Wanless Review

Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park Excerpts

Tuesday 11th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

Yes, it absolutely will. As I have said, the inquiry will be comprehensive when it comes to the institutions it looks at. It will look at state and non-state institutions, because there have clearly been failures not only in state-run care homes, for example, but in other areas of life, such as the Church. The review will be comprehensive.

[Zac Goldsmith (Richmond Park) (Con)]

The Home Secretary has rightly pointed out that the report identifies no clear evidence of cover-up, but I want to draw her attention to a reference it makes to a letter that the then Home Secretary wrote in reply to Mr Dickens on 20 March 1984. It states that a dossier of letters provided by Mr Dickens was passed to the office of the Director of Public Prosecutions and that, as the review states,

“in the view of the DPP, two could form the basis for enquiries by the police and have been passed to the appropriate authorities.”

If that is true, it is very hard to understand how there can be no evidence of those letters. That is exactly the kind of loose end that the inquiry will have to resolve if it is to have any credibility at all with victims and the wider public.

[Mrs May]

My hon. Friend makes a very important point. It is precisely those sorts of issues that have led people to query what has happened, question the attitude taken to these matters and ask the very question he raises about why there do not seem to have been any prosecutions off the back of it. Wanless and Whittam were specifically asked to look at how the police and prosecuting authorities dealt with any reference that had been made from the Home Office because, as I said earlier, in my view it is not good enough for the Home Office to say, “Well, we’ve reviewed what the Home Office did.” We need to know what happened to the evidence that the Home Office passed on. It is in looking at what further action was taken that I have gone back to Wanless and Whittam in the letter I sent them today.

Criminal Law

Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park Excerpts

Monday 10th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

My right hon. Friend makes an important point. He is prescient because it was a point to which I was coming soon in my speech, and it is an important statistic. Sometimes people think that the European arrest warrant is just used to extradite United Kingdom citizens from the United Kingdom, but that is not the case.

Hon. Members have expressed concerns about people being charged with offences over and above those specified in their arrest warrant if they consent to extradition, so we have lifted the requirement that individuals lose their right to “speciality protection” when they consent to extradition. Those changes have been made in UK law, and came into effect earlier this year. They are already making an important difference to the operation of the arrest warrant.

[Zac Goldsmith (Richmond Park) (Con)]

The concept of proportionality is hard to define and therefore hard to understand. The Home Secretary has already given examples of cases that have been refused on the basis that they are too trivial. Can she give an example of the least serious offence where extradition has been possible since July?

[Mrs May]

I do not have a list of all the European arrest warrants that have been refused, but there are two steps to the proportionality decision. The first is an administrative decision taken by the National Crime Agency as the body that initially receives the request. Then there is the possibility for the courts to make a determination about proportionality, and they will consider a variety of issues. It is not a tick-box approach; the courts will make judgments not just about the nature of the crime but about the nature of the disposal available in the other member state in relation to that crime, so that they can decide whether the arrest warrant is appropriate.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Sir Tony Baldry) indicated that the vast majority of people extradited from the UK—more than 95%—are foreign nationals. They include suspects wanted for 124 murders, more than 100 rapes, nearly 500 serious assaults and seven terrorism cases. In the same period, the arrest warrant has been used to return 647 people to this country to face justice. The list includes 51 suspected killers, 80 suspected paedophiles, 46 suspected violent thugs, and one suspected terrorist.

UK Drugs Policy

Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park Excerpts

Thursday 30th October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Lucas]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on being nominated, and I am sure he will win next time. His point is incredibly important. Until now, politicians often thought that they were reflecting public opinion, but they are now massively behind it, as the poll in The Sun absolutely demonstrates.

It strikes me that a time of austerity, with the Government seemingly looking under every last stone to find money to save, is an odd time not to consider drugs policy, given that so much money is invested in the current drugs regime. Yet drugs policy seems to be completely divorced from the usual considerations about public spending and the good use of taxpayers’ money, and we simply have no proper public mechanism for knowing whether the money spent on the so-called war on drugs has been put to good effect.

No one now buys alcohol in unmarked bottles from the back of a pub—that would be dangerous and unnecessary—but for 40 years we have left our children to do exactly that with drugs. There is no denying that drug misuse has the potential to wreck lives, but surely it is time to be honest about the damage caused by the drug laws, which can cause a proliferation of criminality and public harm. The entire drugs trade has been handed over to the worlds’ racketeers and gangsters. The drugs market has soared, and that has brought untold misery. Essentially, the current market is almost wholly uncontrolled.

