Spiking Incidents: Prevention

Rachel Maclean Excerpts

Wednesday 11th January 2023 Westminster Hall

[Rachel Maclean (Redditch) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham) and all colleagues who have spoken. I will never forget my visit to Gloucester at my hon. Friend’s invitation, to meet his constituent Maisy and her mother and to hear her story first hand, and to speak to Sharon Gaffka, as many of us have, and to Dawn Dines, who I am delighted to see is with us today.

We need a holistic response to this crime. I want to use my time to point out some of the fantastic things that the Home Office has done and is doing, as well as to ask some questions of the Minister and point to where he and his colleagues can go further.

We did a great job in the festival sector last summer. The sector came together to protect young people in their first summer of fun after the pandemic—the hon. Member for Bradford South (Judith Cummins) and I spoke about this issue. We know that when the education, support and guidance is put in place, and when work takes place across the night-time economy with the police, that can make a real difference. A lot of young people went out and had a great time, safely.

I thank all those partners and pay tribute to businesses in the night-time economy. They have stepped up to the plate, working in their local areas, making use of Government funding pots such as the safer streets fund and the safety of women at night fund. They have put practical measures in place. We need the legislative change that my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester spoke about so clearly, and we need to keep going with that holistic approach, making sure that police forces can gather data and mount prosecutions using forensic capabilities, which need to be boosted.

The response from the National Police Chiefs’ Council highlighted the lack of a clear criminal offence for spiking. Will the Minister expand on the Home Office’s view that no criminal offence or change to the law is required, given that expert advice from frontline policing? If it is not the position to introduce a new offence—I also served in the Ministry of Justice, and I understand that there are arguments and nuances here—what other measures should be introduced to enable the police to investigate and record crimes more accurately and bring more perpetrators to justice? There is clearly a lot of work to do.

What concrete actions can the Minister take with colleagues to make sure that police forces are recording data accurately so that we can develop the right policy and make sure that the considerable amount of Government funding—multimillion pounds of funding are going into these support services—is going to the right places at the right time, and that data is being gathered quickly?

The Home Office is to run a consultation on the statutory guidance on licensing premises. That is a good idea. Will that cover restaurants? Members might recall that Sharon Gaffka was spiked in a Mayfair restaurant; so was Emily Hunt. We need to ensure that we are covering all the places where women, girls and men can be spiked. What has been learned from the phenomenal work—I pay tribute to the Home Office officials who did that work—in the festival sector? Is that being rolled out again and what more can be done? What are the universities doing? We know that they play a crucial role.

There was a fantastic suite of cross-Government working with the higher education Minister, with public health and with the emergency and urgent care response. We need to stand that up and learn from it. Finally, what has been learned from all the money that has been spent on what actually works to stop this in a particular area? I want to thank Maggie Blyth, who is the Government’s policing lead for violence against women and girls, for everything that she has done with her colleagues in the police force to ensure that there is a response. She said clearly, “If you are spiked, you must come forward. If you have taken illegal drugs, still come forward and report it.”