Spiking Incidents: Prevention

Debate between Jonathan Edwards and Richard Graham

Wednesday 11th January 2023 Westminster Hall

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the prevention of spiking incidents.

It is very good to have this debate under your chairmanship, Ms McVey. It is also good to see colleagues present, including recent former Home Office Ministers from several parties, despite competition from Select Committees and other vital business of the House.

The truth is that it should not have been necessary to have this debate. I do not intend to run through all the evidence showing why spiking is such an increased modern risk, particularly to young females and particularly in the night-time economy, because that is all on the record, including in Home Affairs Committee papers and in my ten-minute rule Bill on spiking offences, which I promoted almost exactly a year ago.

I will briefly mention, however, recent findings, the most striking of which are the data presented by the National Police Chiefs’ Council. For the year from 1 September 2021 to 31 August 2022, it has recorded 2,581 reported cases of spiking by needle; 2,131 reported cases of spiking by drink; and 212 reported cases of spiking by other means, particularly food. That is a total of almost 5,000 reported cases for the last year on record, and if that is not an indication of how serious this issue is, I struggle to understand what is serious.

[Jonathan Edwards (Carmarthen East and Dinefwr) (Ind)]

I am extremely grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his work on this very important issue. Following the announcement that he had secured this debate, I received a message this afternoon from the police and crime commissioner for Dyfed-Powys, Mr Dafydd Llywelyn, informing me that the number of spiking incidents has been increasing over the last few months.

[Richard Graham]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. He and his Plaid Cymru colleagues epitomise why so many of us from all parties in the House are concerned about this issue, despite the problem of data collection, which I will come on to.

Let me now give a tiny bit of context. After I promoted my ten-minute rule Bill almost a year ago, a Home Office Minister promised me that the Department would research this issue and come back to me. By the way, very similar promises were made to the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee, the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson), who is with us in Westminster Hall today. That feedback has now come, but last autumn Ministers were intimating that they were working on a positive solution to confirm that spiking or any attempt at spiking is illegal, and that this simple amendment to existing law would provide a very clear message in words that the nation could easily grasp.

Trade Bill

Debate between Jonathan Edwards and Richard Graham

Consideration of Lords amendments & Ping Pong & Ping Pong: House of Commons
Tuesday 19th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Jonathan Edwards (Carmarthen East and Dinefwr) (Ind) [V]]

It is a pleasure to speak briefly in this debate in support of the amendments made in the other place. It is also a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Wealden (Ms Ghani) who made a very passionate and convincing case for supporting Lords amendment 3, to which I will refer later.

Lords amendment 1 would introduce vital democratic safeguards into international trade policy by ensuring that the Executive cannot operate unilaterally. It would strengthen the hand of Parliament without undermining the ability of the UK Government to conduct negotiations as they see fit. In reality, the negotiations with the European Union have clearly shown that trade agreements can have far-reaching consequences for people’s everyday lives, from food standards to workers’ rights, from environmental legislation to the impact on our public services. It is to be welcomed then that Lords amendment 1 would require the UK Government to outline their negotiating objectives to Parliament prior to the commencement of any trade negotiations and to secure the agreement of both Houses before a deal is ratified, giving Members of Parliament a meaningful role in setting trade policy.

There was much debate during earlier proceedings of the Bill about how domestic democratic empowerment would strengthen the hand of the UK Government when it comes to trade negotiations. That was certainly my experience during a brief visit to the United States many years ago to scrutinise the proposed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership between the EU and the US, where we were reminded that there were certain matters, such as access to food markets, which were non-negotiable for Congress.

Although I support Lords amendment 1, I would have liked to see it go even further in respect of strengthening the role of the Welsh, Scottish and Northern Irish Governments and respective Parliaments. That would not be without precedence. In the EU, every single member state has a veto over its international trade deals as well as sub-national Governments such as Wallonia in Belgium. Although I accept that the UK Government have a direct responsibility for trade policy, I believe that a world of constitutional trouble awaits us unless there are statutory safeguards for the respective countries of the British state. I therefore urge the British Government not only to retain Lords amendment 1, but to go a step further by giving the devolved Parliaments a veto on trade agreements.

I wish briefly to pledge my support for Lords amendment 3—the so-called genocide amendment—which several right hon. and hon. Members have supported this afternoon. Effectively, it couples international trade policy with the promotion of human rights.

Lords amendment 4 would place protections for the NHS on a legislative basis. I also support Lords amendment 6, which sets out to protect a range of regulatory standards such as for food, animal welfare and workers’ rights. Given the increasing noises coming from the Government Benches about a bonfire of standards, acceptance of this amendment would go a long way to allaying fears that our trade policy would be used as a regressive Trojan horse.

I am disappointed to see that the Government are seeking to remove provisions from Lords amendment 9 that strengthen the Trade and Agriculture Commission. Again, I ask Ministers to include representatives from the devolved Governments on the commission and introduce scrutiny protocols for the commission with the Welsh Senedd, the Scottish Parliament and the Northern Ireland Assembly.

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con) [V]]

A lot in this Trade Bill is to be welcomed, including its reinforced commitments to an agricultural commission, which has been welcomed by the farming sector and the NFU, as well as more scrutiny by the International Trade Committee. In my 10th year as trade envoy for three Prime Ministers, I believe that the Bill is further evidence of our commitment to take forward UK trade and investment across the world as a key part of global Britain, and that is not just an idle slogan, for international trade and investment secures jobs across our country, funds our welfare and social justice, and requires engagement globally.

Today we face the so-called genocide amendment, which would propose to replicate the role of the UN and the International Criminal Court because of issues with how that process is currently functioning. The amendment would—as the right hon. Member for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry) clearly illustrated when she spoke about both Cameroon and Egypt—be used by many Members who wish to expand the creation of such a court to have a much wider role on human rights issues and their implications for our trade arrangements, including those already signed, as well as those proposed.

Earlier we heard another Opposition Member, the hon. Member for Leeds North West (Alex Sobel), refer to human rights abuses in Indonesia—a country that has moved further and faster in the development of an open democratic society over the last decade than almost anywhere else I can think of—so let us be in no doubt as to where some would take this amendment. We would find, in an imperfect world, that such a court would be used to limit and constrain our free trade severely, which neither the Labour party nor the SNP was ever in favour of anyway. These are issues that should be decided by our Government and, above all, this Parliament.

Let me briefly address the Uyghur question, for Lords amendment 3 in the first place is aimed squarely at the People’s Republic of China. Many years ago, I almost died in Xinjiang, crossing its great Taklamakan desert. What has happened there for many decades, but with greatly increased severity since 2009, cannot conceivably be supported by anyone in the United Kingdom, but I do not believe that this amendment, if implemented, would achieve anything at all for the Uyghurs or Xinjiang. We should not be asking judges to make political judgments. It is for this place to decide what our relationship with China should be. Over the last decade, we have veered from golden era to worst era in a short period of time. We have to find that balance, and the Trade Bill is not the place for it. It should be part of the integrated review on foreign policy and defence that we await shortly. Meanwhile, I support the Government strongly in opposing an amendment that would subcontract our scrutiny of human rights and of our trade relationships to a new court.