Stalking law plans 'half-hearted'

David Cameron's plans to bring in a new law of stalking will leave the police needing to prove a fear of violence and will not solve the problems with the current system, Labour has said.

Shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper said the plans risked being "half-hearted and over-complicated" and would not give victims the protection they needed.

Her criticism came after the Prime Minister told victims at a Downing Street reception to mark International Women's Day that the Government was determined to ensure "justice is done".

But Labour said bringing in two new offences in England and Wales - stalking, and stalking where there is a fear of violence - would leave police and prosecutors with the same problems.

Proving a fear of violence "has been very hard to make work in practice and has meant too many serious cases fell through the net", Ms Cooper said.

Tougher laws have been
announced to protect victims of stalking

"Under the government's proposals there is a serious risk that low sentencing will continue and many persistent stalkers could still be out of prison within weeks free to continue their behaviour. The Government must not waste time with half-hearted measures which deny victims the protection they need."

She called for a system based on the Scottish model instead, saying the Government should back a Labour amendment to the Protection of Freedoms Bill on the issue in the House of Lords on Monday.

But Mr Cameron said the Government was explicitly criminalising stalking, which he said "makes life a living hell for victims", to "show beyond doubt that stalking is a crime".

Home Secretary Theresa May added: "Stalking is an issue which affects many lives, often in devastating ways. That is why we are taking it seriously and introducing these new offences. Offenders need to know that they will be brought to justice for making others' lives a misery."

Police will also be given new powers of entry to investigate stalking offences, the Home Office said. At the moment, officers only have a right of entry in respect of conduct that puts people in fear of violence.

©Press Association 2012

Eurosceptic anger at Cameron U-turn

David Cameron is facing a backlash from Tory eurosceptics after abandoning his opposition to the European Court of Justice being used to enforce a new fiscal compact for the eurozone.

The Prime Minister has previously insisted that European Union institutions could not be used for a new pact because Britain will not be a signatory.

After his dramatic use of the veto last month to block a new treaty, he said the European Commission and the European Court of Justice could only carry out policies applying to all 27 member states.

David Cameron said the UK would only
make any challenge to a new EU treaty
 if the country's interests were 'threatened'

However after a further EU summit in Brussels, Mr Cameron did not press his case against the use of the institutions and said Britain would only make any challenge if its interests were "threatened".

The Prime Minister said: "We don't want to hold up the eurozone doing what is necessary to solve the crisis as long as it doesn't damage our national interests, so it's good that the new treaty states clearly that it cannot encroach upon the competences of the Union and that they must not take measures that undermine the EU single market."

He added: "The key point here for me is what is in our national interest, which is for them to get on and sort out the mess that is the euro. That's in our national interest. We will be watching like a hawk and if there is any sign that they are going to encroach on the single market we will take the appropriate action, if I may put it that way.

"The principle that the EU institutions can only be used with the permission of 27 (member states) has not changed. In as much as this (new treaty) is about fiscal union, fine: if it encroaches on the single market, not fine."

Tory MPs who were jubilant after Mr Cameron wielded the veto voiced their fears ahead of the summit that the Prime Minister would allow EU institutions to be used to police the new pact. The matter is likely to be discussed at the 1922 Committee of Tory backbenchers on Tuesday. Mr Cameron will report back to the Commons on the latest summit.

Leader of Britain's Tory MEPs Martin Callanan said government policy on the fiscal compact had changed, partly because of a need to mollify Nick Clegg, the pro-Europe Deputy Prime Minister.

Mr Callanan said: "There is no doubt that the Government's position has altered since the December summit when they were insisting the institutions could not be used I blame a combination of appeasing Nick Clegg, who is desperate to sign anything the EU puts in front of him, and the practical reality that this pact is actually quite hard to prevent: the Government would have to ask the European Court of Justice to rule against itself having a role."

Making sense of the Tory lead

YouGov's latest poll puts the Tories ahead by 5 points. YouGov President Peter Kellner explains why we can be confident that the Tories really are ahead

YouGov’s latest poll, showing the Conservatives five points ahead, made the front page of the Sunday Times and livened up the blogosphere. No wonder. It is the biggest Tory lead since September 2010, and the first since then to show the Conservatives doing well enough to secure an overall majority in the House of Commons when our figures are translated into parliamentary seats.


And yet, as both I and my YouGov colleague, Anthony Wells, frequently make clear, individual voting intention polls should be regarded with care. A sudden lurch in the figures might be real, or a sampling fluke, or a mixture of the two.


Most of the time, sampling fluctuations matter little. If a poll finds that 75% of the public consider Ethelred to be unready, few people will care if the true figure is 72% or 78% – we can be sure that a large majority wants him to be better prepared. A three-point margin of error seldom makes any practical difference to the conclusions to be drawn from our polls.


