Oral Answers to Questions

John Penrose Excerpts

Monday 15th January 2024 Commons Chamber

[Chris Philp]

I agree that combating rural crime is extremely important, and the national rural crime unit is designed to do exactly that. We have also legislated, of course, and we will implement that legislation to ensure that things like all-terrain vehicles and agricultural equipment have to be marked or fitted with an immobiliser. Overall domestic burglary has fallen by 57% since 2010.

[John Penrose (Weston-super-Mare) (Con)]

5. What progress his Department has made on implementing the Government’s 10-year drugs plan “From harm to hope”, published on 6 December 2021.

[The Minister for Crime, Policing and Fire (Chris Philp)]

The commitments in the drugs strategy are being delivered, including investing more than £300 million in additional treatment capacity to create over 50,000 extra treatment places. We are also enforcing hard, such as by closing down more than 2,000 county lines since 2019.

[John Penrose]

Local police in and around Weston-super-Mare have had notable successes in disrupting drug dealing and supply, but new dealers quickly take the place of the old ones. The quantity of drugs and the number of addicts are not declining. Does the Minister accept that although enforcement and education are vital, they are not enough to solve this problem on their own, and that the underlying legal frameworks we use to control these dangerous chemicals have to be addressed, too?

[Chris Philp]

Enforcement is important. Besides closing down those 2,000 county lines, Border Force seized about 19 tonnes of cocaine in the year ending March 2022—the largest amount seized in a single year on record. I have already mentioned treatment. The most important thing is to get people out of their addiction entirely, which is why we are investing so much extra money in treatment.

There are no plans to change the legal framework. Drugs are illegal for a reason. They are highly addictive and harmful, and the out-of-control public drug consumption in those jurisdictions that have liberalised significantly, such as California, San Francisco and so on, is not something we want to see in this country.