UK Drugs Policy

Bob Stewart Excerpts

Thursday 30th October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Mike Hancock (Portsmouth South) (Ind)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) on moving the motion today. As the hon. Member for Reigate (Crispin Blunt) said, everyone who has spoken so far has supported her views in one way or another. Like the hon. Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn), I have been dealing with this issue for a long time. When I spoke in a debate in the House nearly 30 years ago, I told the story of how my closest friend had gone to prison for possession of pot—cannabis—in the late ’60s. He was in prison for six months and he came out a heroin addict. Within six months of his coming out of prison, I went to his flat to call for him one day, only to find him dead on the floor. He had died of a heroin overdose. From that day on, I have done everything I can to fight the scourge of drugs and to bring to people’s attention not only how evil and destructive drugs are but how senseless the policies to combat them are.

The report on so-called legal highs is an interesting document, and the Government’s response to it is equally interesting, but they do not mention how we are going to solve the problem. It is proposed that we talk and think more about it, but we need to look at the overall picture of how we are going to help people by dealing with drugs in prisons and in the community generally.

The hon. Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood (Eric Ollerenshaw) spoke eloquently about the late Jim Dobbin. Jim dealt with this issue not only in this country but abroad. I sat on committees with him in the Council of Europe, where he persistently got the issue on to the agenda, against the odds, and got it discussed. We owe Jim a great debt of gratitude for his courage in tackling this issue and for having the strength of character to keep fighting for it. We are doing him justice by keeping the debate going. I was delighted to hear the hon. Gentleman’s comments about Jim; we are sad that he is not here today.

What we do know about drugs is that we have spent billions of pounds and we have a policy that, by common agreement, has failed; it has taken us not a step forward. That is why I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Minister for Crime Prevention on having the courage to persevere and the commitment to see this report through on the comparisons that need to be examined seriously. The hon. Member for Reigate said that it contained few conclusions. There are no conclusions in it, but there are ideas of where we could go. The Members who have talked about a royal commission are going in the right direction; the sooner that can be done, the better.

We have to examine the situation in Portugal, which has been mentioned a lot. The report says clearly that not only has cannabis use there been reduced, but heroin use and cocaine use have been reduced dramatically. The way in which the initial possession has been treated as a health-related matter and not a criminal one is a major step in the right direction. If we can do no more in the life of this Parliament, before it ends next year, than get the royal commission set up and get the idea that we treat the possession of very small amounts of drugs, in some cases, as a health-related matter rather than a criminal one—

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

I want to support the excellent speeches I have been hearing. As a commanding officer in the Army, I had far too often to rid myself and the Army of outstanding young men and young woman because they had just touched a drug. Things have got better, but think what will happen once we deal with this as a medical and not a criminal situation. Of course if someone is high on drugs and leading a patrol, they have to be brought before the commanding officer. But if we are talking about just possession and just usage, our current approach is just too wrong.

[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.

--- Later in debate ---

[Bob Stewart]

You are of course a criminal—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Dawn Primarolo)]

I am not a criminal.

[Bob Stewart]

Forgive me, Madam Deputy Speaker, you are certainly not a criminal, but others may well be criminals if they take drugs or alcohol and put members of the public in danger as a consequence. They are criminals, but just taking a drug or drinking something does not make them criminals.

[Stephen Phillips]

I am extremely grateful to my hon. Friend for his intervention. If we look at the difference between recreational drug usage and smoking, we will see that the harm is so much greater with smoking. For every 1,000 smokers who are admitted to hospital, 123 of them are suffering from health problems directly caused by smoking. If we look at 1,000 drug users who are admitted to hospital, only two of them are there because of the use of illegal drugs. We have at least one drug in this country—we could add alcohol to the list —that is far more dangerous than anything that anybody uses by way of recreational drugs or other illegal drugs. We must focus our attention on dealing with that as a health problem rather than as a criminal problem.

