Psychoactive Substances Bill [Lords]

Anne McLaughlin Excerpts

Wednesday 20th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mike Freer (Finchley and Golders Green) (Con)]

I thank the shadow Minister for a balanced speech that contained some well-judged comments. I also thank my right hon. Friend the Minister for his courtesy when I took a delegation to him from the National AIDS Trust, Stonewall, Millivres Prowler and Boyz magazine to discuss this topic.

It is clear not just from this debate, but from the debate that has been raging in the gay press over the past few months, that there is considerable concern over the need to ban poppers. What has come to the fore over the past few months while I have been working on the topic is the complete lack of empirical data one way or the other. I appreciate that the Home Office believes—I have no reason to think that this belief is not genuine—that deaths have occurred from the use of poppers. However, that evidence has never been forthcoming.

I therefore decided to do a bit of research of my own. I would like to draw attention to some American research, particularly that of Dr Thomas Hall of the University of California in Los Angeles, who gave evidence to the Gay Times for a report on the effects of isopropyl nitrite. I will not quote the whole document, you will be pleased to know, Madam Deputy Speaker, but he said:

“There is very little specific research on the health effects of alkyl nitrites other than amyl nitrite.”

He went on to say:

“My summary statement would be that in the grand scheme of drugs of abuse, the risks from nitrite poppers are fairly benign… Isopropyl nitrite and other nitrite poppers appear to be far less harmful to the body in general than chronic alcohol consumption.”

I then looked at The New England Journal of Medicine, which stated in 2010:

“To our knowledge, over the past 10 years, there have been only two case reports of visual loss after inhalation of poppers, and the anatomical basis of this injury remains elusive.”

Finally on medical research, I turned to the US Department of Health and Human Services report of January 2014. It stated:

“To date, use of alkyl nitrites as a psychoactive substance among MSM”—

men who have sex with men—

“has received little attention in addiction textbooks, where they are subsumed among other inhalants.”

We have heard about that today. The report continues:

“This is unfortunate, because lumping these disparate agents together based on mode of administration”—

that is, inhalation—

“obscures substantial differences in both mechanism and typical risk between alkyl nitrites, which act on a specific…pathway, and inhaled solvents and propellants”

that have other effects. That is about the sum of the medical evidence that I could find.

In the absence of medical evidence or hard facts in the UK, I wrote to the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs. The chairman could not have been more blunt. He said that poppers were

“not seen to be capable of having harmful effects”.

There has been talk of a medicinal benefit to poppers, which I thought was an interesting turn of phrase until I received an email. I have to bow to the knowledge of our SNP colleagues, because it was from a gentleman from Croy in Inverness. He said: “Alkyl nitrites are carried, used and, when the need arises, shared by many people who work in the countryside as the first line of treatment if one is bitten by an adder.”

I confess that adders are not common in Finchley and Golders Green. Mr Joyce of Croy went on to say:

“A substantial number of people are bitten each year in Britain and the bite is rarely fatal, but whether that is because the venom is not particularly powerful against modern healthy humans or because treatment, with Alkyl nitrite or one of the eight known anti-venoms, is almost always administered very quickly is a question that is open to debate.”

That email shows that there is a conflict between the views that are held and what limited information and fact are out there in the public domain.

I support the view that there is a need to provide up-to-date empirical evidence. There also needs to be proportionality. Everything that we do carries a risk, whether it is smoking or anything else. If one drinks bleach, one will be harmed, but we are not proposing to ban bleach. When we seek to control, regulate or ban anything, we must deal with it in the round and consider the proportionality of doing so.

I welcome the response to the Home Affairs Committee report, because it states that an investigation will be under way shortly into the impact of the ban on the relationships of gay men and women. I am told that this issue affects not just gay men, but gay women. The Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee, whom I would like to call my right hon. Friend, talked about anal sex. That is quite a crude way of saying that poppers can facilitate sex, through the relaxation of muscles. However, this is not just about the physical side of a relationship. If people want their relationship to be as intimate as possible and poppers facilitate that, they are an important element in the emotional wellbeing of that couple. Therefore, if we are talking about the medicinal benefits, we have to include the emotional and mental health benefits that the use of poppers in a relationship can bring.