From speaking to young people in my constituency, it is clear that many of them can get hold of drugs far more easily than alcohol, which is surely wrong. When someone tries to get hold of alcohol, they at least have to show an ID card if they are thought to be under age. Drug dealers do not care about someone’s ID or anything else; they care only about their profits. I believe that the current policy is based on a deliberate ignorance about the effect of drugs.

[Zac Goldsmith (Richmond Park) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing the debate, and on her extraordinary petition, which has 130,000 signatures. I understand that 20% of people who have taken heroin said that they got it for the first time in jail. If we cannot control drugs in jail, how on earth are we supposed to control them on our streets?

[Caroline Lucas]

That is an extremely good point. I thank the hon. Gentleman for his very helpful intervention, which speaks for itself.

If we are to design a better drugs policy that is based on evidence, we need to agree on the objectives of drugs policy. For me, it is about protecting people, particularly the young and vulnerable, as well as reducing crime, improving health, promoting security and development, providing good value for money and protecting human rights. In setting out why that is important, I will say a little more about the impact of the current drugs policy and why I believe it adds to the case for a review; I will talk a little about the growing consensus on rethinking the current approach to drugs policy; and I will say a little about Brighton and Hove, where my constituency is situated, where the approach of following the evidence as far as possible has delivered benefits.

Before doing any of that, I would like to talk about Martha. Martha’s mother, Anne-Marie Cockburn, is in Parliament with us today. Like so many parents, she had always wanted to protect her child. However, on 20 July 2013, she learned that that was not always possible. On that day, Martha swallowed half a gram of MDMA powder—ecstasy—and died. She was 15 years old. Today, 30 October, would have been Martha’s 17th birthday. She is not celebrating that birthday because the Misuse of Drugs Act did not protect her. Making MDMA illegal did not protect Martha. We owe it to her and to Anne-Marie, and to the many other people who have died drug-related deaths and their families and loved ones, to ensure that in future each and every one of us is offered the best possible protection by our drugs laws.

In her incredibly moving blog, “What Martha Did Next”, Anne-Marie writes:

“Had Martha known that what she was about to take was 91% pure, she would probably have taken a lot less, in fact I’d go as far as to say that she might still be alive.”

Anne-Marie argues that, under prohibition, it is impossible fully to educate people such as Martha, because there is no way to tell what drugs contain. Prohibition has not stopped risk-taking, but it has made those risks much more dangerous. Anne-Marie suggests that we are failing to protect children such as Martha—that we are letting them down—and that, alongside deterring young people from taking drugs, we need a regulatory model that reduces the risk if drugs do get into the hands of young people such as Martha.

I agree with Anne-Marie. Perhaps many people in the Chamber will not. However, the fact that Martha is not celebrating her 17th birthday today is surely the first of many good reasons to carry out an impact assessment of our drugs laws. We urgently need to know whether prohibition is an obstacle to education about drugs, and whether our children would be better protected by alternatives, such as strict regulation. Despite all the accusations that are thrown at those who are in favour of drug policy reform, the bottom line is that it is not about being pro-drugs, but about saving lives. The only credible way to do that is to know whether our policies are up to the job.

That is especially important because there is powerful evidence that the so-called war on drugs is making things worse. Far from being neutral, in many instances the current model pushes users towards more harmful products, behaviours and environments. Let me give two examples of what I mean. In doing so, it is crucial to distinguish between the suffering that is caused by drugs and that which is caused by drugs policy.

First, the vast majority of drug-related offending happens not because people take drugs, but because of drugs policy. Users are driven to burglary and theft to buy drugs at vastly inflated prices in an unregulated market. There is enormous potential significantly to reduce such crime and its impact on our communities under a different system.

Secondly, on legal highs, according to research into synthetic drugs by Demos and the UK Drug Policy Commission, 40 new substances emerged on to the market in 2010, compared with 24 in the previous year. By 2014, the figure had grown to 80 different synthetic drugs. Professor Les Iversen, the chairman of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, recently admitted that drug control legislation is being forced to play “cat and mouse”. Such substances are routinely banned under the Misuse of Drugs Act, but that simply spawns more substances that, in turn, are banned. The legal process cannot keep up.

