Drugs Policy

Debate between Diana Johnson and Andrew Griffiths

Thursday 16th December 2010 Westminster Hall

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

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this afternoon, Mr Walker. I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Coventry North East (Mr Ainsworth) on securing the debate. I note his great success in getting his views and comments widely trailed in the media. Despite the fact that it is the Thursday before Christmas and we are on a one-line Whip in the House, the debate this afternoon has had a great deal of attention.

All Members know from our work in our constituencies that drugs cause misery to people and thwart the opportunities and life chances of not only the individual, but family members. They sometimes blight whole communities. However, when looking at drugs in the UK, it is important to remember that we have had some successes. For example, the coalition Government’s strategy refers to the fall of a third in the last decade in young people’s rates of drug use. The importation of cocaine has also been disrupted.

As my right hon. Friend said, there has been a great deal of investment in treatment for people with drug problems. He is a very distinguished Member, with, as he explained, experience as a drugs Minister. It is right that we should all welcome the opportunity for a considered and mature debate on drugs policy.

My hon. Friend the Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn) spoke with great passion and knowledge about his experience in European countries. The hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) talked about her interesting experience looking at the RIOTT trials, and about what we can learn from them. She also addressed the matter of tackling inequality when thinking through drugs policy.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Coventry North East has set out his approach, but it is not one with which the Opposition agree. There have been headlines and a great deal of newspaper copy today, but the topic has been reported in far too simplistic a way to deal with the complexities of the drugs problem we face. The issue is not straightforward; there are many different—and respected—views on the way forward for drugs policy in this country.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband), the Leader of the Opposition, commented today:

“I am all in favour of fresh thinking on drugs. I don’t agree with him”—

referring to my right hon. Friend the Member for Coventry North East—

“on decriminalisation of drugs. I worry about the effects on young people, the message we would be sending out.”

That is an interesting point. We do need to have fresh thinking, and we need to keep the area under constant review.

This debate is timely due to the recent publication of the coalition’s drugs strategy for 2010. We have also had the Second Reading of the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill in the House of Commons this week. That includes clauses specific to drugs policy, which I will address later.

The Opposition share the coalition’s broad approach to drugs strategy, building on the pillars of preventing drug-taking, disrupting supply, strengthening enforcement and promoting treatment. There is a lot on which we can agree. However, the strategy marks a departure, from the previous focus on reducing the harm caused by drugs to a focus on recovery as the most effective route out of dependency. We want to look at that further and examine what that would mean.

It is important to note that the Home Secretary, in her foreword to the drugs strategy, states that during consultation the Government looked at the issue of liberalisation and decriminalisation, but decided that that was not the answer—that it fails to recognise the complexity of the problem and gives insufficient regard to the harms that drugs pose.

I want to explore the drugs strategy a little further and test some of its statements against the reality of the current policies being put forward by the coalition Government in areas such as health, education, benefits and criminal justice. The backdrop to the strategy was the announcement of the comprehensive spending review and the budgets that will be available to the pubic sector over the next few years. I focus particularly on the budget allocations to the police, local authorities, the NHS and the education sectors. They all have a very important role to play in drugs policy.

In line with the coalition’s general thinking, the strategy features a move away from a top-down to a local decision-making approach—the localism agenda. I hope the Minister can reassure me and other hon. Members that good practice, which does exist around the country now, will continue to be spread and that we will not see only pockets of good practice, with the rest of the country left to mediocre practices. I hope the Minister can reassure me about that, based on this new local approach.

There are three areas on which I want to comment. There is the issue of reducing demand. We know from research that people from backgrounds in which they face problems, such as homelessness, unemployment or exclusion from school, are more likely to take drugs.

There are policies in the strategy that include a great deal about early intervention and getting to those groups early on to stop them from taking up drugs. There is mention, for instance, of the 4,200 additional health visitors that the coalition Government will have in place by 2015. That is all well and good, but I am concerned about how we are to train those additional health visitors, and also about where the money is to come from for those additional professionals.

