Spiking Incidents: Prevention

Alex Davies-Jones Excerpts

Wednesday 11th January 2023 Westminster Hall

[Alex Davies-Jones (Pontypridd) (Lab)]

It is an honour to serve under your chairship, Ms McVey. It is a privilege to follow the contribution from the hon. Member for Stroud (Siobhan Baillie), which I agreed with wholeheartedly, and I congratulate the hon. Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham) on securing the debate. The number of Members who have turned up to speak is a testament to the importance of the subject, and I know that many Members who wanted to speak could not do so, which just goes to show how vital this issue is. We need to take action today.

I want to talk about the victims of this crime, because behind every spiking incident is a traumatised victim, very often a young woman. As we have heard, however, men are victims too. My heart aches for every single victim. I want to place on the record my overwhelming admiration for Sharon Gaffka, the anti-spiking campaigner, who has led the way on this issue over the past few years. She recently wrote about her own experiences, and her bravery in speaking out about her personal experience of spiking has inspired countless others to come forward and talk about their experiences. I thank her for bravely speaking out.

The prevalence of such horrendous acts is sickening, and I am disturbed by how normalised it is for women and girls to take measures to prevent spiking from taking place. As we have heard, women are often advised to cover their drinks, to wear a denim jacket to prevent being spiked by a needle, to not wear provocative clothing, to not take a drink from a stranger and to wear special nail varnish. How many more times do we have to tell victims to take action against being abused, against being spiked, or against being raped or murdered? I am sick and tired of women—it is particularly women—being told to take responsibility for actions and behaviours being perpetrated against them.

Enough is enough. It is about time we focused on perpetrators, which is why I wholeheartedly support the report of the Home Affairs Committee and, as other hon. Members have said today, creating a new offence for spiking. Every woman deserves to enjoy a night out without living in fear that a predatory man—let us be honest, it is almost always a man—will slip a drug into their drink, or spike them, just as shockingly, with a needle. They could be anywhere, any time, any place.

I thank the nearly 2,000 victims who came forward and participated in the Committee’s survey on spiking. Their bravery has paved the way for this debate here today, and will hopefully, in turn, pave the way for a new offence to be created. They are to be commended. I thank each and every victim for coming forward and talking about their experience. We can all agree that a new offence would go a long way to deter perpetrators and empower the police to conduct more investigations. We need to end the culture of victim blaming and make sure that allegations of spiking, attempts at spiking and spiking itself are taken seriously.

I commend my own local business improvement district in Pontypridd. It has taken direct action, working with the night-time economy. It has delivered spiking awareness training to the Pubwatch team. It has highlighted known or alleged perpetrators. It is well known locally, and South Wales Police are to be commended on the action they are taking, but it is not enough. We need a joined-up, holistic approach from the UK Government that ensures consistency across our police services. We need to empower our police forces to prosecute perpetrators and record spiking rates. As the Committee report also argues, we need to collect data from perpetrators on motivation; as we have heard, spiking is not always sexually motivated.

Without the UK Government leading the way here, we will be failing the victims of a hugely under-reported crime. I urge the Government and the Minister to show leadership and tackle the scourge of this largely hidden crime. We need to make sure of a long-lasting legacy for the victims, and ensure that no one faces this horrendous crime.