Psychoactive Substances Bill [Lords]

Dan Poulter Excerpts

Wednesday 20th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[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.

[Steve Brine]

I support my hon. Friend. Does he agree that the momentum is with his case? The all-party group on drug policy reform hopes to conduct an inquiry shortly into the medicinal use of cannabis. Its results will be interesting in the context of that evidence base.

[Dr Poulter]

My hon. Friend is right.

I shall speak, first, about the barriers to mental health research—we know that the use of cannabis has links with mental illness, particularly psychosis—and also about the broader research into the potential medicinal benefits of the many products contained in the cannabis plant. That has been investigated in the United States, where more than 20 states have relaxed their laws to allow the medicinal use of cannabis and cannabis derivatives. I am pleased to hear that the all-party group is to look into that because it is important that we examine the evidence that is out there and, if necessary, consider using that evidence to change the law. The law should be for public protection but also for public benefit, and if there is a legitimate medicinal use of cannabis, we should support and encourage it because that is good for patients.

Before I proceed, I want to touch on the very brave speech from my hon. Friend the Member for Reigate (Crispin Blunt). It is rare that we discuss our personal experiences in the Chamber, but it brings into focus the importance of making sure that the laws that we pass impact positively on the real world and the day-to-day lives of our constituents. He spoke bravely about his own use of poppers, which helped to bring the debate alive and crystallised the importance of that evidence-based policy making. I know the Minister will respond to that later.

On the rescheduling of cannabis from a schedule 1 to a schedule 2 drug, as we are aware, the scheduling of drugs was laid down in the Misuse of Drugs Regulations 2001. The reason that cannabis was considered a schedule 1 drug was that it did not have any medicinal benefit. That is now a matter of considerable contention in the light of the evidence I am about to present. It is important to highlight some of the inconsistencies in legislation.

Under the Schengen agreement, it is legal for somebody in a Schengen country to bring into the UK cannabis for medicinal use, if they have been prescribed it by a doctor on their own country, for up to 30 days, yet it is not legal in this country for a doctor to prescribe cannabis for medicinal purposes unless it happens to be for the purpose of treating multiple sclerosis. That is the one licensed drug currently available. If we recognise that cannabis can be licensed for the treatment of MS, currently under very elaborate licensing law by the Home Office, surely we recognise that there is a medicinal benefit. Quod erat demonstrandum: schedule 1 is the wrong place for cannabis because we accept that it has a medicinal benefit. The Home Office accepts for its licensing programme that there is a medicinal benefit to cannabis, so we need to consider rescheduling the drug.

I have touched on the intervention from my hon. Friend the Member for Winchester (Steve Brine) by reference to the growing evidence from the United States that there are other potential medicinal benefits of cannabis for the treatment of patients. The relaxing of laws in over 20 states on the basis of that evidence is something that we clearly need to look at in this country. In particular, the potential benefits of cannabis products in palliative care merit greater scrutiny. There is inconsistency in the classification of cannabis, which is why I tabled the amendment.

I want to speak about some of the barriers to research. I am very grateful to my right hon. Friend the Minister for Policing, Crime and Criminal Justice for meeting Professor Sir Robin Murray—he is an eminent professor—and Dr Marta Di Forti, who work in mental health, particularly in psychosis, to examine the issue and learn at first hand about some of the difficulties they experience in conducting research into mental ill health. We know that there are links between psychosis and cannabis use, and it is particularly important that we understand the basis on which the plant works on neurotransmitters and that we support researchers in conducting their research. At the moment, those researchers could potentially be criminalised for carrying out research that would be legitimate in many other fields of medical research. I am sure that that is not an intended consequence. It also makes it very difficult to carry out research effectively in the field of mental health and the links with cannabis. I know that the Minister is sympathetic to that and I look forward to hearing how we can find a workable solution to the problem. We want to improve our treatment of patients with mental ill health, but to do that we need properly to support the researchers in carrying out their work, and I hope that the whole House can sign up to that.

This is not an easy matter and it is not part of a broader discussion on the merits or demerits of legalising cannabis. I specifically wanted to table the amendment for discussion today to highlight the difficulties faced by researchers carrying out their jobs and to highlight some of the clear inconsistencies in drug laws in relation to cannabis and, more importantly, drugs that we would consider much more potentially harmful if used by the public. Heroin, or diamorphine, is a schedule 2 drug, whereas cannabis, the use of which is shown by a growing body of evidence to have a medicinal benefit, is a schedule 1 drug. I believe that the Government need to look into the inconsistency in current drug laws, but in particular I would be very grateful for my right hon. Friend the Minister’s comments on how we can facilitate and ease the process of legitimate research without criminalising researchers.

