Official Report: Minutes of Evidence

The Chairperson (Mr Givan): We have with us, via StarLeaf, Emma Hildreth, senior policy adviser for the Suzy Lamplugh Trust. Thank you for joining us. Hansard will record the session, and a transcript will be published on the Committee web page in due course.

Emma, I will hand over to you to give us a brief outline of the key issues from your perspective. We will then ask some questions.

Ms Emma Hildreth (Suzy Lamplugh Trust): Thank you for having me today. We are really pleased to be invited to give evidence. You will all have seen our written submission.

I will give you a bit of background about the Suzy Lamplugh Trust. We were established in 1986 by Suzy's parents following her disappearance. We are a personal safety and stalking charity, and we run the national stalking helpline across the UK, so we speak to thousands of victims every year about their experiences of stalking.

We are really pleased to see the introduction of this legislation. Recognition of the specific offence of stalking is really close to our heart. It is really important, particularly from our perspective of speaking to victims, because the recognition of stalking as a stand-alone offence gives victims the power that they need to come forward and demand a response from the criminal justice system.

A main point that we want to raise, however, is that, for us, it is the start of the journey. We have had legislation in England, Wales and Scotland for some time and still see very low numbers of reports and prosecutions, so it is really important that this be seen as the first stage in that journey towards greater recognition of stalking. It is the introduction of the training and the guidance that goes along with it that will be pivotal in making the legislation work. I am sure you are all aware of that, but it is worth reiterating the point. We are still working on making sure that everyone knows what stalking is.

There are quite a lot of misconceptions about stalking. It is often associated with celebrities etc. From our perspective, the majority of stalking victims are people whom you would consider to be living everyday lives. About 55% of people who call the national stalking helpline are stalked by their ex-partner. The other 45% are not stalked by ex-partners. They may be acquaintances, neighbours, colleagues etc.

It is also important for us that we are seen as having a connection to domestic abuse and the kinds of effects that it has. There is also a contingent of victims, however, who are not stalked by their ex-partner. In service provision for victims, it is important to recognise that. Often, domestic abuse and stalking are put together, but that leaves a big gap in victim services if they are provided only by people who are experts in domestic abuse.

We were really pleased as well to see some of the nuances in the Bill around stalking. The reasonableness clause is key, particularly because there are some cases in which the extent of the stalking is not known to the victim. A victim could report that some stalking behaviours are going on, but, once the police investigate, they could identify far more stalking. It might be that photos have been taken or that there is more knowledge of the victim from the perpetrator's perspective than the victim was aware of. The idea that it is not based entirely on the way in which victims rate their fear or distress is quite important, although we always say that the victim impact is at the centre.

We really welcome the inclusion of the list of behaviours in clause 1(4), but, as we stated in our written evidence, it is key that that list not be considered to be exhaustive and that something be included to state that. Stalking behaviours evolve over time. Twenty years ago, would we have ever imagined the level of online behaviours of stalking that are now possible? During the pandemic, for example, 100% of victims who rang us had experienced some form of online stalking. It is key that the Bill make it clear that it does not have to be one of the things on that list. We have to be ready for the evolution of stalking behaviours. Stalkers will keep changing their behaviours and finding new ways in which to get into their victim's life. As I have said, that the focus is on the impact of that behaviour rather than strictly on the behaviours list is key for us. Many campaigners and commentators have talked about the fact that it is the impact on the daily life of the victim that is paramount. In some cases, the behaviours themselves often do not appear to be particularly threatening. For example, sending a bunch of flowers is not necessarily viewed as being particularly threatening, but it has to be understood in the context of stalking and the impact that it has on the victim. That is key.

Although we welcome the recognition of the offence of threatening or abusive behaviour in clause 2, we are concerned that it applies to not only a single incident but a course of conduct. That could start to cause a little bit of confusion between what stalking is and what threatening or abusive behaviour is. We see quite a lot of issues in England and Wales arising from determining the difference between stalking and harassment. Sometimes harassment charges should actually be stalking charges. We therefore suggest that "a course of conduct" be taken out and reviewed. Lack of clarity in the law will potentially cause some issues for those who have to implement it.