Let me come back to one of my opening propositions, which is that the war on drugs has been lost. A survey of the public earlier this year proves that that is not just my view. It is the view not just of the world leaders who used to hold office to whom my hon. Friend the Member for Reigate referred, but of 84% of people in this country. It is true that only 39%—up from 27% in 2008—of those in the same survey believed in the widespread decriminalisation of illegal substances. The likely reason for that is the hangover from the debate that we have not been having in this country for the past four decades. We have not had a national debate on this issue, which is why people have not turned their minds to the question of whether some form of liberalisation, some different approach, taking into account the detrimental health effects, is the right way forward.

As the hon. Member for Newport West said, what is the point of this war on drugs? If it is to prevent people from taking substances that may harm them, plainly it is not working. According to the most recent crime survey for England and Wales, 2.7% of adults had taken class A drugs in 1996 compared with 2.6% now—statistically not significant.

My hon. Friend the Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston), who is no longer in her place, referred to the fact that there has been a seeming reduction in cannabis usage among young people. There are many reasons for that, one of which might be the tougher line that has been taken on cannabis by the Government, which has driven people into using so-called legal highs, on which the Minister has today published his report.

If we talked to criminal justice professionals—judges, the police and probation officers—we would learn that they do not support the war on drugs. It is a war that has been lost. If we acknowledged that fact and looked at the experience of Portugal and the other jurisdictions that have liberalised their drug regimes and taken away criminal penalties for small amounts of possession, we would free up enormous resources for the police. More importantly, we would free up enormous financial resources for the treatment of those who are addicted to these substances. Therefore, I venture to suggest that I am correct in my first proposition—I think the Minister will agree with me—that the war on drugs has been lost and that we must look very carefully at a new policy.

My second proposition was that the health outcomes of existing policy are at best poor. In fact, what also happens is that society is harmed by existing policy. We know that funding a drug habit is not a cheap business. It increases crime, particularly acquisitive crime. Drug dependency is therefore one of the drivers of crime in this country. Home Office figures for 2003-04 show that the annual cost of drug-related offending is £13.9 billion, £9.9 billion of which goes to the victims of crime. The other £4 billion of public money is being poured into the criminal justice system every year to deal with the issue. If that £4 billion were taken away from the criminal justice system and put into the health system to try to encourage better outcomes, we would not only get something better for those who use illegal substances and for society, but achieve a reduction in the total amount that has to be spent.

If existing policy is not deterring drug use and drug dependency, it is leading to crime, and that cannot be in anybody’s interests. A great deal of money is evidently being wasted, and it is money that, in these times of austerity, should not be wasted.

Let us turn now to the health of those who take illegal substances. By criminalising them, are we dealing adequately with them? Many young people who take drugs have no idea not only what they are taking, but what the effects might be. Those who are standing in a nightclub at 1o’clock in the morning having consumed, no doubt, a large amount of vodka are much more interested in getting the pill than they are in what is in the pill. What is in the pill is not always what people have been told. They might be told that it is MDMA when it is some other entactogen that has not been tested on humans. It may be rat poison, or it may even be harmless. Even if someone does know that the pill they are about to pop is ecstasy, there is no guarantee that they are aware of its potential effects. Although there are admirable websites such as Talk to Frank, not many young people necessarily go on them. Not everyone knows about the risks of these drugs or how to mitigate those risks. We know that from some of the tragic cases that we have seen in the past of users taking excessive amounts of drugs in clubs and elsewhere.

Let us consider those who inject their drugs, and look at the comparative treatment in other places, and the experience of the criminal justice system in Georgia. Georgia reduced its prison population from 24,000 to 10,000 by taking out of prison those who had been put there for possession of small amounts of drugs. The first result of that was a massive saving to the taxpayers who fund the Republic of Georgia. Much more importantly, there was an incredible improvement in the health of the prison population. Deaths in prison fell, and there was a significant reduction in the hepatitis C and HIV infection rates among the prison population. I am not sure whether that experience is included in the Minister’s report, but it is another strong indication that we are not doing this right and that if we focused on this as a health issue rather than as a criminal justice issue, we would serve our constituents and our society a great deal better.

