Psychoactive Substances

Julian Huppert Excerpts

Monday 11th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Diana Johnson]

If the right hon. Gentleman had been listening, he would know I was making the case for why I am questioning whether the procedure in this proposal would actually work. I want the Minister to respond to the Government’s advice on the point about the effect that such a proposal would have on any determination this country could make about its own classification.

[Dr Julian Huppert (Cambridge) (LD)]

The hon. Lady rightly raises the question of our making our own determinations, which I hope she will agree should be evidence based. Has she seen the advice from the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs that khat should not be controlled under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971, and will the official Opposition follow that evidence-based line when it comes to a vote in the Statutory Instrument Committee?

[Diana Johnson]

The hon. Gentleman should perhaps look to his own coalition Government, who decided not to follow the advice of the ACMD. As a Member of one of the two ruling coalition parties, perhaps he should question his own Ministers on that point.

[Dr Huppert]

rose—

[Diana Johnson]

I am going to move on because I do not want to get sidetracked into a debate on khat as that is not the purpose of this debate. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman could ask his Ministers about their position as they are part of the Government who are not using—[Interruption.] Well, I have made my position clear. He should look to his own Ministers. The Liberal Democrats cannot have it all ways—I know they try, but perhaps on this they should look to their Liberal Democrat Minister in the Home Office.

It would be helpful if the Minister set out clearly his position on classification. EU co-operation on drugs is not new, but previously the agreement was that drugs, as recognised by the UN agreement on narcotics, needed to be controlled and the trafficking of drugs tackled. The proposals we are discussing go far further than that. Drugs that would be deemed low risk will not be restricted; those deemed a moderate risk will be prohibited from the consumer market; and the most dangerous drugs will be prohibited altogether, with a possible exception for medical use. I should make it clear that the Opposition do not want to cede powers on drug classification to the EU, and I press the Minister on the Government’s legal advice on how the adoption of the directive could affect the UK Government’s position. The Home Office explanatory memorandum states:

“we do not consider that the measure complies with the principle of proportionality. In particular, the effect of Article 4 of the draft Regulation fetters the UK from adopting more stringent measures to control NPS. In our view, it is vital for the UK, guided as necessary by EU expertise in NPS but not bound by it, to have the final say when deciding whether to exceed any minimum standards mandated by the EU.”

Although the Opposition concur generally with that, it would be helpful if the Minister explained exactly what the Government mean by “fetters”. Do the Government believe that article 4 would prevent them from placing strong prohibitions on a substance?

When we turn to articles 3 and 4, we see that the Commission has placed a strong emphasis on free trade, as I have said. Article 3, on free movement, states:

“New psychoactive substances and mixtures shall move freely in the Union for commercial and industrial use”.

Article 4, on the prevention of barriers to free movement, states that, in so far as

“the Union has not adopted measures to subject a new psychoactive substance to market restriction under this Regulation, Member States may adopt…regulations”.

Is it the Government’s view that member states could impose restrictions only before the EU has classified a drug? Would the Commission classifying a drug as low risk, and therefore not restricting sale in any way, count as having adopted a measure, therefore precluding further action from member states? For its part, the Commission thinks not—it argues that in its impact assessment.

--- Later in debate ---

[John Mann]

It is a late hour and I have had no substances of any height during the day, but I have been building up my adrenalin, looking forward to this debate.

I have been monitoring what the Home Office has been doing in this field. Whenever I speak to people from other countries, they keep telling me how the British Government—this coalition Government—are out there seeking their views and trying to learn from them. Portugal is one of the leaders of the move towards drug legalisation across the world, but the Czech Republic is following—that makes two EU states—and the European monitoring body on drugs is based in Lisbon.

[Dr Huppert]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[John Mann]

I would like to make my point first, so that the hon. Gentleman can understand it in its fullness.

It is this Government who have been going and listening to the legalisers. I suspect that the European Commission is making an attempt over time to pull together these strands, backed by several senior police officers in this country, so that they can evaporate the problem of drugs and say that crime will reduce, because if we legalise lots of things and do not criminalise others, we will not need to spend as much money on policing, because crime will be falling all the time. What is happening with this Government—it is why the Minister has encouraged this proposal from the EU and now wishes to demolish it—is an attempt to block legal highs being made into illegal highs so that crime does not go up, because they are not providing the police in areas like mine that are disproportionately impacted by the current legal highs.

