Drugs

Lord Howarth of Newport Excerpts

Thursday 17th October 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howarth of Newport (Lab)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher. She is one of the leading voices in the quest for a more rational, proportionate and humane policy on drugs. The Home Secretary, in her foreword to the Government’s response to the Home Affairs Select Committee, stated:

“This Government does not believe there is a case for fundamentally re-thinking the UK’s approach to drugs”.

The document went on to say that,

“our new approach is working”.

It is pleasing that the Crime Survey for England and Wales has recorded a declining trend in the use of controlled drugs; that the numbers in treatment are rising; that the incidence of drug-related HIV infection has fallen so far, about which the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, spoke with justified satisfaction; that there is now faster access to treatment; and that more people are recovering from their dependence on drugs. However, the improvement in the figures for usage is, I fear, more apparent than real. The previous Minister, Jeremy Browne, told the House of Commons candidly on 6 June:

“In this country, consumption of illegal drugs has reduced, but consumption of legal drugs has increased”.—[Official Report, Commons, 6/6/13; col. 285WH.]

The United Kingdom is in the upper range of consumption of traditional drugs. There has been a large increase in addiction to prescription drugs and an even larger increase in the consumption of new psychoactive substances, of which it is thought that 73 entered the United Kingdom market in 2012. The internet has transformed the marketing and distribution of drugs. The Silk Road website may have been closed, but there are numerous others, and Postman Pat continues to bring the packages up the garden path. The drug scene continuously mutates. We know that the charge on the health and justice budgets of this country is £15.3 billion. The illicit market fuels vast amounts of crime. Some 78% of people who have used drugs in the past year in this country say that drugs are easy to get. Indeed, 24% of prisoners, unbelievably, say the same thing. If we are honest, we know that the horrors experienced in the producer and transit countries of Latin America, Africa and Asia would not occur were it not for the self-indulgence of consumers of drugs in western societies such as our own.

This is not the success story that the Home Secretary wants us to believe, but policy in this area is exceedingly difficult. There is no excuse for our failure to ensure that we have a comprehensive evidence base and that we sustain an adequate research infrastructure. The UK Drugs Policy Commission, the Home Affairs Select Committee and the report of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Drug Policy Reform, Towards a Safer Drug Policy, have all pointed to the deficiencies in this regard. These include the discontinuation of programmes, gaps, inefficiencies and underfunding. At the very least, we need to know as best we can what is going on in the United Kingdom. We also need a division of labour in research across Europe and indeed the globe so that we can quickly analyse what these new psychoactive substances are. The Select Committee recommended ring-fenced funding for drug research and a co-ordinating role for the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, but the Government’s response was:

“We do not … accept the need for allocated ring-fenced funding to drugs policy research … the ACMD is not, nor is expected to be, a research commissioning body”.

This will not do. Stephen Pudney and his colleagues at the University of Essex, supported by the Beckley Foundation, have published a model study entitled, Licensing and Regulation of the Cannabis Market in England and Wales: Towards a Cost-Benefit Analysis. They have identified 17 distinct factors of cost and benefit. They have demonstrated how very difficult it is to arrive at a cost-benefit analysis in this area, and that it is impossible to do so with the present lack of basic information. No policy should be dogmatically ruled out and alternatives should be considered seriously. All decisions in this field are hard politically, but they will be less hard if they are evidence-based.

Another model study is the report of the New Zealand Law Commission, Controlling and Regulating Drugs. It recognises that the existing New Zealand legislation is unfit for the new drugs landscape, inconsistent with aspects of government policy, hugely expensive and that a punitive approach to low-level offending has adverse social consequences. It is a rational and practical report, which recommends that the manufacturers and would-be importers of new psychoactive substances should have the opportunity to seek approval by an independent regulatory authority before the substance is released on the market. It provides a detailed model for regulation, including particular protection for people under the age of 18.

There are no easy solutions. Those war-worn Latin American presidents and the hugely distinguished and experienced members of the global commission, including Kofi Annan and Paul Volcker, have taken the lead in the international debate and advocated decriminalisation of possession and use. The Secretary-General of the United Nations has issued his challenge to all of us to debate all the options that there may be in the lead-up to the United Nations General Assembly special session in 2016, in the quest to achieve a better international consensus on how we can reduce consumption and mitigate the harm that drug use brings with it. Our Government and our Parliament ought to respond constructively to that challenge.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach]

I do not want to sound complacent in giving these figures. I understand exactly what the noble Baroness is saying but the noble Baroness, Lady Greenfield, told us why it was very important to suppress the use of cannabis and how dangerous it can be as a drug. However, the figures show that there has been a considerable reduction in drug use. I think that we should acknowledge that and take some encouragement from it. We are going to need some encouragement because this is a difficult issue with which to deal.

I was going on to say that school pupils tell us that they are taking fewer drugs too. That is really important because these habits can be dealt with when people are young. In 2012, 12% of 11 to 15 year-olds reported having taken any drug in the past year, the latest in a downward trend from 20% in 2001.