The Government have published a report today that recommends that all novel synthetic psychoactive substances, or legal highs as they are more widely known, be banned. I appreciate what they are trying to do with that policy, but I think that it is misguided. It fails to appreciate that many legal highs are the products of prohibition. Synthetic cannabis, for example, would not exist if there were a legally regulated supply of real cannabis. Nor does the policy recognise our knowledge that prohibition—in other words, banning things—does not stop people taking drugs, but simply increases the risks.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Hancock]

The hon. Gentleman is for ever bringing us his experience and the House should welcome that. Once again, he has touched on a very important point: careers are being thrown away because of the attitude of the Army, in his case, and of other organisations, which have taken draconian measures against people for the very minor crime of carrying or smoking cannabis. We have to look seriously at this issue. We owe it to the people outside this place because, as other Members have said, they are now ahead of Parliament on this matter. We should not be playing catch-up; we should want to find a way of leading on the issue. The report on comparisons is a step in the right direction, but I hope that the strength of the support in the Chamber today will carry forth that message to our colleagues, including the Prime Minister, who should be continuously reminded of his stance in 2002. He should be reminded of it daily, because when he talks about this issue he seems to forget what he might have said before.

[Zac Goldsmith]

The hon. Gentleman might like to know that today’s Guido Fawkes quote of the day is the one on drug laws that we have heard cited by a number of hon. Members.

[Mr Hancock]

I am delighted to hear that Guido Fawkes is talking about something other than me. We have an opportunity now and we squander it at our peril. We should look forward to this Minister getting the backing of his boss, the Home Secretary, and of the Prime Minister to make sure that we have the opportunity to do something positive, for once, on the issue of drugs. Let us not just continue to know that we have failed.

--- Later in debate ---

[Zac Goldsmith (Richmond Park) (Con)]

Most of the things that I wanted to say have been said, so I will be brief. I just want to put on record my admiration for the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) for having secured this debate, and for having raised the profile of the issue considerably in recent weeks and months. I also want to pay tribute to the Minister. It is true that the report out today has no clear, firm conclusions, but I have no doubt that it is pushing the discussion in a very healthy direction.

At the risk of being repetitive, I want to quote one aspect of the report, which is essential. It states:

“We did not in our fact-finding observe any obvious relationship between the toughness of a country’s enforcement against drug possession, and levels of drug use in that country.”

It goes on to cite recent evidence in the Czech Republic where tough laws coincide with relatively high use of cannabis, but then, dealing with Portugal, it states:

“Although levels of drug use rose between 2001 and 2007, use of most drugs has since fallen to below-2001 levels. It is clear that there has not been a lasting and significant increase in drug use in Portugal since 2001.”

If that is the case, and it certainly syncs with many other reports on the same issues and the same case studies, there is a serious question to answer. If the law is not acting as a disincentive to drugs use, and therefore, logically, drugs use will continue at more or less the same levels, with other factors knocking it up and down in various places, the question is whether we want that trade to belong to the criminals or to be under the umbrella and regulatory regime of some sort of government. For me, the answer is obvious.

There is also a practical issue. This is not an ideological or philosophical issue. According to the figures I have seen, in 2012 14% of people in jail were there for drug-related offences, and last year there were 87,871 convictions on the back of drug offences in this country. Obviously, not all of them ended up in jail, so the question is whether the present policy offers value for money. It comes with a multibillion pound price tag, and the cost goes well beyond the money. We have to ask ourselves who wins from this policy. My hunch, and the hunch of many Members who have spoken today, is that the laws in place have little effect other than to create a black market and therefore opportunities for the very worst people in society. We have laws in place that enrich the bad people while doing very little, if anything, to protect those whom we all have a common interest in protecting.

The present policy does not seem to me to offer great value for money. I know that there is a growing consensus outside this place on this matter, and this debate shows that there is a great consensus in this place, too, which I was not expecting to hear. The motion seems to be unarguable. We need an evidence-based policy system, and the first step is the review for which the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion is calling. I very much support it, and I am thrilled that everyone else in the Chamber today has supported it.

Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park Excerpts

Monday 9th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

Of course Ministers visit Heathrow and other ports at various times to see the operation of those ports in a variety of circumstances. At terminal 4 today, queues were in fact not over an hour long, as I understand the right hon. Gentleman has said that they were, staff were quickly redeployed and more than 80% of desks were open to process passengers as quickly as possible. That is what we have been doing by increasing the staff in recent days and in a week or so, the Olympic numbers will kick in, which will bring even more staff to Heathrow and ensure that people are processed properly and quickly.

[Zac Goldsmith (Richmond Park) (Con)]

Will the Home Secretary please review her decision to approve the extradition of Richard O’Dwyer to the US, where he faces up to 10 years for an alleged breach of copyright rules, an offence, if it is one, that our own authorities did not think merited a prosecution?

[Mrs May]

As my hon. Friend will know, that case is due to go to court later this year. The extradition decision has already been taken and, as he will know, I have decided to uphold it.

