Nightclub Safety

Lilian Greenwood Excerpts

Monday 8th November 2021 Westminster Hall

[Matt Western]

I agree entirely with my hon. Friend that there is an urgent need for the data, which I think was mentioned earlier in the debate, but also for multi-agency meetings through the local authorities, the police, and universities—wherever. Some of the work being done by Devon and Cornwall police, which was discussed earlier, is really interesting. We as parliamentarians should certainly be pushing for that, but so should the Government be urging the Home Office to call on chief constables to work with local authorities, those on campuses, universities and further education colleges to lead on and to try to address this phenomenon.

It is certainly really alarming to the National Union of Students, which is rightly urging that any case needs to be investigated quickly and that the findings need to be shared across the country through different authorities, because there is an information vacuum at the moment. We just do not have the data, as has been discussed, and we need to know the scale of the problem, particularly with the spiking by injection that my hon. Friend the Member for Bethnal Green and Bow (Rushanara Ali) referred to. Students across the country are understandably very anxious and are panicking about this issue. Some are taking extreme measures, in an effort to protect themselves when venturing out. The reports that we are getting are extremely horrifying and need investigating, but perhaps the NUS would be saying that we have to be cautious about measures to increase surveillance in clubs, because that can cause problems of its own.

[Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)]

I apologise that I was not able to be present for the start of the debate—I was in a Delegated Legislation Committee.

Does my hon. Friend agree that in formulating a response to the reports of spiking by injection, and the impact that it is having on young women and their lives because of the fear that they feel, it is really important that the authorities, the police, our universities and our health service listen to young women and hear about the things that they want, the things that would allow them to feel safe, and the things that they want to hear about men changing their behaviour? This should not be about victims; it should be about changing the behaviour of perpetrators.

[Matt Western]

I absolutely agree with the point made by my hon. Friend: it is about changing behaviour among perpetrators and young men. Going back to the points that were made earlier by my hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall (Florence Eshalomi), the problem absolutely starts at a very young age. We must change the norms of behaviour—certainly among young males—at a much younger age. She is right in the point that she makes.

I will move on to two examples; I did not want to take examples from across the country, but these are very real examples I have had to deal with through constituency casework, and so are specific to the University of Warwick, which is close to me. One constituent’s daughter was unable to seek urgent medical care, so had to travel to her home in Manchester, and go to Manchester Royal Infirmary, because she could not get the care that she needed locally. The hospital has implemented a separate pathway and recording system for spiking victims, so all credit that Manchester should have done that. Another student is currently in A&E at University Hospital Coventry, being treated for a suspected spiking with a needle. That is just in the last couple of weeks.

It is no wonder that the Girls Night In campaign quite rightly drew attention to this nationally. If we are to bring about change, we need to have an impact on the night-time economy, and we need people to wake up to the immediate urgency of this. I would echo the calls that I made earlier. It was interesting to listen to the point made about the work being done in Devon and Cornwall. If there is a chance of rolling that out, that would be terrific, but we need to quickly share that information. I hope the Minister will be listening carefully to this, because it does need leadership from the Government.

This is a terrifying phenomenon for young women, and it is leading to a real change of behaviour in our towns and cities. The Government and police need to get to grips with it very quickly, and ensure that the night-time industry meets with them and can bring about the changes that are needed. The NUS has called for greater training for staff, to understand and identify those visiting their nightclubs and so on, looking at alcohol vulnerability and the potential for sexual harassment and assault, with a focus on how to respond and intervene if incidents take place.

In my constituency, I want to pull together the police, the local authorities and the university, but also meet with a panel of young women to understand what is really going on. This is happening quickly, and it needs a response from Government. I really hope that they will look to work with all sectors to co-ordinate some sort of response, because this issue needs urgent leadership from them.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jess Phillips]

The underreporting of this, and of all violence against women and girls, is well charted. We estimate that, at best, we are hearing about 20% of it. It used to be that only 8%—or even 4%—of people had come forward about rape. At the very best we are only seeing 20% of the problem, and 80% is missing from our eyes. With nightclubs, what worries me even further is that young women especially, and I remember this because I was one, will not speak up because of fear for their liberty—by which I mean the fear that their moms and dads will not let them go out again. When bad things happen when they are young, girls keep those secrets close because they are worried about their freedom.

In nightclubs, whether we like it or not, there will be people who take recreational drugs. That is just the world that we live in. The idea that people will not want to come forward because they are frightened, because they have been taking recreational drugs, is something that we have to deal with. We do not want to deal only with perfect victims. We must never fall foul, as so many of us have over many years, of only seeing victims who have a halo that allows us to see their abuses and not others.

