Nightclub Safety

Paul Blomfield Excerpts

Monday 8th November 2021 Westminster Hall

[Tonia Antoniazzi]

My hon. Friend has made absolutely wonderful and excellent points. This should be data driven, and the universities must be working in concert. There has to be consistency across the whole United Kingdom. There need to be guidelines. That is why this petition calls on the Government to take control of the situation.

Let me go back to think about how Hannah felt. This young woman, a year out of university, feels so motivated to make a difference, and she is in Edinburgh, just going about her everyday life. We have to take notice. This issue is happening everywhere. I will go back to talk about Hannah’s social media posts. What happened when she reported some of the comments? What support was she getting from Instagram? Absolutely nothing. It said that it would not take action against those posting the comments, so in the end she had to delete them. It became a really difficult thing for one person, one young woman, to have to deal with. I say to those social media platforms that are unwilling to act: get your house in order; you may be able to change your company name, but we still know who you are, and we will be taking action to make sure that you clean up the cesspit that social media can be.

Clubs themselves also have to take responsibility. When Hannah went on one radio show to talk about this issue, a nightclub owner was arguing that the rise in reported drink-spiking incidents was because students going out were not used to drinking so much after being stuck indoors because of covid and were reporting it as spiking. Fortunately, that attitude seems to be limited to a few uncaring club owners. In fact, Mike Kill, chairman of the Night Time Industries Association, has called on the Government to hold an inquiry into spiking. The association would like a review of the way in which spiking is classified and recorded, meaning that it could look at solutions based on the full facts. It has also highlighted a scheme put in place by Devon and Cornwall police that provided on-site testing as soon as there was a report of spiking. That meant a uniform approach to reporting, assessment and evidence gathering, which increased confidence and reduced fear of crime among customers. Will the Minister today agree to meet me and the Night Time Industries Association to discuss the scheme trialled in Devon and Cornwall and see how we can roll this out across the country? Where there are patterns of this behaviour that can be identified, it is much easier for effective policies to be put in place, and this could be put in place quickly.

I thank Hannah for talking to me about how she and her friends felt. I really appreciate her efforts on this issue and hope that we can get some concrete commitments from the Minister today.

The last 18 months have been particularly hard on women. I am thinking of Sarah Everard, Nicole Smallman, Bibaa Henry and Sabina Nessa and of those women who were locked down with their abusers. The subject of today’s debate is just part of a wider picture for women all over the United Kingdom. Violence towards women and girls is an epidemic of epic proportions, and the Government must act now to stem it.

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

The issue that we are addressing today was raised with me, before the recent media attention, by school students at King Edward VII School in Sheffield. The prevalence that they describe, in terms of their experience, is distressing. I have also had reports of incidents at house parties. Does my hon. Friend agree that the issue does not simply end with nightclubs but is about a wider spectrum of behaviour? There have been some good campaigns. My own student union in Sheffield has a good initiative and some nightclubs are working well, but, as she has said, but there has not been a comprehensive approach, which is what we need to address this.

Does my hon. Friend agree that the Government need to work with the police and other authorities to treat the issue more seriously and view it in the wider context of violence against women and girls? Does she also agree that the strategy needs to challenge the whole spectrum of behaviour, which starts with casual harassment and ends with sexual violence?

--- Later in debate ---

[Rachel Maclean]

My hon. Friend makes an extremely good point. We have a number of communication plans within the wider violence against women and girls strategy, and we will absolutely make sure that this issue is included in that work, which I am sure he will welcome.

The Home Secretary has already asked the National Police Chiefs’ Council to urgently review the extent and scale of the issue, and we are receiving regular updates from the police. We are working locally, regionally and nationally, including with our partners in the National Crime Agency. The NPCC has convened a group of policing leads, including Jason Harwin and Maggie Blyth—the Government’s new lead on violence against women and girls—which is meeting several times a week, with the aim of understanding the issue and ensuring that there is a strong police response.

Turning to the licensing regime, I think it was the hon. Member for Warwick and Leamington (Matt Western) who referenced the fact that not all of these cases occur in nightclubs. [Interruption.] Apologies, it was the hon. Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield). Not all of these attacks occur in nightclubs, but our understanding is that the majority of these settings are probably targeted specifically by offenders.

[Paul Blomfield]

There are lots of numbers floating around, and many of them probably underestimate the scale of the problem. My understanding is that the Alcohol Education Trust has done some work on this, and has suggested that there are slightly more incidences of drink spiking in house parties than in nightclubs. How will the Government reflect that in the strategy that they are looking at?

[Rachel Maclean]

I welcome the hon. Gentleman’s remarks, and it is important that we continue to ensure that we gather data from all these incidents, regardless of whether they take place in homes or nightclubs.

I turn now to the issue of nightclubs, which is the subject of the debate. It is really important to say that there is nothing preventing a nightclub from introducing searches on entry, and a number of nightclubs are doing that already. Lincolnshire police are working with their local licensing authority and a local nightclub to address concerns about spiking. The club has made an extra search on going into the premises a condition of entry and, additionally, it is using stickers to place over the tops of drinks at key locations within the premises. Many other clubs across the country are doing that as well, and we have heard references made to the work in Devon and Cornwall. In fact, I did a quick straw poll with my children, who are all of clubbing age. Two of them had been out clubbing in London over the weekend and had seen in action some quite detailed and thorough searches when they went into clubs.