Labour’s Nick Thomas-Symonds has welcomed tough new action against perpetrators of stalking and spiking in Torfaen.

The Government’s Crime & Policing Bill will receive its second reading in the House of Commons today (Monday 10th March) 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.

Several reforms seek to tackle the rise of stalking specifically, which has increased by 10% over the past year. In Gwent, over 8500 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.

Nick Thomas-Symonds MP said:

“This Labour government is expanding support for victims of stalking and spiking in Torfaen. Victims show tremendous courage to come forward and seek help. Our new orders will make that as straightforward as possible.

“Labour committed to halve 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.”