Asked by: Nadine Dorries (Conservative - Mid Bedfordshire)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many police officers in England and Wales have been trained on the law on stalking to date; and what further such training is planned.
Answered by Norman Baker
The College of Policing sets standards and provides relevant training products and services to police forces. This includes a College of Policing training package on stalking, which was completed 56,748 times between October 2012 and 30 September 2014 by police officers and staff in England and Wales, and continues to be available.
Neither the College of Policing nor the Home Office holds information which breaks this figure down by the number of police officers and staff in England and Wales that have completed the training.
In 2013-14, 743 prosecutions were commenced under the new stalking legislation. This is a significant increase from 2012-13 and shows that the legislation is taking effect.
We are also working with the police and Crown Prosecution Service to raise awareness and improve professional knowledge.
To ensure prosecutors’ knowledge is continuously refreshed, in April 2014, the CPS launched a specific e-learning module on stalking which focused on victim support, working with the police and ensuring a strong case is built from the start. The College of Policing is also undertaking a review of how stalking incidents are investigated by the police. This will include how the police understand what constitutes a course of conduct in policing, how the police support victims, and further training on the appropriate use of Police Information Notices.
Since April 2014, offences of stalking and harassment are being reported separately in Police Recorded Crime figures. This will allow us to monitor the impact of the legislation more effectively.
Convicted stalkers will already be captured on the Police National Computer. We are working to make better use of existing databases and improve connectivity and information sharing rather than creating new databases or registers for each and every offence.
Asked by: Nadine Dorries (Conservative - Mid Bedfordshire)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps her Department is taking to monitor the effects of section 2A and 4A of the Protection from Harassment Act 1997.
Answered by Norman Baker
The College of Policing sets standards and provides relevant training products and services to police forces. This includes a College of Policing training package on stalking, which was completed 56,748 times between October 2012 and 30 September 2014 by police officers and staff in England and Wales, and continues to be available.
Neither the College of Policing nor the Home Office holds information which breaks this figure down by the number of police officers and staff in England and Wales that have completed the training.
In 2013-14, 743 prosecutions were commenced under the new stalking legislation. This is a significant increase from 2012-13 and shows that the legislation is taking effect.
We are also working with the police and Crown Prosecution Service to raise awareness and improve professional knowledge.
To ensure prosecutors’ knowledge is continuously refreshed, in April 2014, the CPS launched a specific e-learning module on stalking which focused on victim support, working with the police and ensuring a strong case is built from the start. The College of Policing is also undertaking a review of how stalking incidents are investigated by the police. This will include how the police understand what constitutes a course of conduct in policing, how the police support victims, and further training on the appropriate use of Police Information Notices.
Since April 2014, offences of stalking and harassment are being reported separately in Police Recorded Crime figures. This will allow us to monitor the impact of the legislation more effectively.
Convicted stalkers will already be captured on the Police National Computer. We are working to make better use of existing databases and improve connectivity and information sharing rather than creating new databases or registers for each and every offence.
Asked by: Nadine Dorries (Conservative - Mid Bedfordshire)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether the Government plans to introduce a register for serial stalkers.
Answered by Norman Baker
The College of Policing sets standards and provides relevant training products and services to police forces. This includes a College of Policing training package on stalking, which was completed 56,748 times between October 2012 and 30 September 2014 by police officers and staff in England and Wales, and continues to be available.
Neither the College of Policing nor the Home Office holds information which breaks this figure down by the number of police officers and staff in England and Wales that have completed the training.
In 2013-14, 743 prosecutions were commenced under the new stalking legislation. This is a significant increase from 2012-13 and shows that the legislation is taking effect.
We are also working with the police and Crown Prosecution Service to raise awareness and improve professional knowledge.
To ensure prosecutors’ knowledge is continuously refreshed, in April 2014, the CPS launched a specific e-learning module on stalking which focused on victim support, working with the police and ensuring a strong case is built from the start. The College of Policing is also undertaking a review of how stalking incidents are investigated by the police. This will include how the police understand what constitutes a course of conduct in policing, how the police support victims, and further training on the appropriate use of Police Information Notices.
Since April 2014, offences of stalking and harassment are being reported separately in Police Recorded Crime figures. This will allow us to monitor the impact of the legislation more effectively.
Convicted stalkers will already be captured on the Police National Computer. We are working to make better use of existing databases and improve connectivity and information sharing rather than creating new databases or registers for each and every offence.
Asked by: Nadine Dorries (Conservative - Mid Bedfordshire)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many complaints of stalking were recorded by the police in England and Wales in (a) 2011-12, (b) 2012-13 and (c) 2013-14.
Answered by Norman Baker
The Home Office collects data on the number of crimes recorded by the police but not how many complaints the police receive.