Extradition

Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park Excerpts

Thursday 24th November 2011 Westminster Hall

[Zac Goldsmith (Richmond Park) (Con)]

Thank you very much, Mr Rosindell, for allowing me to sneak in at the last minute. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Esher and Walton (Mr Raab) on securing the debate. He mentioned the well-known case of Gary McKinnon, and I want briefly to add my support to his cause.

That case, and some of the figures we have heard in the debate, show that we exist in an imbalanced relationship with the United States. That is reinforced by the fact that the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister were so reassuring on this case while in opposition, but now seem to feel at least that they do not have the power or the authority to follow through with some of those reassurances. That has to be addressed.

I am here to speak about a case that has already been mentioned briefly—that of a constituent of mine, Deborah Dark. She was arrested in 1988 in France, on suspicion of drug-related offences, and held in custody for eight and a half months. She was eventually found not guilty by a French court, and was released and returned to the UK, where she tried to get over the fact that she had wasted eight and a half months in jail.

Nearly 20 years later, in 2007, Deborah travelled to Turkey for a holiday, but instead of being able to enjoy it, as she would have expected, she found herself stripped at gunpoint at the airport by Turkish police. According to the police—whose behaviour, incidentally, was unspeakably disgusting and life-changingly appalling—they were acting merely on a tip-off from Interpol. That was the only explanation she was given; they did not elaborate in any way.

As we would expect, Deborah wanted an immediate explanation when she arrived in the UK. She called the police and was told there was no outstanding arrest warrant; they shrugged their shoulders. She asked the Serious Organised Crime Agency and was told it had no records on her either. Helpfully, it added that her arrest might have been a mistake.

Time passed and, with extraordinary calm, Deborah accepted that explanation. Then, in 2008, she travelled to Spain to visit her father, who had retired there and who was unwell. She tried to return to the UK after her holiday, which lasted a few weeks, but she was arrested at the airport. She was taken into custody by the Spanish authorities and told that she faced extradition to France.

That is when the penny began to drop. Seventeen years before, the French prosecutor had appealed the verdict clearing Deborah. That happened without her knowledge. She had been found guilty, without anyone bothering to tell her. In her absence, she was sentenced to six years. I repeat that she was never summoned to appear in court, never asked to defend herself and never given an opportunity to do so. She was never told that her acquittal had been overturned; these things happened entirely without her knowledge.

That was in 1989. More than a decade later, the French authorities issued their European arrest warrant, meaning that EU member states were compelled to arrest Deborah and send her to France to serve the sentence. As it happens, she refused to consent to the extradition and was granted an extradition hearing. Fortunately, the Spanish court chose not to extradite her, on the basis that so much time had passed and she was unlikely to get a thorough, proper or fair trial. After one month in custody, she was released from prison, and she returned home. However, it was not over.

When Deborah arrived in the UK, she was arrested by the British police at Gatwick airport. Again, she refused to consent to extradition, and she was released on bail, pending another hearing. In 2008, extradition was again refused, for the same reason—the passage of time.

Despite being cleared by two courts, however, Deborah remained subject to the European arrest warrant in other EU states until 2010, when the French finally withdrew it. Until that moment, she was, in effect, trapped in the UK and unable to visit her family in Spain for more than three years, all because of a conviction that she was never allowed to contest.

I have chosen to speak about Deborah not only because her case is horrific and she is my constituent, but because there are hundreds of examples of the European arrest warrant failing. Julian Assange, the boss and founder of WikiLeaks, is a well-known figure. He faces extradition to Sweden, despite the fact that he has not been charged anywhere or for anything, and despite the fact that the extradition is being demanded by a private prosecutor, described as a partisan prosecutor—in other words, they are not a member of the national judiciary or a formal representative of the state.

The system clearly needs changing, and it needs changing soon, because the number of such cases is rising. One thousand people were subjected to the European arrest warrant last year, and the figure grows every month. A remedy suggested by Fair Trials International would involve applying the principle of mutual recognition to the European arrest warrant. That would mean that once one member state had refused to execute a European arrest warrant, as happened with Deborah, it would automatically be withdrawn, along with any alerts on EU and international police databases. That remedy would have prevented Deborah from being subjected to her grim groundhog-day experience.

One alternative that has been proposed—including, I believe, by Fair Trials International—is that we raise the bar to capture only the most serious cases, and I certainly go along with that. As my hon. Friend the Member for Esher and Walton said, that is what this tool was originally designed for. I am sure there are alternatives, but I am no expert, and it is for the Government to identify the most appropriate steps. What is certain, however, is that the system needs radical and rapid reform to prevent such appalling abuses from happening again.