Psychoactive Substances Bill [HL]

Lord Howarth of Newport Excerpts

Tuesday 14th July 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

My Lords, I have added my name to the noble Baroness’s Amendment 3, and my noble friend Lord Paddick and I have Amendments 4, 5, 8 and 9 in this group.

On the term “novel”, which is the subject of one of our amendments, the Secretary of State in her correspondence with the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs has explained how difficult a term this would be in legislation. I entirely accept that point, but as it was raised by the ACMD, which said that the omission of the term widened the scope of the Bill beyond that originally intended and cautioned against a blanket ban on psychoactive substances—because, for reasons we have heard, it would be almost impossible to list all desirable exemptions—I thought it was appropriate to raise it. As the Secretary of State points out, one might ask: novel since when? The use of the term “novel” as used by the ACMD is in itself slightly novel, but it is a term that is widely used. We have talked throughout this Bill—the term has come into common usage—of “new” psychoactive substances. If “novel” means new, and we have been using the term “new” again today, I think that it deserves some explanation from the Minister.

Importantly, I support the noble Baroness with regard to the term “synthetic”, because surely that is what this Bill is really all about. The Minister spoke in Committee about producers of new psychoactive substances constantly looking for loopholes, and I of course understand that, but the term is more precise than “novel”. I hope the Government can consider some way of addressing concern about the breadth of the ban. To me, the term “synthetic” imports a notion of artificiality, of materials being brought together, a combination. That is probably what it means; I suspect one of those comes from the Greek and one from the Latin. It suggests imitating a natural product.

The Minister referred in defence of the Bill to natural products being available in head shops which are far from safe. He mentioned fly agaric mushrooms. I had a quick look at the Kew botanic gardens website this morning, which calls them,

“the most iconic of … toadstools … commonly depicted in children’s books and on Christmas cards”,

so let us be very careful where we tread. It refers to their hallucinogenic properties, which I do not doubt, but then states that they have been well-known for centuries. Much the same can be said about salvia divinorum. The second part of that name suggests that there are sacred aspects to that substance, as is the case. Again, it has been in use for centuries. So I question whether it is appropriate to ban such substances now through this mechanism. We have a lot of drugs legislation, as the noble Baroness said, and one has to accept that this is a fairly hastily prepared Bill. It is not, I would have thought, directed at natural, albeit dangerous, substances known for centuries.

Is there something about how these plants are treated that distinguishes them from other plant-based drugs which are covered by the Misuse of Drugs Act? In the case of a substance that is integral to a religion, like the variety of sage to which I have referred, is there a mechanism for permitting its use in a religious context?

The question of harm is fundamental to everything we are talking about. As has been said, this issue has been raised by the ACMD and we on these Benches—and, I am sure, the whole House—are concerned about ensuring that harm is the focus of the legislation. My noble friend and I are concerned about the whole premise of the Bill—we have debated this before—because we do not believe that a complete ban can work. Human beings do not take well to prohibitions and if new psychoactive substances become more difficult to get hold of, they will be driven underground or users will turn to more harmful substances. That is why we believe that harm should be the focus of the Bill.

I turn now, as I did at the previous stage, to the Misuse of Drugs Act. This established the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs and gave it an advisory role where,

“the misuse is having or appears to them capable of having harmful effects sufficient to constitute a social problem”,

and in,

“preventing the misuse of such drugs or dealing with social problems connected with their misuse”.

I thought it would be appropriate to import those words into the Bill and our amendments deal with that. We do not seek to put them into Clause 1, as the noble Baroness has done, because that is an overview. It points to the definition clause but we have included the words in our amendment to Clause 2, the definition clause, providing a requirement on Ministers to refer matters to the ACMD and allowing it to oppose exemptions on this basis. The Secretary of State’s letter to the ACMD refers to a discretion about the definition and scope of the exemptions. We want to make it clear that the basis should be harm, not an unqualified, undefined term but using the terms in established legislation.

I have just seen, as other noble Lords will have done, the ACMD’s letter of 13 July. I do not criticise it but I am sure that I am not the only noble Lord who thinks that we could have done a better job on this Bill if there had been consultation with the ACMD before it was published. The advisory council has moved very quickly—it cannot have been easy for it—but it refers in its letter to having had only a narrow window of opportunity to make recommendations for amendments and to begin to formulate advice. This House does its best work when we have a good basis to work from and are not trying to second-guess the experts in the field.

