Luke Taylor

Let me start by highlighting my support for new clauses 85 and 86, which deal with neighbourhood policing. They would ensure that police forces are required to practise community policing “at a level necessary to ensure effective community engagement and crime prevention”. It is a shame that the hon. Member for Huntingdon (Ben Obese-Jecty) is not in his place to intervene for a definition on that. It is about engaging with local communities and ward panels to define the appropriate levels in their areas—which I am sure he would support— rather than taking a top-down view. The new clauses would compel the Secretary of State to produce an annual report on the state of community policing. We have outlined a way of funding that too: 20% of future police grants would be ringfenced for community policing activities, literally making crime pay—in the reverse of the manner in which that phrase is normally used—by allocating funds recovered from the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 to community policing. That is important, because commitments to policing numbers mean little without serious action to reverse the scale of forthcoming cuts, such as the cuts of 1,419 officers and staff that we in London are about to experience this year. Indeed, as the Metropolitan Police Commissioner recently told the BBC, “ambition and money go alongside each other”. I urge Members across the House to support those new clauses. I will now turn to my new clauses 95 and 96. It is good to see the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, the hon. Member for Birmingham Yardley (Jess Phillips), in her place to continue a conversation that we have had many times on stalking. Stalking is a heinous crime: it throws lives into chaos, leaves victims in life-changing and near-constant terror, and too often goes unpunished. The current legislation forces too many victims to meet an improbably high bar of evidence, forcing them to jump through hoops to be a perfect victim, just to prove the scale of the threat against them. I have heard from victims in my Sutton and Cheam constituency who have had their lives completely upended by their stalkers, and who are completely at their wit’s end after facing so many obstacles to getting justice. It is clear that the two relevant sections of the Protection from Harassment Act 1997 are the root of those obstacles. The distinction between a lesser section 2A offence and a more severe section 4A offence is failing victims and fails to recognise the total scope of stalking. Successful prosecutions of section 4A offences are far too hard to achieve. The burden of proof is placed so heavily on the victim.