[Lilian Greenwood]

My hon. Friend is making a very powerful speech, as she always does on this subject. Does she share my concern that one reason why women may not come forward, and why we do not have evidence about whether there is a link between these sharp-object incidents and toxicology, is because when women do seek help in instances of spiking they are sometimes not believed, dismissed as being drunk and, I am told, they are not seen quickly when they attend A&E? Does she agree that this response is discouraging women from coming forward and preventing us from getting the evidence that we need to better understand this latest problem?

[Jess Phillips]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and our hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington (Matt Western) pointed out very clearly that one of his constituents had that exact experience. My hon. Friend the Member for Gower talked about good services and best practice in Devon and Cornwall; some best practice in hospitals in Manchester was also highlighted by hon. Members. But that simply cannot be the case everywhere. As with all violence against women and girls, those presenting at A&E will be made to feel brilliant in some places—amazing and believed, and there will be specialist workers there—and in other places that will absolutely not be the case. But the single most important thing that the Government have to tackle is not how victims interact with the system. We have spent so many years trying to improve the experience of people who end up in this situation, which is noble—I will not stop trying to do that, and I am sure nobody else in the House will either. However, the fundamental point is that we have to end the perpetration. We have to make perpetrators feel as frightened of being caught with this type of thing in a nightclub as being caught with a knife. A rape victim once said to me, “If I had a stab wound, I wouldn’t have to prove that I’d been stabbed—everybody would be able to see that—but because I’ve been raped, I have to prove it. I have to prove it to you.”

We have heard many brilliant examples from Swansea and elsewhere of women speaking up with one voice. I have spoken to women about the issue, such as a local councillor in Oxfordshire who has been dealing with around 20 cases. She is working with 25 young student freshers who have been spiked in recent months, who were all deeply reluctant to report it to the police, saying that they did not want the hassle or were worried they would not be taken seriously. Statistics are starting to flood in from big and small organisations, and I am sure we can all see it on Instagram. I came across a Birmingham women’s safety initiative group that had done a survey of 100 Birmingham respondents, and more than 95% said they felt unsafe in their local area.

As always, I stand with each and every one of these women. There are things we can do now and I would like to hear what the Government will do to make sure that they happen. Venues must be clearly led to do far more robust security and search protocols, improve training for staff and have high-quality and well-positioned CCTV. The Minister might know that I am not always a fan of the sticking plaster of CCTV, because I would like someone to be stopped from hurting me, rather than it being possible to find my body. However, I have seen CCTV work well in clubs when something is found which shows that women were not drunk or stupid or lying or attention seeking.

I have a slight concern about searches in nightclubs, relating to the protocols for testing and securing staff who work on the doors of nightclubs. There has been a series of newspaper articles in recent weeks about the vetting of people who work on the doors of our nightclubs. There is a live debate among Members of Parliament about having our own security and how we vet the people doing that. I am afraid to say that, in lots of circumstances, journalists found what a lack of vetting had not: door staff who had been convicted of sexual assaults. I have to say, remembering what it was like to be searched going in and out of clubs, that it can often feel like a sexual assault to lots of women. We need to make sure that there are women on hand to ensure that those searches are done properly and appropriately. I certainly would only ever want to be searched by a woman.

It is very important that we do not treat this as just another issue where not much can be done. The Government need to start telling us exactly how they are going to deal with perpetrators of violence against women and girls. They are currently resisting, stating for the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill that they will make it a serious crime, and that local authority areas have to—not can choose to, if they like, which is the sort of standing we give violence against women and girls—have a violence against women and girls prevention plan, as they would for crimes such as county lines. They have to have a public health approach to that locally. In this instance, the Government could be working with licensing; it would be incredibly helpful to have a protective duty.

I would hope to see the Government committing, finally, to make violence against women and girls a serious crime with a serious crime prevention duty. Mainly, I hope that they will take the advice of Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary and fire and rescue services. The former Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May), did lots of good work in this area, but the inspectorate’s very long name is not something I will ever thank her for. It is a ridiculously long name. Her Majesty’s inspectorate has clearly set out a timeline and a timeframe for exactly how police forces could be working to tackle perpetration and build up trust in victims to come forward. The Government are, for some reason, still resisting saying how they are going to do this.

I will sit down now so that the Minister can speak, but I want to finish by saying that my parliamentary assistant, as I was preparing for the debate, told me this morning that at the weekend her and her mates had had to compare the features of their new safety keyrings, which included whistles, seatbelt cutters and rape alarms, just so that they could go on a night out. It is no longer on the young people and women in this country to make themselves feel safer. It is on the Government now.