads as follows:

"We recommend that the Public Order Act 1986 should be amended so that (a) section 6(4) should no longer require the prosecution to prove that the offender either intended to cause harassment or was aware that harassment may result, but instead should require the prosecution to prove that a reasonable person

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would have expected harassment, alarm or distress to be caused by his actions, (b) section 5(4) should allow a police officer to arrest on the basis of reasonable suspicion that an offence had been or was about to be committed, and (c) in section 5(6) the penalty should be increased to include a sentence of up to 12 months imprisonment, a more substantial fine, or both. We consider that these amendments will allow the courts to take into consideration and deal more effectively with those expressions of racism accompanying criminal acts to which we refer in paragraph 86."

I hope that I do my right hon. Friend the Minister of State no injustice, but I seem to remember that at the time he said that it was not possible to go further along the lines of the Committee's recommendations. I now warmly commend him and thank him for moving considerably further along those lines in the Bill, which, by extending the concept of stalking, deals with racial harassment. As a result there will be more weapons in the armoury of the criminal justice system for dealing with something that, when we seek to live together in a decent society, is one of the most insidious and hateful forms of human behaviour.

It is not only the victims of stalkers who have reason to thank the Government for the Bill. Harassed neighbours, whose numbers must run into thousands, if my constituency is anything to go by, and the racially harassed, of whom there must also be thousands, have reason to thank them too. So do all those who seek to bring order and justice to our society--whether that means the police, the probation service, the magistrates or the judges--and therefore the British public, who yearn for a society in which there is more law and order. I commend the Government for bringing forward a Bill that fulfils those wishes.

6.35 pm

Mrs. Diana Maddock (Christchurch): Although the Bill is generally perceived to be about stalking, its tentacles are likely to spread far wider. In some ways it is like four Bills rolled into one--an anti-stalking Bill, a feuding neighbours Bill, a domestic violence Bill and a Bill that extends civil injunction remedies in such cases to the criminal courts.

It is therefore all the more disappointing and worrying that the timetable means that the Bill will be taken through all its stages in little more than 24 hours, on two consecutive days. My hon. Friend the Member for Roxburgh and Berwickshire (Mr. Kirkwood) has already made his views clear on that subject. Shortly before coming into the Chamber, I discovered that the Government may even be minded to push the whole thing through in one day.

During the debate on the Queen's Speech when my right hon. Friend the Member for Yeovil (Mr. Ashdown) pledged to the Prime Minister my party's co-operation in the passage of the Bill, we did not envisage such a compacted and rushed debate. In my view, an attempt has been made to take advantage of our good will and concern.

We have heard that line already this afternoon. People have said that Opposition Members are against the Bill and are not co-operating, but "co-operating" does not mean failing to scrutinise the legislation properly.

Mr. Maclean: The hon. Lady says that there is a tight timetable for pushing the Bill through, but she should revise her opinion. As I understand it, two days have been allocated for debate, should that be necessary, although

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I hope that we shall not need the full time. I should have thought that that was ample time in which to scrutinise the legislation properly.

The Parliamentary Secretary, Lord Chancellor's Department (Mr. Gary Streeter): We can go through the night if the hon. Lady likes.

Mrs. Maddock: I hear facetious comments about sitting through the night. That is not what I meant. I believe that dealing with the Bill in such a short time will prevent all but the most rushed consultation. Drafting changes between Second Reading and Committee, and between Committee and Report, are part and parcel of the passage of most Bills through the House, and we all believe that they are the better for it. Clearly that will not happen in this case.

We would like several improvements to be made to the Bill. I have tabled amendments accordingly, and I hope that the Minister will respond sympathetically to them when the time comes. I am a little disappointed that an amendment that I tabled to allow a breach of a civil undertaking to be treated as an offence has not been selected. I believe that such a provision could save lengthy and complex legal arguments, and could take some of the acrimony out of cases, especially domestic violence cases.

I am advised that such a use of undertakings with legal force behind them could be extended to the criminal courts, too. In view of what the Minister has already said, I hope that he and his civil servants will consider the scope for the use of undertakings in both civil and criminal courts in the context of the Bill. I hope that we shall hear some response to that suggestion during our proceedings tonight.

I now move to a second area where we on the Liberal Democrat Benches are looking for some improvement. [Hon. Members: "We?"] There are 26 of us somewhere in the building. As the Bill is drafted, the court cannot give any protection to victims pending the trial--which may be months away--short of remanding someone in custody, which would be expensive, or making it a bail condition, which does not carry the same full protection as the restraining order provisions in clause 5 from the time of sentencing onwards.

I hope that the Minister will consider whether it is possible to enable the court to make such an order when a trial is pending. One possible use of such an order would be to enable the court to make an order while proceedings are adjourned indefinitely, with the prospect perhaps of the defendant never having to come to court. The victim, therefore, would never have to relive the ordeal in the witness box. That would give the substantial protection of an explicit order, backed up with five years' imprisonment.

Given the wide scope of the Bill, I was surprised to read that the Government expect approximately 200 additional criminal cases a year to arise from it. Do the Government really believe that only four additional cases a week will arise in the whole of England and Wales as a result of the Bill? I can only imagine that they are considering only stalking cases and ignoring the wider effects of the Bill, which have been described fairly graphically this evening.

I have been advised by a lawyer active in this field that once the extent of the Bill is known there will be immense pressure on the police to take up the proceedings,

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particularly in neighbour disputes and domestic violence cases. In addition, the hon. and learned Member for Burton (Sir I. Lawrence) highlighted how important the Bill will be in cases of racial harassment. Only this week, the local beat officer in the centre of Christchurch--who often calls in at my office--said that she knew of two people in the constituency who were suffering a certain amount of harassment and who could be helped if the Bill were on the statute book. That is just one small part of England, so I suggest that the Government have underestimated when they state that there will be only 200 additional cases.

Stalking is a very serious matter, but it has only recently attracted media attention. It is a shame that, before anything can be deemed to be important, it has to become a media sensation. Many people still have the impression that stalking is little more than a nuisance and affects only celebrities who have in some way forfeited their right to privacy. The truth is much more complex. More than 3,000 people--young and old, men and women, those who are well known and those who are not--have been the victims of stalkers across the country in recent years. The true total figure is almost certainly higher. Stalking is not yet a crime, so the police have no criminal records on the matter.

Three months ago, there was a particularly appalling stalking case in the newspapers when a 37-year-old man--technically on a charge of causing grievous bodily harm, as that is the route that the police have often tried to use--was controversially acquitted by a court in London. The court had been told that he had harassed his victim for four years. He telephoned her up to 10 times a day, registered his car in her name and lurked outside her house--once with a machete. The man offered no defence, but the judge acquitted him because in his view there was insufficient evidence to prove intent to cause psychological harm, which was what the case turned on.

To get a criminal conviction at the moment, one must prove psychological distress equivalent to grievous bodily harm. Although this was achieved in one recent case--by Tracey Sant from Portsmouth--it has proved to be very difficult. I suspect that there was success in Portsmouth because of the assiduous work of the police there, and police officers from Portsmouth were the first to lobby me on this issue. They were incredibly frustrated at their inability to deal effectively with bad cases of stalking and harassment in the area.

Speaking last September at the Liberal Democrat annual conference in Brighton, I advocated a two-track approach to tackling the menace of stalking. This comprised a civil offence, allowing the courts to use restraining orders and award compensation, and a more serious criminal offence of molestation, where the stalker's persistent conduct causes harassment, alarm or distress, or leaves the person in fear of violence. I am pleased that the Bill broadly fits that description.