Two drug dealers were arrested and 17 narcotics offences took place at the Palace of Westminster in the 12 months to March 2021, according to a freedom of information request.
The figures obtained by The Sun newspaper revealed that as well as the arrest of the two drug dealers on the parliamentary estate, the Metropolitan Police Service arrested eight people for possession of cannabis and five others for the possession of unspecified narcotics.
In total, there were 17 drugs crimes, 25 thefts from giftshops, seven other cases of shoplifting, 36 assaults (mostly against officers at the gates), and 52 cases of threatening letters sent to MPs in the House of Commons, members of the House of Lords, and their staff. Just some 3,000 people are Houses of Parliament pass holders.
Two hundred and two crimes were committed in that twelve-month period in total, and while reported offences were 16 per cent higher in 2018, the recent crimes occurred while the country was under lockdown during the coronavirus pandemic and the parliamentary estate was largely shut, with MPs working at home.
“What is shocking is how much crime was committed given hardly anyone was here,” one parliamentary source told the tabloid.
A parliamentary spokesman responded to the report: “The safety and security of members, their staff and the parliamentary community are an absolute priority. We work closely with the police to ensure members and staff are safe and are able to perform their duties.”
Just last month, The Sun reported that HMP (Her Majesty’s Prison) Coldingley in Surrey launched a drugs probe after a letter sent from Parliament to an inmate had triggered the prison’s drugs detection scanner and was found to have traces of ecstasy.
The letter, allegedly a response to an inmate asking for information from the House of Commons Library, was reportedly sent by a junior official on House of Commons-headed paper in March and franked with the Commons’ postmark, indicating it had been sent from Parliament’s in-house post service.
“It was a very odd case but someone who has handled the letter somewhere along the line could have had enough on their hands for our scanners to pick up,” a prison source told the newspaper.
Recently, leader of the Opposition, Labour’s Keir Starmer, managed to make a drugs-related gaffe when he admitted to being called ‘Special K’ as a child during a trip to the Kellogg’s cereal factory in Greater Manchester.
While the nickname was undoubtedly harmless, media picked up on the fact that Special K is also the slang term for ketamine, an anaesthetic primarily used by veterinarians on animals, but also used illegally by people as a hallucinogen.
Referring to the low-fat cereal, Starmer had said last week: “I’ve been dubbed Special K since I was born. K for Keir.”
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