I will pick up on some of the points made by the hon. Member for Wycombe (Mr Baker) and by my hon. Friend the Member for Gower (Tonia Antoniazzi).
This has not come out of nowhere, but the incidence, escalation and scale of the issue are extraordinary. Although date rape drugging was on my radar—and, I am sure, that of many others—this sudden phenomenon of spiking through needle is a shocking escalation.
In terms of the wider issue, the figures obtained by the BBC back in 2019 showed an increase in recorded cases of drink spiking of more than 2,600 since 2015. This is a significant problem in our society. Just this week, Nottinghamshire police said that they had received a total of 15 reports of alleged spiking with a sharp object since 2 October. That is from a month ago, and that is just in Nottinghamshire. Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary and fire and rescue services has called violence against women “an epidemic”, and says that the authorities have to treat it with as much urgency as they fight terrorism.
I am sure that many of us will have been horrified by the incident in Texas, which illustrates that this is not just a UK problem. There is a phenomenon and copycat behaviour, as mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Gower, in terms of social media and how quickly these things get shared, perhaps among males, not just across campuses, towns, cities and countries but globally. In Texas, where eight people died and hundreds were hurt, police are investigating reports that somebody in the audience was injecting people with drugs, such that several concert goers had to be revived with anti-drug overdose medicine.
As of 23 October, the National Police Chiefs’ Council had collected 198 reports of drink spiking, in addition to the 56 reports of incidents involving a needle. This is not necessarily an epidemic at this stage, but it is a seriously concerning phenomenon. Freedom of information requests from “Sky News”, which were published back in 2018, found that reported incidents of spiking had doubled in the three years before. Although I do not have the data to hand and did not have time to put it all together, it is really alarming to see where this phenomenon is taking us.