Psychoactive Substances Bill [Lords]

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Wednesday 20th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Lyn Brown]

I am going to come to that later in my speech when I talk about Wales. Although there has not yet been a proper examination of the findings from the drugs programme that Wales has put into action, the initial findings appear to show that it has had some impact. If my hon. Friend will allow, I will continue with my—[Interruption.] Thank you: I will continue with my oration.

The evidence, including from the Government’s own inspectors, suggests that the Government’s approach to PSHE simply is not working. This failure has occurred at a time when the growth of the new psychoactive substances industry has started radically to alter the drugs situation in our country.

Moreover, parents want these changes. A National Union of Teachers survey suggests that around 88% of parents want PSHE to be compulsory. A 2011 survey conducted by Mumsnet showed that 98% of parents were happy for their children to attend PSHE lessons.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

While this legislation will go some towards addressing legal highs, there is still the issue of the purchase of legal highs online. Does the hon. Lady agree there is still much to do in relation to that?

[Lyn Brown]

I agree that there is much we can do to prevent the supply of, and demand for, these substances. This set of amendments is dealing with demand, and I feel that, unless we get across the message that these so-called legal highs are neither legal nor safe, the demand on the internet will become even greater. We need to get across the core message that the Government are sending through this Bill: these drugs are not legal and not safe. The demand on the internet needs to be curbed as well, which is why we need to make sure that we have proper education and information out there.

Teachers, parents and the Government’s own inspectors think we should have more and better drugs education, but it appears that the Government do not agree. In Wales, a Labour Government show us how successful an alternative approach can be. A £2 million investment in the all-Wales school liaison programme has made substance misuse education a core subject in 98% of Welsh primary and secondary schools. Almost all Welsh schoolchildren receive accurate, consistent and credible information about the potential harms of drugs, rather than having to rely on friends, myths, the internet and guesswork. The school programme is complemented by the Welsh emerging drugs and novel substance project, a new psychoactive substances information and harm reduction programme, as well as measures to educate parents. These are all part of a £50 million investment in reducing drugs harms.

There are signs that the Welsh approach is working. Drug deaths in Wales are down by 30% since 2010. By contrast, drug-related deaths have been creeping up in England. There was a 17% increase in the last year, and the Office for National Statistics states that they are now at the highest level since records began in 1993.

Too much of the drugs education in our schools is focused on providing information. Evidence suggests that to get drugs education right, it has to be taught alongside a focus on the life skills which empower young people to resist peer pressure and make informed decisions.

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[Crispin Blunt]

Indeed. I suppose I have advertised the fact that I may be vulnerable to that. I therefore plead with the House to make sure that I do not find myself caught in this particular situation. Given that the issue relates to my personal experience, as well as to my experience as a Justice Minister with responsibility for offenders and offender management, I implore my colleagues at the very least, if they do not want to be seen voting against the Government, not to be associated with putting the Bill on the statute book. It is a real mistake, and it would be sensible to do anything possible to ensure that amendment 5 is accepted, with our looking at and considering the matter again in due course.

[Jim Shannon]

I am not alone in having a constituency that has been blighted by the use of legal highs. I do not like the term “legal highs” because, unfortunately, the very words attract young people to them. I have been concerned about that for a long time.

I commend the Government on introducing very strong legislation for us to consider in the House. The Chair of the Home Affairs Committee, the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), referred to the Minister as his “favourite” Home Office Minister. When he brings such legislation before the House, the Minister is the favourite of many Members. My constituents will be grateful to him for the proposed changes. I am not at all in favour of liberalising drug use, so it is quite clear where I am coming from. I think the Government have the same stance, which I welcome.

I welcome that stance because, just last year in my constituency, we saw an example of the heartbreak, illness and trauma that results from legal highs. A young man, Adam Owens, a constituent of mine—I know his father and stepmother quite well—was found dead in the town of Newtownards in my constituency of Strangford as a result of his addiction to legal highs. The case shocked not just my constituency, but the whole Province. It left the family devastated, and they told me the very nature of their concerns. Adam’s step-mum Dawn said:

“Legal highs are a major problem around here and something has to be done about it.”

