Legal Highs

Diana Johnson Excerpts

Tuesday 1st July 2014 Westminster Hall

[Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)]

Thank you, Mr Chope, for calling me to speak. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this afternoon.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield (Toby Perkins) on securing this debate on a very important issue. In his opening remarks, he set out the situation that we find ourselves in today and the specific problems that he has identified in his own constituency. I listened to his account of what is going on in and around the Reefer store, and it sounds absolutely dreadful. Also, his account of the effects of the substance called Clockwork Orange was particularly concerning. I had a quick look in my own local paper, the Hull Daily Mail, which recently ran a story about Clockwork Orange. The headline was:

“How £10 clockwork orange ‘legal high’ turned caring mum into deranged Longhill attacker.”

Clearly, that kind of substance is available all around the country and are causing problems for all sorts of communities.

I was also very pleased that my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis), who is not in his place at the moment, was able to contribute to the debate, because I know that he is particularly interested in the issue. He hit the nail on the head about the importance of cross-Government working. My hon. Friend the Member for Barrow and Furness (John Woodcock) spoke with great passion about the action that is needed now. He made two interesting suggestions: one was about the seizures that could take place at the ports, and the other was about putting the onus on sellers to show that what they are purporting to be bath salts really are bath salts and are not to be consumed.

Many Members across the country have seen a proliferation in the number of head shops opening in the high streets in their constituencies, and we know that those shops are selling dangerous drugs. Obviously, the correct term is “new psychoactive substances”. However, I take the point that the hon. Member for South Swindon (Mr Buckland) made that that term is a bit of a mouthful. His idea of calling them “chemical highs” has some merit, because the problem with them being called “legal highs” is that it causes young people, in particular, to view them as being absolutely fine and safe to take.

We know that there is widespread concern among parents and communities about legal highs. Many Members have spoken today about particular cases in their own constituencies. The hon. Member for South East Cornwall (Sheryll Murray) spoke about what was happening in her area, and the hon. Members for Milton Keynes South (Iain Stewart) and for Rugby (Mark Pawsey) talked about their areas. The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) raised the important issue of legal highs being used at festivals, which at this time of year is quite an important issue to try to address.

All this activity has been going on for some time, but the Government have been very slow in coming to the table to sort it out. There is now genuinely a call for action from all parties in the House, and the Government need to do something. It was not until December last year that the Minister accepted that the situation was no longer under control, and he instigated the review that has been mentioned. The Opposition have been raising the matter with the former Minister with responsibility for drugs, the hon. Member for Taunton Deane (Mr Browne), and the current Minister for the past three years. During that time, the UK has become Europe’s largest market for legal highs. We now have more than 500 internet sellers and at least 100 high street shops selling hundreds of substances. We have also heard that more than 650,000 young people in the UK are thought to have taken these substances, on some occasions with tragic consequences.

We know that the problem has been growing exponentially since 2009. In that year, 24 new psychoactive substances were identified in the UK and were linked with 10 deaths, but by 2012 73 drugs had emerged, which were linked to 68 deaths. We know that last year 81 new drugs emerged. I am glad that the Government have now recognised that they can no longer ignore the problem, and although the review is three years too late, I still welcome it. I hope that the Minister will be able to tell us when it will be published, so that we can see what the Government’s plans are.

There are four issues about legal highs that I want to raise with the Minister. I want to highlight them and seek assurances from him that they will be addressed in the review and its findings.

The first issue is about information. It is difficult to address a problem when we do not understand or know the full scale of it, but at present we do not have a clear recording system to identify the spread of legal highs. There is no record of those presenting at A and E with complications resulting from legal highs. We do not know how often legal highs are implicated in mental health referrals or in adolescent mental health figures. There is even confusion about the drugs that have been identified as being available in the UK, with the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction, which is informed by the NHS’s National Poisons Information Service, consistently publishing a much more comprehensive list of substances than the list that the Home Office has on its forensic early warning system. There is a discrepancy in the numbers. Why does the Home Office not use the National Poisons Information Service as its source of information, since its list is more comprehensive? We need a co-ordinated Government strategy. It appears that at the moment one half of Government does not know what information the other half is publishing online. That would be the first step in establishing the baseline of the problem.

Secondly, the Opposition supported the Government in introducing temporary banning orders for new psychoactive substances, but in three years that power has been used just five times, while hundreds of drugs have emerged on the market. The ACMD has been clear that it is not able to assess more than three or four drugs a year. The Minister will say that he has used generic bans to outlaw whole classes—families—of drugs, but I am not convinced that that has worked, as hon. Members have highlighted. We need a new approach to tackling these substances.

Thirdly, it is not just about banning the substances; we now need to tackle an entire industry that has grown up to distribute them. We have heard how head shops behave, particularly the bad example in Chesterfield. Many are deliberately targeting young people, and drugs may be marketed as bath salts or plant food, but that is a thin veneer. As my hon. Friend the Member for Barrow and Furness indicated, people will soon recognise that mislabelling when they seek a description of the drug and information about it from those selling it.

