Licensing Act 2003: Post-Legislative Scrutiny (Licensing Act 2003 Report)

Lord Mancroft Excerpts

Wednesday 20th December 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Mancroft (Con)]

My Lords, I, too, would like to congratulate my noble friend on chairing the committee and so ably opening the debate. I cannot usefully add to the report or the Government’s response, or to my noble friend’s opening remarks, but I shall make three points.

The first is similar to the one that the noble Lord, Lord Davies, made a few minutes ago on scrutiny committees, which are relatively new but important animals in your Lordships’ House. I served on the pre-legislative scrutiny committee—I can only say that this early in the evening—on the 2005 Gambling Bill, as it then was. Gambling was a subject in which I had, and retain, some interests. It was a very big Bill and the committee, which was a committee of both Houses, sat for almost a year. It had some extremely controversial areas in it, but the Bill was very much sought by the industry—it had been pushing government for some time for a new regulatory Bill. The committee recommended quite a lot of changes, most of them technical, and advised the Government that they needed to amend their philosophy. The Government took absolutely no notice of that, although they took notice of some of the technical changes that the committee suggested. The result has been what I think could be regarded as a bad Bill becoming a bad Act. In recent weeks, noble Lords will have heard noises about fixed-odds betting terminals and the problems there, about the excessive gambling advertising that resulted from that Act, and about the considerable concerns raised about children gambling. It is difficult not to conclude that it was a bad Act.

So it was very interesting for me to come and sit on the post-legislative scrutiny committee on another Licensing Act, in this case for alcohol, in which I had no particular interest. I make that point about interest and no interest. It is important on these Select Committees to have a few members who know the subject pretty well, but it is also true that it needs one or two members of the committee who do not know the subject very well and come to it with a fresh mind.

Any report is obviously going to focus on those bits that do not work in a Bill. My noble friend in opening the debate, and other speakers, as well as the report itself, have concentrated on the bits that we thought did not work, particularly on the recommendations that we made that the Government have rejected, which is always disappointing for a committee. But if one stands back from the Act, this is not to say that it is a good or a bad Act, but it is a successful Act, in that it does what it set out to do—what it says on the tin—and fulfils its objectives. That in itself is a good thing. What is not such a good thing is to take the trouble to have a Select Committee, to take evidence and write a report, taking quite a lot of trouble on it, and then the Government can only be bothered to reply seven months later. I think that Cabinet Office rules say that the departments should respond to Select Committees within two months. “Justice delayed is justice denied”, but government delayed is bad government. Whether on this or any other subject, the Government need to pay attention. It is a combination of how government works on a daily basis and how Parliament operates that makes for good government. When the two do not work hand in glove, people get bad government—and to that we need to pay attention.

If we were to look at the process, I would say that on pre-legislative scrutiny the jury is out, but like the noble Lord, Lord Davies, I think that the post-legislative scrutiny was a successful process. If any of the powers that be in your Lordships’ House are listening—and I do not blame them if they are not—I would say that this is a process that we should continue and develop, and I think that it is good for Parliament and for government.

The major point that I would like to make is on the dog that did not bark in the night—that is, health. As we have heard, health is not an objective of the Act. Therefore, technically, it was not within our remit. But it was the elephant in the room, and not to have discussed it would have been ridiculous. The whole reason for licensing is because alcohol can cause crime and disorder and also causes health and social problems; if that were not so, we would not bother to have a licensing regime, period. Having discussed this at length—and the committee wrestled with it for a bit, rightly—we came to the conclusion that it is right that health is not an objective in this Act, and nor should it be. Although it is the overall objective of the strategy of licensing, this is a licensing and not a health Act—so it was right that we left that out.

I make two final points, relating to that health point. When the 2003 Act was born and bred, the major focus, as has already been said in the debate, was on the on-trade, the licensed trade: pubs, clubs, et cetera. There is absolutely no doubt now that, if there is a social problem—and indeed there is, as we all know—and a health problem, it is mostly related to the off-trade. It is the sale of cheap alcohol in shops and supermarkets that causes the bulk of the problem. It is in this direction that the Government and future Governments should focus their attention if we are to resolve some of the health and social issues that result from excessive drinking, and I urge the Government to do so. At the same time, I hope that they do not completely reject, as they have to date, minimum unit pricing. I hope that they look at it and keep an open mind and that, if it is successful in Scotland, they think carefully about how it might be extended to England and Wales.

Cannabis

Lord Mancroft Excerpts

Thursday 7th September 2017 Grand Committee

[Lord Mancroft (Con)]

My Lords, in a civilised society, one of the ways by which we are judged is how we look after those who are disadvantaged through no fault of their own: the young, the old, the infirm and the weak. Among them are those who have a particular condition or disability that cannot easily be remedied by orthodox medical care or modern drugs. But if we cannot help them conventionally, nor should we prohibit them from accessing less mainstream treatments if they believe that those treatments can alleviate some of their discomfort or pain. We all know why cannabis is illegal, and whether or not we agree with its prohibition—your Lordships will know that I never have—we can recognise the good motives of those who introduced that legislation and prohibited its use almost half a century ago. That happened some years after the proposal to ban heroin and cocaine was dropped by the Home Office. The Minister responsible agreed, after meetings with doctors’ representatives, to permit those drugs to be categorised as controlled rather than prohibited drugs so that even though they were recognised as dangerous and addictive, they could be prescribed by doctors because of their unique therapeutic value. I know a little about that because my own father was the Minister responsible for doing that in the post that my noble friend holds in the Home Office today.

