MPs would have voted for doping to become criminal offence - poll
Freya Pascall
| Dods Monitoring
A Dods poll has revealed that in theory, most MPs would support making doping in sport a criminal offence.
As the Rio Olympics approach, a recent Dods poll asked MPs whether doping should be made a criminal offence.
Though Labour’s amendment to the Policing and Crime Bill on this topic was never selected for debate, the polling suggests over 70 per cent of MPs would have supported such a move in theory.
In fact Labour MPs were less sure than their Conservative colleagues, with 65 to 75 per cent supporting criminalisation and 6 to 16 per cent undecided respectively. Smaller parties were even more united with 83 per cent backing the move.
Recent revelations about tennis star Maria Sharapova, as well as damning reports on Russian sport will not have helped the case against criminalisation, though MPs agreed in a recent debate that UK Anti-Doping was one of the world’s leading anti-doping organisations.
Concerns about the impact of performance enhancing drugs on the long term health of athletes alongside a presiding sense of fairness keep this consideration at the fore, especially after Prime Minister David Cameron announced a new international sport integrity partnership would be launched next year at the anti-corruption summit in May.
With the new sports governance codes due to be published later this year, matters of integrity in sport will remain on the agenda. Sports Minister Tracey Crouch recently confirmed the new codes would "deal with a number of matters relating to integrity, including doping and match fixing" but it remains to be seen if the Government, under a new Prime Minister, will take things further.
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