Drug Crime

Dan Poulter Excerpts

Wednesday 20th April 2022 Westminster Hall

[Robbie Moore (Keighley) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the matter of tackling drug crime in local communities.

It is a privilege to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Pritchard. I am grateful to every hon. Member who has come to participate in this debate. I am well aware that the issues we are discussing affect not only my constituency in Keighley and Ilkley but constituencies across the country. I welcome the fact that Members are here from different parties, communities and areas, all coming together to share their thoughts on a real challenge in our communities and to come together to deliver progressive change.

As MPs we want to sing from the rooftops what is so great in our communities, but it is important that we also tackle the darker issues, such as drug crime, that have plagued our cities, towns and rural communities for far too long. Drug crime is a real problem across the country. Last year there were 72,024 arrests for drug offences in England and Wales—up from the previous year, and the highest total in more than five years. It is estimated that one in 11 adults—more than 3 million people—took an illicit drug last year. It is alarming that 2% of adults are classed as frequent drug users. There are more than 300,000 heroin and crack addicts in England, who between them are responsible for nearly half of all burglaries, robberies and other types of crime.

Sadly, those issues are prevalent in my constituency. There is a strong chance that someone going for a walk in some parts of my constituency will see drug crime and drug distribution taking place. Drug crime is happening in all parts of my town.

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

I fear that this is an issue on which my hon. Friend and I might have different views. He talks about the challenges of illicit drugs in his constituency and the impact they have, but has he assessed the impact of legal drugs, such as alcohol, by comparison?

[Robbie Moore]

I absolutely have. Alcohol abuse is very much an issue in my constituency and in other areas of the county, but what must be tackled—I have seen this time and again—is the misuse of illicit drugs, from cannabis to class A drugs. It is vital that we take a hard-line approach to dealing with such criminality.

[Robbie Moore]

I thank my right hon. Friend for his intervention, and I do agree. We have to take a hard-line approach to those evil members of society who get involved in drug distribution and supply. However, we also need a twin-track approach, which is what the Government have provided through the plan they announced last year—I will come on to that—where we provide support to individuals who get trapped in the system and those who need it.

In my constituency, there have been many instances of drug crime over the past few months and incidents where the police have got involved. Just this morning Sergeant Dave Purcell from our local neighbourhood policing team, along with his colleagues, carried out an early-morning raid and seized cannabis seedlings from an address in the Highfield area of Keighley with an estimated street value of £130,000. That is not the first instance where that has happened; in one instance last year, six men from Keighley were arrested and five cars and £10,000 in cash were seized, as well as weapons such as CS spray and knuckledusters. A staggering 500 wraps of class A drugs were found on those individuals, which they wanted to sell to good people in my constituency who were getting trapped in the system of taking drugs.

Of course, we must also focus on drug distribution. Last year, I was contacted by two constituents who informed me that they had video evidence of one of our local taxi firms using its network to distribute drugs. I went to meet them after a surgery meeting and saw that video footage for myself before passing it on to West Yorkshire police. That illustrates that drug distribution is an organised crime that is happening right across my constituency and the wider country. On the point about taxi firms being used for drug distribution, I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Darlington (Peter Gibson) for his Taxis and Private Hire Vehicles (Safeguarding and Road Safety) Bill, which contains vital measures that will help restore better licensing provisions, which will operate across the country, as opposed to local authorities dealing with licensing through a siloed approach.

Those examples show that there are undeniable issues in my constituency, which are all related to drug crime. Some local factors exist, some of which are related to geographical area. Keighley is right on the periphery of West Yorkshire, bordering North Yorkshire, and on the periphery of three different local authorities. We closely border North Yorkshire, Lancashire and Calderdale, meaning that county lines drug gangs are a real challenge for my constituency. Because we border two local police areas, drug gangs can use our geographical position to get away with drug dealing undetected, or are not as easily detected, by the police. In one instance, a county lines gang was found to be using rail network links, using Keighley train station to ferry drugs across the border into Skipton.

Often, the evil leaders of supply operations exploit hapless addicts of class A drugs to ensure they have street runners to sell drugs for huge sums, in return for drugs to feed those addicts’ habits or even for a reduction in their debt for the drugs already supplied to them. Innocent people can be drawn by gangs into these bad habits from a very young age, and have their lives ruined by their involvement in this criminal activity.

Drug dealing links to other crimes: members of these gangs are often the same people who are the perpetrators of gang-related grooming and child sexual exploitation—an issue that has haunted my constituency for far too long, and one that I will continue to talk about. They blackmail their victims by exposing them to this criminal activity of drug dealing, which fuels other forms of antisocial behaviour, some of which I have already described.

Violence involving drug gangs has caused disorder and criminal damage in particular areas of Keighley, such as Westburn Avenue. We have two predominant drug gangs within Keighley, who will openly challenge and take one another on in broad daylight. Unfortunately, residents of Westburn Avenue have been exposed to that behaviour, but it is not restricted to that area: it happens in the Highfield area, the Showfield area, and the Lawkholme Lane area of Keighley as well.

