Misuse of Drugs Act

Kit Malthouse Excerpts

Thursday 17th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Crime and Policing (Kit Malthouse)]

I thank the hon. Member for Manchester, Withington (Jeff Smith) and my hon. Friend the Member for Reigate (Crispin Blunt) for calling this important debate. Indeed, I am grateful to Members from all parts of the House for their commitment and passion in what has been, as the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for St Helens North (Conor McGinn) rightly pointed out, an interesting and thought-provoking debate.

There are obviously a wide range of views on the best way to tackle drugs and the harms they cause, and I remain open to listening to those views to ensure that our approach is both balanced and evidence-based. I recognise the importance of a balanced approach with tough enforcement against the right people in the right way, alongside treatment and recovery support for those dependent on drugs.

On the issue of drug controls, I think it is important that we come at it from the perspective of what keeps the public safe while enabling healthcare and legitimate business and research to flourish. Controls on harmful drugs continue to be adjusted in the light of new evidence and information, including, for example, the changes over recent years to allow specialist clinicians to prescribe, where appropriate, cannabis-based products for medicinal use.

Members should make no mistake: drug misuse has a profound and tragic consequence that is felt right across society, and that can occur even in the official and regulated sector, as we have seen sadly in the United States with the opioid crisis. It devastates lives, communities and neighbourhoods, with the most deprived areas facing the highest prevalence of drug-driven crime and health harms.

The Government recognise that this problem demands a whole system, cross-Government approach, and that is exactly what we are pursuing. The Home Office is working extremely closely with partners, including law enforcement, the Department of Health and Social Care, Public Health England and others right across Government. Our activity in this area of policy is necessarily broad, but there are two key elements of the strategy that I would like to emphasise: first, the use of targeted enforcement to restrict supply; and, secondly, our focus on providing truly effective treatment and recovery services. This approach responds to the evolving threats and challenges that continue to emerge from drug misuse, including changing drugs markets, changing patterns of use, and an ageing and more complex group of people who need wide-ranging support to recover.

[Grahame Morris]

On that point, is the Minister willing to commit to working with police and crime commissioners to try to ensure that in all force areas there is a treatment-first approach to offenders with a history of substance misuse?

[Kit Malthouse]

I do not have to commit, because that is exactly what we are already doing in five parts of the country. As the hon. Gentleman may know, I instituted a series of projects going by the acronym ADDER—addiction, diversion, disruption, enforcement and recovery —in five areas of the country to build a new modus operandi on drugs, bringing police and crime commissioners and enforcement alongside health, local authority, housing and other therapeutic providers to see if we can shift the numbers in Blackpool, Hastings, Middlesbrough, Norwich and Swansea Bay.

If we are to refine and improve our response, we must have a comprehensive picture of what is happening on the ground. That is why part one of Dame Carol Black’s review on drugs—a number of Members mentioned it; its findings were published in February last year—was such a valuable and insightful contribution to our understanding of the problem. The report underlined the impact of the so-called county lines criminal business model, where illegal drugs are transported from urban areas to be sold in smaller towns and villages. That is one of the most disturbing and pernicious forms of criminality to emerge in our country in recent years, as the hon. Member for Manchester, Withington mentioned. We are making significant progress, which I will talk about shortly.

In July last year, the Department of Health and Social Care commissioned part two of Dame Carol Black’s review on drugs, focusing on prevention, treatment and recovery. It will build on Dame Carol’s work to ensure vulnerable people with substance misuse problems get the support they need to recover and turn their lives around. It will look at treatment in the community and in prison, and how treatment services work with wider services that enable a person with drug dependency to achieve and sustain recovery, including mental health, housing, employment and the criminal justice system.

In 2019, the Government appointed Dr Ed Day as the Government’s recovery champion to provide national leadership around key aspects of the drug recovery agenda and to advise the Government on where improvements can be made. His first annual report was published in January. When I have spoken to Dr Day he has talked passionately about the importance of recovery and the work he is doing with a huge number of fantastic advocates in the sector, including people with lived experience of drug misuse who are celebrating being in recovery. It is very motivating to hear their stories and the extent to which recovery can provide hope and help people to turn their lives around.

We also continue to work closely with the devolved Administrations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland to ensure drug misuse is tackled as a UK-wide problem. Following the UK drug summit, which I called in Glasgow in February last year, the Minister for public health and I jointly hosted a meeting in September, bringing together academic experts and Government Ministers from across the home nations of the UK to discuss topics such as drug-related deaths, treatment and recovery services, and the impact of the pandemic on illegal drug taking. The Government remain committed to tackling the harms caused by drug misuse on a cross-UK basis and I will, I am happy to confirm, be holding another such meeting in the autumn for all the home nations to discuss these matters further.

