‘Ban stalkers from using false names on Twitter’

‘Caught at earliest opportunity’

STALKERS should be banned from setting up fake Twitter profiles, MPs have urged.

Reports of stalking in England and Wales have trebled since 2014 – while prosecution rates have halved. Social networking sites have become the most common medium of pursuit.

Now ministers are facing calls to impose orders restricting stalkers’ ability to go online or even ban them from using the internet altogether.

Twitter has also been accused of not doing enough to combat the problem, which is said to have affected one in five women and one in ten men.

Conservative MP Sarah Wol- laston has lodged a Private Member’s Bill calling for tougher powers to intervene against stalkers before they reach the threshold for prosecution.

It proposes ‘stalking protection orders’ which would require stalkers to divulge all their online aliases, punishable by up to six months’ imprisonment if terms are breached.

The Bill will be debated in the Commons in November.

In 2014-15 there were 2,882 recorded offences of stalking, the Home Office said. By 2017-18 this had rocketed to 10,214.

However, over the same period, the number of people charged with stalking decreased from just under half – 49 per cent – to a quarter.

The Home Office admitted more needed to be done and said it was backing Dr Wollaston’s Bill to catch perpetrators ‘at the earliest opportunity’.

Twitter denied it was not doing enough and said tougher legal action was needed.