Labour’s Preet Kaur Gill has welcomed tough new action against perpetrators of stalking and spiking.
The Government has this week introduced new legislation to deliver on its commitment to tackle the scourge of violence against women and girls.
The Bill contains a range of new measures to strengthen enforcement and better protect victims, such as making it easier for courts to issue Stalking Protection Orders, introducing a new offence for spiking and improving information sharing with victims.
Gill has worked with the community to tackle spiking in Birmingham. In 2021, she organised a meeting with the police, council and nightclub bosses to agree on actions to take to keep women safe.
Several reforms seek to tackle the rise of stalking specifically, which has increased by 10 % over the past year. In the West Midlands Police Force Area, over 37,127 stalking and harassment offences were recorded by the police.
Not knowing the identity of an online stalker can be extremely unsettling with victims left in the dark as to whether the offender is known to them, which can put them in more danger.
New ‘Right to Know’ guidance will be brought into force, empowering the police to release the identity of an online stalker at the earliest opportunity. This will provide victims who are subject to this chilling crime with greater reassurance that they will be quickly told the identity of the individual threatening them online.
Stalking Protection Orders (SPOs) can also ban stalkers from going within a certain distance of their victims or contacting them and can also compel them to attend a perpetrator programme to address the root causes of their behaviour.
Currently, however, these can only be applied when an offender is convicted and when a protection order was in place before they went on trial.
A BBC investigation earlier this year found that since SPOs were introduced back in 2020, just 1,439 had been issued by the 40 police forces. This is despite over 440,000 offences being recorded by the police over the same period.
Under Labour’s new measures, courts will be able to directly apply protection orders on those who have been acquitted if there is enough evidence to suggest that they are still a risk to the victim.
Preet Kaur Gill, MP for Birmingham, Edgbaston said:
“This Labour government is expanding support for victims of stalking and spiking in the West Midlands. Victims show tremendous courage to come forward and seek help. Our new orders will make that as straightforward as possible.
“Labour is committed to halving violence against women and girls in a decade, and today we are beginning our work to make good on that promise.
“For too long governments have treated violence against women and girls as an inevitability instead of the emergency that it is. This government speaks with a single voice: on our watch victims will receive the vital protections they so desperately deserve”.
ENDS
Notes to editors
• Crime statistics broken down by police force area are provided by the ONS and can be accessed here - Crime in England and Wales: Police Force Area data tables - Office for National Statistics.
• A summary of the number of offences recorded by the police can also be found here - Crime in England and Wales - Office for National Statistics
• Statistics on the number of SPOs issued by the police provided by the BBC can be found here - Tiny proportion of stalking cases result in protection orders - BBC News
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