Drink spiking: minister called for rewrite of 'victim blaming' ads

Civil servants were told to rewrite a proposed social media campaign to combat drink-spiking after the original appeared to blame victims, a minister has told Labour conference delegates.

- Rajeev Syal

Alex Davies-Jones, the minister for violence against women and girls, suggested that Whitehall encouraged a "culture of victim blaming" and should instead focus on stopping perpetrators.

At a fringe event yesterday at Labour's conference in Liverpool, Davies-Jones said she had refused to accept the script her civil servants had drawn up before an awareness campaign that was due to coincide with freshers' week at universities.

"The Civil Service brought me my script for talking about this on social media, on Tiktok, trying to bring in the youth," she said.