Controlled Drugs (Procedure for Specification) Bill

Debate between Cameron Thomas and Alex McIntyre

Committee stage
Wednesday 25th June 2025 Public Bill Committees

[Alex McIntyre (Gloucester) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Murrison.

Many hon. Members will be aware of the blight of drugs on our streets. The recent and ongoing emergence of novel synthetic opioids, particularly fentanyls and nitazenes, poses a particular risk to public safety and public health, not least because of their very high potency. It is those drugs that the Bill seeks to address, because with the rapid development of synthetic drugs, it is vital that new controls can come into force at the earliest opportunity to enable the police and other authorities to act in the interests of public safety.

The Bill seeks to amend the delegated power to specify controlled drugs under section 2 of the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971, so that the form of statutory instrument is regulations made by the Secretary of State rather than an Order in Council. The statutory instrument remains subject to the draft affirmative procedure and the statutory preconditions of acting after consultation with or on the recommendation of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs.

For Members who are not aware, the UK-wide Misuse of Drugs Act is the principal legislation to control substances that are dangerous or otherwise harmful. These substances become controlled drugs by being listed and classified as class A, B or C under schedule 2 to the Act, according to their relative harmfulness, or by being specified in a temporary drug class as a drug subject to a temporary control order.

The Act imposes the criminal penalties that many of us will be aware of in relation to offences such as unlawful possession, supply, offer to supply, production, and importation and exportation of those controlled drugs. Currently, any amendment to schedule 2 to control, remove from control or amend the control of drugs is made by Order in Council—in other words, by the King in Council. Orders can also be varied or revoked by a subsequent Order in Council.

For newbies like me who are not aware of what that means, let me explain. If we are looking to add a new substance to the list, we first have to go through the draft affirmative procedure with debates and approval by both Houses of Parliament. A statutory instrument then has to be made at the Privy Council and will come into force on a specified date, which is generally 28 days later. Given that the Privy Council generally meets only once each month, and not at all during recess, this means that it will be an additional four to six weeks following the debates in Parliament for a substance to be controlled under the law. In the interim, that means the police have limited powers to tackle those substances and are not able to throw the full force of the law at individuals supplying or possessing those substances, which, as we know, are very dangerous to public safety.

The Bill is very short. Clause 1 seeks to amend the 1971 Act by removing the requirement for an Order in Council so that any amendment to the list of controlled drugs under schedule 2 would require only debates in both Houses under the draft affirmative procedure. Importantly, the clause continues to state that the Secretary of State can act only following consultation with or on the recommendation of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs. In terms of its impact and effect, the Bill is limited to that area.

Clause 2 is even shorter, providing that the Bill extends to England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, which is very standard.

The Committee will be pleased to hear that we are not expecting the debate to be too long, and I recommend that all members of the Committee vote in favour of the Bill.

[Cameron Thomas (Tewkesbury) (LD)]

I support the Bill in the context of my liberalism. For years, the Liberal Democrats have campaigned for better access to medicinal cannabis for those who rely on it to manage their symptoms. The current system is too restrictive and necessitates a more compassionate, patient-centred approach to ensure that nobody is left to suffer unnecessarily. The Government should investigate the merits of permitting general practice to prescribe cannabis-based products.

That said, this retired military police officer does not find his liberal values to be at odds with the Bill. In fact, the Bill increases protections for citizens from dangerous substances and simplifies and shortens the control systems set out in the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971.

Children’s Social Media Accounts

Debate between Cameron Thomas and Alex McIntyre

Monday 13th January 2025 Westminster Hall

[Alex McIntyre (Gloucester) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Twigg. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland Central (Lewis Atkinson) for introducing this important debate on behalf of the Petitions Committee. He made some powerful points in his speech, and I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response to them. I also associate myself with the remarks made by my hon. Friend the Member for Darlington (Lola McEvoy), who spoke so eloquently, and my constituency neighbour, the hon. Member for Cheltenham (Max Wilkinson).

