Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment her Department has made of the adequacy of resourcing of information sharing between police forces in stalking cases; and what steps he is taking to improve this process.

The Government is committed to tackling stalking as part of its mission to halve violence against women and girls in the next decade. While the handling and investigation of cases is an operational matter for policing, it is vital that they have effective information sharing protocols in place between forces. This is important in stalking cases where robustly managing perpetrators and supporting victims as early as possible is essential for reducing harm.

To enable this, police forces have information sharing procedures in place underpinned by the College of Policing’s Authorised Professional Practice on information sharing. This helps ensure the timely and lawful sharing of information in stalking cases.

To improve the overall police response to violence against women and girls and child sexual abuse, the Home Office has invested £13.1 million funding to launch a new National Centre for VAWG and Public Protection (NCVPP). This funding includes an uplift of nearly £2 million to enable policing to better target these crimes, including through better information sharing.