Criminal Justice and Courts Bill

Lord Mancroft Excerpts

Monday 14th July 2014 Lords Chamber

As I hope I have made clear, extending the use of mandatory drug testing will go only part of the way to providing a solution. Many of the drugs that I have described as causing problems are prescribed in prison, so of course will show up on testing—but the use of psychoactive substances, or legal highs, will not, as many of these substances will not show up. Therefore, Amendment 20 seeks to ensure that we have sufficient information not only about the use of drugs in prison but about the effectiveness of the mandatory drug-testing system. Taken together, this review of effectiveness of mandatory testing and the scale of the problem of drug use in prisons, alongside clarification about the plans for provision on safe places for ensuring that prisoners can receive drugs that they need without the potential for abuse, will, I believe, provide us with greater confidence in the likely impact of Clause 14. The clause needs to address the range of complexities and potential solutions to these very challenging issues, and I very much hope much that the Minister will consider these amendments seriously. I beg to move.

[Lord Mancroft (Con)]

My Lords, I listened with great care to the noble Lord, Lord Patel of Bradford, in moving his amendment, and he laid out very accurately for your Lordships the perceived problem of misadministration of various sorts of drugs, particularly prescription drugs, in prison, and the manner in which they are prescribed and taken. The problem that the noble Lord describes to the House is probably entirely right. However, it may not have come over that it is merely an extension of the problem of prescription drugs outside prison. Often in your Lordships’ House we discuss drugs and drug-related crime, but we rarely get around to talking about the fact that, however many people may be taking illegal drugs, many more are addicted to prescription drugs, which causes immense problems for them and their families, as well as for society as a whole. Whether or not that addiction to prescription drugs is causing crime or is related to crime in some way, it is an enormous problem. All those drugs are prescription drugs, which means that they have already been prescribed by a doctor—and probably, as a consequence, misprescribed, or they would not be resulting in addiction and all the problems that stem from it.

We are not dealing with that problem outside prison, with the ordinary population—we are dealing with it incredibly badly. The Department of Health is wrestling with it in a rather inadequate way, and it is bouncing backwards and forwards between the Home Office and the Department of Health, as it has been for many years. I am not entirely sure why, if we cannot deal with it outside prison, we should dump that problem into prison and say to the prison authorities that we cannot deal with it when prisoners are ordinary citizens living in our society, but now that they have been convicted of a crime and are going to go to prison we expect the prison authorities to deal with a problem that we cannot deal with outside.

The noble Lord has accurately identified a problem, but I have some concern over whether Amendments 19 and 20 contain the solution. Perhaps it is the start of a solution—but if we cannot deal with it outside, asking the Secretary of State to lay a report, the results of which we can all guess, even if we do not know the details, does not seem even to get to the start of resolving this problem. I look forward to what my noble friend says in response, and perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Patel, would like to respond before then. However, although I accept the problem, I cannot see that this even remotely touches on a solution.

[Lord Patel of Bradford]

I completely agree with the noble Lord, Lord Mancroft, about the issue of prescription drugs out in the community, given the ludicrous figure of literally 50 million prescriptions—I think—having been issued last year. However, there is a clear distinction between that situation and the situation in prisons. Mandatory drug testing was introduced to test prisoners for heroin in particular. However, following the introduction of mandatory drug testing, many prisoners who had been using cannabis, which stayed in the system for longer, started to use heroin, which stayed in the system for a shorter time. We got over that problem through introducing into the prison estate a very good integrated drug system, which has worked exceptionally well.

However, the drug abuse problem has shifted to prescription drugs. In prison after prison, prescription drugs are used as a commodity. People are being bullied on account of these drugs and violence is associated with them. We do not have the measure of this problem or know the extent of prescription drug abuse. Indeed, we have no idea about the problem of the so-called legal highs, which is clearly a problem in prisons, because the mandatory drug testing simply does not pick up those drugs. Merely to say that we will conduct mandatory drug testing for all drugs will not solve the problem. We need to analyse further how prisoners can safely take the prescription medicines they are prescribed and what policies need to be put in place to provide safe places for them to do so. We need data on prisoners’ prescription medicines and on the incidence of abuse to enable us to move forward on this issue. The intention behind the amendment is to obtain that data and for the Secretary of State to present them to Parliament in a report. That would give us the opportunity to improve the situation.