[Lord Howarth of Newport (Lab)]

My Lords, it is remarkable that the international community, having been increasingly aware of and alarmed by the dangers of new psychoactive substances, has none the less not so far succeeded in establishing a definition that is watertight in legal terms and available to the Government to use in their legislation as they seek to fulfil their manifesto pledge. The expert panel, on page 38 of its report, advised that the definitions in use in legislation would need to be robust. This group of amendments seeks to specify more closely the generic problem that we are seeking to address through this legislation.

In seeking to tighten and, in a sense, limit the scope of the Bill in this way, let me not give the impression—I know that other noble Lords who have supported these amendments would not want the impression to be given—that we in any way minimise the dangers from new psychoactive substances. This is a serious and challenging social problem.

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[Lord Mackay of Clashfern (Con)]

My Lords, I have no particular difficulty with the first amendment concerning “synthetic”, and I think I indicated that to the Minister some time ago before it was actually formulated as an amendment.

However, I have considerable difficulty with the second amendment and how it is going to work. If somebody produces this material and that production is to be a crime, in the general view I have about the law he must at least have the means of finding out whether what he is doing is criminal. The difficulty that has been expressed before in relation to these psychoactive substances is that they are produced so quickly and changed so quickly and the harm is done so quickly that the Misuse of Drugs Act can hardly catch up with them. That is a very serious problem.

I agree very much with what the inspector has said in his report about the difficulty of prisons. Indeed, I have been told before that there are considerable difficulties with the input into prisons, by whatever means, of these legal highs. They certainly seem to have the effect of producing considerable violence, which is undoubtedly a social problem if ever there was one. How is this to work? The Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs will have to give advice. Will that not create exactly the same difficulty as the attempt to use the Misuse of Drugs Act to control these legal highs has proved to have in the past? That is the need and reason for the production of the Bill.

The noble Lord, Lord Howarth of Newport, said that the definition is very wide. My view is that, on the whole, the legal effect of a definition is rather more related to its precision than to its particular width. In some cases, the definition of what is made criminal is very wide indeed—as undoubtedly it should be to encompass many methods of carrying out the offence. I cannot see how the mechanism suggested here is going to be capable of working, given the problems that exist. I have been trying to think of how this could be modified but so far without too much success, except that something depends on the intention of the laboratories producing these substances. What are they doing it for? Are they intending to help people to sleep well or behave well and so on? I think they are probably not.

The purpose for which these substances, which may be synthetic, are produced seems highly relevant but it is quite difficult to get at defining an offence by reference to that. However, if the purpose for which the substance is produced is something that the state considers should be criminalised, that is a possible way to define an offence. That would at least have the effect of it being decided in relation to the time of production. It might not be possible to prove it immediately but the essence of it would be something that has happened before that production was put into the hands—or the body, one way or another—of the person receiving it, which is part of the crime that the Bill seeks to establish.

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

What would be the practicalities of trying to prove the intention of a chemist in China?

[Lord Mackay of Clashfern]

The intentions in China are possibly as human as intentions here. If people produce a substance in China, it is bound to be possible to say why they are doing it. I agree that the more remote they are, the more difficult it is to bring to bear our criminal system but the system has to work when the drug is brought into operation in this country. The people who bring it in will have a purpose. They will no doubt have some kind of relationship with those who produce it, in China or elsewhere. I do not think that they are normally bringing it in as a charity but for some commercial purpose.

As far as I can see, the type of approach that the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, has suggested may be capable of being rephrased to bear on the purpose for which the drug is produced. If that were possible, it would be a much more feasible and workable solution than is contained in Amendment 2 at the moment. I am very sceptical about anything I could say about a definition of this kind that is supported by no less a person than the noble Lord, Lord Rees of Ludlow. However, this has legal implications as well, which is why I have been encouraged to say what I have thought about it up to now.

[Lord Tunnicliffe (Lab)]

My Lords, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, hit on the essence of the Bill at the beginning of his contribution. It takes a different approach from the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971, because of the speed with which these new products are coming into our society. We all at least agree that their impact is one of tremendous and peculiar harm. The Labour Front Bench supports the Bill and the essential concept behind it. We had a manifesto commitment to address legal highs and we approve of the device used, which is a wide definition with exceptions. That is the difference between the two sides in this debate. We therefore, as a generality, oppose the narrowing of definitions, as that would go to the essence of how the Bill is designed to work.