[Rachael Maskell]

I welcome that the Minister is talking about the impact of harm. What is his assessment of the harm-reduction model, particularly that deployed in Portugal?

[Kit Malthouse]

I am just coming on to what we are doing about harm reduction. As I said in my opening remarks, I think that should be at the forefront of our mind. Opinions may differ across the House on the balance between enforcement, and treatment and recovery, in the mix of dealing with this pernicious social problem. My view is that they have to be balanced. I am not sure that experiences around the world on decriminalisation, for example, necessarily give us quite the silver bullet that Members have suggested, but I will come on to that in a minute.

In January this year, we announced £148 million of new investment to cut crime and protect people from harms associated with illegal drugs: £80 million for drug treatment services, the biggest rise in funding for 15 years; £28 million for the ADDER projects across the UK that I have already outlined, building a new modus operandi for tackling drugs and creating a foundation from which I hope we will expand; and £40 million to tackle drug supply and county lines. As the hon. Member for St Helens North illustrated, we are surging our activity against those awful groups, focusing on them as businesses as much as groups of criminals, and we are seeing significant success.

Although some have expressed the opinion during the debate that enforcement does not work, I would point out that our new approach—the new tactics that we have agreed with the police—is resulting in significant results. In Norfolk, for example, 16 months ago there were over 100 county lines; that is now down to under 20. Bangor in north Wales was declared county lines free, along with Swale and Tonbridge. Kent has halved the number of county lines moving drugs into that part of the world. There is a lot that we have done: over 780 lines closed; 5,100 arrests; £2.9 million of cash seized; and, importantly, 1,200 vulnerable young people safeguarded. That funding demonstrates our commitment in this area and the effect that we can have when we focus.

If I may crave your indulgence, Madam Deputy Speaker, I want to deal with one or two particular issues that have been raised. My hon. Friend the Member for Reigate and I have been in ongoing correspondence and conversation about the impact of the legislation on research and the business that may come from it, and he raised that during his speech. As he will know, there are clinical trials already under way into the use of the compound psilocybin, and I am hopeful that they will produce positive results. If they do—if there is a proven clinical and medical use—then obviously, as we have in the past, we will have to adapt to that as we go. I have commissioned the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs to look more widely at barriers placed in the way of clinical research in all sorts of areas of narcotic and other drugs, to ensure that we are getting the balance right to enable that legitimate form of research, and the health benefits that may come from it, to be pursued.

My hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley (Nick Fletcher), in a very thoughtful speech, raised the issue of cannabis. There have been quite a lot of calls for legalisation of cannabis. I point him to the Canadian experience. As he rightly identified, rather than legalisation producing a reduction in the illegal sector or its elimination, that business, like any other, has adapted to competition, producing a stronger product more cheaply, provided more conveniently, and it still exists in Canada. Obviously, we will be monitoring closely Canada’s experience and those of other areas that have legalised. However, as was pointed out, in Amsterdam, where consumption has been liberal, shall we say, for some time, I am not convinced that criminal gangs are not still pursuing their trade.

We have had a strong showing from the various factions of Scottish nationalism this afternoon, which is no surprise given the truly appalling number of drugs deaths that Scotland has seen over the past few years. I am not a man moved to anger very often, but I found my blood boiling at being accused of intransigence, dereliction of duty and ignorance when I literally went to Scotland 18 months ago to beg the Scottish Government to do something about this issue and to spend more money on health. The whole point of my immediately starting to convene a four nations drugs summit when I came into this job was to focus on the real tragedy—the scandal, the emergency—that there was in Scotland.

I was amazed that the hon. Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss) had the gall to say that she imagines the number of people who might have been saved if the UK Government’s actions had been different, given the number that could have been saved if the SNP had not sat on its hands for 10 years while the numbers mounted. Only a looming election saw it step up to its responsibility. I ask it, please, to look to the log in its own eye before it looks to those in others’.

My hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Dr Mullan), who has unique experience in and perspective on this as both a former police officer and a doctor, showed us the truth of this very complex situation, which is that there is no silver bullet. This is a complex area where Government have a duty to listen, to look at the evidence and to consider what can be done both on enforcement and on public health to make sure that we try to minimise, reduce or remove this most pernicious of social evils from the areas of our society that are benighted by it.