We welcome the introduction of stalking protection orders (SPOs). We have them in England and Wales. As is the case with any new legislation, we are having some teething problems. Getting the guidance right, and working with providers to do so, is key. It is about getting the threshold right and getting the idea around positive requirements right. For example, it is quite common to put in that people might have to attend a perpetrator programme. If you have no perpetrator programmes to refer to, it does not make sense to have that as a positive intervention. Something about investment needs to go alongside having SPOs.

The other main point that we will draw your attention to is the financial implications, particularly around stalking protection orders.

No additional funds were granted to the police when those orders were introduced, and, as a result, we now see that financial burden becoming a barrier to their implementation, because the police carry the costs of taking them to court. There is a need to bear that in mind when they are brought into being. I hope that that highlights the main points.

The Chairperson (Mr Givan): Thank you. That is helpful. I just want to pick up on one point, and I will then bring members in. There is reference to stalking protection orders and how they have been operating in England and Wales. Do you want to elaborate on some of the concerns that those orders are maybe not working out as was envisaged? In your view, whilst anecdotal, is it the case that the police may go for SPOs as their preference rather than pursuing an offence in the courts?

Ms Hildreth: One of the key issues that we are now seeing evidence of is that SPOs in England and Wales have a criminal threshold, and, when we were looking to have them introduced, we always wanted them to have a civil threshold. As a result, that is causing problems, because you have exactly the same evidence threshold for an SPO as for an investigation and a criminal charge of stalking. That is one of the problems now. It is my understanding that there have been instances when SPOs have not met the criminal threshold and, as a result, the stalking charge has not been able to be taken forward. That is one issue. The protection that they were supposed to offer is acting against what the criminal charges are then going to go on to do. We are also seeing breaches. If they are not appropriately tackled, the SPOs are not worth anything, and that is one of the key things that we see with any legislation like this. If you do not follow up on a breach, it becomes a pointless piece of protection for the victim. Those are the main things we are seeing.

The Chairperson (Mr Givan): Thank you. That is helpful.

Ms Dillon: Thank you very much for your presentation. Your last point was about the fact that the police are not being properly resourced, and, when the PSNI was before the Committee last week, we asked about this issue, so we are live to the fact that it can happen. I would like to think that it might be less of an issue here because we have only one police service, and so it is potentially easier to monitor. My thinking is that it is important that we monitor it and ensure that that is not happening, and, if it is happening, we need to come back to this. After all, the Justice Minister has brought forward this legislation, so the Justice Minister has a responsibility to resource it. We do not want to find that the PSNI is not being properly resourced, so should we be doing anything else to ensure that that is not the case? Is there anything that we can put in place, other than that monitoring piece and ensuring that, in the future, we follow up on the resourcing issue?

Ms Hildreth: Following recent discussions in England and Wales, one of the things we have called for is a task force approach around why stalking prosecutions are so low and why convictions are even lower. It might be useful, as soon as the legislation comes in, to have something in place that monitors it almost straight away, because it means that, from the get-go, you are able to see how successful it is. As I said at the beginning, although it is great to have the legislation — we have had it for a long time — we are, unfortunately, still seeing lots of issues with the understanding of what it means, and, as a result, lots of victims do not get the appropriate charge and the appropriate prosecution. That is probably the main thing.

Ms Dillon: I appreciate that, Emma. That concern was outlined by other people who have come before the Committee. It is a concern for the Committee. It is something that we added to the Domestic Abuse and Family Proceedings, Bill because that monitoring and reviewing are vital. The Department may be listening and add it in or potentially the Committee will want to do that itself, but I agree with you. Thank you very much. I appreciate your presentation and giving us the time.

Ms Hildreth: Thank you.

Miss Woods: Thank you, Emma, for that. Certainly, on Linda's point about review and monitoring, she will know where I stand on that. Excuse my ignorance on monitoring and reporting in England. Do you have annual reporting on stalking statistics and offences, charges and prosecutions?