Prior to 1 April 2014, offences relating to stalking recorded by the police were included in the offence classification of harassment and cannot be
identified separately. From the 1 April 2014 these offences have been supplied to the Home Office as a separate classification of stalking. Therefore data are only available for the months April to June 2014, when the police recorded 695 offences. They are published in the quarterly Office for National Statistics publication of ‘Crime in England and Wales’.
The most recent data are available in Table A4 of the appendix tables in this link:
http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/crime-stats/crime-statistics/period-ending-june-2014/index.html
Asked by: Nadine Dorries (Conservative - Mid Bedfordshire)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what plans his Department has to develop programmes for perpetrators of stalking (a) in the community and (b) in custody.
Answered by Andrew Selous - Second Church Estates Commissioner
I refer the Hon Member to the answer I gave on 21 October 2014 (210680 and 210770).
Asked by: Nadine Dorries (Conservative - Mid Bedfordshire)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what plans his Department has to issue revised sentencing guidelines in respect of the new offences of stalking.
Answered by Mike Penning
Sentencing guidelines are issued by the independent Sentencing Council.
Asked by: Nadine Dorries (Conservative - Mid Bedfordshire)
Question to the Attorney General:
To ask the Attorney General, how many people have been charged under the provisions of section 4a of the Protection from Harassment Act 1997 since 25 November 2012.
Answered by Robert Buckland
I refer the Hon. Member to the answer I gave to the Hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd on 23rd October 2014 (questions, 211141, 211143 and 211144). The previous answer included tables detailing the number of offences charged under Sections 4A(1)(a)(b)(i), Sections 4A(1)(a)(b)(ii) and 2A(1) of the 1997 Act broken down by each police force in England and Wales.
Asked by: Nadine Dorries (Conservative - Mid Bedfordshire)
Question to the Attorney General:
To ask the Attorney General, how many people have been charged under the provisions of section 2a of the Protection from Harassment Act 1997 since 25 November 2012.
Answered by Robert Buckland
I refer the Hon. Member to the answer I gave to the Hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd on 23rd October 2014 (questions, 211141, 211143 and 211144). The previous answer included tables detailing the number of offences charged under Sections 4A(1)(a)(b)(i), Sections 4A(1)(a)(b)(ii) and 2A(1) of the 1997 Act broken down by each police force in England and Wales.
Asked by: Nadine Dorries (Conservative - Mid Bedfordshire)
Question to the Attorney General:
To ask the Attorney General, how many employees of the Crown Prosecution Service have been trained on the law on stalking to date; and what further such training is planned.
Answered by Robert Buckland
The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) has developed two online e-Learning courses on all types of stalking. The “Cyber Crime: Cyber Stalking” course includes cyber stalking, non-cyber stalking and harassment. The “Stalking and Harassment” course (which was released in April 2014) deals specifically with stalking and harassment offences.
The CPS maintains a central record of the number of employees who have been trained on the law on stalking by way of the e-Learning courses. 1581 of its employees in post on 23 October 2014 have completed all elements of either of the e-Learning courses in the period between 1 November 2012 (the month when the Cyber Stalking e-Learning module was revised to include the new stalking offences) and 23 October 2014.
In October 2014 the CPS issued follow-up, face-to-face training material on the Stalking and Harassment offences. It can be used flexibly at a local CPS level; accordingly, its delivery is not recorded on a central database.
Although there are no current plans for new training products to be launched, the CPS will continue to train its staff in this critical area of work.
Asked by: Nadine Dorries (Conservative - Mid Bedfordshire)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps he is taking to ensure the same standard of care across the country for those diagnosed with prostate cancer.
Answered by Jane Ellison
To help reduce regional variations, the Care Quality Commission (CQC) is increasingly incorporating information from accreditation and peer review programmes into its assessments of National Health Service trusts' services, including the National Cancer Peer Review Programme. The CQC also intends to use data from the national clinical audit which is being developed for prostate cancer. In addition, national statistics on waiting times experienced by patients with suspected and diagnosed cancers continue to be collected, monitored and published in order to improve equity of access to cancer services and to contribute to an improvement in survival rates.
The results of the latest national Cancer Patient Experience Survey (CPES) from 2013 show that, whilst variations between trusts still exist, the overall range of variation for many indicators has narrowed. For example, in 2010 the proportion of patients saying that they had been given the name of a Clinical Nurse Specialist ranged from 92% in the highest performing trust to 59% in the poorest performing trust (33 points); by 2013 this had reduced to 97% to 76% (21 points).
NHS Improving Quality (NHS IQ) will be doing a suite of work across all surveys to understand what the barriers are to implementing change and to showcase best practice where real improvements can be demonstrated.
NHS England is working with NHS IQ to develop better ways of using the CPES data within the NHS in order to maximise the impact of the survey, to be able to work with successful and struggling organisations to spread best practice for example.