At that time, no such therapeutic benefit was attributed to cannabis, which is why it was banned. Now we know differently. We live in an age of evidence-based policy, as the noble Baroness said. However, while there is scientific research that demonstrates the value of cannabis, such as that undertaken by Professor Raphael Mechoulam at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, perhaps more importantly there is overwhelming anecdotal evidence from many individuals, some of whom I too have met personally, that their symptoms can be alleviated by cannabis. We would be negligent and, as the noble Baroness said, cruel to ignore that evidence.

I hope my noble friend will not seek to resist the proposal of the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, by advocating a long and complex process of drug trials. This is unnecessary. In November 2015, scientists in the United States announced the discovery of a drug that cures, without any side effects, hepatitis C—until then, incurable, untreatable and usually terminal. Some 300,000 people in Britain have it today. In less than three years, without any extensive trials, thousands of patients throughout the world, who until then faced an uncertain future, has been completely cured of hepatitis C because of the use of this drug. I have a slight interest in it because I am one of those who has been cured within the last six months, and I am immensely grateful to NICE for the decision it made to allow the prescription of this drug without any of the requirements to go through the usual years of testing required by the MHRA. So it can be done and it has been done.

Whatever regime Parliament puts in place will inevitably be circumvented by those who want to do so. Alcohol, tobacco and opiates are all controlled in different ways by the law but they are all abused in a way that the law does not permit. One cannot stop that. Arguably, the drugs that are most abused and cause the most harm are those that are routinely and quite legally prescribed by thousands of doctors, who should know better. So the argument that cannabis is uniquely dangerous and capable of being abused is not credible and appears simply obstructive for the sake of it. Let us therefore have no humbug today. Rather than looking for excuses to do nothing by citing spurious reasons from a bygone age, and thus needlessly prolonging the suffering of patients whose lives could be immeasurably improved, I hope my noble friend will use this debate and opportunity to make this tiny, reasonable and unique move—at no disadvantage to the taxpayer—and show the world that we are the civilised nation that we aspire to be.

Drugs Policy

Lord Mancroft Excerpts

Monday 21st November 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Mancroft (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness not only for introducing this debate but for her impeccable timing in doing so when we are waiting with bated breath for the Government’s revised drug strategy to be published.

I hope your Lordships will forgive me if I start my remarks by using the same words that I did when finishing our last debate on this subject, which is that it is uniquely not party political. In views shared across the whole House, there is broad agreement on the objectives of drug policy; where we differ is on how to achieve those objectives and how to balance the need to control supply with the better target of trying to reduce demand.

There have been two significant changes since we last debated this subject. First, the overwhelming evidence now shows us that the attempts to control supply have failed. We have been saying this for some years, but there is now hard evidence that they have failed, particularly in relation to cannabis. Secondly, this view is now the pre-eminent view. Whereas it was the view of the minority in the past few years, it is now, following the recent United Nations meeting in New York, the view of most people throughout the world. As has been said already, 28 American states, including California, and a number of European states are moving in the same direction—a direction which has been indicated by the Royal Society for Public Health, as the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, said earlier. An all-party report today in the House of Commons also indicated the same direction.

All these reports are saying that we do not want devolution but evolution of our policy based on evidence. The All-Party Parliamentary Group for Drug Policy Reform report, which has been referred to by many speakers, produces that strong, scientifically supported evidence. What steps are Her Majesty’s Government taking towards the medicinal use of cannabis for the conditions we have already heard about, such as chronic pain, arthritis, insomnia, fibromyalgia?

This is not a movement that requires a matter of principle to be changed. Following representations from the royal colleges and a number of doctors, the Home Office Minister with responsibility for drug policy in 1953 told your Lordships that heroin was a uniquely effective pain killer for those with terminal cancer and that, as a consequence, Her Majesty’s Government had decided to change their policy and that heroin was not going to be prohibited in the United Kingdom but was to be a controlled drug, as it is now, because it is the most effective drug for those particular conditions. The Minister in those days could not have known anything about the heroin addiction that was going to sweep this country over the next 40 or 50 years, but there has been little seepage of legal heroin into the black market. The Minister said, “It is both uncivilised and cruel for the Government to deny patients a drug that uniquely alleviates their suffering”. My father was the Minister making that statement. I agree with what he said then and, if he was here now, he would agree with it too in respect of cannabis.