[Mrs Gillan]

Does my hon. Friend also agree that there is a real anomaly when a drug such as DNP, which has caused the death of so many young people and is taken as a drug for body building or to improve people’s perception of their body image, is so classified and falls between so many stools that it is impossible to get it banned, despite the deaths and damage it has caused?

[Dr Poulter]

My right hon. Friend speaks wisely. On that subject, looking at the scheduling, steroids come under schedule 4 to the misuse of drugs regulations. They are often a drug misused by body builders and other athletes whereas, in the example I just gave, diamorphine, or heroin, is a schedule 2 drug. There is now a clear and compelling case, because of the growing medical evidence and the barriers to research, to consider the scheduling of cannabis. More broadly, before we even get to that point, I know that there is more we can do to make it easier to research the links between cannabis and mental health and to support that very important research so that, hopefully, we can move towards a better position through this Bill, not just in protecting the public from psychoactive substances but in improving the care of a number of the most vulnerable patients looked after by our health service.

I intend the amendment as a probing amendment and do not wish to press it to a vote, but I look forward to hearing my right hon. Friend the Minister’s response.

[Diana Johnson]

I rise in support of new clause 1 and amendment 4. I start by congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown), who sits on the Front Bench, on the excellent way she set out why new clause 1 and amendment 4 need to be incorporated in the Bill.

It has been six years since we seriously started to discuss in Parliament why personal, social, health and economic education should be made compulsory. I greatly regret that we did not manage to do it when we were in power. At the very end of the 2010 Labour Government, PSHE was going to be made a statutory part of the national curriculum. There was a very good case made for that, based on building life skills, confidence and resilience in young people, which we all accept needs to happen. To me, the challenges that young people face in the modern world include how to deal with drugs and these new psychoactive substances. It was a great regret that in the wash-up, during those final months leading up to the 2010 election, we were not able to secure the support of the Conservatives to get that change to the law.

The UK Drug Policy Commission spent six years researching what our drugs policies should be, and found that the best drugs education is delivered in an evidence-based life skills programme. That is why making PSHE compulsory is important. Why does it need to be statutory? The Select Committee on Education, in its report last year, said:

“There is a lack of clarity on the status of the subject. This must change, and we accept the argument that statutory status is needed for PSHE”.

We know that it varies all around the country. In some schools, it is taught very well, but in many schools it is not taught well at all, and that is because it is not statutory. It is not measured and we know that headteachers will always have an eye on ensuring that their schools and pupils do best in what is measured. That is the compelling argument for me: we should ensure that we have a level playing field across all schools, so we have to provide statutory PSHE. Another important reason to make it statutory is that schools have to ensure that teachers are properly trained. One of the big problems with how PSHE is delivered in this country is that the teacher with a little more time in their timetable—perhaps the PE teacher—takes responsibility, not a teacher with the level and depth of training required to teach the subject properly.

We know, as my hon. Friend said from the Front Bench, that many students say that they have only one hour of drugs education in school. At the moment we are relying on good will, charities and other organisations to provide information to our young people. I think that that is wrong. However, I want to pay tribute to the Angelus Foundation for the work it has done. It was set up in very sad circumstances by Maryon Stewart, who lost her daughter, Hester, who took GBL without knowing what it was and sadly died. Maryon has fought hard for this legislation to be put on the statute book, but I am sure she would be the first to say that we need to ensure that our young people are educated. It is not just about changing the law, but about making sure that young people make good decisions for themselves.

I also want to refer to an organisation in my constituency called REAL— Recovery Enabling Abstinent Lifestyle—run by Mike Tong and Su Baker, who are also trying to get information out to young people in Hull to explain about legal highs. We have already debated how we should describe legal highs, and I think it right to refer to them as new psychoactive substances, rather than legal highs. Those provisions all rely on good will and charity, which is why it is vital that the amendments are accepted today.

Before the Minister responds, I wish to mention the FRANK campaign—I think my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham also mentioned that. “Talk to Frank” is not good enough, and if the Government are serious about ensuring that young people have information to make good choices in their lives, FRANK is not the delivery mechanism for that.

We know that young people have called for PSHE to be made statutory, and the Youth Parliament supported and ran with that campaign a few years ago. Parents support PSHE and want it brought into schools, as does the cross-party Education Committee. We need to equip our young people with life skills to make good decisions, and to equip the police with the powers that they need to enforce the law against those who exploit, harm and damage people, particularly young people. The Minister is a sensible man who often relies on his good common sense, and I hope he will think hard about whether rejecting these amendments is in the long-term interests of this country and the young people whom we in this House wish to ensure are protected and able to make good and healthy decisions about their lives.