I welcome the fact that the Government are now doing something about it.

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[James Berry (Kingston and Surbiton) (Con)]

Is the hon. Gentleman aware that in Ireland, after the introduction of legislation very similar to the Bill, not only did every one of the 102 head shops close, but no Irish domain websites now sell such substances? We obviously hope that there will be the same effect in England and Wales.

[Jim Shannon]

I mentioned the closure of the head shops, which is really good news—good stuff. I also referred to the detective sergeant in the Drugs and Organised Crime Bureau. He outlined an issue that the Irish are now trying to address. It is good to be able to refer to other examples of hard and fast legislative change to address such issues. In the Republic of Ireland, they have been partially successful in relation to online sales—they are almost there—but we must also do that.

I commend the Minister and the Government on what they have introduced. This is the sort of legislation that I and my constituents, as well as people from across the whole of Northern Ireland, want. I look forward to supporting the Minister when it comes to a vote—if it comes to a vote.

[Mike Freer (Finchley and Golders Green) (Con)]

I thank the shadow Minister for a balanced speech that contained some well-judged comments. I also thank my right hon. Friend the Minister for his courtesy when I took a delegation to him from the National AIDS Trust, Stonewall, Millivres Prowler and Boyz magazine to discuss this topic.

It is clear not just from this debate, but from the debate that has been raging in the gay press over the past few months, that there is considerable concern over the need to ban poppers. What has come to the fore over the past few months while I have been working on the topic is the complete lack of empirical data one way or the other. I appreciate that the Home Office believes—I have no reason to think that this belief is not genuine—that deaths have occurred from the use of poppers. However, that evidence has never been forthcoming.

I therefore decided to do a bit of research of my own. I would like to draw attention to some American research, particularly that of Dr Thomas Hall of the University of California in Los Angeles, who gave evidence to the Gay Times for a report on the effects of isopropyl nitrite. I will not quote the whole document, you will be pleased to know, Madam Deputy Speaker, but he said:

“There is very little specific research on the health effects of alkyl nitrites other than amyl nitrite.”

He went on to say:

“My summary statement would be that in the grand scheme of drugs of abuse, the risks from nitrite poppers are fairly benign… Isopropyl nitrite and other nitrite poppers appear to be far less harmful to the body in general than chronic alcohol consumption.”

I then looked at The New England Journal of Medicine, which stated in 2010:

“To our knowledge, over the past 10 years, there have been only two case reports of visual loss after inhalation of poppers, and the anatomical basis of this injury remains elusive.”

Finally on medical research, I turned to the US Department of Health and Human Services report of January 2014. It stated:

“To date, use of alkyl nitrites as a psychoactive substance among MSM”—

men who have sex with men—

“has received little attention in addiction textbooks, where they are subsumed among other inhalants.”

We have heard about that today. The report continues:

“This is unfortunate, because lumping these disparate agents together based on mode of administration”—

that is, inhalation—

“obscures substantial differences in both mechanism and typical risk between alkyl nitrites, which act on a specific…pathway, and inhaled solvents and propellants”

that have other effects. That is about the sum of the medical evidence that I could find.

In the absence of medical evidence or hard facts in the UK, I wrote to the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs. The chairman could not have been more blunt. He said that poppers were

“not seen to be capable of having harmful effects”.

There has been talk of a medicinal benefit to poppers, which I thought was an interesting turn of phrase until I received an email. I have to bow to the knowledge of our SNP colleagues, because it was from a gentleman from Croy in Inverness. He said: “Alkyl nitrites are carried, used and, when the need arises, shared by many people who work in the countryside as the first line of treatment if one is bitten by an adder.”

I confess that adders are not common in Finchley and Golders Green. Mr Joyce of Croy went on to say:

“A substantial number of people are bitten each year in Britain and the bite is rarely fatal, but whether that is because the venom is not particularly powerful against modern healthy humans or because treatment, with Alkyl nitrite or one of the eight known anti-venoms, is almost always administered very quickly is a question that is open to debate.”

That email shows that there is a conflict between the views that are held and what limited information and fact are out there in the public domain.