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[Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab)]

My Lords, like other noble Lords, I start by thanking the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, for bringing this Question for Short Debate to your Lordships’ House. In the time allowed it is not possible to cover all the points I would like to, or to respond to all the points made by noble Lords. I know that other noble Lords will be with me on this: I hope that for all government policy decisions the starting point is a reasoned, evidential base at the heart of what the Government promote as a policy. The noble Lord, Lord Paddick, referred to that, but the fact is that all three parties have failed that test over many years.

The Question before us concerns evidenced-based policies to promote public health and to place health rather than prohibition at the heart of our policies on drugs. Of course, we have two legal recreational drugs that can cause serious problems, namely tobacco and alcohol. I am fully aware of the debate about the legalisation of cannabis and the contention that it is less harmful than the two legal drugs I mentioned. My position is that I would not legalise cannabis for general use. It may well be less harmful than alcohol or tobacco but that in itself is not a good enough reason.

I do, though, see the point that the Government should give careful consideration to the case for the use of cannabis or cannabis products as a medicine. As the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, said, where there is medical evidence, the Government should consider the case for trials and consider rescheduling cannabis from Schedule 1 to Schedule 4. These trials would be with named patients only. There should be further research seeking to establish for which ailments cannabis could be an effective and inexpensive treatment.

With the passing into law of the Psychoactive Substances Act 2016, there is no criminal penalty for the personal possession or use of new psychoactive substances, such as the synthetic cannabinoid known as Spice. There has been considerable press coverage of the harmful effects of this product, and I recall a debate in the Moses Room with the noble Baroness, Lady Williams of Trafford, when this very subject came up. There is no criminal penalty for possession of this product, but it is still illegal to produce and supply the drug—criminal penalties still apply. There seems to me some inconsistency between the Government’s policy on Spice, a synthetic cannabinoid, and that on cannabis itself. The Government should look at that carefully and urgently to get both products on the same footing. Maybe the noble Baroness can address that tonight. If she cannot, maybe she can write to me after the debate.

I turn to some of the points raised by noble Lords. I accept, as mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Crickhowell, and my noble friend Lord Rea, that many people in the UK are using cannabis for the relief of pain and in doing so are breaking the law. The noble Lord, Lord Mancroft, made an important point in saying that what we want is not revolution but evolution on an evidential base.

The noble Lord, Lord Maclennan of Rogart, addressed the serious issue of drugs in Glasgow. It will be important to evidentially assess the programmes and the results of work being done to deal with the serious problems there.

The noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, made an important point that the Government should review these matters on the basis of evidence and not get themselves stuck and be unable or unwilling to move.

I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, for bringing this Question forward for debate and I look forward to the Minister’s response.

[Lord Mancroft]

If the Government were to move in the direction that the noble Lord talked about, would Her Majesty’s Opposition support or oppose the Government? That would make a huge difference to the Government’s position.

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark]

If the noble Baroness were to come forward tonight and suggest what I just described, I hope we would support them.

Hunting Act 2004

Lord Mancroft Excerpts

Wednesday 15th July 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bates]

I do not think that it will make it unworkable. There has been concern, which has been expressed in representations from farmers, particularly in upland areas, that the current provisions and exemptions for pest control are unworkable, causing them problems and resulting in the loss of livestock as a result of attacks by foxes. So the question was: can they bring it into line with that which is already the case in Scotland? The view was that that was a reasonable request and something which should be done.

[Lord Mancroft (Con)]

Will my noble friend agree with me that the Government’s proposals did not constitute repeal but were welcome nevertheless, and that we look forward to repeal, as it is in the manifesto, at a convenient moment in the future? In asking this question I declare my interest as chairman of the Masters of Foxhounds Association, chairman of the Council of Hunting Associations and chairman of the Countryside Alliance.

[Lord Bates]

My noble friend makes me grateful for that provision in the manifesto which the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, referred to, that it is a free vote on these matters.

Psychoactive Substances Bill [HL]

Lord Mancroft Excerpts

Tuesday 9th June 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Mancroft (Con)]

My Lords, I am very pleased to welcome the Government’s attention to this important issue. Drugs use is an extraordinarily complex political issue, which is why it has proved so intractable. It is also one of the most damaging social issues in the UK today. The cost to the criminal justice system of dealing with drugs is, at the last count, about £12 billion a year and rising, so it is not cheap.

We have before us today a Bill that implements a policy that I thought, until the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, spoke, was agreed by all three main political parties in their manifestos, although apparently not the Liberal Democrats. I do not know whether it is agreed in the Scottish National Party manifesto because, although I am sure it is a cracking read, I have not got round to it yet, but I am sure the SNP will support us in spirit if not otherwise. As many noble Lords have said, it is also supported by an expert panel. I have been around a long time, and I tend to think that when all political parties agree about something, particularly when they are supported by an expert panel, they are probably heading in the wrong direction, but that is the way things are.

It is helpful to start where the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, started by seeing what we have in common. Every speaker in this debate, those listening to it and those on the Front Benches are all motivated to try to reduce the harms drugs do, particularly the health, social and criminal harms. The noble Lord, Lord Paddick, who is not in his place, talked about his experience. I, too, had great personal experience of drugs, experience I would rather not have had, many years ago. That gave me an interest, which I have developed. I have had a particular interest in drug treatment for about 28 years. For the last 15 or so years, I have also had an interest in drug prevention.

The noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, talked about the treatment of prescription drug addicts and used the word “feeble”. I say to him and the rest of the House that most of the treatment in Britain today is feeble. One of the reasons for that is that we do not spend enough on it. We spend just under 10% of our drug budget on treatment, and just under 1% on drug prevention. That is to deal with the demand for drugs. The sad thing is that we know that treatment works—we can demonstrate that—yet we spend so little time and focus on it.

Reducing the harm of drugs was the motive behind the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971. It is quite clear to those who have read the papers that that is what the drafters of that Bill were thinking at the time. Looking at it now, 45 years later, it is very difficult to come to the conclusion that the Misuse of Drugs Act, which aimed to prevent the distribution and use of drugs, including heroin, cocaine and cannabis, was an overwhelming success. This Bill is a response to a change in the pattern of drug use. Heroin, cannabis and cocaine were not really problems in Britain in the 1950s, but by the time the 1960s finished and the 1970s started they were becoming a problem, and the result was that the Government of the day introduced the Misuse of Drugs Act. Ten or 15 years ago, although we had psychoactive substances, nobody really used them as drugs, certainly not as recreational drugs, but that too has changed. Like other drugs, people take them for fun, but some people—thankfully a small minority, although it is growing because use is increasing—incur harm: mental health problems, physical health problems and, as we have heard, death. The Government’s response, which was explained carefully and thoughtfully in a measured way by my noble friend Lord Bates, is similar to that of the Governments in the 1960s and 1970s and is to restrict supply by use of a mix of criminal and civil sanctions.

The Bill, as we know, aims to ban the manufacture, sale, marketing, distribution and supply of all these substances. In practice, what it will do is prevent the sale of these substances by retail outlets—the so-called head shops, of which there are a few hundred here in the UK. Most of the substances sold are manufactured in China and India and have found their way here by post. The Government believe that the majority of sales take place via the head shops, the retail outlets, while acknowledging that a small but immeasurable amount comes via the internet and then the post. If you look at the evidence widely from around the world, and indeed from the various departments here, it is clear that the evidence is not as clear-cut as has been suggested. What is clear is that the amount of these drugs bought on the internet and coming in through the post is quite large and has increased, and there is no suggestion that it is going to do anything but increase in future. That is the lesson not just in the UK but from around the world.

My real concern is that the Bill will lead not just to a closure of head shops, which I am sure will happen, but to what happened after the Misuse of Drugs Act was passed in the 1970s: it will just mean a diversion of supply. The noble Lord, Lord Patel, and the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, both drew attention to the problem of prescription drugs. In that case, the dealer is the biggest dealer of psychoactive drugs in Britain: the National Health Service. If it, with all its rules, regulations and committees, cannot do this properly, what hope does the Home Office have with one small Bill?

It is not just the manufacture and content of the drugs that are always one step ahead of the law; it is also the importation, supply, marketing and sale. The nub of the matter before us today is this: I share with the Government the desire that our children, grandchildren and godchildren, and indeed everyone else’s, should not take drugs, but I am not so naive as to believe that, whatever I or the Government say—and I do not set much store by government messages—children will not do that. Every scrap of evidence that we have tells us that they will and do take drugs, in exactly the same way that your Lordships will drop into the Bishops’ Bar for a drink after this debate, and for exactly the same reason.

Here is where I differ from the Government: when our children and grandchildren go out to buy drugs, I would infinitely prefer that they bought a product that was as safe as we could make it—safer than nicotine or alcohol, I hope—with its contents free for all to see, at a price that is reasonable, and from a regulated supplier, like nicotine, alcohol and, I hope, prescription drugs. Today the Government are ensuring that that will not happen and that the only suppliers of these products will be unscrupulous criminals, way outside the reach of the law, selling drugs to our children and grandchildren in the dark—the dark of the street corner or the dark of the web. Some will be caught; most will get away with it. Actually I do not really care what happens to them, but I care desperately about the young people who will be harmed and their inconsolable families.

My noble friend Lady Hollins talked about evidence. We do not have enough evidence. She talked about delaying the Bill. I doubt that the Government will; they never delay Bills. It is clear from the remarks all over the House that the evidence about where these drugs come from, and how they will arrive in future, is unclear. However well meaning the Government are, and I am quite certain that they are, all the evidence from the past 40 years is that attempts to control the supply of drugs have failed, and that tells us what might happen in future.

The Government cite as support for their case what has happened in Ireland and Poland. The Minister was kind enough to take the trouble to go through the Bill with me, and I am grateful for that. The Government clearly believe that the measures in Ireland and Poland have been a success. I have to say that the evidence I have seen, as for other speakers around the House, indicates that the early fall in drug use and its consequences in those countries have been reversed, and that the problems are now increasing and will increase further, as the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, suggests. Both sides cannot be right but it is clear that the evidence is not well-enough developed to form a balanced opinion, and to legislate without a balanced view, without being able to make a judgment, is a mistake.