Amendment 1 would narrow the definition to “synthetic”, which would potentially exclude a large group of naturally occurring substances. Amendments 2, 5, 6, 8 and 9 all seem to be about the same concept, with the same words used over and over again, as in Amendment 2, to limit the definition to,

“any drug which is, or appears to the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs to be, misused and of which the misuse is having, or appears to the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs”—

here we get to the key words—

“to be capable of having, harmful effects sufficient to constitute a social problem”.

Those ideas would drive right through the concept of the Bill and reverse its essence, meaning the psychoactive substance would first have to be proved harmful. The Bill is poised the other way round: if the substance is psychoactive, it is presumed to cause harm and is illegal under the Bill unless exempted.

The wording and framing of those amendments seems also to leave out the concept of self-harm, which the Bill seeks to address. It certainly takes out the more complex issues of harm such as dosage, volume, et cetera. We therefore cannot support those amendments.

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

I am very grateful to my noble friend for giving way. How does he deal with the objection raised by Professor Iversen and his colleagues on the ACMD in their letter of 2 July? The professor warns that:

“The psychoactivity of a substance cannot be unequivocally proven”.

He goes on to say how difficult it would be to demonstrate in court that a particular substance was indeed psychoactive. He also says:

“It is almost impossible to list all possible desirable exemptions under the Bill”.

Are those two objections not very serious ones to the legislation? What is my noble friend’s response to Professor Iversen?

[Lord Tunnicliffe]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend for that intervention and hope to respond to it, at least in part, as I progress through the points I am making.

Amendment 7 would delete the definition in the Bill and would hence create the opposite effect from the one that we wish to pursue. For those reasons, in general we oppose these amendments. But—and it is an important but—we have become increasingly concerned with the operation of the Bill. What will happen? The concern that was building up and which came out on the first day in Committee was about how it will work operationally. It is of particular concern because the Bill refers specifically to the “balance of probabilities” and then, in other places, ends up with criminal sanctions. That is starting to feel very wrong. We challenged the Minister on this and he promised to write to me to provide reassurances about the operational aspects and the whole issue of proving whether something was psychoactive. I intend to refer to the letter that I got from the Minister. I thank him for the letter and I thank him and the team for making sure that it was copied to anybody who has spoken in the event—so anybody who has spoken in the debate so far should have a copy of the letter.

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[Lord Bates]

The noble Baroness goes to the heart of the issue; we have a problem with that. We are just not convinced. There are botanicals, to which we have referred. There are other substances, such as nitrous oxide. Does “synthetic” as a term cover what we want it to cover, or will we be reassembled back here at some future date trying to clamp down on another loophole which has been exploited? That is the difficulty. When I say that I am not ruling out the term “synthetic”, that is absolutely correct, but we want to make sure that if the term is used, it is understood in a legal context as achieving the intention of the Bill, which is to uphold a blanket ban. I hope that, with that, I have provided some clarification.

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

I am grateful to the Minister for giving way. What is his difficulty about using the apparatus already available to the Home Secretary under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 to deal with botanical substances and, I think, nitrous oxide—natural substances about which the Government are concerned? It is open to them to classify them perhaps as class C drugs and deal with the problem in that way, distinguishing between natural substances and the synthetic substances that constitute this huge social threat by being barraged into our society week after week to the great danger of our young people.

[Lord Bates]

That was the point that I was trying to address in response to my noble and learned friend Lord Mackay, who talked about the speed of this: the cumbersome process that existed before to categorise something, the period of time, and the agility of the criminal gangs behind the production of these substances. That goes to the heart of the purpose of the blanket ban. I know that we may not necessarily agree on that point, but I hope he will understand that that is where we are genuinely resolute: how do we uphold the blanket ban—which is the advice that we received from the expert panel, what similar panels in Wales and Scotland believe to be the way forward and what operates in Ireland—in a way that recognises the nuances we have but does not allow people to escape through loopholes? That is the challenge we are wrestling with. It is a dialogue that we are committed to continuing, both with your Lordships in the remaining process of the Bill and as it goes to another place, should it be your Lordships’ will that it does. That dialogue will continue; it is genuine and we are continually listening to views on this.