It is only right to start by paying tribute to Ellen and Bereaved Families for Online Safety, who are in the Public Gallery. They have raised this petition following the heartbreaking loss of Ellen’s son, Jools. It is unbelievably courageous to turn away from the abyss of pain and grief, and to turn that into a campaign for good. It is, frankly, inspirational to many Members in this House and I thank the 1,711 Gloucester constituents who signed the petition.

As a relatively new parent, I now know what it is like to really worry about a child. People say that no one really knows what it is like to be a parent before their child is born. I laughed that off and thought, “Of course you can know,” but, truly, no one does. The moment a parent meets their child for the first time, their world changes. I realised that I would literally walk through walls for my child. Thankfully, my child is only one. He does not yet have any social media channels that I am aware of. If that could continue for as long as possible, I would be grateful.

I know that parents are increasingly worried about their children’s use of social media across the country and in my constituency of Gloucester. According to the Children’s Commissioner, two thirds of parents are concerned about the content that their children can access online, and the impact that it is having on their children’s mental health. Those concerns are felt by not only parents but children themselves. Research shows that nearly three quarters of teenagers have encountered potential harms online and three in five secondary-school age children have been contacted online in ways that have made them feel uncomfortable. As social media becomes increasingly embedded in our children’s lives, it is clear that urgent action is needed. While the Online Safety Act 2023 was a long-awaited start to protecting children online, we must go further and I was pleased to hear my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology say that he is “open-minded” about introducing new legislation. I encourage him to consider introducing Jools’ law.

My remarks will not particularly focus on online content, although my hon. Friend the Member for Lowestoft (Jess Asato) outlined some of the dangerous and horrific online content to which children and young people are exposed. Members of this House do not need to be reminded of the horrific content available online. Not long after being elected, I found that pictures of myself and my baby had been posted with a threatening message, anonymously, as part of an online “spotted” page. Members of this House develop a relatively thick skin in this job but imagine the impact of that on a teenager. I think back to my teenage days, and whether I was mentally equipped to be able to deal with cases of bullying. I am just about young enough to remember when Facebook came in—I was a teenager when Facebook started—and back then it was a very different place. Nowadays, we see, frankly, a cesspit of online content and I do not think that I would have had the mental capacity, during my teenage years, to deal with that level of abuse.

[Cameron Thomas]

The hon. Member, my constituency neighbour, makes an interesting point. My school years are long behind me and we sometimes look back at our youth with rose-tinted glasses, but being at school can feel like being in a warzone—there is so much pressure. If someone is being consistently bullied, I can barely imagine what it must be like for them to try to escape that at home and then have a device in front of them with such material coming in, even at night. Does the hon. Member agree?

[Alex McIntyre]

The hon. Member is entirely correct that, in the days before social media, bullying was confined behind the school gates and in most cases, though sadly not all, the home was a place of safety and a haven in which a teenager could recover and steel themselves for the next day. That safety has been removed by social media and people are able to get someone, wherever they are.

As a teenager, I grew up with social media as it was first coming out—with Bebo, which I do not think exists anymore, and MSN Messenger. My parents had no oversight over what I was accessing or who I was talking to. Frankly, it was dangerous. That is not to question my parents’ parenting skills; they are of an age where they are still learning how to use Facebook in 2025. However, we need to do more to protect teenagers at such a vulnerable age when they are learning about themselves and about how to build the mental resilience to deal with some of the stuff that some Members of this House experience on a regular basis.

Although we could have another debate on online content, we all know why we are speaking about the petition today. It concerns me that grieving parents cannot access information that may relate to the death of their children. We know that there has been a worrying rise in dangerous pranks and trends that go around on social media and in people using social media to groom and target young people, and that dangerous information is going viral—information that may have played a role in tragic and heartbreaking deaths up and down the country. Giving grieving parents the right to find answers for themselves must be within our power as a Government. I encourage the Minister to do what we can to support parents and families in this absolutely heartbreaking position.