Voting intentions are different. The figures that tend to receive the widest publicity are those where small variations have real political significance. So, when our poll for the Sunday Times put the Tories on 41% and Labour on 36%, then – assuming a three point margin of error – the true figures could be Labour 39%, Conservative 38%.


However, I don’t think that is the case. Here are two reasons why.


Firstly, when we say a polling figure has a 3% margin of error, we are operating a statistical convention. Theory tells us that, assuming the poll is properly conducted, the likeliest truth is at or very close to the figures we report. A 2% error is less likely than a 1% error, a 3% error is less likely than a 2% error, and so on.

Conservatives: 5pt ahead

The good news, then, is that a 3% error is unlikely. The bad news is that 4% error, or even a 5% error, is not impossible. When pollsters talk about a 3% error, they mean that we can be sure 19 times out of 20 that the true figure is within three points of what a poll reports. But there is a one in twenty chance of a rogue poll, which is out by more than three points. So, the chance that the true state of the parties at the time of our Sunday Times poll is that they were level-pegging, or that Labour was ahead, is pretty small. (Remember that the one-in-twenty calculation covers errors in both directions. In other words there is a one-in-forty chance that we significantly overstated Tory support – and another one-in-forty chance that we have badly UNDERstated their true figure.)


The second reason why I am sure the Tories have moved into the lead this month is that we can look at more than one survey. In nine surveys we have conducted within the past fortnight, we have detected Tory leads on five occasions, Labour leads twice, and level-pegging also twice. This is a far cry from our pre-Christmas polls when Labour leads were routine.


Moreover, our last four polls have shown this trend:


Jan 16-17: Con 39, Lab 40
Jan 17-18: Con 40, Lab 39
Jan 18-19: Con 41, Lab 38
Jan 19-20: Con 41, Lab 36




This pattern indicates one of the advantages of daily polling. If we see a sudden change, especially where there is no obvious reason for it, we are normally able to tell within a day or two whether it is an outlier. This time, our five-point lead fits a pattern. So, although I would not bet the farm on the precise level of the Tory lead, I am now certain, for the first time since December 2010, that the Conservatives really are ahead. Previous Tory leads were narrower, and fleeting, and could be explained by sampling fluctuations. Were we, like other companies, to measure voting intentions only once or twice a month, I would be less certain that we had avoided the curse of the rogue poll.

YouGov President Peter Kellner

Why have the Tories taken the lead? Here’s my guess. It has little to do with anything ministers have done. The problem lies with Labour. The stream of bad publicity for Ed Miliband over the past fortnight has damaged the party (as well as his own rating, which continues to deteriorate). Some public sector workers may feel badly about Ed Balls’s tough language on public sector pay. And last week’s spat between Miliband and the unions on this issue may have done further damage. Voters don’t like the spectacle of divided parties. I believe Miliband could retrieve his, and his party’s, ratings if he fights this battle to a conclusion and is seen to win decisively. Then voters would admire his courage and start to see in him a real leader.


Remember Neil Kinnock and Militant: while Labour’s leader at the time was engaged in trench warfare with the far Left, he was unpopular; but when he launched his ferocious assault in Bournemouth in Labour’s 1985 conference, and put his opponents to flight, his ratings soared. In short, voters don’t like internecine battles, but they love decisive victories. Labour and Miliband are suffering from the former, and have not (yet?) achieved the latter.


One final thought on sampling variability. Yesterday morning, radio and television reports spoke of Newt Gingrich’s 'unexpected' victory in South Carolina’s Republican primary election. Nobody watching the polls sensibly would have described it in this way. The pollster.com website listed twenty polls conducted within the final ten days of the campaign. See the website here.


These showed a clear trend, with Mitt Romney’s support sliding, and Gingrich gaining ground. It looks as if Gingrich moved ahead on Tuesday or Wednesday of last week, and continued to surge until Saturday’s vote.


Now, within that clear overall pattern, there were wide disparities between individual polls. Surveys conducted in the first half of last week showed Romney’s support varying between 26 and 37%, and Gingrich varying between 24 and 33%. It would be – indeed, was – simply easy to say that the polls were all over the place. And, given the small samples of likely Republican voters in some of the polls, and hence the increased risk of sampling error, wide variations between individual polls were always likely. Yet Gingrich led in each of the seven polls conducted between last Wednesday and Friday, and by the widest margin in the poll with the latest fieldwork.


Six of the previous seven polls, conducted over the previous three days, had shown Romney ahead, and by an average of nine points. It was perfectly possible to find fault with individual surveys and to treat some of their sample sizes with caution – and yet be confident by Saturday morning that Gingrich had taken the lead and was heading for victory.


Moral of the story: polls should be regarded neither as individually perfect nor collectively worthless. The knack is to distinguish between what can be said with some certainty, and what cannot. And the more polls by the more companies, the better.

Original Source: http://labs.yougov.co.uk/news/2012/01/23/making-sense-tory-lead/