Protection from Harassment Act 1997
Public General Act of Parliament of the United Kingdom
The Protection from Harassment Act 1997 (c. 40) is an act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. On introducing the bill's second reading in the House of Lords, the Lord Chancellor, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, said, "The aim of this Bill is to protect the victims of harassment. It will protect all such victims whatever the source of the harassment—so-called stalking behaviour, racial harassment, or anti-social behaviour by neighbours." Home Office guidance on the Act says "The legislation was always intended to tackle stalking, but the offences were drafted to tackle any form of persistent conduct which causes another person alarm or distress."
Infield and Platford described the Act as "controversial".
Provisions
Section 1
This section prohibits a person from pursuing "a course of conduct" which "amounts to harassment of another" and which "he knows or ought to know amounts to harassment of the other". A person is taken to know that conduct is harassment if "a reasonable person in possession of the same information would think the course of conduct amounted to harassment of the other".
The Protection of Freedoms Act 2012 inserted the offence of stalking in relation to this section and is defined to include things like monitoring a person online, contacting a person, loitering in a public or private place, interfering with property or spying/watching a person.
Subsection 1(1A)
Subsection 1(1A) was inserted by section 125(2)(a) of the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005. It prohibits a person from pursuing a course of conduct "which involves harassment of two or more persons" with the intention of persuading any person (not necessarily one of the persons harassed) to do or refrain from doing something they are lawfully entitled to do or not do.
According to Baroness Scotland of Ashall, promoting the Bill in the House of Lords, this provision and the associated provisions of section 3A were intended to strengthen "the protection afforded to the bioscience industry, and those who work in it" including by "making it an offence to protest outside a person's home in a way that causes harassment, alarm or distress to the residents of that home."
Section 2
This section creates the offence of harassment, which is to pursue "a course of conduct" in breach of section 1 of the Act.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Protection from Harassment Act 1997” is public General Act of Parliament of the United Kingdom. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Protection, Harassment and Public, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “public General Act of Parliament of the United Kingdom” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 9, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7251337. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1997, 2012 and 2005.
Official terminology may obscure informal participation, dissent or communities documented only indirectly. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.
- Event chronology
- Institutional context
- Locating named record creators
Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Protection from Harassment Act 1997”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Protection from Harassment Act 1997 primary sources, Protection from Harassment Act 1997 archive and Protection research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Protection from Harassment Act 1997”?
- Which voices are present, absent or mediated by the institution?
- Who created the surviving record, and for what administrative purpose?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Protection from Harassment Act 1997” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.