The mother of murdered Harvey Nichols beauty consultant Clare Bernal demanded to know today why her daughter was not protected from the stalker who killed her.

Patricia Bernal, of Groombridge, near Crowborough, said the police and courts did not take the threat posed by her ex-boyfriend Michael Pech seriously enough.

She said her daughter might still be alive if he had not been granted bail. Miss Bernal, 23, was shot by Czech-born Pech last month at the perfume counter where she worked in the exclusive London store.

Pech, 30, a former security guard at the Knightsbridge shop who stalked Miss Bernal after the pair split up, then shot himself as terrified shoppers fled the building.

At the time, he had pleaded guilty to harassing his ex-lover and was just days away from being sentenced after being released on bail by the court.

He had been arrested twice in the months before the murder, once for breaching his bail conditions by trying to talk to Miss Bernal outside her home.

He also travelled to the Czech Republic during that period, where he reportedly bought the Luger pistol he used to kill her.

Mrs Bernal told the ITV Tonight with Trevor McDonald programme that Pech "should have been locked up" after breaking bail.

She said: "He was obviously fearless, he wasn't scared of the police, and, yes, he should have been put away."

Asked if she thought her daughter would still be alive if that had happened, she replied: "Possibly, yes. It was made quite easy for him, wasn't it ?

"I do feel let down. I didn't realise how dangerous he was.

"I don't understand why, because Clare's life was threatened, suddenly after breaking bail he wasn't watched.

"Something's got to be done, people have to take stalking more seriously."

Asked whether she believed her daughter's case had been taken seriously enough by the police and the courts, she said: "At the moment no, I don't.

"I don't know that anything would have changed but I'm sure something more could have been done."

Mrs Bernal also paid tribute to her daughter as an "extremely shy" young woman who was "blossoming", and described the devastating effect her death had had on her family.

She said: "I can't bear the thought that another family should go through what we've had to go through.

"It's just a huge chunk of my life is gone, none of us will ever be the same again."