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7.6 pm
Mr. Andrew F. Bennett (Denton and Reddish): Legislation that is rushed through the House tends to be bad legislation. On this occasion, there was no need for a rush, but we have a Home Secretary who always seeks party advantage in preference to good government.
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When my hon. Friend the Member for Rossendale and Darwen (Ms Anderson) introduced her Stalking Bill, the Government would have had no difficulty in ensuring that it became a good Bill and passed through the House; but no--the Government preferred to block it and claim that they were doing something different.
That is the Bill's tragedy. By the time my hon. Friend the Member for Rossendale and Darwen had introduced her Bill, it was obvious that stalking had become a problem and needed to be tackled. When a private Member introduces a Bill, it receives a Second Reading and goes into Committee. Then discussions take place between the promoter and the Government. Almost every clause of the original Bill is dropped, a series of new clauses appears and the Bill emerges from Committee, improved yet managing to fulfil the promoter's original intention.
If such proper scrutiny had taken place, we would now have a useful measure on the statute book. Sadly, the Home Secretary did not want the chance of a Labour Member being responsible for passing legislation on stalking; he wanted to claim the credit. He produced a discussion document. There was a lengthy charade about whether the Government would promote legislation. Finally, we got the Bill. We have 10 days in which to examine it.
I do not complain that hon. Members have only 10 days in which to examine the Bill, but I do complain that people outside this place have little time in which to do so. It is surprising how difficult it is to get hold of a Bill like this, to study it, to work out whether it will meet one's circumstances and to lobby Members of Parliament to ensure that it does the task.
Holding Report stage immediately after Committee stage does not provide enough time--not because, in Committee, Members often do a great deal to improve the Bill, but because often the amendments that they table force Ministers into a discussion with civil servants and draftspersons, to make the Bill that crucial bit better. I suspect that, if we rush this legislation through, we shall not produce a good Bill.
I am disappointed that the Home Secretary's approach is to produce a vague Bill, which, as my hon. Friend the Member for Rossendale and Darwen said, will be filled out as a result of case law. But we are told that there is a problem now, and we want to provide some certainty for people who are distressed and upset about being stalked. They should be relieved now, without having to take their case all the way to the Appeal Court. My hon. Friend attempted to make the original Bill clear so that anybody could understand it.
If a police officer trying to advise somebody picks up this Bill, he cannot say that certain behaviour is all right, because it will have to be tested in the courts. This is not a particularly good document for the police to use; it is certainly not a good document for a lawyer to use when advising somebody. Lawyers always say "on the one hand" and "on the other hand". We want clarity and we do not get it from this Bill.
My next complaint is that the problem will not be solved simply by changing the law; we need more resources. The Government claim that very few cases will be involved. If that is so, the legislation will not meet the needs that exist out there in the country. If there are more cases than the Government say, from where will the
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I wish to ask the Home Secretary about the exemption if someone is behaving reasonably. Many people are involved in harassing other people and do it perfectly legitimately. The Leader of the Opposition tries to harass the Prime Minister, and I am sure that no one would complain about that. Most Members of Parliament try to harass Ministers, and it is our job to do so. Most hon. Members will admit to harassing a fair number of civil servants and officials in their constituencies to get justice for their constituents.
The housing officers in Thameside and Stockport must sometimes feel, when I ring them up and bend their ears, that I am harassing and pressing them. I think that that is perfectly legitimate and that I could defend my behaviour. Most people would say that it is reasonable for a Member of Parliament to act in that way on behalf of his or her constituents to put right an injustice.
What about a constituent who tries to put right an injustice for himself? Does he has the same defence? This seems to be one of the problems. If someone can say that he is a debt collector and operating as such, his behaviour will be acceptable when he harasses people to pay their debts. But what happens if an individual tries to get people to settle their debts?
Recently, a constituent had some work done by a local builder whose standard of work was appalling. He went to the small claims court and was awarded money, but then the builder said that he was not Joe Bloggs the builder but John Jones the builder. Everyone knows the trick: builders move easily from one business to the next, leaving their debts behind them. My constituent followed that individual around for a week and every person that the builder talked to was handed a note by my constituent explaining his claim for money. Eventually, he got his money. I think that that was harassment, but justified harassment. I am concerned that my constituent, acting as an individual to try to get that money, could not claim that he was a professional debt collector.