In preparing for this debate I looked at the European Union’s contribution: its directive, which is 47 pages long. Rather like the SNP’s manifesto, it may be a cracking read, but I could not keep awake for all 47 pages. However, one part of it that jumped out at me from the page was where it said that the European Union’s own response was “inadequate”. To call your own response inadequate is quite something—and it needs another response. Whether the next one will be another 47 pages, I do not know.

Past evidence has repeatedly shown that a gap in the market is almost immediately filled by somebody else. More than that, a restricted drug is replaced by a more dangerous one, as we have already heard. That has happened in the UK in the past, and it will happen again now. Poly-drug users—users of lots of different drugs, which nowadays is everybody—are not by their nature very choosy.

Fascinatingly, in the Bill, for the first time ever, as other noble Lords have pointed out, possession for personal use will not be a crime. I would be fascinated to hear my noble friend explain the Government’s thinking behind that. I agree with it, but if it applies to these drugs, why does it not apply to all the other drugs, too? That would be the route to go down.

In politics, as in most things, timing is everything. All over the world today, the mood is turning against the war on drugs. The USA, South America and middle America, and other countries such as Afghanistan and Mexico, which have been torn apart by drug cartels and drug-related crime and which have enormous health and social problems, are slowly beginning to turn away from using the criminal justice system to solve what is a health and social problem. I admire the Government’s resolve and I applaud their motivation in seeking to tackle this issue today, but I wonder about their motivation, and whether they remember the story of King Canute.

Recreational drugs are a demand-led market. Before us today is another measure to restrict the supply of those drugs. It may or may not succeed; I imagine it will, to a certain extent. Past evidence is that it will not displace some supplies for very long. However, the demand following this measure will remain unchanged, and so the likelihood on the evidence we have today is that the demand will be met in another way, and that will lead us back to square 1.

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[Lord Bates]

I hear what the noble Lord says and once again I appreciate the passion that he feels about the topic and his knowledge of it, but in a sense that debate went before this piece of legislation. We looked at that. I do not want to run through the whole list again but other people, including the Home Affairs Select Committee and the expert panel, all looked at that and came to the view that that was not the case. That is a point of wider drug policy. It is perfectly legitimate to continue to have that debate, but not in relation to the Psychoactive Substances Bill now before us, which is seeking to tackle a very specific problem in a way that we believe is in keeping with the expert opinion that we have had.

I recognise that the noble Lord, Lord Patel of Bradford, and many others—I keep saying this—have an immense level of expertise. I should, in mentioning expertise, say that I am very grateful to be assisted on the Front Bench by my noble friend Lady Chisholm, who also brings immense experience to this, from her understanding both of drugs and of their health effects. The noble Lords, Lord Rosser, Lord Patel, Lord Kirkwood and Lord Rea, asked about the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs. Its 2011 report called on the Government to explore legislation for new psychoactive substances. The Home Office set up a six-month policy review, with a primary focus on looking at how law enforcement powers could be strengthened. Ministers informed the ACMD in October 2014 of the Government’s plans to develop the blanket ban approach. The Home Secretary has written again to the ACMD, and welcomes its views on how we strengthen the UK’s forensic capacity and capability to support the implementation of the legislation in 2016. The ACMD continues to provide expert scientific advice which is greatly valued by the Government. The Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 will remain the cornerstone of our response to dangerous drugs and the ACMD will continue to have the central statutory role in assessing the harms of specific new psychoactive substances and provide advice to Ministers.

[Lord Mancroft]

I am most grateful to my noble friend for giving way. In the course of what he was just saying, he talked of the Misuse of Drugs Act being a cornerstone. I understand that, but the Misuse of Drugs Act’s primary purpose was to restrict the supply of certain drugs—heroin, cocaine et cetera—and it has completely and utterly failed to do that. It has not restricted the supply; we have a massive oversupply. You could say that that is because time has passed, but the fact is that the Act has failed. If that is the cornerstone, and we are moving on to another stone in the same pavement, it is completely logical to ask why this new stone would succeed where every previous measure has consummately failed.

[Lord Bates]

My noble friend asserts that the Misuse of Drugs Act has failed. You can of course observe and point to the availability and prevalence of drugs within society and draw some conclusions, but one cannot make a direct comparison because, had the Misuse of Drugs Act not been in place in 1971, perhaps that situation and the situation that we are trying to address might be a whole lot worse.

What can you do in government? You can look at issues. We have parents, including Maryon Stewart, and the Angelus Foundation coming to us and urging us to take action and clamp down on these drugs. We read in our regional and national newspapers of horrendous situations—young lives lost and blighted. We see new drugs come on to the market branded as “plant food” and “not fit for human consumption”, as if that gets the sellers off the hook of their moral responsibility for what they are selling. Are we supposed to say “No, we do not take any action”, simply because there is an availability of drugs in society? Well, the Government do not take that view and nor did the expert panel, the Home Affairs Select Committee or any of the mainstream political parties in their manifestos. I am sure that this debate will go on, and it is good that we do this. I will now try to address some more of the particular points raised.

The noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, and my noble friend argued the case and called for a more regulatory approach. As I indicated in my opening remarks, the expert panel considered the regulatory model along with others in operation in different jurisdictions, and concluded that it presented significant practical difficulties. Trying to define what we mean by low-harm substances would be a legislative and scientific minefield. For many substances, the evidence of chronic harm can take years to emerge, as can dependence potential. It is not clear how the harms could be properly assessed to medicine standards without animal and human trials. Do we really want to contemplate further animal testing for these purposes? I also remind the House that there have been no applications for licences in New Zealand—further evidence, if it were needed, of the difficulties of going down the regulatory route.

The question of definition was raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, and the noble Lord, Lord Patel. The Bill is designed to capture substances supplied for human consumption that have a psychoactive effect. Its aim is to capture substances that are not currently controlled under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 but that, as with all drugs, carry health risks when misused. Many new psychoactive substances are still legal due to the speed at which they are produced, with manufacturers inventing new substances by tweaking chemical formulas, as I already mentioned.

The point about criminalising young people was raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Hollins, again from her deep experience in this area. I assure her and other noble Lords that there is no question of criminalising the users of psychoactive substances. As proposed by the expert panel, the Bill is focused on the trade in these substances: those who manufacture, import, distribute or sell new psychoactive substances. The Bill contains no offence in relation to simple possession—a point welcomed by the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher. As she suggested, for young people tempted to use new psychoactive substances our focus must be on prevention and, where necessary, treatment. I look forward in Committee to setting out in more detail the comments in that expert panel report on the work that will need to go hand in hand with education and health prevention available to people.

The noble Baroness, Lady Hollins, argued in favour of the Irish approach. The Bill is closely modelled on that approach. I will come back to that specific point about the Irish definition.

The impact on research was raised by the noble Baronesses, Lady Meacher and Lady Hollins, the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, and my noble friend Lady Browning. A number of noble Lords sought reassurance about the impact of the Bill on legitimate research. I can indeed offer such reassurance. Research that does not involve the human consumption of a psychoactive substance would not be caught by the provisions of the Bill. Where research has reached the stage of clinical human trials, Schedule 1 to the Bill exempts investigational medicinal products from the scope of a psychoactive substance. This includes active substances being used in such trials. If further latitude for research were needed, the regulation-making power in Clause 10 enables us to exclude specified activities from the ambit of the offences.

The noble Lord, Lord Rosser, raised the issue of keeping the list of exempted substances under review. He asked about the process for ensuring that the list of exempted substances in Schedule 1 is kept up to date. We believe that the list will be relatively stable. Indeed, Ireland has not needed to amend its equivalent list in the five year since its legislation was enacted. I should add that we are not legislating here for a regulatory regime for new psychoactive substances; there is no provision in the Bill to enable the licensing of so-called low-harm substances, and the regulation-making power in Clause 3 is not designed for that purpose.

The noble Lord, Lord Rosser, and my noble friend Lord Farmer asked about the implementation of the Bill. We are working with the police, the National Crime Agency and the Border Force on implementation, including the development of appropriate guidance, and we will extend those discussions to the Local Government Association—another organisation that is actually being supportive of the Government’s approach here. We are also ready to work with other bodies, such as the Association of Convenience Stores, to provide bespoke guidance for their members. A very good point was made about what we are doing to engage with countries that lead in supplying these things, such as India and China. I do not have an answer to that, but I shall write to noble Lords about that in further correspondence.

I mentioned the cross-European approach. The noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, asked whether we could be more specific about when the ACMD is due to report. NICE and the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency have published advice to clinicians on how to help people to withdraw from medicines to which they are addicted. Public Health England has produced advice to commissioners on how to assess the need in their area for specialist services to help people to withdraw from medicines to which they are addicted.

I am conscious that there are a number of issues that I have not had time properly to address here, and I shall be very happy to write a follow-up letter to begin a discussion with colleagues, and perhaps to arrange, ahead of Committee, meetings between interested Peers and some of the experts from whom we have taken our opinion. I am very happy to give an undertaking to do that. With those assurances—

Drugs

Lord Mancroft Excerpts

Thursday 17th October 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Mancroft (Con)]

My Lords, I add my thanks to those of other noble Lords to the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, for tabling this debate. Of course, 50 years ago we could not have had this debate because Governments did not have drugs policies in those days. However, it became apparent during the 1960s that we were going to need one. Very little was known about drugs or drug use in those days but it was quite clear that they were damaging to an individual’s health. They hurt families and the wider communities, and there was potential damage to society itself. That is how it was perceived and, from where we are now, it probably was not entirely wrong. However, we need to look at the context of those days.