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[Lord Howarth of Newport]

My Lords, in supporting the amendment tabled by my noble friend Lord Rosser, I express my welcome to the amendment tabled by the Government. It gives me particular pleasure to support my noble friend but it also gives me pleasure to support the Minister in his tabling of that amendment. It is never really profitable in politics to seek to take credit; it is much more important that there should be results. But there has been pressure from all quarters for the Government to make it clear—and make it clear in the Bill—that they were going to involve the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs in carrying forward the policy for which the Bill would legislate, so this can be nothing but good. If any credit is due to this House, because the issue has been emphatically raised in our proceedings, then it is one more instance of how the Minister has been the most honest of brokers between this House and his department. The integrity, good will and energy with which he has mediated these debates through to his colleagues in the Home Office is something which I think we all very much appreciate. I would like to place that on the record.

[Lord Bates]

My Lords, this may be a short group as we, too, welcome this amendment. I do not think I have ever known an occasion before where all three main parties have put their names to the same amendment. It is a matter of semantics as to whether we have all come around to Amendment 10 or everybody has come around to government Amendment 22. What matters most is that we are all on the same page. In the context of the previous debate, that same page very much underscores the importance which the Government place and should place on the advice which they receive from the advisory council.

The Explanatory Notes made it clear that we expected to consult fully the council on Clauses 3 and 10. However, in bringing forward these amendments to turn such an expectation into a statutory duty, we have been mindful not just of those views and its opinion but of the deliberations and the views expressed in your Lordships’ House. These amendments reaffirm the value we place on the independent expert advice from the advisory council and our commitment to a constructive working relationship with it on the provisions of the Bill and the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971. We will continue to work with the council to achieve our common purpose of reducing and preventing harms caused by psychoactive substances to individuals, especially young people, families and communities. For these reasons, I am happy to support Amendment 10 and similarly to commend Amendment 22 to the House.

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[Lord Howarth of Newport]

My Lords, I am not sure that the issue of the medicinal use of cannabis is germane to this particular Bill—

[Baroness Hamwee]

I would just make it clear that I am talking about research. It happens to be in that context, but it is research.

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

I was not meaning in any way to attempt to refute or reject something that the noble Baroness had just said—I was apologising to the House for being about to mention the medicinal use of cannabis, because it is somewhat marginal to the Bill. However, ensuring that research for medical purposes, or indeed for other legitimate industrial purposes, is not inhibited by the provisions of this Bill certainly is germane, and it is rendered all the more important because of the difficulties that the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 already places, in practice, on certain sorts of research that it is highly desirable should be pursued. I also have the report by Professor Val Curran and Mr Frank Warburton in my hands, and I was going to draw to the attention of the House the observations made by the authors of that report that there is what Professor Curran calls a “stranglehold on research”. She says in the report:

“Carrying out research into cannabis in the UK is a costly obstacle course. It involves a minimum outlay of £5,000 to cover licensing and security; licence applications take about a year”.

She broadens out what she says to deal with other substances in Schedule 1, saying:

“As a result of its Schedule 1 status in the UK only four hospitals have been granted a licence to hold stocks of cannabis although all of them are able to hold heroin”.

So it is a somewhat confused situation. I was encouraged to read in the Home Secretary’s letter to Professor Iverson of 11 July that the,

“Government’s intention is for all bona fide medical and other scientific research to be untouched by the provisions of this Bill”.

I simply draw to the attention of the Minister and the House that the provisions of the 1971 legislation already make for very considerable difficulty in pursuing bona fide research into certain substances in Schedule 1. I am very happy to know that the Government are consulting and looking to amend the provisions of this Bill in the House of Commons, and I hope that they take fully into account when they do the difficulties that the 1971 Act has already created.

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Moved by

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

13: Clause 5, page 2, line 36, at end insert “for the purpose of financial gain”

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[Lord Howarth of Newport]

My Lords, this amendment is intended to avoid a situation in which we may find ourselves criminalising rather large numbers of young people. I am not sure that that is what the Government really want to do, and I myself would not at all like to see it happen. The Bill provides that it is not an offence to possess a psychoactive substance, but all means whereby people might obtain psychoactive substances would be made illegal. I do not know whether Ministers expect people to come into possession of psychoactive substances rather as if they had descended like manna from heaven—or perhaps, as some people would see it, surfaced from hell.

At all events, very many young people use psychoactive substances. I do not think anyone knows what the scale of use is in this country. The report on new psychoactive substances that the Home Office commissioned and published last year indicated that the data are extremely thin and inadequate. That is no one’s fault; it is a very widespread problem and it is hard to monitor the reality of it. Still, a lot of people are using psychoactive substances, just as a lot of students are using substances that they think will enhance their cognitive powers, and I do not think that a ban is going to stop them doing so.

