Q As you will have seen, we get lots of people in here who are very familiar with this place, and then every now and again we get people who are brave, committed and dedicated to making a change and making the world a better place. Thank you for coming and for all your campaigning on this issue. All power to your elbow.
How important are the measures in the Bill, and why? Is there anything that you think the Government should be doing beyond what is in the Bill?
Colin Mackie: I think this is majorly important. It is a giant step forward. Up until now, spiking has been a very grey area. It is charged as assault, theft, poisoning or whatever; it has been such a grey area that it has been hard to process it. That has the knock-on effect of putting victims off coming forward, because they do not know where they are going to go or what is going to be talked about, and they are unsure. Perpetrators of spiking feel, “Well, nothing’s really happening over this. I don’t hear of anybody getting charged for it, and it’s only a bit of fun; we don’t think we’re going to do any harm,” so they carry on doing it.
Having a stand-alone offence is beneficial for the victims, and I also think it is beneficial for the police. I feel that once a law is in place, you are going to get a co-ordinated response from police. Currently, victims in Newcastle are treated differently from victims in Newquay, and it is the same across the whole country. That is one of the major problems that victims tell us about all the time: some forces are great, while others are not so good. I have had one victim tell me that the police said they did not have the manpower or the time to go in and check the CCTV at the club where they were spiked. Another victim told me that uniformed officers turned up and were not sure how to deal with it, but half an hour later, the CID were there and straight into the club. We cannot have that inconsistency; we need to move forward with that.
You were asking earlier, “What can we do to help?” In bringing in the Bill, we have to involve A&E, because A&E has a big part to play in this as well. All too often, as you know, it is the job of the police to gather the evidence, but a spiking victim is likely to appear at a hospital—at A&E—unconscious or confused and not sure what is going on. They are not going to think about asking for a police officer to attend—they are not in a state to do that—so unless they have a family member or a friend there, that is not going to happen. By the time they get maybe two days down the line and think, “Yeah, this is what’s happened to me; I want to report this,” there is a good chance that a lot of the evidence has gone. We need that in the Bill as well: for A&E to play a bigger part by gathering evidence and holding it for the police. Then, if the victim wants to take it forward, it is there.