What about the Child Support Agency? That government body has the right to sue people for money, but what about an individual who feels that the CSA is not doing enough and wants to provide extra evidence to it? Would that be legitimate?
What about journalists? Moreover, when is a journalist a journalist, and when is he not? If he or she has full-time paid employment, there will be little doubt, but if he or she is freelance there are difficulties. A particular problem for a journalist is that, with hindsight, all sorts of things can be seen to be unreasonable but at the time it may have seemed to the journalist that they were reasonable.
What about writers? We often read articles in newspapers saying that a certain biography was authorised and they usually say what a nice person the subject was, but how legitimately can someone trying to produce an unauthorised biography go about collecting information under this legislation, and when does it become harassment?
I could give many more examples, but the Government must deal with the question of the defence of someone pursuing a legitimate occupation.
Sir Ivan Lawrence:
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that he would be on to a better point if he explained that,
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Mr. Bennett:
I fully accept that point. As I said at the beginning, it is important to be clear so that people know what they are entitled to do. They should not have to wait until lawyers have made a lot of money out of this matter and until there have been 20 cases over five or six years to establish what the law is.
It was claimed that the Bill would cover harassment by groups. I am not sure how that will work, and I hope that the Minister will explain. The last two cases of racial harassment with which I dealt involved not just one individual but a group of people--five or six--living in the same street who all behaved in a racist way towards someone attempting to move into that street. I should have thought that one or two of the people involved might be involved in two or more incidents, but I suspect that encouragement of collective action was the problem.
More recently, I tried to persuade one of my constituents to give evidence in a particularly nasty case. The intimidation that he suffered as a witness was carried out not by one individual but by a group of people who all believed that they liked the accused person and wanted to make things as difficult as possible for anybody acting as a witness.
I want a clear statement from the Home Secretary that the Bill will not be used against protesters. This country has always believed in freedom of speech and freedom to demonstrate. There seems to be a narrow line between protesting and demonstrating, and harassment. I hope that the Minister will make that clear.
I wish to tell the House about two incidents in my constituency where I believe that what is needed are resources rather than legislation. Not long ago, a reasonable couple came to see me at my advice bureau in Reddish and said what terrible neighbours they had. There had been a dispute about a boundary fence and their neighbour had acted utterly unreasonably and outrageously. I must admit that I believed that, from what was described to me, the neighbour had behaved outrageously. I went on to my second advice bureau, which I do in the evening, at Denton, where another reasonable couple came to see me and said that their neighbours were utterly unreasonable and had behaved outrageously. The two couples lived next door to each other and were describing each other. Had I heard only one story, I would have been convinced that someone should take action on that couple's behalf against the neighbours.
The problem with those situations is that there is a good chance that the police or lawyers will hear only one side of the story. The only advice I could give to the couples once I knew the situation was that they should move, but of course both couples thought that the other couple should move. It will be difficult to resolve the issue satisfactorily, although the four people are all reasonable except when involved in that neighbours' dispute. If we had the resources for a conciliation service, it could bring the four together and explain to them all that they are harassing their neighbours and that, if they cannot come to some accommodation, the only solution is for one pair to move.
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The final example I wish to mention is that of a young lady who came to see me with a worrying case. She described how she was being followed and said that there were people spying on her. I assumed, as she talked, that she was suffering from paranoia and that she did not have a case, but I agreed to take it up with the police and social security. I wrote to both services asking them to confirm that they were not carrying out surveillance and, much to my surprise, someone from the social security fraud squad rang me up and said, "Look, I should not really tell you this, but we have made a terrible mistake in this case. We have been carrying out surveillance because we thought she was claiming benefit while she was working, but we now know the whole history of the case. The police were making inquiries because they thought that she was involved in illegal activities." In that case, because I found out the full story, I was able to tell my constituent that there had been a mistake, people had been following her for what they thought were legitimate reasons and it would all stop.
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