I support the view that there is a need to provide up-to-date empirical evidence. There also needs to be proportionality. Everything that we do carries a risk, whether it is smoking or anything else. If one drinks bleach, one will be harmed, but we are not proposing to ban bleach. When we seek to control, regulate or ban anything, we must deal with it in the round and consider the proportionality of doing so.

I welcome the response to the Home Affairs Committee report, because it states that an investigation will be under way shortly into the impact of the ban on the relationships of gay men and women. I am told that this issue affects not just gay men, but gay women. The Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee, whom I would like to call my right hon. Friend, talked about anal sex. That is quite a crude way of saying that poppers can facilitate sex, through the relaxation of muscles. However, this is not just about the physical side of a relationship. If people want their relationship to be as intimate as possible and poppers facilitate that, they are an important element in the emotional wellbeing of that couple. Therefore, if we are talking about the medicinal benefits, we have to include the emotional and mental health benefits that the use of poppers in a relationship can bring.

When we are talking about risks—I have mentioned proportionality—it is important that we do not start banning things on the basis of one or two incidents. There has to be a significant risk of significant harm to a significant number of people, otherwise we would be banning cigarettes and alcohol tomorrow.

I say to the Minister that the investigation and report must be as open and transparent as possible. I ask him to give an assurance when he responds that evidence will be taken not just from organisations such as Public Health England, elements of the NHS and the ACMD, but organisations such as the National AIDS Trust, the Terrence Higgins Trust and Stonewall. It should also be taken from organisations such as Millivres Prowler, which I believe is the largest retailer of poppers in the UK, because it has a strong, relevant and up-to-date evidence bank of how poppers are used and how they are sold. Because it is a reputable retailer, it also has an enormous amount of data on the illegal import of the more dangerous poppers that are coming in through the internet. I hope that the Minister will also say that evidence will be taken from the international bodies, a few of which I mentioned earlier, that have done medical research into the benefits or disbenefits of the use of poppers.

Finally, if the Home Office decides that there is a risk that needs to be mitigated, but that an outright ban is not necessary, I urge it to consider licensing poppers for sale through sex shops. That would allow some level of control, regulation and protection, without the need for an outright ban, which might lead people to be exposed to all sorts of underground drugs.

There is a lot of work to be done. I welcome the swift action of the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz). Members might think that my conclusion will be that I will support Opposition amendment 5, and I have to say that the Opposition have spoken a lot of sense. However, I will support the Government because I want an exemption based on empirical evidence. If poppers are exempted by the summer recess, as outlined in the response to the Home Affairs Committee report, that exemption could not be easily overturned on the whim of a future Home Office Minister, because it would be based on empirical evidence, whatever it says. On that basis, I will support the Government on this issue.

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[Jim Shannon]

Mr Speaker, may I ask what time will be left for the hon. Members who will follow me?

[Mr Speaker]

It is very good of the hon. Gentleman to pursue a bit of information. The answer is that the debate must conclude at 5.39 pm, which fits neatly with the hon. Gentleman’s legendary succinctness.

[Jim Shannon]

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I want to be fair, which is why I asked that question.

I am very pleased that we are having this legislation agreed on the Floor of the House. I am pleased that the Minister, whom we have great affection for, has delivered what he said he would, and in the time he set out, and that the Government have done that as well. I also want to thank the civil servants who are here—they do not often get thanks; they should get more—for all the hard work they have done. They have helped the Government formulate the legislation and bring it forward.

My party, the Democratic Unionist party, was committed to this—we wanted to see legislative change. I have been approached by the Forum for Action on Substance Abuse, a group that helps those with addictions. It wanted this legislative change, as did my constituents, and we now have it in place as the law of the land. That is good news on behalf of Adam Owens’ family—his father and step-mum—and his friends, who wanted this to happen. We had a rally in Newtownards town, in the middle of my constituency, for all his family and friends. I gave them a commitment that I would work with Government within this House to make it happen, and we have delivered it. With that in mind, I want to say on behalf of my constituents in Strangford, and those across the whole of Northern Ireland, a very special thanks to Government for doing what they said they would do.