When we are talking about risks—I have mentioned proportionality—it is important that we do not start banning things on the basis of one or two incidents. There has to be a significant risk of significant harm to a significant number of people, otherwise we would be banning cigarettes and alcohol tomorrow.

I say to the Minister that the investigation and report must be as open and transparent as possible. I ask him to give an assurance when he responds that evidence will be taken not just from organisations such as Public Health England, elements of the NHS and the ACMD, but organisations such as the National AIDS Trust, the Terrence Higgins Trust and Stonewall. It should also be taken from organisations such as Millivres Prowler, which I believe is the largest retailer of poppers in the UK, because it has a strong, relevant and up-to-date evidence bank of how poppers are used and how they are sold. Because it is a reputable retailer, it also has an enormous amount of data on the illegal import of the more dangerous poppers that are coming in through the internet. I hope that the Minister will also say that evidence will be taken from the international bodies, a few of which I mentioned earlier, that have done medical research into the benefits or disbenefits of the use of poppers.

Finally, if the Home Office decides that there is a risk that needs to be mitigated, but that an outright ban is not necessary, I urge it to consider licensing poppers for sale through sex shops. That would allow some level of control, regulation and protection, without the need for an outright ban, which might lead people to be exposed to all sorts of underground drugs.

There is a lot of work to be done. I welcome the swift action of the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz). Members might think that my conclusion will be that I will support Opposition amendment 5, and I have to say that the Opposition have spoken a lot of sense. However, I will support the Government because I want an exemption based on empirical evidence. If poppers are exempted by the summer recess, as outlined in the response to the Home Affairs Committee report, that exemption could not be easily overturned on the whim of a future Home Office Minister, because it would be based on empirical evidence, whatever it says. On that basis, I will support the Government on this issue.

[Anne McLaughlin (Glasgow North East) (SNP)]

I think that I have to beg to move the amendments that stand in my name. If I have not to beg, I have to do something else, I am sure.

[Mr Burrowes]

Speak to them.

[Anne McLaughlin]

Oh, I am speaking to them and not begging at all. I wish to speak to the amendments that stand in my name, amendments 12, 13, 14, 15 and—along with Labour colleagues—amendment 5.

We support the aims of the Bill to protect public health and to go after the big guys—the ones who are making a profit out of other people’s endangerment—rather than going after the individuals who decide to try these substances for whatever reason. In that respect, however, I do not think that we are quite there yet, which is why we have tabled our amendments.

--- Later in debate ---

[Victoria Atkins (Louth and Horncastle) (Con)]

I am sure that the hon. Lady knows that the situation she has just described in which youths place an order with a dealer and then distribute the substance among their friends is entirely consistent with the law as set out in the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971. The message is that if you buy the drug and then distribute it, you are a supplier in the eyes of the law. I would be interested to know why she thinks there should be a distinction between these substances and the more serious drugs that are dealt with under the 1971 Act. Surely we are still trying to achieve the same aim: to stop the supply of harmful substances.

[Anne McLaughlin]

My understanding was that we were trying not to mirror the Misuse of Drugs Act. We have moved on, and this Bill is not about criminalising individuals for possession, as they can be under the Act. The Bill does not have to mirror the Act exactly. The key issue is the effect that criminalising a young person for a foolish mistake can have on their life chances. Drugs blight enough lives already—that is certainly the case in my constituency—and we do not need to penalise someone who is acting on behalf of his or her peer group, a small group of friends, without any financial motive. These young people are not drug suppliers. Obviously, we might question the sense of their decision to buy drugs, but it should not be a criminal offence. A young person could be pressurised by their peer group to purchase these substances, and they might do so in order to gain the recognition of their peers, but if they were caught they could end up with a substantial criminal conviction.

[Victoria Atkins]

Surely the point is to introduce clarity to the young people that the hon. Lady is describing. Ecstasy is a class A drug, and if a young person buys it, they risk going to prison for a very long time if they are prosecuted and convicted. If a young person buys one of these new psychoactive substances that is minimally different from MDMA, and the dealers get round the problem by saying that it is just a little bit different from ecstasy and therefore does not fall under the 1971 Act, that young person could be placed in a very difficult position. They would have to be a scientist to know the difference between the two substances. My question is: should we not be encouraging clarity to differentiate between those drugs, to enable young people to know that they should not be buying those substances and distributing them?

