Prisons (Substance Testing) Bill

Bob Stewart Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons
Friday 16th October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Ms Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)]

I am grateful to you for calling me, Madam Deputy Speaker—I love Fridays.

I congratulate the right hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Dame Cheryl Gillan) on bringing forward her Bill. I know that she will have done so because she wants to make a real difference for the most vulnerable in society, just as she did with her Autism Act 2009. This Bill has Labour support. I am looking forward to serving with the right hon. Lady on the Bill Committee, and I hope that the Government will ensure that the Bill has a smooth passage today and through all its parliamentary stages.

As the hon. Member for North West Durham (Mr Holden) rightly said, substance misuse is an extremely important issue for our criminal justice system, our prisons and our communities. Sadly, this week, drug-related deaths hit an all-time high. Drug dependence and abuse is a massive factor in many people’s offending and, indeed, reoffending. This year, the Black review found that about a third of prisoners are in prison for reasons connected to drug use. Of that third, 40% are actually in prison for drugs offences, so 60% are there for other crimes, such as theft or robbery, which they often commit to pay for the devastating financial cost of an addiction.

As we know, the cost of an addiction is not just financial. Many psychoactive drugs, including novel psychoactive substances—I will call them NPS so that I do not have to say those words throughout my speech—such as Spice, can take a terrible toll on physical and mental health. In prison, as in the outside world, many people take drugs to escape the bewildering, scary or miserable circumstances of their lives. Unfortunately, the substances taken to experience fleeting moments of distraction or numbness make the problems of chaotic lives so much worse.

Drug misuse, just like alcoholism, is a medical problem, and healing it requires well funded, long-term, holistic medical and social intervention. We know that substance abuse treatment works to reduce reoffending. Analysis by the Ministry of Justice suggests that being in treatment cuts reoffending by 44%, and that the number of repeat offences committed is cut by about 33%. It is likely that if treatment were better funded, larger reductions would result.

Over the last 10 years, responsibility for drug treatment has been transferred to councils, and the ring-fenced budget has been removed and reduced. Local government grants and public health funding were both cut. Many of those who are in our prisons today might not have been there if they had got help earlier—if society and the state had had the resources to step in and stop a downward spiral before it started—but to quote the American President, we are where we are. Now, we have to do everything in our power with those who are in prison to ensure that the conditions are there for good health, effective treatment, decent living conditions and a seamless transition to treatment in the community upon release. Without those things, I do not believe that somebody who has done wrong and is in prison will get a second chance to turn their life around.

The interventions made in individual prisons, and the policy for prisons across England and Wales a whole, can be made more effective if prison governors and the Prison Service have knowledge of what is happening with drugs inside. This Bill is intended to help with just that, and Labour Members support that essential purpose, just as we supported by Psychoactive Substances Act 2016—I should know, because I was the shadow Minister on that Bill. During its passage I learned lots. In particular, I learned that Spice and other new and initially unregulated psychoactive substances can have a devastating effect on people, and that their use in prison has had some terrible impacts on prison safety and stability.

Spice use can cause prisoners to behave extremely unpredictably and in ways that are out of character, and it has led to violent attacks on prison staff and on other prisoners. That primarily affects prison officers and workers. Like the hon. Member for North West Durham, I have been told by the POA that its people have been faced with the utter horror of someone they have known for a long time—perhaps a young man who has been in the revolving door and been in and out of prison without ever being a problem—taking Spice and being turned into “an utter lunatic who wants to kill you and who feels no pain.”

When a batch of Spice manages to get into a prison and is distributed widely across the population there can be a wave of problems, with people physically collapsing, having a mental health crisis or becoming violent. It is clearly in the interests of vulnerable prisoners, staff and our communities for the system to be able to respond more quickly to changing recipes, new symptoms, new routes in and new users, which is why this Bill is so welcome.

May I gently point out, however, that there is evidence to suggest that a disproportionate number of Spice users may not be in treatment? The Forward Trust has estimated that between 60% and 90% of the prison population have used an NPS at some point, yet in 2018-19 only 11% of prisoners in treatment had NPS use noted as one of their problems, so there is a huge disparity there. Most prisoners on a treatment programme went into it immediately upon entering prison. I know we will agree that picking up on the substance abuse immediately is an important thing, but it does not account for those who start misusing a drug while in custody. Such people may have had no other history of this. So I would be grateful to hear a little from the Government—or they can write to me—about what they are doing to improve treatment provision, alongside getting the more accurate testing that we need and that this Bill provides for. Public Health England estimates that every £1 spent on drug treatment has a fourfold return, and that has to be worth looking into.

I am told that when somebody uses Spice it is obvious, so there is a bit of a concern that the powers in this Bill will be used for the purposes of punishment, rather than for making an effective order of treatment. It would be a great pity if that is all that happens as a result of this Bill, with prisoners subject to greater punishment rather than getting treatment, because then it will not improve rehabilitation, and it will not make our prisons safer or more stable in the way that we want to see. At the end of the day, Spice is used primarily by very vulnerable populations, particularly rough sleepers and those in prisons. It is used by those whose days are filled with a lethal mixture of boredom and despair. Despite the risk of losing all control and having a terrible time, Spice promises an escape from reality, and the uncomfortable truth is that many of the punishments used in prisons, such as taking away TV privileges or limiting time outside cells, can make that boredom and despair deeper.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

I am wondering, with Spice, if there is an animal—a dog—that can sniff it, and how the heck do we trace it? There are people in prison who come in with a problem and there are people who are infected, in a way, with drugs in prison, but the key is to try to find where the drug is located. I am sure the hon. Lady knows that much better than I do, not that she has experience.

