The Minister of State, Ministry of Defence (Lord Coaker) (Lab)

First, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, for bringing forward these crucial and really important amendments, and my noble friend Lady Royall for what she said in support of them. On the point about the whistleblower review raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Goldie—I know the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, and her noble friend Lady Kramer have also been involved in looking at that—we hope to publish it, and the expectation is that we will do that in the next two weeks. I hope that is of some reassurance. The idea is to have that published with a Written Ministerial Statement. As soon as I have absolute certainty about that, I will let both noble Baronesses know. In answer to what specifically the Government are doing to try to tackle some of the culture with respect to women and girls and protection in those circumstances, the whistleblower review is one part of that. The contributions that both noble Baronesses made have substantially improved what the Government were proposing, so I am grateful for that. I will just make a couple of general remarks before coming to the specifics of the amendments tabled by the noble Baroness. The Government are clear that stalking is a serious and often escalating crime that can have a devastating impact on victims and their families, and we are committed to ensuring that victims are protected, perpetrators are held to account and agencies have the powers that they need to intervene at the earliest opportunity. As has been said, stalking behaviour can cause significant physical and psychological harm and must never be dismissed as trivial or harmless. The Government’s approach is therefore focused on prevention, protection and prosecution, supported by robust safeguarding arrangements and effective multi-agency working. Stalking protection orders provide an important tool to protect victims before harm escalates, enabling restrictions and positive requirements to be imposed where necessary to manage risk and prevent further offending. The reason I said in my letter to the noble Baroness that Amendment 21 was not necessary is not that interim stalking orders are not important. I draw the attention of the Committee to new Section 236Q, where there are interim service stalking protection orders on the face of the Bill. Without being pedantic, I know they are not interim stalking protection notices, and I suspect that may be the point that she wants to raise, but the Government recognise the need for interim measures to have the protection that is needed while a full application is still pending. I am informed by people who understand these processes better than I do that being an order rather than a notice means that there are more significant protection measures available to deal with any possible breach of an interim order. I just raise that point with the noble Baroness, and no doubt we can discuss that either further in Committee or another time.