Ms Hildreth: My understanding is that we did at one point have stats coming through in Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) data and that kind of thing. However, because of problems with the data, the CPS was going to do a review and come out with the stats again, making sure that they were in a better position. We provide data to the Office for National Statistics (ONS) for part of the victim survey about their experiences and that kind of thing. We do have some data. There is annual data, but it is one of those things: when numbers get low, it is harder to publish some of the data. One of the things that is being worked on is how we can get better stats.

Miss Woods: I like a lot of good data collection and statistics. The more data you have, the more you know what is going on, I suppose, and funding follows suit usually. You covered the financial costs of the stalking protection orders, which is a concern, even within the Bill. According to the explanatory and financial memorandum, it is going to be based on an outline business case. There is no funding attached to this

legislation. We heard last week that an indicative cost to the Police Service of Northern Ireland without monitoring and other responsibilities of SPOs could be about £800 each. Do you know, even anecdotally, how much they cost in England?

Ms Hildreth: I do not know, I am afraid. I can definitely find out and see if there is any data that we can send to you. I am sure that we can help out with that.

Miss Woods: That is great, thank you. Sorry for putting you on the spot on that.

Ms Hildreth: No, that is absolutely fine. I just do not want to pluck a figure out of the air.

Miss Woods: No, you are grand. Lastly, there was something in your submission about clause 8(4) in relation to the impact on religious beliefs, education or place of work. You mention a possibility of manipulation in that, and I have concerns about that on a number of levels. Will you elaborate a wee bit more on that and on the experiences of some of the people who you have dealt with? My concern in our legislation as it is drafted is that is has exceptions for workplace, education or religious settings. What if the stalking behaviour is occurring at the workplace, education place or religious setting? How have you squared that circle, if you have, in England, and is that something that you come across?

Ms Hildreth: That was also in our guidance on SPOs, and we raised exactly the same concern at that point. What you are seeing here is balancing the rights of the perpetrator with the rights of the victim. However, we know from the victims' perspective that workplaces are often a key place for someone to stalk, because they can guarantee that the person will be there at certain times. From our perspective, this is where training for the judiciary etc and when you are putting together an SPO will be key. You would hope that, if it is the case that there has been or could be a lot of stalking around those places, the SPO would be written in such a way that, "Yes, OK, we recognise that the perpetrator has a right to continue their daily life, but actually it is not appropriate for them to be in that area", because that is one of the key places where they would be undertaking the stalking.

That is why we keep saying that the training of the judiciary to understand some of the issues and the nature of stalking is really key. So many people have a complete misconception of what stalking is. They see it as someone hiding in a bush and that kind of thing. How does someone find out where you work and all of those sorts of things? It is because that is their fixation. That is what they want to know. They want to be where you are and to disrupt your life. Our suggestion is to get some really good training in so that the judiciary understands that you are not working against the rights of the perpetrator; you are just balancing them with the rights of the victim.

Miss Woods: Thank you, Emma. I could not agree more with you. I appreciate that.

Ms S Bradley: Emma, thank you for your presentation and submission. I will not go over some of the things that have been discussed, but I will take you back to the piece in your presentation about clause 2 and the removal of "a course of conduct.". If I am following your logic correctly, that is to eliminate the chance of more cases than need to going under this offence rather than the stalking offence. With that in mind, do you recognise that there may be a potential difficulty with the burden of proof? Is that something that has that in there? Also, I recognise that you are talking about the behaviours and the distress part; I get that. However, following that through, if that removal were to come about, would you imagine, given that you are taking out "a course of conduct." and leaving in only "a single act", the conviction piece in clause 2 also having to be revisited because it would probably reduce the level of crime that may have been perpetrated?

Ms Hildreth: One of the biggest issues that we see is the misunderstanding of what stalking is. As a result, it is often not recognised and charged appropriately. Often, someone will be charged with what you would consider to be a lesser offence. When we read that, our concern was that, by including that last "course of conduct" element, if you do not quite understand stalking and you do not have your thought around whether it is really severe alarm and distress for the victim etc, the default position might be that you start to see quite a big increase in threatening and abusive behaviours, because it feels like it is not quite that same level. How do you prove the difference? One bit that I put in the evidence is that it is quite unusual for us to see courses of conduct where there is not serious distress. If you tried to differentiate by saying, "Well, there's a course of conduct that has serious distress and there's a course of conduct that doesn't have serious distress", how would you pitch that? We would always say that, if there is a course of conduct, it is stalking, because generally there is serious distress involved and it is impacting on that victim's life, normally quite substantially.

