Baroness Brinton (LD)

My Lords, I have all three amendments in this group. They aim to improve the arrangements for cases of service stalking. Amendment 21 wants to create a service stalking protection notice—SSPN—by mirroring the existing framework for the service domestic abuse protection notices, giving service police an equivalent power to provide immediate protection orders pending the determination or withdrawal of an application for a service stalking protection order. I am very grateful to the Suzy Lamplugh Trust and Aurora New Dawn for their briefings and for correspondence in recent weeks. Before going into the detail of these three amendments, I want to thank the Minister for his letter of a few days ago, following Second Reading. He says very clearly in that letter that the changes I want in order to strengthen the protections against stalking are not necessary because “we fully recognise the importance of ensuring that the Service Police and other relevant personnel have the skills and knowledge necessary to identify stalking behaviour, assess risk and make effective use of the new protective measures”. I am remembering discussions with Ministers in 2012, 2016, 2019 and 2022, when we tried to do the same for non-service stalking arrangements. Every single time we have not put the detail in the Bill it has gone wrong further down the process and has had to come back to Parliament to be corrected because, unfortunately, stalking, which is itself a very unpleasant crime, can quite often lead to murder. Therefore, some of these things that I am proposing are very much to protect the victim.