Oral Answers to Questions

Keith Vaz Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Indeed.

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

4. If he will introduce mandatory drug testing for prisoners on entry to and exit from prison.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Jeremy Wright)]

The right hon. Gentleman knows that we already have a system of random and intelligence-led drug testing in prisons. He knows, too, that we are not persuaded of the merits of adding further testing for all prisoners at the fixed points of arrival and departure from custody. However, we are working with the Department of Health to test an end-to-end approach to tackling addiction from custody into the community, which includes looking at which prisoners should be tested and when.

[Keith Vaz]

The Minister is right: I do, in fact, know all that. However, it does not deal with the problem. The problem is that 35% of those in prison have a drug addiction and 6% acquire that addiction once they are in prison, so more come out with an addiction than went in with one. Why do the Government not feel that mandatory testing on entry and exit will help break the cycle of drug dependency?

[Jeremy Wright]

We are in agreement, because I knew all that, too, but it is worth saying to the right hon. Gentleman that we have one or two issues with the suggestion he and his Select Committee make in what is, I concede, an excellent report that makes a substantial contribution to this debate. The concerns we have are that if tests are done at a fixed point of exit, particularly from custody, the offender knows that is coming and can do things to try to mitigate the effect of the test. We think it is important to test on a random, and perhaps frequent, basis. We entirely agree with him and his Committee, however, about the importance of extending our testing to include prescription drugs as well as illegal drugs, because of the widespread abuse of those drugs, and I hope he will support the private Member’s Bill of my hon. Friend the Member for Stourbridge (Margot James), which will achieve exactly that.