Drugs in 1971 meant cannabis, a little amphetamine, heroin—that was probably the most serious one—and some hallucinogenic drugs such as LSD. Although cocaine existed, it was not really available in the United Kingdom then. All the new NPDs such as ecstasy, methedrone and ketamine really did not exist. Crack had not been invented and prescriptions for drugs such as valium and librium were really new, and their long-term effects not known at all. In 1974, there were 14,000 heroin addicts registered with the Home Office.

There are only two things you can do about drugs, then or now. You can put in place measures to restrict or reduce the supply of drugs or try to reduce the demand for them. You can restrict the supply by use of the criminal law. Unfortunately, in the 1970s there was no recognised way of treating drug addicts, so there was nothing much that you could do about reducing demand. We introduced something called the British system, whereby addicts were prescribed heroin every single day as a way of keeping them level and out of the black market. That in fact continued in this country until the 1980s and it is the forerunner of much of the state provision of treatment today.

The central plank was to try to control or reduce supply, which was done through the passage of the Misuse of Drugs Act, supported internationally by the United Nations conventions. While those and the law may not have changed over 40 years, quite a lot of other things have. We now have 300,000 addicts, mostly of heroin and cocaine. We have crack, NPDs, ecstasy, methedrone and ketamine, with two new drugs appearing every week. In 1992—but not until then—the Home Office decided that there was after all a link between drugs and crime. That led to the first ever drugs strategy, while my noble friend Lord Howard was in the Home Office. We learnt then that the cost of drug-related crime and the policing of drugs was about £12 billion a year.

The noble Lord, Lord Teverson, talked about the international side of the drug industry. He mentioned a lot of countries but missed out Afghanistan. The second reason why we went into Afghanistan eight years ago was to suppress the opium business, of which we are the largest consumer; 80% of the heroin on British streets comes from Afghanistan. Now we are leaving Afghanistan, though, and the poppy harvest has in fact quadrupled. I am not really sure that you could describe that as a policy success.

Whichever way you look at it—internationally, nationally or locally—I cannot see that our attempt to restrict the supply of drugs has been anything but a disastrous and incredibly expensive failure. In 1971 we did not have options but today we do. If we cannot restrict the supply, as we clearly cannot, we can reduce demand. The United Nations, the World Health Organisation and the NHS all accept that drug addiction is a primary illness; it is not curable but it is treatable. The previous Government recognised this and over 10 years put an enormous amount of time and effort into treatment, and formed the National Treatment Agency for Substance Misuse.

The present Government have taken that forward by ring-fencing the funding and by moving the National Treatment Agency into Public Health England, but there is a structural fault in drug treatment in Britain. The officials at both the Department of Health and the Home Office fundamentally do not believe in drug treatment; they believe that drugs are a symptom of social deprivation. They are backed in this feeling by the medical profession; because there is no medical treatment for drug addiction, which there is not and never has been, there is therefore presumed to be no treatment at all. Therefore the only treatment for drug addiction, in the view that is held, is substitute prescribing, which means that 150,000 out of 300,000 addicts in this country live on prescription drugs. To look at it another way, it is like taking an alcoholic off whisky, putting him on vodka and saying, “There we are, job done”. However, there is a vast amount of other treatment available such as abstinence-based treatment, which has been in existence in this country for 40 years but which virtually no one has access to because they cannot get it through the health authorities.

We started this debate 40 years ago with a degree of consensus; we need to find that consensus now. No responsible politician wants to do anything other than to reduce the demand for drugs and the harms caused by them, so there is quite a lot of agreement about the way forward. The consensus is growing among politicians, internationally and now in the media. All that we need now is for the Government to join that consensus.

EU Drugs Strategy: EUC Report

Lord Mancroft Excerpts

Thursday 19th July 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Mancroft]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Hannay of Chiswick, and his colleagues on the Select Committee on what is a really thorough and incredibly useful piece of work—one which we have not had before the House for a very long time. It makes some extremely useful recommendations and comes to some very helpful guiding conclusions, and I am grateful for the opportunity to debate it today. I would add to that my congratulations to the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, on the way that he has introduced this debate. Were it not for the fact that my name is on the list and so I had better say something, I would not be speaking, as the noble Lord covered his report extremely well, and certainly covered all of the main points that need to be addressed. It is late on a Thursday afternoon and we have a long speakers list, so I shall try to keep my comments as short as possible.

It is very helpful that the report emphasised, at paragraph 26, that member states should continue to decide and enact health policies in respect to drugs. That is the position we have had for many years and have now, and it complements the position of the United Kingdom’s own national drugs policy, where the Government would like to see such decisions go further down, even to a local level. That co-ordinated approach is helpful.

The report’s conclusions in paragraph 27 are also extremely helpful. They concern the difficulty of amending a treaty signed by 180 countries, namely the United Nations conventions. This is important, because a lot of people and NGOs in this country and around Europe have been devoting quite a lot of time over the last four or five years on working to amend the conventions, or get them amended, on the basis that it is difficult to develop policies and strategies in this difficult and complex area while the conventions remain as they are. If we read the report before us today and its conclusions, we see that that is not so. By way of a very helpful example, the committee draws attention in paragraphs 30 to 34 to the different national policies in Sweden, the Netherlands, Portugal and the Czech Republic. They are well worth looking at, because they demonstrate the flexibility within the conventions which many countries have not taken advantage of. Nor, certainly, have we, and we might well think about doing so.

