My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, for speaking to these amendments.
We return to stalking; stalking is stalking us yet again, as I am afraid it will continue to do through time immemorial, and until and unless we really grab hold of this. The case for independent stalking advocates is fairly undeniable. One can scarcely imagine what it must feel like when you do not know where to turn, you do not really understand what is going on, and the people that you are turning to for help clearly do not really understand what is going on either. It must be a pretty horrendous state to be in, and the independent stalking advocate can and does make an enormous difference. They can undertake risk assessments and work with the different authorities to ensure that safety plans are put in place to protect victims—and, importantly, where children are involved, those around them—from further harm.
The research that has been done by the Suzy Lamplugh Trust indicates that: 77% of stalking victims are not able to access an independent stalking advocate; 69% could find no advocacy support of any kind whatever; only 4% access support from a non-specialist service; and only 15% of victims were referred to an independent stalking advocate by the police. So even the police themselves, in 85% of cases, failed to point the potential stalking victim in the direction of help.
The demand for such stalking advocates far exceeds current capacity. National stalking services supported a combined total of just under 12,500 stalking victims in 2021, and there were 1.5 million stalking victims in total. Noble Lords can do the maths; that is not a highly impressive percentage. In some parts of the country, there are effectively no local specialist supporting services whatever.
I mentioned earlier that I had the privilege of speaking with Gracie Spinks’s father, Richard Spinks, a couple of weeks ago. One of the extreme examples of the more than 40 reports that Gracie made to the police over an extensive period was a case when, after she had pointed out that she was again being threatened, the police undertook a search in the vicinity of where she lived, and they found a bag of weapons—knives, hammers and so on. What did they conclude from having found that cache of weapons? They told Gracie that they were probably theatre props. Clearly, the officers involved had undergone extensive training, but probably in how to supervise playgroups, rather than in helping victims of crime. That shows the gulf between the sort of support, help and advice that one might expect as a victim of stalking and what actually happens.
As we mentioned on earlier groupings, at the end of 2022 the Suzy Lamplugh Trust submitted a super-complaint against the police, outlining systemic issues such as those that we have talked about in previous groups. One of the recommendations was that the College of Policing
“mandate that all officers that deal with cases of stalking complete training by a specialist stalking training provider, in order to adequately identify, investigate and—
this is very important—
“risk assess cases of stalking”.
We referred earlier to the pilot that the Suzy Lamplugh Trust ran in Cheshire. I conclude by giving some quotes from the senior police officers involved in the study and what they observed happening through the results of this programme. One front-line officer said:
“It’s an injustice that in nearly half of all stalking cases unrelated to prior intimate relationships, victims must rely on luck for access to specialised, local advocacy—something that should be a non-negotiable right. Including Independent Stalking Advocates … in the Victims and Prisoners Bill isn’t just an option; it’s an imperative step towards rectifying this imbalance.”
Finally, the Police and Crime Commissioner for Cheshire said:
“Cheshire’s example shows that multi-agency working delivers results for victims and it benefits all agencies involved. The impact of ISAs”—
independent stalking advocates—
“here is clear to see, and I believe it would hugely enhance our collective ability to deliver justice for victims of stalking if they were to be included in the Bill”.