That makes people afraid and puts them off coming into Keighley, which is a really good, attractive place. We want to encourage more people to come into Keighley, but we have to address some of these darker, underlying issues. In one tragic case, a man was stabbed to death after challenging a teenage drug dealer to his face about what he was trying to do—selling drugs to a 14-year-old boy. Urgent action and urgent change are needed for the sake of my town and, I am sure, the constituencies of other Members present. We need to talk about this and make sure that when announcements are made at a national level they filter down to our constituents and that our constituents then see real change being delivered at a local level.

Of course, these issues are not just restricted to urban environments; drugs are very much an issue in our rural settings as well. I represent a very urban fringe seat with some really rural parts to it, and I know that drug dealing happens in some of the remotest parts of my constituency as well.

It saddens me to say that when I was first elected to this place, one of the first constituency meetings I had was with a father who came along to tell me that his 13-year-old son had come home from school one day saying, in all innocence, “Dad, I know exactly what I want to do when I’m older,” and that was to become a drug dealer. That was not because his 13-year-old did not know the difference between right and wrong but because he thought drug dealing was something good to aspire to, because he had seen people driving around Keighley in blacked-out, fancy cars. We all know what those individuals are driving and we know where the money comes from to facilitate this activity.

That father was heartbroken that he was coming to me to raise those concerns, but that story gets to the bottom of this issue. This is about raising aspiration for communities such as the one I represent, so that we are not only taking a hard-line approach against drug dealing and providing the necessary support for those who get into the unfortunate situation of taking drugs, but ensuring, alongside all of that, that when we talk about levelling up we are raising aspirations for our constituents and their young families as well.

I was pleased to welcome the Home Secretary to Keighley only a week or so ago. I had had many conversations with her myself, and she met my local neighbourhood policing team to discuss some of the very open challenges we have on the ground. It was great for her to meet Inspector John Barker, as well as some of our police community support officers and members of the police team who are doing incredible work in Keighley.

I welcome the work the Government are doing to tackle this issue, because they want to tackle it head-on. At the end of last year, I was pleased that they unveiled a 10-year plan to clamp down completely on drug crime in our cities, towns and villages, backed by millions of pounds of investment. Of course, that involves a plan to stop the cycle of crime that is driven by addiction, to keep violence out of communities and to save lives by reducing the number of drug-related deaths and homicides.

The Government will also target the violent county lines gang-related issue, which I have already mentioned, making sure that the UK has a strategy that can be adopted by our police forces to make sure that we tackle some of the issues that exist in communities that are geographically challenged, with different police forces, different local authorities and different organisations working cross-boundary. I was also pleased to see that a new commission will be set up to rebuild drug treatment and recovery services to help those who have fallen into this dire situation.

Perhaps most importantly and most encouragingly, though, the Government will put in place a strategy that will educate children comprehensively about the dangers of getting into drugs, and that needs to happen at an early age. Interventions will happen to stop young children from getting dragged into the dangerous life of drug crime.

All the points that I have picked up on are very much to do with the Home Office, the Department for Education and, of course, the Department of Health, but what work is being done at Government level on collaboration between those three Departments, to ensure that when a national policy is announced an average constituent of mine will really feel a tangible change?

[Dr Poulter]

My hon. Friend is making some interesting points, and I should quickly draw attention to my declaration in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests as a practising NHS doctor. On the issue of cross-Government working, it seems extraordinary that most drug treatment services are commissioned not by the NHS but by local authorities. That leads to fragmented care and a lack of direct health involvement in drug treatment. Does my hon. Friend agree that we should ask the Minister to look at this issue, take it to the Department of Health and bring drug treatment commissioning back to the NHS?

[Robbie Moore]

My hon. Friend obviously knows what the next paragraphs of my speech are. In terms of that collaborative approach, we need to give the Department of Health more freedom to instigate some of the measures needed to help those who get driven into this cycle of drug addiction, and to ensure that more support is provided in the treatment sphere as well. Coupled with that, we have to have the right strategy, which involves taking a hard-line approach with those involved in the drug distribution network and those supplying illegal drugs and bringing them into our communities.

I want to give a good example of a very local initiative that has been utilised in Keighley and that is working incredibly well. Driven by the Home Office and initially branded Operation Springhaven, it specifically targeted a small part of my community—an area in Keighley—that was known for having horrendous issues with drug distribution and dealing. Initiated by the Home Office, it took a partnership-led approach and was worked on in collaboration with West Yorkshire police. It brought the local authority, local community groups and the town council onboard. When we took a targeted approach to a specific area, it was not only about tackling drug crime but about being aware of where the drug dealing happened: low-lit back streets that often had overgrown vegetation. All those organisations could work together to try to remove the drug dealing that was taking place. It was done with the point of providing a lot more reassurance to residents living in that area, and involved a lot of door knocking and getting residents to take ownership and buy in to the strategy. It worked incredibly well. I ask the Minister whether that strategy could be adopted and rolled out beyond the initial pilot scheme we had in Keighley.