The question is this: if a group of people club together, in the words of the Advisory Committee on the Misuse of Drugs in its letter of 2 July, and one of them supplies a psychoactive substance to a circle of friends but does not do so for the purpose of financial gain—it is a shared social activity that they have agreed to undertake—should that become a criminal offence? I suggest that it should not. More significant than my suggestion is the urging of the ACMD in its letter to the Secretary of State, in which it says:

“The Bill has the potential to both criminalise and apply disproportionate penalties to many otherwise law abiding young people and adults…An example is a young person being prosecuted for ‘supply and importation’ in a case of ‘social supply’ where a young adult has bought small quantities of Novel Psychoactive Substances on-line on behalf of a group of friends who have ‘clubbed together’. The ACMD believes that criminal justice sanctions would be disproportionate to the harm caused by such acts”,

and I think the ACMD is right. In her reply to Professor Iversen’s letter, the Home Secretary offered some reassurance when she said that,

“the Bill contains both criminal and civil sanctions which will enable law enforcement agencies to adopt a proportionate response to offending behaviour. In addition, the police and Crown Prosecution Service will exercise their professional discretion taking into”—

I think the next word is “account” but it has been missed out—

“all the circumstances of the offence and the offender”.

So that is good.

Oddly, she also says in the preceding paragraph that the expert panel,

“did not suggest excluding social supply”.

That is not how I read the expert panel’s report. Page 33 of that report, at the beginning of the section entitled “General prohibition on the distribution of non-controlled NPS”, in which the expert group set out to state the principles that should apply, said:

“Legislation of this type … can exclude … social supply”.

It did not recommend that it should exclude social supply, but contemplated that it should. I hope that the Government, in the light of that, might be prepared to think a little further about this issue.

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[Lord Bates]

The noble Lord made a good point on stop-and-search powers and I know that a significant body of work is going on in relation to it. I was going to quote some of the reports on it and the actions that the Home Secretary has requested and taken on recording the data on how stop-and-search powers are used, particularly vis-à-vis black and minority ethnic communities. Perhaps I can undertake to write to the noble Lord and set that out in some detail. Because it is such a serious point, the ACMD was right to raise it in its letter, and the Home Secretary was right to acknowledge that point in her response. However, that does not take away from the wider point that allowing a defence or allowing for a provision relating to social supply of new psychoactive substances would provide a loophole that would be open to exploitation. It is for that reason, rather than the other, that I ask the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, to withdraw the amendment.

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

My Lords, I am grateful to everyone who has spoken. We know and applaud the Home Secretary’s drive to reform stop and search, and her desire that its incidence should be greatly reduced, not least in light of the findings that a high proportion of stop-and-search operations have been conducted illegally. However, the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, with all his experience of policing in Brixton, has raised a fresh point in our debates that is exceedingly important. It is that stop and search is producing a disproportionate incidence of cautions and charges among BME communities. I hope that the Home Office will reflect carefully on what the noble Lord had to say.

The noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, put it to us that the charge that a young person might receive for supplying a psychoactive substance to their circle of friends, although not doing so for profit, might actually be more damaging than the effect of the psychoactive substance. That would often be the case. She mentioned Portugal, where the health-led approach is very different from the comprehensive prohibitionist approach that the Government have espoused and are reinforcing in this legislation. It is interesting that the European monitoring centre’s statistics show us that Ireland, which has used the approach that the Government are now seeking to legislate to provide in this country, has the highest incidence of consumption of new psychoactive substances among the many European countries covered by this survey; and Portugal has the lowest. There are lessons to be learnt from that.

The noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, reminded us of the dangers of a criminal charge getting on to a young person’s record and being carried through into adulthood—and what a millstone that is around their neck. I should imagine that that is dangerous psychologically and in all sorts of practical ways.

I take seriously the intervention by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hardie, who asked us to consider the extreme circumstances in which someone, perhaps with innocent intentions, had provided a substance to a circle of friends but it had all gone horribly wrong and someone had died. The noble and learned Lord said that the right solution was to leave the question of prosecution to the judgment of the prosecutor. I was pleased that the Minister indicated that that, too, would be his view—that discretion, which can be used by the police and the prosecuting authorities, is provided in the Bill. The intervention underlined how important the exercise of that discretion is.