The report refers to the EU strategy’s two “broad brush” objectives—which have been the policies of most nations, too—of restricting supply and reducing demand. These are indeed very broad brush. Reducing demand is left to subsidiarity and the individual member states. Where the European Union has played a significant role is in attempting to restrict supply. There is great co-operation between member states’ police forces and different agencies. Of course, one could always say that it could be improved, but it is an area where the strategy has been successful. However, as the report says, it is rather broad brush, and it would probably be more helpful if that broad brush were to become a slightly narrower brush.

On reducing supply, I would make two points only. First, the report makes a number of points on trafficking. I noticed and read carefully the Home Office’s evidence about that. Apparently, it has had great success in managing to stop drugs coming into this country and other European countries, to the effect that, for example, the purity of cocaine has significantly reduced and the price has gone up. Of course, this is good news and the Home Office should be congratulated on it. However, I have heard such statements from the Home Office many times during the past 25 years. I am sure that what it says is correct, but I note that it has had absolutely no effect on the amount of drugs that can be got on the streets of Britain and of other cities in Europe nor on the ease with which one can do so. I wonder whether that is an effective use of resources. That, too, has never been looked at.

The report also makes an interesting point about displacement which has not been taken into account previously; namely, that if security forces, be they customs or police, adopt a strategy for getting rid of trafficking in one particular area, it has the undesirable effect of moving it somewhere else. Within Europe, that could mean moving it to a part of Europe that has not had a serious drug problem so far. There are two examples of exactly the same problem occurring outside Europe. Only this week, we have heard that Honduras has now taken over as the murder capital of the world. The work that the Mexican and United States Governments have done to reduce trafficking in Mexico has caused enormous problems in Honduras, which did not have any problems previously. The second example is the work being done by the Americans and the Royal Navy in the Caribbean to stop that being a drug route for South American cocaine. It has been very successful, but it has displaced the problem to west Africa, which now has an appalling drug problem which it did not have 10 or 15 years ago. We must be careful not to recreate those problems in Europe. It is helpful that the report draws attention to them.

My main point rather echoes that made by the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, and is about differences in national policies and what they mean. I draw attention to Sweden and the Netherlands, two countries which are often regarded as being at opposite ends of the spectrum when it comes to drug policies. I know both of them quite well and have spent quite a lot of time looking at policies in those countries during the past 20 years. They are very interesting and very different. Although Sweden is regarded as being hugely successful, it is the nature of the way that things happen there that a degree of its problems is not visible. I would not say that it has been swept under the carpet, which would be unkind and unfair, but it is like an iceberg—it is below the surface.

I do not necessarily think that the Swedish policy overall is quite as overwhelmingly successful as is presumed. My background is in drug treatment, and although a lot is talked about the success of the treatment system in Sweden, for a number of cultural and social reasons, that form of treatment, without going into the detail, would not be acceptable in this country. You could not do it. Equally, in the Netherlands, their approach to life, the way that they choose to live, and their morals and ethics, are very different from ours in Britain. Although what they have done is very interesting, and some people have asked why can we not do in London what they have done in Amsterdam, one of the things I have noticed is that you can learn from other countries—I wish we would learn more from them—but you cannot pick up another country’s policy and transpose it. We are not Los Angeles, Amsterdam or Stockholm, we are different. We can learn from them but we cannot do exactly as they do. That is an important thing to take on board.

Perhaps the most important part of this report for me was Chapter 5, which is devoted to Portugal. Everybody in the drugs field has something to say about Portugal—that it has either been a huge success or a great failure, depending on the position you started from. The interesting thing about this report is that it is so dispassionate and refuses to come to a conclusion, but recognises the importance of what has happened in Portugal, where there has been a reduction in the use of the criminal justice system, an increase in the treatment system and a resulting reduction in drug use. There has been a complete change in what has happened in that country. Could we do that here? I do not know. Nobody knows, because we have not done it. However, I fully support the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, when he referred to the fact that we have not had that debate. One of the reasons we have not had that debate is not only because of the irresponsibility of the press, which scares politicians off from doing it, but because important social debates of this sort need to be led by the political class, particularly by the Government of the day, and successive Governments for the last 20 years have declined to engage in this debate. They have not said whether it is right or wrong but have just refused to engage.

What this report says to us more than anything else is that there is a hugely important debate out there to be had. It could have an enormous effect, because the single biggest cost of the drug problem—an economic cost in these difficult economic times—is the criminal justice cost, which we are told by the Government is about £18 billion a year. If there is any possibility that we could save some of that money and save some of the people to whom that money is directed as individuals through healthcare—this Government are doing a great deal on healthcare and drugs—that is something we should be looking at. If there is one message that comes out of this excellent report for me, it is that we must have this debate and that it is worth while—but it must be led by the Government.