[Ms Brown]

No, trust me, I have no experience. That is why I found the Psychoactive Substances Act 2016 rather an exciting piece of legislation to be responsible for. The hon. Gentleman is right and there are many ways, sadly, that Spice can be taken into a prison. For instance, I was told that Spice can permeate a piece of paper. In a four-page letter, one of those pages might have the substance. It can then be torn into little strips and submerged in water, and the compound can be extracted from that. There are many ways that this can happen, and that is one of the reasons why this is so dangerous and why we really do need to be doing all we can to bring some semblance of control over the substances in our prisons and our prison estates.

If we want to tackle Spice in our prisons, as well as shutting down the routes in and ensuring that those who exploit it are stopped, we have to ensure that fewer people actually want to take it. That requires treatment by professionals, a productive and active prisons regime, and the creation of a therapeutic culture in which it is normal to want to be well, to have opportunities and support to be well, and to see oneself leaving prison and leading a productive life.

I am told that the test for psychoactive substances available currently can identify only six elements within the broad category of NPSs, and that updating that test can take as long as a year. I wonder if the Minister can tell us how many more chemical elements the Government think will need to be added in the near future to make that test more effective. I know she might not have that at her fingertips, and I would be grateful for a letter. I would also be grateful for any estimates she might have made as to how these changes will allow testing revisions to be speeded up and new forms of dangerous drugs identified.

Can I also ask the Minister: who will get access to the studies of the prevalence of different substance misuse in prisons in future? She will know that the Prison Officers Association has requested access to these studies so that its members have basic information about which substances are in circulation in their prisons, but it tells me that it does not get a response. Currently, the contract for prison testing is outsourced and held by just one company, Abbott Toxicology. It would be worth while if, during the progress of the Bill, the Government would make available an assessment of the performance of that contract. Is the service this company is providing adequate and is it value for money? Will there be a new contract to reflect the wider range of substances that need to be tested for?

As hon. Members will know, there are occasionally issues with the interpretation of the definition in the Psychoactive Substances Act, which this Bill would copy into the Prison Act 1952. Are the Government confident that the definition in the Bill is robust enough?

What purpose will be left for section 47(3A) of the Prisons Act 1952 after the Bill has amended it? Currently, the section allows the Government to make special rules enabling samples to be required for tests of substances that are not controlled under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971. However, it now will not be possible, or presumably necessary, to use those powers to enable testing for new psychoactive substances, so what could it be used for? Is there still a point to having that general power in legislation?

The Bill extends the testing regime to cover prescribed and pharmacy medicines, many of which can be misused and cause serious damage in our prisons. They include drugs such as gabapentinoids and prescribed opioids for pain relief, which may be sold or shared with others outside the prescription given by the NHS. This is a welcome change, but close collaboration will be needed to ensure that prisoners who test positive are not mistakenly and unfairly penalised when they have a prescription and a genuine medical need. I note that there are a few points about that in paragraph 40 of the explanatory notes to the Bill, but I ask the Minister to expand on that, either in this debate or when we consider the Bill in Committee, as I hope we will.

It is essential that the testing regime will be the same across each prison and between prisons: from the new entrants in reception, to those in treatment areas, to those in a different prison, to a prison to which the prisoner might be transferred next week or next month. Otherwise, damaging disparities could arise between the results given by a test used in reception and one used by NHS staff in the treatment centre. What reassurances can the Government offer that that will be absolutely guaranteed?

Better testing can do very little when the treatment provision and the healthy rehabilitative regimes and cultures are not there in our prisons. I would be interested to see in the near future an analysis by the Government of how much an expansion of testing would cost. However well intentioned the Bill is—I think it is well intentioned—we need to make a considered assessment of whether additional money might be better spent on more staffing in prison, better access to drug treatment and through-the-gate support, or more rehabilitative prison regimes.

We need to make our prisons free of this poison, which continues to wreck lives. On the face of it, the lockdown in prisons should have made a big difference. There are only a number of possible routes that banned substances can take to get into prisons and two of the main routes have been heavily restricted. Visits to prisons were banned for many months and even now they have restarted they are occurring at a much lower capacity. During that same time, new entrants to the prison system from our courts have slowed to a trickle as a result of court closures and mounting backlogs. I hope the Minister can tell us whether there has, or has not, been a big decrease in access to substances in prisons over the past months, as that should be able to inform us about the routes being used to bring substances in. Perhaps the Minister will be able to tell us what lessons have been learned.

What impact has the lockdown had on the quality and accessibility of treatment in prisons? We know that access to prescriptions has, thankfully, continued with relatively little disruption through the pandemic, but what has happened to the other elements of treatment? Group-based discussions and therapy are always an important part of treatment. Are the Government considering how a wider range of treatment options could be restarted safely, bearing in mind that the risk from the pandemic may continue for many months to come?

I am happy to say that Labour welcomes and supports the Bill, and I congratulate the right hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham again on bringing it to the House. The Bill will create greater consistency across policies and make a change that perhaps should have been made when the Psychoactive Substances Bill went through the House four years ago. I will be delighted to support it today.