Yesterday in Parliament there was a debate about what legislative action the Government needs to take to combat the increase in spiking offences. I was pleased to support former safeguarding minister Rachel McLean in her calls to see an amendment to the 1861 act which is being used in the very few cases that are prosecuted.
In the 12 months to 31st August last year there were reports of about 5000 spiking offences, where the victims were mainly young women. It is not good enough to rely on data from other offences perpetrated as a result of spiking, they may or may not be sexual offences, but there is a growing trend of people being spiked in order to obtain money or simply for entertainment.
There is clearly a role for licensing authorities, the Police, licensed premises, universities etc to all come together to try to prevent offences from being perpetrated, but without a clear law, relevant to the 21st century, and adequate data collection to evidence the scale of the problem it will be hard to tackle the cultures underlying this sort of behaviour.
I have heard too many accounts from constituents who have been spiking victims to be content with the current Home Office view that this is adequately addressed by existing laws. They are hopelessly out of date.
I raised two points, firstly the fact that men can be victims as well as women, and often in order to exploit someone financially. So a reliance on data collected as a result of sexual offences is inadequate. Secondly, specifically bouncers and door staff need to be better equipped to consider whether someone might have been spiked. I have heard a terrible tale of a young female student, who had been spiked, simply carried out of a club and dumped on the pavement when she collapsed.
There is good work going on, I spent a morning last year talking to Police and security staff at Glastonbury about the efforts they go to in order to keep festival goers safe. There are schemes like “Ask Angela”. Last year I met representatives of Life Centric who make anti-spiking kits for students, but the onus still is very much on the victim needs to protect themselves, as opposed to effective steps to tackle the perpetrators.