I carried out my own public inquiry in Worksop town hall this January into the question of legal highs, asking the young people, the police, the health service and others what was going on. It was interesting to find out that it was not only young people who were taking these substances. It was also middle-aged people, although not perhaps elderly people. It was the people who participate in what the Government call the night-time economy and what I would call pubs with late licences. People are tanking up at home on cheap alcohol then going out to the pubs and nightclubs and taking these substances. The owners of the pubs and clubs complained to my inquiry that their biggest problem was that people were taking cheap pills and other highs instead of buying alcohol.

By the way, allowing pubs to have late licences was the worst error of the last Labour Government. My biggest error in this place was not to speak out and try to alter that policy as it was going through because applying a city solution to areas like mine was totally inappropriate. One pub in my area is open till 5 in the morning, but nobody is drinking beer or spirits; they are allegedly—according to all the information I have—taking all sorts of substances that the Government will not deem illegal because they do not want the police to arrest people, though the police are not there anyway, because the Government have cut their numbers; and there are not even any police cells left in my area to put people in, and the police community support officers are about to take over neighbourhood policing. But nobody is being arrested for using legal highs in the pubs, and of course they are not because the highs are legal. This is part of Home Office policy.

--- Later in debate ---

[John Mann]

I dare not digress.

Like the Government, the European Union is doing nothing other than create an excuse for allowing the growth of legal highs without criminal sanctions. Some European Union countries think exactly the same way as this Government think. They are saying, “The more we create illegal drugs, the more criminality there will be; the less we spend on police, the more that criminality will grow, and the public will not like that.” That is the problem that the Minister should be addressing. I put it to him that he should go back to look at the origins of this proposal and withdraw the Government’s policy of going around these legalising countries to see what we can learn from them. Instead, he should be looking at the problems in areas like mine.

[Dr Huppert]

I tried to intervene earlier on this point. The hon. Gentleman keeps talking about countries like Portugal as though they are legalising drugs. Does he not realise that Portugal has not legalised drugs and has no plans to legalise them? What it has done is to decriminalise them—a huge difference, which the hon. Gentleman should try to understand.

[John Mann]

I am familiar with the system in Portugal, having met the Portuguese and seen the myths created by their policy. Yes, the nuances of language are important for the law, but I am talking about the objective of allowing police cuts in areas like mine, which are the areas with the biggest problem with legal highs. This is part of a deliberate Government strategy. I put it to the Minister that as well as taking this back to the European Union, he should tell it that it has no remit in this area, no expertise to give and no valid data. He should stop relying on EU statistics and the EU agenda in setting Government policy. He should listen to the good people of Bassetlaw who say, “We don’t want legal highs in our clubs, pubs and streets; we want systems to make them illegal, and then we want the police in place to prosecute on the basis of them.”

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Julian Huppert (Cambridge) (LD)]

I shall try to be relatively brief and to resist the temptation to discuss the speech of the hon. Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann). I think that it was the first speech that I have heard in which someone has objected to the concept of talking to other people to identify good practice, which is surely something that most of us would want to do.

It is clear that a huge problem is posed by new psychoactive substances. As that has been reiterated so many times, I shall not go into it in detail now, but I will say that the rise in the number of such substances is partly our fault, because our prohibition-led policy has made it possible to be sentenced to years in jail for possessing one tablet of known harm, but to receive no penalty for possessing something else of unknown harm, which could be far more serious.

We know that some of the new substances are more harmful than substances that we have already controlled. Our use of the term “legal highs” suggests to the public that it is all right to take such substances, because it implies that they are safer than others. If ecstasy is a class A drug and another substance is legal, that suggests that we have made an assessment of the risk, which is deeply misleading. It flies in the face of any evidence-based policy, but it also flies in the face of what we all want to do, which is to reduce the harms from drug use. All substances of this kind, whether legal or illegal, have harms, and we must try to reduce those harms.

I agree with the Minister that the European proposal is not the right one to adopt, but what is the correct way in which to deal with all these substances? On the general subject, I follow the Portuguese line. I think that decriminalisation has worked very well there. Only those on the far right in politics opposed it originally, and now it is supported by people throughout the political spectrum and by the police themselves. The Home Affairs Committee conducted a detailed study of all the issues, and that was our very clear finding.