What was the second point? Was it about sentencing?

Ms S Bradley: Yes, it is about the downgrading. You are trying to eliminate the possibility of the downgrading of the offence. If that left a smaller margin so that only "a single act" would come under clause 2, does it follow that we would have to revisit the convictions under that clause?

Ms Hildreth: It is difficult for me to say, because it would depend on what would be charged or what could fall under that. Just thinking about it, the other thing about having this offence is that you want to ensure that the course of conduct is recognised, so there is still a danger that, with the single offence, you could get lots of individual incidents of what amounts to stalking being charged as individual offences of threatening or abusive behaviour. Again, that might be something that you want to monitor regardless to see how the two interplay with each other. I do not want to make a statement about downgrading the actual sentence without understanding what we might envisage being charged under that offence. For us, it is really clear that work has to be done so that the course of conduct is recognised. Too often, incidents are seen as single incidents on their own. Once there is a course of conduct, it is recognised as stalking; it is not seen as something else. That is what we are trying to avoid with this slight overlap. I hope that that is helpful.

Ms S Bradley: Yes, it is. I absolutely follow your logic. It is about recognising that, if there is a course of conduct, it is stalking —

Ms Hildreth: Yes.

Ms S Bradley: — and it should not be framed anywhere other than in the stalking conviction piece. I am just wondering where that leads. It is almost an insurance piece in the legislation, so that if, for whatever reason, a conviction cannot be brought, something else is there. I need to understand better that

but I appreciate that. It is a very worthwhile submission. Thank you, Emma. That is very helpful.

The Chairperson (Mr Givan): Thank you, Sinéad.

Mr Frew: The conversation that you have just had with Sinéad is very striking. I cannot think of a course of conduct that exemplifies stalking that should not or could not be encapsulated in clause 1. I struggle with that. I think that what has happened is that clause 2 is, for want of a better phrase, a copy-and-paste job from Scottish legislation to try to cover all angles, and I am not sure that it does its job properly. It could then do violence to the whole Bill. Have I given a fair reflection? Do you share that concern?

Ms Hildreth: In our submission, we welcome the recognition of that offence, if it has value and if we are lucky enough that the victim rings up the first time that they are victimised and they are able to get some kind of criminal sanction against the perpetrator for threatening or abusive behaviour. However, we know that generally, when victims make contact with the criminal justice system, there is already a course of conduct. We do not necessarily say that there is no value in the clause; it may be that things can be prosecuted under it that, off the top of my head, I cannot think of right now. I agree, however, that the course of conduct stuff is significant for us; generally, by the time that victims make contact, the course of conduct is well established. It is not for me to say that there is not necessarily any space for the offence of threatening or abusive behaviour; our concern is that we see too often, particularly in England and Wales, that things are charged as harassment rather than stalking because we have this overlap between the two offences. You could leave a gap; at the same time, you may just get people to actually charge stalking when it is there.

Mr Frew: I get that. We have pushed for stalking legislation because, over here, we use harassment legislation, which is not at all compatible with stalking. We have fought hard against that so that we have got a stalking Bill. To me, clause 2, "Offence of threatening or abusive behaviour", is already encapsulated in law, probably many times, including in the Offences Against the Person Act 1861. If the Bill is designed to tackle stalking behaviour, I am still not convinced that clause 2 is required; moreover, there might be a danger in the legislation that, when people are charged, they drop down to a lesser charge that is contained in the Bill. That concerns me. We might remove the "course of conduct" line and keep it as "a single act", but I do not know if that is what it is designed to do. That concerns me.