The number of heroin and crack cocaine users—not just cannabis users—in England has fallen below 300,000 for the first time since records began in 2004-05, according to figures published by what was then the National Treatment Agency for Substance Misuse, now Public Health England, in March.

I agree with my noble friends Lady Miller and Lord Teverson and the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, about targeting the supply side of this issue. To restrict the supply of drugs, the police, SOCA—now, the NCA—and other enforcement agencies are seizing significant quantities of drugs off the streets. In 2012-13, more than 109 tonnes of class A drugs were seized at home and abroad as a result of SOCA’s activity. The police and the UK Border Force made 216,296 drug seizures in England and Wales in 2011-12.

Local criminal justice partners across England and Wales managed the transfer of 88,000 class A drug-misusing offenders into treatment and recovery services in 2011-12 through the drug interventions programme, or DIP. The DIP is estimated to help to prevent around 680,000 crimes per year. This is the approach of intervening and not seeking to drive drug users into criminality. Moreover, well over 250 new psychoactive substances, also known as legal highs, have been banned to date. In June, we legislated to make 10 more legal highs temporary class drugs within a matter of days.

I agree with my noble friend Lady Manzoor that enabling addicts to recover is the right way forward. That is why we are supporting individuals in recovering from dependence. The strategy has maintained quick access to treatment, with average waiting times being only five days. Record numbers are recovering from dependence, with nearly 30,000 people successfully completing their treatment in 2011-12, up from 27,900 the previous year and almost three times the level seven years ago, at 11,200. Drug-related deaths in England have fallen over the past three years.

I should like to comment on the review and report of the noble Lord, Lord Patel of Bradford—and this applies, too, to the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham. The Government are very grateful for the report in this important area. A number of recommendations from his report are being implemented as part of the Government’s health and justice reforms. I know that the Patel report proposed pooling all government drugs funds under a single, central governmental structure; this has been implemented, with the Department of Health funding all substance misuse work in prisons. I hope that that is carrying forward the noble Lord’s ideas, and the expertise that he brought to his report.

Given that we are making progress, the Government are not currently persuaded that there is a case for fundamentally rethinking the UK’s approach to drugs. However, we are not complacent and must continue, as we have been doing with today’s debate, to listen and learn from emerging trends, new evidence and international comparators. In particular, we are building on the commitment in the drug strategy to,

“review new evidence on what works in other countries and what we can learn from it”.

We are conducting a study on international comparators to learn more from the approach in other countries. We continue to develop our approach to evaluating the effectiveness and value for money of the drug strategy. This includes publishing an update on our approach to evaluation alongside the next annual review. The update will set out, at a high level, the approach to evaluation; it is not the evaluation itself.

I turn to some points raised in the debate. If I say that we are confident in our current approach to tackling drugs, it is not to be complacent. Drug usage has fallen to its lowest level since records began and people going into treatment today are far more likely to free themselves from dependency than ever before. However, as the noble Lords, Lord Birt and Lord Condon, pointed out, it is a very long haul. We are continually looking at new ways to reduce demand, restrict supply and promote recovery. The Government are undertaking an international study that will examine approaches in other countries, and we will seek to engage with the United Nations on this matter.

Given the complexity of the issue, the economic and social costs of class A drug use, and noting that the vast majority of this is attributed to crimes committed to fuel problem drug use, the Home Secretary will continue to be accountable for the overall drug strategy. However, as I have explained, all government departments work together on that strategy. Of course, there are other societal harms, including family breakdown, poverty, crime and anti-social behaviour. That is why drugs policy has to be a cross-government issue.

The Government are committed to an evidence-based approach. A number of noble Lords, including the noble Lord, Lord Howarth of Newport, and my noble friend Lord Taverne, hoped that we would pursue an evidence-based approach. Our approach is informed by the expert advice of the ACMD.

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

I am grateful to the Minister. He talks, rightly, about the need for a cross-departmental strategy and an evidence-based approach. Is he satisfied with the contribution of the Department for Education to the demand reduction aspect of his strategy? He will, perhaps, be aware of the observation by the charity, Mentor:

“We are spending the vast majority of the money we do spend on drug education on programmes that don’t work”.

He will be aware of the comment by the Department for Education that they,

“do not monitor the programmes or resources that schools use to support their teaching”.

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach]

I can only point to the fact, which I have already quoted, of the reduction of drug use among school children. When I talk about cross-governmental co-operation, I am demonstrating that it is one of the areas that is very important. Schools can be very important in this, and I am satisfied that the Department for Education is playing its full part.

We are also committed to undertaking an evaluation to assess the effectiveness and value for money of the current drug strategy as well as reviewing the drug strategy on an annual basis. The second annual review will be published shortly.

I agree with my noble friends Lord Fowler and Lady Hamwee that the “war on drugs” is an unhelpful term and does not reflect the complexity of the issue. However, I believe that the legalisation of drugs would not eliminate the crime committed by organised career criminals; such criminals would simply seek new sources of illicit revenue through crime. Neither would a regulated market eliminate illicit supplies, as alcohol and tobacco smuggling clearly demonstrate. Regulation also carries its own administrative and enforcement costs and could cause increases in drug use and availability. I do not believe that it is a risk worth taking.