[Jim Shannon]

Perhaps the hon. Lady will comment on online purchasing of legal drugs, which I mentioned. Although they are available in shops, as we all know, they are also available online and people can buy them without anyone—their parents or their family— knowing. I regard that as a matter of greater concern.

[Diana Johnson]

The hon. Gentleman is right. Online sale of these substances is worrying. Just this morning I read a description of a drug on pills4party.com:

“DEX powder–new generation of legal high”

produces a

“pure dose of euphoric energy and keeps you charged for all night long. DEX powder is perfect alternative to cocaine that gives you more than the Snowman Experience without any hassles.”

I am sure, Mr Chope, that you are fully aware of what the snowman experience is, although many of us find that rather baffling. That shows how these substances are being marketed for consumption by young people. Nobody can be under any illusion that they are not being marketed as recreational drugs. I have heard of internet sellers sending out free samples of new drugs that have emerged on the market. It seems to me that they are treating our children as guinea pigs.

Until a little while ago, Amazon was selling legal highs on its site, but due to work by the Angelus Foundation I think that it has removed them. Many local authorities have attempted to use trading standards legislation to close head shops down where there is a problem, but such attempts are rarely successful. Indeed, last year a prosecution was thrown out by the judge, who, although sympathetic to the need to close such shops down, said that the legislation simply was not fit for purpose.

One idea, which was used in Leeds, involved solvent legislation, but of course that applies only to selling solvents to someone who is under 18. By extending the solvents legislation, as has been done successfully in Ireland, we could give local authorities the powers they need to close head shops down. I should be grateful if the Minister said what he thought of that idea, which was proposed in an amendment tabled by the Opposition to the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Bill. The Government saw fit not to support that amendment.

I was struck by the menu of ways to tackle the problem that the hon. Member for South Swindon proposed. I hope that the Minister will respond to some of those ideas.

My final point, which I have raised in many debates, is that there should be a proper drugs prevention strategy. The lack of one is the Government’s biggest failure. Legal highs have emerged as a new phenomenon, and the Government have done little to tackle the myths that have allowed those substances to take hold in the past few years. Even after a number of deaths, and the horror stories that we have read about and heard about today, some people still think that “legal” means “safe”. That misconception needs to be tackled head-on.

The Minister will claim to have invested in relaunching the Frank website and even to have launched a public awareness campaign last year, but it was too little, too late. In four years, just £67,000 has been spent on a one-off, limited campaign that generated just 75,000 web page views. That is feeble, when we consider that more than 650,000 young people have tried these substances.

Mr Chope, can I just check that the time for this debate has been extended to 4.15 pm?

[Mr Christopher Chope (in the Chair)]

For the avoidance of doubt, it continues until 4.14 pm.

[Diana Johnson]

I am grateful, Mr Chope. I did not want to eat into the time available to the Minister.

I pay tribute to the Angelus Foundation, which has done its best to get educational materials into schools and communities. It feels frustrated that the Government have not taken up the mantle on education in schools, in particular, which I think most hon. Members would think is important. Will the Minister talk to Public Health England, which also has a job to do in getting a message out?

A two-pronged approach is needed on prevention and education in schools, giving children the life skills they need. I know that it has been a long-standing commitment of the Liberal Democrats to have compulsory personal, social and health education in schools and, as a Liberal Democrat Minister in the coalition, I hope the Minister might be able to persuade the Education Secretary that that is a good idea.

Those are the four points that I want the Minister to address. I look forward to the review being published shortly, so that we can finally have a policy that gets to grips with this dreadful problem, which is growing and developing in all our constituencies.

--- Later in debate ---

[Norman Baker]

I will come to the steps that are being taken, but I want to stress at this point, since the hon. Gentleman has raised it, that a process is in place. We have appointed an expert panel based on the best brains in the country from various disciplines: law enforcement, those who have knowledge of drugs, those from the health regimes, those who understand the psychiatry of those who might use drugs and so on. The panel has been charged by me with finding the best way forward to minimise harms from those substances. That is its objective. It is therefore not for me to second-guess what the panel will come up with. The clear objective is to minimise harm, and I look to the panel for recommendations. I will come to the process in a moment. It would be wrong for me to rule anything in or out until the panel has had an opportunity to reflect and take professional advice as it is doing so. No doubt the hon. Gentleman’s points will be considered by the panel, along with everything else.

[Diana Johnson]

Will the Minister give us a time scale for when the review will report, because time is pressing in this Parliament?

[Norman Baker]

Time is pressing. I have been in post since October or thereabouts. The review panel was appointed in December and has almost concluded its work. I expect to have its final report on my desk in a couple of weeks’ time. The Government will reflect on the conclusions and we will publish our intentions shortly thereafter. That is our intention. I want to get a move on. There is no intention to delay matters. However, there is also no wish to end up with bad legislation that is rushed and might have unforeseen consequences. I stress that no country in the world has cracked the issue successfully. We have to look across the world at different practices to see what might apply best to our own situation.