Drug-related Deaths in England and Wales

Lord Foulkes of Cumnock Excerpts

Tuesday 26th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Merron (Lab)]

I will indeed be doing that, not least because our work with other departments continues to take account of the early warning to which the noble Baroness refers. That is in respect of the threat of synthetic opioids, which we know is extremely real and pressing.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab Co-op)]

The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Newcastle is absolutely right: there is a direct relationship between poverty and drugs deaths, which is why it is vital that we increase our resources for fighting poverty and why we need to raise taxes on wealthy landowners such as James Dyson and Jeremy Clarkson.

[Baroness Merron (Lab)]

As always, I pay close attention to the contributions of my noble friend, who makes helpful observations. We do indeed need to continue our work in this area. It is quite important to look back at the history that Dame Carol Black reported on. She talked about one of the difficulties being that funding for community drug and alcohol services was subsumed into the public health grant in 2013, which meant that by 2019-20 funding for those services had been reduced by over a third. That is a £212 million disinvestment. The result of all this is that drug use has increased, with all the major indicators of its harm. This is something we need to turn around.