[Anne McLaughlin]

I am not arguing that we should not be discouraging young people in that way. I am arguing that if someone buys these substances for themselves and a couple of friends, we should not criminalise them as though they were drug dealers when they clearly are not. I worry that, further down the line, Members of this House will be contacted by the parents of someone who has foolishly purchased such a substance on behalf of himself and one or two friends and has been convicted of supplying drugs. That young person’s life chances would be greatly diminished. Of course we hope they will be discouraged by our telling them what will happen to them if they make these purchases, but I certainly do not think we should punish them and label them as a drug dealer for stupidly buying stuff for their friends. On the whole, people pass a strong moral judgment on anyone with any kind of a conviction relating to drugs, but an even stronger judgment is passed on anyone convicted of supplying drugs. We are talking about a young person getting these substances for himself and his friends, not a young person who has become a drug dealer, yet that is what the conviction would be for.

[Paul Flynn]

Following the arguments being put forward from the other side, does the hon. Lady agree that the two most deadly drugs, which are taken by millions of people in this country and which cause addiction and a huge number of deaths, are tobacco and alcohol? Has she contemplated the effects that banning those two drugs would have throughout the world?

[Anne McLaughlin]

The hon. Gentleman would not expect me to disagree about the considerable harm that tobacco and alcohol can cause, but today we are talking about new psychoactive substances. I take his point, but it is important to carry on discussing what we have come here to discuss.

Any Member in the Chamber today who has children could face a situation in which their child was silly enough, along with some friends, to experiment with some currently legal highs. They might be fortunate enough not to be damaged physically or mentally by their experience, but they could still be convicted of a drug dealing offence just for stupidly experimenting.

Amendment 14 deals with the question of internet purchases. It seeks to highlight the fact that the Government are criminalising the use of drugs for personal consumption that have been purchased over the internet and that are then shipped into the UK for use by an individual. The Government suggest that they are moving forward and that they are not seeking to criminalise individuals unnecessarily. Indeed, the Bill indicates that those who purchase in other ways will not be committing a criminal offence. However, this part of the Bill will still unnecessarily criminalise people.

I would strongly prefer law enforcement agencies to use their time and effort to prevent the large-scale importation of psychoactive substances for distribution in the UK, rather than concerning themselves with the purchase of these substances for personal use by one individual. In a previous debate on the Bill, the Minister for Policing, Crime and Criminal Justice stated:

“The spirit of the Bill is that we do not want to criminalise individuals for possession, but we are going to criminalise the sale and purchase of these substances.”

We asked for further clarification, and he said:

“I apologise: I kind of misled the House unintentionally on individual possession. I was talking about intent to supply, not intent to use. Making a purchase from a foreign website would be caught, but the purchase on its own from a website or foreign website would not, and I apologise if I misled the House on that point.”

My hon. Friend the Member for Angus (Mike Weir) pressed the Minister and pointed out that clause 8 stated that a person commits an offence if

“the person intentionally imports a substance,”

and

“the person…intends to consume the psychoactive substance for its psychoactive effects”.

He went on to say:

“It seems to me that if someone imports and possesses even a small amount of the substance over the internet he is criminalised, but if he bought it in a head shop, for example—

in this case the head shops would be gone, so if bought in the street—

“he would not be criminalised, which seems to be a strange provision.”

The Minister’s response was:

“That is not the Bill’s intention. As we go through the Bill in Committee we will endeavour to iron out those concerns.”—[Official Report, 19 October 2015; Vol. 600, c. 737-9.]

I was unable to be on the Committee as I was serving on another Bill Committee but I can read Hansard, I have hon. Friends who served on that Committee and I know that in Committee the Minister voluntarily offered this statement:

“Possession in a club would not be an offence; indeed, possession is not an offence under any part of the legislation, unless in a secure facility. It is important to send that message out.”––[Official Report, Psychoactive Substances Public Bill Committee, 27 October 2015; c. 37.]

I would like some clarity from the Minister on that.