What is the solution? What is not the solution is simply to ban everything that is psychoactive. I suspect that that is what the hon. Member for Bassetlaw is proposing, and it is certainly what the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson) proposed in a new clause to the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Bill, which would have included making the sale of caffeine, including coffee, illegal. I do not think that that was the intention of the new clause, but it illustrates the problems that arise when we try to ban things. Coffee is a psychoactive substance. I will not ask how many Members who are present have consumed some of that psychoactive substance today, but quite a number will have done so. That illustrates the danger of being extremist and banning everything.

What we should do is adopt an alternative to the European proposal, and emulate, for example, what has been done in New Zealand. When the New Zealand Government asked the New Zealand Law Commission to look at their drug laws—the Select Committee report goes into this in much more detail—the commission proposed the establishment of an independent regulatory authority to test substances, so that manufacturers and importers would have to demonstrate their safety. I am pleased to see that other members of the Select Committee are present. We proposed that urgent action should be taken, based on existing trading standards and consumer protection legislation, to deal with the sale of untested substances. The onus should be on the person selling a substance to check that it is safe. That is the right way to tackle the huge number of new psychoactive substances.

[Diana Johnson]

Perhaps I could correct the record. The new clause to which the hon. Gentleman referred would have dealt with exactly the problem that he has raised by building on the work that had already been done in relation to young people who were sniffing glue. I believe that it was a Conservative Government who had previously legislated to put the onus on shopkeepers who sold substances that could be used for that purpose, and the new clause was intended to put the onus on the seller in the same way. I take exception to the way in which he has described its aims.

[Dr Huppert]

New clause 2 stated:

“It is an offence for a person to supply, or offer to supply, a psychoactive substance, including but not restricted to…a powder…a pill…a liquid; or…a herbal substance with the appearance of cannabis which he knows, or has reasonable cause to believe, to be so acting, that the substance is likely to be consumed by a person for the purpose of causing intoxication.”

That would make it illegal to sell coffee. It is perfectly possible to be intoxicated by caffeine, which is an addictive substance. The hon. Lady is right to say that the new clause deals only with the supply of substances, but, although some of us may have concerns about Starbucks paying taxes or otherwise, I think that making the company illegal would be going too far.

Roughly one in five of the notified new psychoactive substances are used for legitimate purposes in industry or research, or as active substances in medicines. We must be extremely careful about how we proceed, because a global ban would give rise to all sorts of problems.

We have touched on the Home Secretary’s decision to ban khat. She has tabled a statutory instrument to do so. That was her decision; it was not a jointly signed off one, and I was very disappointed by it.

I was also very disappointed and surprised that the shadow Minister had no idea what her own policy was. [Interruption.] If she would like to say what it is, I will be happy to take an intervention. Apparently, she does not wish to do so.

The Government have twice asked the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs what to do about khat. This is a classic example of a legal high that exists and would be covered by this provision, and where we have to work out what to do. The ACMD said that

“the evidence of harms associated with the use of khat is insufficient to justify control and it would be inappropriate and disproportionate to classify khat under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971.”

It also said that

“the evidence shows that khat has no direct causal links to adverse medical effects”.

It went on to say there is no robust evidence of a causal link between khat consumption and any of the social harms indicated, and no evidence of it being connected with organised criminal behaviour.

[Mr Bone]

Will the hon. Gentleman tell me what his definition of “brief” is?

[Dr Huppert]

I suspect I will be one of the briefest speakers in this debate, not counting interventions. That will have to do as a working definition, and I have almost concluded.

Not only is it clear from the evidence that banning khat will be harmful and will not solve the problem, but it would also cost this country £12.8 million a year in the loss of the VAT that is currently being paid on the legal import of khat, with a total cost of £150 million, according to the Government’s own estimates. This is an example of a legal high that the Home Secretary is proposing to ban, and I intend to vote against that when we have the opportunity to do so, and it would be fantastic if the Labour party decided to join us. That example shows why this is such a hard issue.

I agree with the Minister that we should make it clear to the EU that we should make our own decisions, but it is also important that those decisions are the right ones.