When you talked about clause 1, you said that you were happy to see the list of conducts or activities. Yes, I agree that it is good to get that defined and itemised activity. I do not know if you have the detail in front of you, but do you have any concerns with clause 1(4)(j), which is:

I am really concerned. Is it clear to you that reasonableness is only really activated when one is "acting in any other way"? Is that the catch-all that you require? Is it clear that reasonableness only really kicks in "in any other way" and not in the activities found in 1(4)(a) to 1(4)(i)?

Ms Hildreth: There is a reasonableness clause under clause 1(1)(b)(ii). The person commits an offence where it:

For us, the impact on the victim is the key element . It is where somebody else would say, "That is not a reasonable kind of behaviour", or, "That is not a normal type of thing". We would like to see added to the list of behaviours something along the lines of, "This list is not exhaustive. These are not the only kind of things that you could have". You asked whether clause 1(4)(j) is the catch-all that we require. I say no, it is not. We would want something that says, "This list of behaviours is not exhaustive". We have it written into our guidance; that is the catch-all that we have. It basically says that, "This is the list, but actually these are not the only things that you could have".

Mr Frew: I get that being put into guidance, but is it really appropriate to put into legislation a line stating that, "This list is not exhaustive, and it could be anything else"? Would that be good law?

Ms Hildreth: I am not a lawyer, so I cannot necessarily advise on the exact status of that. We would just like to make sure that it is clear somewhere. I am sure that there is an argument that it does not make any sense to put it in the legislation, but there is probably an argument to say that it could be in it. I cannot be more specific than that, I am afraid.

Mr Frew: I understand. Clause 1(4)(b) states that "conduct" means:

I have put a footnote beside that to ask, "Does this include online?" I know that clause 1(4)(d) mentions the internet, but does that help? Technology moves on. Is clause 1(4)(b) future-proofed because it says "by any means"?

Ms Hildreth: It could be. However, again, because it talks about "contacting ... by any means", I guess that, if someone was looking at it down to the letter of the law, they could say that they were not trying to contact and were just trying to gift or —. Do you see what I mean?

Mr Frew: Yes.

Ms Hildreth: The "by any means" phrase is good in that sentence, but I guess that, if someone was looking specifically at the law and how it is applied, they could say, "Oh, 'by any means' applies only to 'contacting'", and you could then get into a debate around what contact actually entails.

Mr Frew: Yes. To go back to the exhaustive list, I would rather see a list that is more detailed and itemised. One activity that I think should be considered in this is the making up of what I would describe as a picture wall. There is probably a more nuanced police, scientific or psychological term, but you know what I mean. It is where someone is so obsessed with a person that they basically give over a room of their house to pictures of that person. To me, that is not natural behaviour. To me, that is quite dangerous behaviour. In something like that, there is not actually contact between A and B but the perpetrator is doing something without the victim knowing about it, namely gathering photographs and displaying those on a wall. I know that that activity is cause for concern, but should it be articulated in the Bill? If so, are there any other activities that should be included?

Ms Hildreth: That goes back to what we said about that first reasonableness clause coming in. As I said at the beginning of the conversation, in those situations, the victim might not even know the extent to which they are being monitored. For us, it is that first part that is key. It is about thinking through how a reasonable person would see it, as opposed to always thinking —. If the victim does not know, the victim may not feel fear, distress etc. We look at the list of behaviours a lot and think, "Would there be value in adding more behaviours?" However, I think that the list would just go on and on and on if we looked at every single type of stalking behaviour. The most common ones are probably those that are captured here: contacting, monitoring behaviour, loitering, watching, spying etc. If we tried to capture everything, the list would just keep on going. The other thing is that we do not want to provide a framework for stalkers, if that makes sense. We do not want to provide ideas, which is why we like the open-ended nature of the list. Stalkers will always think of something that we have never seen or thought about before, so it is quite useful for us to have that as open-ended and not list everything. We do not want to provide ideas.

Mr Frew: OK. Thank you very much for your time.

The Chairperson (Mr Givan): Emma, thank you very much for taking the time to join the Committee today. It was very much appreciated and very helpful.

Ms Hildreth: Thank you very much for having me.

The Chairperson (Mr Givan): Thank you, Emma; pleasure.