Untrammelled use of drugs, especially recreational drugs, fuels disinhibition in those who take them, and that in itself leads to criminal behaviour. We know that that is a significant part of organised crime. The Association of Chief Police Officers has estimated that 50% of all organised crime in the UK involves illegal drugs, mostly class A drugs. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime has said that drugs are the most profitable sector of organised international crime, with a total turnover of $2 trillion in 2009.

My third proposition is that other countries are doing this much better, and that is why the Minister’s views and the report that he and his predecessors, including my hon. Friend the Member for Reigate, have pushed for so hard, are so important. In the limited time available, I will deal only—

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister for Crime Prevention (Norman Baker)]

I had felt that I was in a somewhat surreal debate, hearing all Members on both sides of the House agree about the need for reform and a different approach, all making coherent arguments about why the present arrangements need to change. But I woke from my dream when I heard from the shadow Minister, who appears to be the only Member of the House who wishes to defend the status quo absolutely.

The hon. Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn) said that he has waited 43 years for this report. I think that it is a very good report and that people can take from it what they want; they can look at the evidence and draw their conclusions from it. I think that the Home Office deserves credit for having the courage to issue it, and I hope that it will be the start of a debate.

My view, which is drawn not only from the report but from the public opinion polls that have been referred to, is that the genie is out of the bottle and it is not going back in. I think that the days of robotic, mindless rhetoric are over, because the facts and the evidence will no longer allow that. We now have to base what we do as a country on the facts and the evidence that we can accrue, and the issuing of this report is part of the attempt to do that.

I welcome the efforts of the Backbench Business Committee, the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas), who is my near neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) and many other Members—many of them are here today—who over the years have made brave comments that have not always been welcomed by the Government of the day. I sense that there is a public mood now for a proper debate on these matters, and what could be wrong about a proper debate on a matter of such importance? It is much better than trying to shut down debate and pretend that everything is all right.

The coalition Government has made lots of progress over the past few years, which I am very pleased with, and there was progress in some regards under the previous Labour Government. However, it would be arrogant to say that we have everything right and that we can learn nothing from other countries. Of course we can learn from other countries, and it is right that we should seek to do so. The report seeks to highlight some of those lessons that can be learned.

My hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge and the hon. and learned Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Stephen Phillips) referred to the Portuguese experience. The hon. Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith) drew attention to the fact—he quoted the report in full—that we have learned from Portugal for more than a decade that there is no correlation, at least in that country, between the level of penalty available and the extent of drug use. That is an important finding that we ought to bear in mind as we go forward.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr Lilley), who is not in his seat, made an interesting case for legalising cannabis. That is not Government policy, I have to tell him, but his case was coherent and others may or may not want to take it forward. The report’s stated position—its “observations” as the civil servants put it—is that we ought to keep a watching eye. Of course we should keep a watching eye on what is happening in the world. Does anyone argue that we should not?

These are experiments and it is far too early to say what the outcomes will be. They may be negative or positive, as my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston) said. We do not yet know the consequences, but we should certainly watch with interest to see what they will be for public health and crime—and public finances, indeed, if we are to see a regulated market such as that in Colorado or Uruguay.

[Bob Stewart]

We have not touched much on the subject of crime. If we legalised drugs, the business would be less lucrative to the criminal world and that would stop some of the criminal gangs killing one another. We would have the bonus of fewer young people being killed on the streets of London.

[Norman Baker]

I shall take that as a comment in support of our right hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin and Harpenden. As I said, it is not Government policy to legalise drugs—nor, I think, is it the policy of any party in the House. However, my hon. Friend has made his point. Those sorts of discussions ought to be taking place and people ought to be able to argue the whys and wherefores in each case.

I turn to the question of new psychoactive substances, sometimes unhelpfully called “legal highs”. The hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion wanted more detail about what we were doing and was not entirely sure whether our policy was correct. I should say to her that in some ways it mirrors the approach taken in the international comparative study: it recommends that we get very tough on the suppliers of these dangerous substances, which cause immense harm to our constituents and, unfortunately, the deaths of young people. We are trying to rid our high streets of headshops, which are not an asset, but we do not seek to criminalise the users of the substances. That approach seems entirely appropriate—hammering down on those causing misery and helping those who use the substances.