The situation is the same with Sure Start. The strategy mentions Sure Start and the coalition Government recognise the important role that Sure Start and children’s centres play. We all know that the funding of the 3,500 that were opened under the previous Labour Government will now go to local authorities and will no longer be ring-fenced. As local authorities are under huge pressures to balance their budgets, I ask the Minister to look carefully at whether the role of Sure Start and children’s centres will be as effective as the strategy sets out, with reduced resources.

There is also mention of the national programmes of support for families with multiple problems. Again, I hope that that money will be protected. Pilots of those programmes are showing very good results. Will the Minister respond by saying how he will secure the resources to ensure that that category of early-intervention project is as effective as it can be?

I want to mention education. All of us recognise how important drugs education is. My right hon. Friend the Member for Coventry North East mentioned FRANK, which he was pleased to hear was still going. That is right, and most people accept that the initiative has been a success. However, drugs education has to be more than just a website. We know the important role that schools play in getting messages across to young people. I am concerned about the changes that we are seeing in the education sector—the move to a narrower academic approach in schools, moving away from the Department of Children, Schools and Families’ approach, which was about Every Child Matters and championing the well-being agenda. That seems to have been sidelined within schools with the new approach of the Secretary of State.

Will the Minister reassure me that drugs education will remain an important subject in schools? I was deeply disappointed that at the very end of the previous Parliament, the Conservative party blocked personal social and health education from becoming a statutory, compulsory subject in schools. PSHE is a good vehicle for ensuring that drugs education is present and effective in the educational setting.

My hon. Friend the Member for Gedling (Vernon Coaker), a former drugs Minister and schools Minister, made it clear to me that if teachers are expected to provide good drugs education, they need training, resources and the use of external experts to come and talk to children and young people. That all takes resources and I am concerned that those may not be available to schools and head teachers.

I wanted to pick up one other point on education, which is in the section of the strategy dealing with reducing demand, and encouraging young people to stay in education and obtain qualifications to help them get employment. There is one section that deals with educational opportunities and talks about supporting children and young people from disadvantaged backgrounds to stay in education. I read that and thought it did not fit well with the coalition Government’s current policy to remove educational maintenance allowances. That has a direct effect on some of the disadvantaged communities, where drugs have been a problem. As a number of hon. Members have already said, the removal of the EMA is a real problem when trying to encourage young people to stay on up to 18.

I move on to restricting the supply of drugs. The strategy is building on the good work over the past few years and relies on a number of factors. One is around good neighbourhood policing, and of course we have seen additional police numbers over the past 13 years. We now face a 20% cut to police budgets. PCSOs, who often provide an effective presence on the streets, will have their numbers cut. Again, I seek reassurance from the Minister about how the strategy will deliver, given that reduction in resources. Under the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill, which had its Second Reading earlier this week, police and crime commissioners are to set out the strategic direction for police forces. When the Bill comes to its Committee stage, we will want to consider the possible conflict between reduced resources and the fact that police and crime commissioners will probably want to play a part, encouraging the police to join them in partnership working. It will be difficult for police commissioners to square that circle of not having the resources needed to provide effective partnership working.

Legal highs are mentioned in the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill. The Minister knows that there is common cause on tackling legal highs, as there have been a number of debates on the subject over the previous few months. There is common cause not only because it is the right thing to do; the previous Government began the journey, and the present Government are continuing on a similar line. What is proposed in the Bill will prevent manufacturers from tweaking compounds to stay ahead of any ban.

The chair of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs says that the Bill permits a systematic approach, which is to be welcomed. Clause 149 of the Bill allows the Secretary of State to introduce temporary class drugs orders to deal with the problem of legal highs. Overall, we support the proposal, but we shall want to examine it further in Committee. The matter was raised in a previous debate, but will the Minister give some indication of the cost of legal highs’ being banned for up to 12 months?