I understand why the Home Secretary would not want to create a large loophole in the coverage of the legislation, and I was pleased that the Minister told us that the Government were seeking as far as they could to minimise the criminalisation of young people through this legislation and that he shares the concerns expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Paddick. I am sure that the House of Commons will want to think further about this issue. In the mean time, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 13 withdrawn.

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[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, I apologise that I have not been able to be here for the whole debate. I had meetings earlier and I have others tonight. I thank my noble friend the Minister for the amount of information he has supplied. Indeed, I have not had enough hours in the day to read all the PDF attachments in my email inbox. I am sympathetic to one of the amendments; namely, that relating to children’s homes or places which hold vulnerable children, or whatever is the current correct terminology. Clause 6 creates an aggravated offence for selling drugs outside a school. It seems to me an anomaly if we do not include places which hold even more vulnerable children than those in schools.

I think that in Committee my noble friend said that one of the difficulties would be that everyone can see where a school is—there are big signs and lots of children—but that drug dealers might not know when they are selling drugs in the vicinity of a children’s home. I do not think that that will wash. The bad guys selling drugs know every potential outlet better than anyone else. They will know when there is a children’s home and a potential outlet nearby, and they will target it. I would like to hear from my noble friend the practical difficulties about including children’s homes or places which hold vulnerable children. It seems to me that they are even more important than ordinary schools.

For a few reasons, I am not so sympathetic on the point about prisoners. Drugs are a problem in prison but they should not be. There is no excuse for drugs being in prisons but certain excuses are used. We have, in my view, the ridiculous situation of completely free association. Wives and girlfriends can freely mingle with the prisoners, most of whom are male. They can hug, kiss and cuddle, and they have every opportunity to pass on drugs. I have never understood why we do not have a system where there is a glass screen between the visiting friends and relatives, and the prisoners, so that drugs cannot be so easily passed on.

In 1993, my noble friend Lord Howard of Lympne went to the Home Office. He decided to crack down on drugs and introduced springer spaniel sniffer dogs to some prisons. Two things were immediately noticeable. First, as soon as the relatives saw the dogs, they had to return to their cars to deposit the goodies that they were about to take into the prison. Secondly, there was resistance from a large number of prison officers and governors about the policy. I apologise to that very trendy trade union, the Prison Officers Association, if I misquote it. However, I was told at the time by prison officers that, if you are looking after 700 men in prison, you have to reduce the tension level. The way to reduce the tension level then was to let them have illegal access to drink, drugs and pornography. That reduced the tension levels, they said. Therefore, I do not have much sympathy for prison governors who say that there is a problem with drugs in prisons and the Government should do something about it. They have it in their own hands to tightly control drugs in prisons. However, if the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, is right that it is impossible to test for some of these psychoactive substances, we need to make sure that visiting relatives are not able to pass them on. I would be amazed if little sniffer dogs were unable to detect them. It may be difficult to do so with a blood test, but we now read in the press about sniffer dogs which can detect almost anything. Some dogs can detect whether you are about to have an epileptic fit and it should be possible to have a tighter control regime.

Finally, why stop at prisons? I consider nightclubs to be an even bigger problem. If we are to have an aggravated offence of selling drugs outside schools, what about an aggravated offence of selling them in nightclubs, or near nightclubs where young people hang out? Again, that is a large captive audience. Perhaps we should have an aggravated offence for people in positions of responsibility who commit this offence. A tiny minority of military officers or police officers may be tempted to commit this offence, but perhaps it could be an aggravated offence. Off the top of my head, I can think of a few areas where I would like to see an aggravated offence introduced, but it may be best to restrict it to schools, with the possible addition of children’s homes.

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

My Lords, whatever I may think about the general principle of the legislation, if we are to have it, I am sure it is right that there should be aggravated offences where the interests and protection of children are concerned. I support the extension of that principle to prisoners. I applaud my noble friends for tabling their amendments and other noble Lords for their amendments, and for supporting the various amendments in this group.

I say to the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, who is set fair to close down the whole country, as far as I can see, that I understand that one of the difficulties that prison governors now face is that it has become a not uncommon practice for family members to send letters to prisoners on paper which they have previously soaked in a psychoactive substance. When the prisoner receives the letter, the thing to do is to smoke it. Therefore, this is not as straightforward an issue, as the noble Lord, of course, with his experience, very well knows. However, these are good amendments and should be supported.