I conclude by saying that drug crime is dark and horrendous and impacts every level of society, from more affluent areas all the way down to the most deprived areas. It is a dangerous, dark crime that relies on the most evil in society exploiting the weakest. I commend the Government for the work that they are doing, but I would like to understand how we can make sure that the announcements that were made at the end of last year can be delivered as quickly as possible to communities such as those I represent across Keighley and Ilkley.

--- Later in debate ---

[Robin Millar]

The hon. Member makes an interesting suggestion, which I will return to later in my speech. It would be remiss of me to give the great reveal now.

I have the very great privilege of representing a beautiful part of the world, Aberconwy in north Wales. Two thirds of the constituency lies within Snowdonia and the rest is on the coast. We have the walled, medieval town of Conwy and we have Llandudno, which many people probably know is the largest resort in Wales, and it is a beautiful place. Unfortunately, in common with many other, often very beautiful, coastal communities, it also has problems with poverty, deprivation and drug abuse. How often do we hear about poverty and drug abuse together, and about the associated crime?

We have heard about the terrible problems that come with that, and I do not want to dwell on them, except to say that the involvement of children and young people, particularly through the phenomenon of county lines gangs that has grown across the UK in the last decade, is quite awful. Things once attributed to the despicable behaviour of adults are now attributed to children. The age of children doing those things, carrying weapons, and being involved in and exposed to that deprivation, is ever lower. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley for bringing this debate forward and allowing us to address these issues.

I pay tribute to the brave police officers in north Wales who are working around the clock to disrupt and break up many county lines operations—in particular, the astonishing work of the intercept team that covers the whole region and was set up to clamp down on organised crime and drug gangs throughout north Wales. The team use innovative technology to ensure they are able to intercept and disrupt criminals, making north Wales a hostile environment for crime groups to operate in. Since their inception in February 2020, they have recovered controlled drugs, tens of thousands of pounds in cash, mobile phones and weapons such as knives, Tasers and worse, and they have made hundreds of proactive arrests.

In March this year alone, the team made 16 arrests for a range of offences and seized more than 100 wraps of class A drugs, 40 bags of class B drugs and £5,000 in cash. The officers have carried out warrants, stopped vehicles and made arrests linked to possession of controlled drugs, drink and drug driving, and other driving offences. It takes courage and dedication to deliver that kind of performance. Th team’s protection of the public is invaluable and they are a credit to the communities they serve in north Wales. I dare say other Members here can say the same of forces operating in their areas.

I turn to the importance of the community and community groups in dealing with this issue. As I and the hon. Member for Inverclyde (Ronnie Cowan) suggested, the first action of the sheriff was to gather a posse; the key point was that the community did not lose ownership of the problem. In western civilisation, we live in an atomised society. We are individualist in our approach and become very transactional in our relationships, and as a result we tend to say, “That is their job.” In debates about litter, I have often heard people say, “I am not picking up that piece of litter because it would cost someone their job—someone is paid to do that.” There is a strange tension in our society that means that we start to have a dissociated view of each other and the different things that happen, and yet in that lesson of the posse, even though the town had hired and paid the sheriff and the deputies, it still had the responsibility.

I will highlight that idea in a couple of comments with respect to poverty. Poverty and drugs exist in almost a death spiral, with the two locked together. Which comes first? It is a case of cause and effect. Very often, they are a cause, but equally those who are locked into poverty are preyed upon by criminal gangs. Some years ago, the Centre for Social Justice produced some thought-provoking work about pathways to poverty, which included drug abuse, educational failure and family breakdown.

The idea of pathways is helpful because, as other hon. Members have mentioned, there are sometimes entry points to these pathways through socially acceptable behaviour. Alcohol is a socially acceptable drug, yet it can become an entry point into harder drug abuse, as can prescription medication. We should not be ignorant of that or imagine that problems with illicit drugs exist in isolation.

At one scheme—I will not mention where it is, except to say it is in north Wales—I spoke to veterans of special forces who in effect used a cocktail of alcohol, across-the-counter and prescription medicines, and illicit drugs, to manage the highs and lows, the uppers and downers, of the post-traumatic stress disorder resulting from some of their experiences in the service of this country. That is just one example of how this kind of problem can develop.

[Dr Poulter]

My hon. Friend has rightly brought the debate on to people who are dependent on alcohol and street drugs. In that respect, I am sure he is aware of schemes operated in countries such as Portugal where drug possession has been decriminalised and of how that has improved access to drug services for many people, who in this country would otherwise be criminalised. It has also reduced drug-related deaths. Is it worth us at least looking into that in this country?