How much longer have I got, Madam Deputy Speaker?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Natascha Engel)]

There are no time limits in this debate but many Members want to speak and the list is getting longer and longer, so the longer the hon. Lady speaks, the less others will have a chance to do so.

[Anne McLaughlin]

I will move on, then. I will take out all my killer arguments and bring them up when the Minister is summing up.

I shall make one more point, which is about purchasing online. If we are saying that it is not a criminal offence to purchase down a dark alley, which is where people would have to purchase if they intended to purchase these psychoactive substances, but it is a criminal offence to do so over the internet, we will end up with a situation where two people, brother and sister, could try to do exactly the same thing, and one of them would be a criminal but the other would not. Which of them, the boy or the girl, is most likely to be gung-ho enough to meet a criminal drug dealer down a back alley? It is far more likely that women are going to be criminalised because they are less likely to want to go and meet the drug dealer in person.

Amendment 15 proposes sentencing commensurate with the potential harm done by the substance involved. In Committee the Minister said that he supported the principle behind the amendment, so we should like to hear where he stands on it today.

On poppers, I am proud that the SNP championed this from the start. It was great to hear so many passionate speeches of support from both sides of the House, so I shall say nothing further and let someone else speak.

[Dr Daniel Poulter (Central Suffolk and North Ipswich) (Con)]

I shall speak to new clause 3. First, though, I welcome the constructive approach taken by my right hon. Friend the Minister to engaging with Members on all sides of the House during the passage of the Bill—a constructive engagement which, I believe, has enhanced the positive aspects of the Bill. I am pleased that the broad consensus across the House is that this is an important piece of legislation about public protection.

What we have heard clearly today is a call for evidence-based policy making. That has been echoed in a number of contributions on different amendments and new clauses, and we should all sign up to that. In that spirit, I tabled the new clause primarily as a probing amendment to examine and draw out the Minister’s comments on an increasingly confused law in respect of the medicinal use of cannabis. The existing law is an impediment to research into the effects of cannabis on mental health and general research on the medicinal benefits of cannabis and cannabis derivatives.

--- Later in debate ---

[Anne McLaughlin]

I shall be very brief. I wish to congratulate all those involved in bringing forward this Bill, including the Government; the Minister who has been very willing to engage in open and robust debates; the Scottish Government who have supported the ethos behind the Bill; the Committees; and our colleagues on the Labour Benches. This is the second Bill with which I have been closely involved, and it has been a pleasure to work alongside Labour colleagues on a number of issues.

It is clear that new psychoactive substances are dangerous, and we are putting that message out there now. They are also unpredictable: there is no way of knowing what is in them or of predicting the impact on the individual. In a previous debate in this House, I talked about someone I know who made one foolish mistake at the age of 17. She was a talented young medical student, and a beautiful girl, and she has spent the rest of her life on a locked psychiatric ward. It is impossible to predict what impact drugs will have.

I have some remaining concerns, as the Minister will be aware, particularly on poppers. I look forward to the review. I remain concerned about distinguishing between people buying online and people buying down a dark alley from a drug dealer. I understand that the Minister has said that that is not the intention behind the Bill, and I accept that. I just want to quote him:

“The spirit of the Bill is that we do not want to criminalise individuals for possession”.—[Official Report, 19 October 2015; Vol. 600, c. 737.]

He also said:

“Possession in a club would not be an offence; indeed, possession is not an offence under any part of the legislation”,

and:

“Purchase and possession would be legal… so there would be no illegality on the part of the individual.”––[Official Report, Psychoactive Substances Public Bill Committee, 27 October 2015; c. 37-63.]

[Mike Penning]

In the spirit with which we have taken the Bill through, I just wanted to say that the Bill does make possession illegal in secure institutions.

[Anne McLaughlin]

I understand that—as the Minister knows, I am against it—but I was referring specifically to buying substances on the internet. We were unable to have those words included in the Bill today, but we do have the Minister’s words on the record, and lawyers will be able to use them if they have to.

My intention in all this is to protect people on two fronts: to protect their health by supporting the Bill in the first place, and to protect them from being criminalised for making a foolish mistake on one occasion. I commend the Bill as it stands, and, if it turns out that we are right about some aspects, I hope that it will be amended at a later stage.