Drug Consumption Rooms Debate

Full Debate: Read Full Debate
Department: Home Office
Wednesday 17th January 2018

(6 years, 2 months ago)

Westminster Hall
Read Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts

Westminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.

Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.

This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record

Ronnie Cowan Portrait Ronnie Cowan
- Hansard - - - Excerpts

I completely agree. The first step of the healing process is building a working relationship with someone and earning their trust, so that they come back and do not have the suspicions that we have built among drug users.

Drug consumption rooms also seek to contribute to reductions in drug use in public places, in discarded needles and in public order problems linked with open drug scenes. Typically, they provide drug users with: sterile injecting equipment; counselling services before, during and after drug consumption; emergency care in the event of overdose; and primary medical care and referral to appropriate social healthcare and addiction treatment services.

Currently, people are sharing needles, using a product that may kill them instantly, and living chaotic lifestyles that harm them, their friends and their families. DCRs provide needles, which instantly reduces the spread of HIV and hepatitis C, instantly improves the health of the user and instantly engages users back into society, where they can be signposted to relevant services. Needle exchanges also go some way towards doing that, but the paraphernalia leave the premises and are often discarded in public places or shared with other users. Users may choose to inject themselves in streets, doorways or gardens near to the exchange, which is unsuitable for users and local residents.

The great thing is that we have evidence from 10 other countries that DCRs work. The first supervised room was opened in Berne, Switzerland, in June 1986. Further such facilities were established in subsequent years in Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, Norway, Luxembourg, Denmark, Greece and France. Outside Europe, there are facilities in Australia and Canada. A total of 78 drug consumption facilities currently operate in seven European monitoring centre for drugs and drug addiction-reporting countries.

Grahame Morris Portrait Grahame Morris (Easington) (Lab)
- Hansard - -

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this debate on a potentially controversial subject, but perhaps one where we need to look at the evidence. Does he agree that there are not only health benefits but other benefits in terms of crime prevention and reduction? The Home Office’s figures say that 45% of crimes are caused by drug users stealing in order to feed their habits. Tackling that through the introduction of consumption rooms would bring considerable benefits.

Ronnie Cowan Portrait Ronnie Cowan
- Hansard - - - Excerpts

Absolutely. To my knowledge, the closest thing we have had to that in UK was opened by John Marks in the Wirral back in the 1980s. At that time, local crime dropped by more than 90%. We have the information at our fingertips.

Most interestingly, no country that has adopted DCRs has ever regretted it and subsequently closed them. Switzerland and Spain have closed DCRs, but only because the need for them reduced significantly—they were so successful that they put themselves out of business.

Before the festive recess, I asked the Prime Minister at Prime Minister’s questions to change the law to facilitate DCRs in the UK—or, if not, to devolve the relevant powers to the Scottish Parliament so the Scottish Government could do so. The law needs to change to protect the people who supervise the rooms and to enable the relevant police forces to take a consistent stance that does not set them apart from the rest of the judicial system.

--- Later in debate ---
Douglas Ross Portrait Douglas Ross
- Hansard - - - Excerpts

I think we are short of time, so I want to keep going.

Drug consumption rooms could even make things worse. Some drugs, such as heroin, work in such a way that many people build up a tolerance to them, so in order to get the same high and to satisfy their addiction, they end up having to take more and more of the drug. We therefore could be faced with the prospect of the state building a facility to passively watch over someone sinking deeper and deeper into an addition that becomes more and more likely to kill them with each hit. Instead of building drug consumption rooms and trying in vain to make addiction to these drugs safer, we should be redoubling our efforts to help people overcome their addictions altogether.

When it comes down to it, the only safe approach, and the only thing that we should be encouraging, is detox and abstinence. That approach also has the added benefit of being less regionally biased. I for one cannot foresee many drug addicts in Moray, which I represent, making use of a drug consumption room in Glasgow, but drug addiction is not limited to the large cities or the communities close to them. This issue affects all parts of the country, including small and relatively remote rural communities such as my own. There may be fewer addicts in Moray than in other parts of Scotland, but they deserve the same level of support. The issue should not be reduced to a postcode lottery.

Grahame Morris Portrait Grahame Morris
- Hansard - -

Members of this House and members of the public have strong feelings on this issue, so it is important that we consider the evidence and the arguments. The hon. Gentleman says that he is against drug consumption rooms. I am not familiar with the situation in Moray, but I understand that shooting galleries exist. In my constituency, they are located in private dwellings, with drug addicts using dirty needles and tainted drugs of unknown quality and strength. Why does he believe that dangerous, private shooting galleries are preferable to drug consumption rooms?

Douglas Ross Portrait Douglas Ross
- Hansard - - - Excerpts

The hon. Gentleman started his remarks by saying that we must base our decisions on evidence. The evidence from Professor Neil McKeganey, founder of the Centre for Drug Misuse Research said:

“we surveyed over 1,000 drug addicts in Scotland and we asked them what they wanted to get from treatment. Less than 5% said they wanted help to inject more safely and the overwhelming majority said they wanted help to become drugs free.”

That is the evidence that I am looking at.

I want to further explain how this issue has an impact on more rural areas. The opioid epidemic in the United States has shown us how drug addiction crises can become a dispersed and largely rural phenomenon, rather than something confined to parts of cities within reasonable distance of a drug consumption room.

There are, of course, other issues, such as policing—an issue that is close to my heart, given that my wife is a police officer. We obviously could not have police officers standing outside a drug consumption room ready to arrest anyone who walks in for possession, but where do we draw the line? Do we have an exclusion zone, within which the police do not arrest people for possession? As I was trying to ask the hon. Member for Inverclyde, what if someone is further away, but still claims to be en route to the consumption room? Do we prosecute them? Could it even be used as a valid legal defence? After all, it would be the Government actively setting up these places where drug possession and consumption are condoned. That would set us on the road to a sort of selective decriminalisation.

The hon. Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss) and the Scottish National party want powers over drugs, including the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971, to be devolved to the Scottish Parliament, but I believe the UK Government are correct to expect the police to enforce the law. I do not support SNP Members on that matter. We all want to help drug addicts, bring addiction levels down, reduce the number of deaths and injuries, and cut the crime rate, but drug consumption rooms are not the best way to do that. The best and right thing to do is to enforce the law and focus on getting people off drugs altogether.