Drug Consumption Rooms

Debate between Douglas Ross and Lloyd Russell-Moyle

Wednesday 17th January 2018 Westminster Hall

[Douglas Ross]

I agree that engagement is important; I disagree that the only place in which that engagement can take place is in these drug rooms. I stick by what I said earlier. We really have to ensure that we do not go down this route, because there is ultimately no safe way to take class A drugs—that is why they are classified as such.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Brighton, Kemptown) (Lab/Co-op)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Douglas Ross]

I will give way in a moment. Someone may use a drug consumption room once—they may even use it regularly—but there is no guarantee that they will use it all the time. As long as someone is addicted to these drugs, they cannot be kept safe. They certainly cannot be set on a course towards recovery, and the drug-free life that every human being deserves.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

The KPMG study found that there were no drug deaths among the people who had used and engaged with the rooms, of whom there were 4,400 over that time. During that period, there was an 80% reduction in the number of ambulance call-outs relating to drug issues in Sydney, and a reduction in the average number of overdoses in public locations by more than three quarters. The rooms provided 9,500 referrals to welfare services in the wider communities. Most importantly, they won the support of residents and neighbours.

One of the things we hear time and again—I am sure this will be brought up—is that people do not want these things in their backyard. As colleagues have said, the reality is that they are in people’s backyards—quite literally. I remember canvassing up flights of stairs in tower blocks, and people were shooting up right in front of me. They had nowhere to go and no support was offered. The only thing we can do is ring the police, but we know that in a day or so the revolving door will start again. How does that help with the pressure on our police? How does that help with the pressures on our communities? The reality is that it does not.

Globally, countries have gone down two tracks: the prohibition track or the treatment track. At the same time, in all those jurisdictions, usage has slightly decreased. However, in jurisdictions that go down the prohibition route, the harm caused by those harder drugs has rocketed and the number of people getting stuck in long-term habits has increased. Under the treatment route, as we have seen in Portugal and so on, we have seen long-term usage go down and the harm slashed. Surely that is what our policies must be about: the harm to communities and individuals.

I will not speak for much longer, because I know that lots of other colleagues want to speak, but I will touch on some of the issues that have been raised about policing. I feel the policing issue is something of a straw man argument. If there is a centre that people are asked to go to for treatment and to abstain from drugs and stop their addictions entirely, should those people be stopped from going to the centre on the off chance that they might have drugs on them because they are addicts? Should they be followed home? Should we try to entrap them? We do not do that at the moment, so suggesting that the police would need to do that with DCRs is a straw man argument.

No law is perfect, and there are grey zones, but surely it is better to work within those legal grey zones, deal with issues through dialogue with the police and save lives, than to have a system in which we have a hard and fast rule and thousands and thousands of people die. Some 56 people died from 2014 to 2016 in my city of Brighton and Hove—it is also the city of the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas), who I am sure will testify—which is actually lower than in previous years.

[Douglas Ross]

To clarify, I was not suggesting that the police are going out and searching everyone on the way in to DCRs. I was suggesting that there is a reasonable concern that, if someone in the vicinity of a drug room is stopped and searched and found to be in possession of something like heroin, they could say they are on their way to the drug room and may therefore not be charged. That is why the Lord Advocate in Scotland was not able to give his permission for the example in Glasgow.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

It is interesting that that does not seem to be a problem elsewhere. That is all I can say. Let us base this on evidence from elsewhere. I have spoken for long enough, so I shall sit down.

Government Policy on the Proceedings of the House

Debate between Douglas Ross and Lloyd Russell-Moyle

Tuesday 10th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Douglas Ross (Moray) (Con)]

I contribute to this debate from quite a privileged position, as someone who has served both my Parliaments: as a Member of the Scottish Parliament in Holyrood in Edinburgh; and as a Member of our Parliament here in Westminster in London. Of course, in both Parliaments, I have served under minority Governments, so I am well placed to speak about how Oppositions deal with debates in both Chambers.

We hear a lot from our Scottish National party colleagues about minority government here at Westminster, but very little about the fact that their party is in minority government in Holyrood—we heard a couple of sentences about it today from the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart), but not much before that. It is therefore worth repeating that Nicola Sturgeon went into the last Scottish parliamentary elections with a majority and came out with a minority, largely because the number of Scottish Conservative MSPs more than doubled—from 15 to 31.

The hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire said many interesting things. After 13 minutes of criticising and attacking the Government and Conservative Back Benchers, he told us that he was being helpful and consensual. That was the only helpful thing he told us, because up until that point it did not seem that he was being particularly helpful or consensual. He also said—I wrote this down because I was very interested—that nobody expects the Government to change policy after being defeated in an Opposition day debate. That was quickly followed by an intervention from the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael), who disagreed entirely. That just shows the confused position among the Opposition parties in today’s debate. It is perhaps because the party of the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire has a minority Government in Scotland that he does not believe that Governments should change policy due to a defeat in a Chamber.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

It is nice to hear about the Scottish example, but I am interested to know whether the hon. Gentleman thinks that the Government should change course when they are defeated in a Chamber, instead of just hearing him attack the SNP, which I do not have much truck with either.

[Douglas Ross]

I am a Scottish Conservative Member representing a Scottish constituency, so if the hon. Gentleman bears with me, I will speak about Scottish issues in the House of Commons. I will also speak about Governments being defeated when this Government are defeated. They have not been defeated in this House, but the party of the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire has been defeated. I want to come on to the point that I tried to make when I intervened on his speech. Hansard will show that I asked clearly about the Offensive Behaviour at Football and Threatening Communications (Scotland) Act 2012, but that the hon. Gentleman never once mentioned that piece of legislation in response.