Drugs and Crime

Lord Mancroft Excerpts

Tuesday 15th June 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Mancroft]

My Lords, it is my first and very pleasant duty to thank on behalf of the whole House the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, not just for initiating this debate but for co-ordinating the letter to Ban Ki-Moon, working with the UNODC and going to Vienna, which I am quite sure, as she suggested, has had a considerable effect.

I do not think that this is a discussion paper; it is more a positioning paper, which reveals a radical and welcome change in the United Nations’s stance. It is radical because, as we have heard, the United Nations has until now focused almost exclusively on the elimination of drug use and suppression of the drugs trade. Now, suddenly, we see that focus switch towards the only effective way to tackle the drug problem, which is to reduce the demand for drugs by providing appropriate help and healthcare to drug users and addicts. The change is welcome because a growing number of people in public and political life have pressed for a move away from gesture politics towards a more mature and pragmatic policy which will have a significant social and economic benefit.

What has brought this about? It is quite simply a change in the direction of American policy. For years, the United Nations was unable to move even if it had wanted to—which I do not think it did—because its most powerful member and paymaster, the USA, was determined to go on promoting its war on drugs and its “just say no” campaigns.

With the arrival of the Obama Administration, however, that has changed. The language has changed. It seems that—not overnight, but carefully and slowly—the Administration will wind down the war on drugs. It is this change in US policy that has taken the shackles off the United Nations and allowed it to move in this new and very welcome direction.

Crucially, the UNODC is accepting, indeed encouraging, member Governments to act in a way many do already, but, more importantly, in a way which it had previously argued was in breach of the conventions. This paper invites us to take a position started by the previous Government. In reality, very few people in the UK are sent to prison for possession of drugs alone. We remain in the position, however, where an enormous proportion of those currently in prison, probably over 50 per cent, are there for drug-related crimes. This paper invites us—and I am confident the new coalition will accept this—significantly to increase both the availability and the quality of treatment in the criminal justice system and the wider community, with the specific objective of getting people off drugs rather than maintaining them on drugs indefinitely, giving them appropriate support when they leave prison, and helping them to lead healthy and, I hope, happier lives as positive members of society.

Throughout this paper, the UNODC reiterates that drug dependence is a health and social problem, but health and social problems cannot be solved by using the criminal justice system. We therefore cannot say, “We will give you the help you need until the moment you need it most, when you relapse, whereupon we will withdraw that care unless and until you get yourself arrested”. That is a pretty good summary of what happens in too many cases in the UK.

The paper also raises some interesting points about coercive treatment. I agree that this is an unattractive route and I hope the Minister will confirm that that is not within the Government’s thinking.

I make two other points in passing. The first concerns the difference between users and those addicted to, or dependent on, drugs. Not everyone who drinks alcohol is an alcoholic. If you do not believe me, go and look in the Bishops’ Bar this evening. Not everyone who uses drugs is an addict. Addicts and alcoholics are ill. They need treatment, even if they do not always want it. At some stage whether we like it or not, society is going to have to get used to the idea that large numbers of our fellow citizens have made informed decisions to use drugs in the same way that their fellow citizens use alcohol. The vast majority do not have health problems and do not commit crimes and, on balance, they behave better in public than many of their fellow citizens who drink. That is for another day, but that other day is coming.

Lastly, I draw attention to the comments in the paper about drug courts. They exist in the UK to a limited extent, and it would be very interesting to hear the Minister’s views.

We are barely a month into this new Government and it would be unfair to expect a detailed response from my noble friend on the Front Bench today. Indeed, it is a pity we are not having this debate in a few months’ time when we could reasonably expect a more detailed answer. If that is the case, perhaps I could ask my noble friend to come back to the House at a later date and make a fuller statement on the Government’s policy. Even so, I hope he will say that the Government welcome this paper and that it is, indeed, the general direction in which the Government would like to move.

If the Obama Administration, the United Nations, the Public Accounts Committee and the Permanent Secretary to the Home Office in the report that was published by the Public Accounts Committee in April find common ground on a policy issue of this complexity, you can reasonably conclude that a consensus is starting to form. It seems there might be a consensus forming in your Lordships’ House this evening, and I very much hope that Her Majesty’s Government will join, if not lead, that consensus.