The Domestic Abuse Bill, currently making its way through the Legislative Council, is not what was promised, a lawyer has told MLCs.

Rachel Horman, the head of domestic abuse, stalking and forced marriage at Lancashire-based law firm Watson Ramsbottom Ltd, was invited to speak to LegCo by Kate Lord-Brennan MLC.

Providing evidence via video link to LegCo, which was sitting as a committee, Miss Horman told MLCs she was disappointed and said ’it wasn’t the Bill it was promised to be’.

Miss Horman told members that in her opinion, provisions surrounding stalking and training for the police and judiciary had been mistakenly omitted from the Bill.

She said that the lack of clauses directly aimed at stalking was ’one of the first things’ that she noticed. And Miss Horman told MLCs that she was ’surprised’ there was no provision within the Bill for stalking, but there was for harassment.

She added: ’In my view, that is very different to stalking and if you were to be faced with two people, one with a conviction for harassment and one for stalking, I think you would be much more concerned about the stalker and quite rightly, because they are two very different crimes.

’Harassment, really, was often used to deal with much more low-level things like disputes between neighbours about the size of a hedge for example. Whereas stalking is very different. It’s very dangerous and often leads to homicide, so I do think they need to be treated very differently and named differently.’

Miss Horman said she ’encouraged’ members to push for a stalking clause to be included in the final Bill. She added that as the focus had been on domestic abuse, the Bill failed to cover stranger stalking .

She cited the high profile case of BBC journalist Emily Maitlis, who was stalked for over two decades by the same man as an example of how stalking can continue for many years.

Another area that Miss Horman wanted to see tightened in the Bill is related to a domestic abuse disclosure scheme, known as Clare’s law.

She told MLCs: ’I think the right to ask isn’t enough and I think there needs to be a requirement on the police to tell.

’And while Clare’s law does allow the police to tell, it doesn’t place a requirement on them. By the time that somebody is contacting the police and asking for information about their partner, it’s too late because it means they’ve already experienced abuse, in my view.’

Miss Horman also wanted to see improvements in the Bill such as provisions for relationships between under 16-year-olds and sexual offences such as upskirting and revenge porn.