I turn to the question of building recovery in communities, the individual tailored approach set out in the document. Although it is recognised as important, I hope that there will be true recognition of the need for different approaches, and that they will be deemed equally valid. For some people, moving on to methadone and remaining stable and able to function as members of the community may be seen as a positive result, whereas for others being entirely drug free will be the right goal.

I do not agree with the hon. Member for Stroud (Neil Carmichael). He seemed to imply that we did not need to have a range of treatments, although he spoke passionately about the Nelson Trust and the excellent work that it does. The hon. Member for Burton (Andrew Griffiths) spoke about the Burton addiction centre, and told us about Jamie’s view of the situation. However, I believe that we need a plurality of approaches. We cannot have a one-size-fits-all approach for something as complex as dealing with drug treatment. Martin Barnes, the chief executive of DrugScope, said:

“The aspiration for treatment and recovery is to be applauded, but the challenge will be ensuring that high level ambition is delivered and sustained locally, not least at a time of policy change, uncertainty and spending cuts.”

The massive reorganisation of the NHS means that PCTs will be going and that GPs will hold 80% of the NHS budget. Along with the creation of the national public health service, and local authorities taking on the public health role, the way in which much of the public sector is to operate will be a constantly moving feast. I understand that public health money is to be ring-fenced, but it is unclear exactly how much money local authorities will have for dealing with public health matters in their areas. I believe that directors of public health will commission services locally. The services will be competitively tendered and rewarded, and there will be transparency about the performance of any drug treatments contracted for.

We heard earlier in the debate about payment by results. I hope that we will be able to explore that question further, and to discover how the pilots, which will be created by 2011, will work. We need more detail about how they are to be judged successful. Will it be if people become drug free, or if they are merely stable and able to function on methadone? We need that information.

[Andrew Griffiths]

The hon. Lady raises a point that is crucial to the success of payment by results. The danger is that certain providers will cherry-pick the easy-to-cure addicts, and that the more difficult and complex cases will be abandoned. Does she agree that we need to ensure that providers that deal with the toughest cases should be properly rewarded?

[Diana Johnson]

We will want to look carefully at the pilots and exactly how such problems might be dealt with. There must be an imaginative way of dealing with that matter, but we need more detail. The strategy sets out in broad terms what the Government want to do, but the hon. Gentleman is right.

There is also the question of prisons and the criminal justice system. Reference has been made to the proposals in the Green Paper published by the Secretary of State for Justice. It is worth pointing out again that resources and funding will be required. For the approaches that the majority of Members want to see put in place, the important question is where the money and resources will come from.

We also need to deal with the social issues set out in the strategy, such as the reintegration of former drug addicts so that they can obtain housing and employment. Such matters sit uneasily with some of the proposals made by the coalition Government on housing, housing benefit and changes, and that may cause problems for people returning to work. Those matters, too, need to be considered.

As my right hon. Friend the Member for Coventry North East said, clause 150 of the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill will remove the requirement for certain appointments to the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs to have a scientific background. It will remove the requirement set out in the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 to include those with wide and recent experience of medicine, dentistry, veterinary medicine, pharmacy, the pharmaceutical industry and chemistry, and those with experience of the social problems caused by drug abuse. That approach rather undermines the view of the Minister for Universities and Science, who wrote into the ministerial code the principles for respecting independent advice—including scientific advice, obviously and importantly.

The Liberal Democrats seem to be in some difficulty on this question. The hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake) raised it in an intervention, and the hon. Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) has tabled EDM 1148. The problem is that the Liberal Democrat 2010 manifesto says that drugs policy should always be based on independent scientific advice, including making the ACMD independent of Government. There will be some discussion in the coalition about how to deal with that, as it seems that that pledge is in danger of bring broken.

I look forward to hearing from the Minister, and particularly to his answer to the question posed by my right hon. Friend the Member for Coventry North East on evaluating the success of the drugs strategy, and at what point we can have a further debate to consider whether the strategy has worked.