Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 (Amendment) Order 2021

Lord Mann Excerpts

Monday 17th May 2021 Grand Committee

[Lord Mann (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, it has taken some time for some very simple action to be taken on benzodiazepines. I first recommended this action in 2003 in the House of Commons and was ignored. I do not want to take issue with the Minister—I hope she does not feel that I am—but there is a concept which she and the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, raised, which I want to disagree with. It is about the unintended consequences of it, and it is not nit-picking, because of where the logic comes from.

Part of the justification for the proposal to the Committee—I entirely endorse the merits of agreeing it today—was that these three benzodiazepines have no identifiable health benefit. That rather misses the point, because even if they had a health benefit, the use of benzodiazepines in the illicit-drug-using and problematic-drug-using communities is prodigious. It can of course take place elsewhere, and there is a huge market for the resale of prescribed drugs; the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, alluded to that. That same market is particularly problematic when it comes to problematic users, by which I mean users whose drug dependency is such that it dominates their entire life and leads them into forms of behaviour that damage others. That is distinct from those who suffer misery by themselves in their own home, which can be through illegal drugs but which is far more often through the misuse of prescribed drugs. That latter category of people do not tend to buy the drugs illegally; they simply get them through perfectly legal prescriptions. However, there is a huge market in the sale of all products, some of which are obtained technically illegally—they are prescribed and then sold on—while others are in the entirely legal market, such as these three particular benzodiazepines.

Part of the dilemma we have and part of the weakness in the system in this country is that the ACMD logic still ties in with what criminal justice sees—and criminal justice still has a tendency not to want too many things to have to regulate and criminalise, because it means more work—as well as with health, and particularly public health, which has had an obsession with the perceived positive benefits of a cocktail of drugs, defined as one drug being used to counteract another drug. That is precisely the kind of use that drug addicts have for benzodiazepines. In my experience, I do not know anyone who has a heroin addiction, for example, who does not also use benzodiazepines. The two go together, although not usually literally together. So the public health input has often been to say, “Things are better out there, because it will help people’s health”. I think that is fundamentally wrong.

Our inability to get on top of drug treatment in this country is partly because criminal justice takes too much of a lead in this. That is not the Minister’s fault, although it is her problem, because she then has a responsibility. I happen to be Lord Mann, of Holbeck Moor in the City of Leeds, and I hope that the Minister will at some stage—I would be happy to accompany her—look at the managed prostitution red light district on Holbeck Moor. It is a health disaster and catastrophe and very unpopular with members of the local community, as I know from listening to them. I in no way purport to represent them; that is for the far more illustrious Members of the Commons. However, the notion of a managed red light district is precisely the kind of problem that has led to so much time being taken to make benzodiazepines illegal.

The Minister is right to bring this forward, but I think we need to knock heads together more, particularly in public health, which is silent too often. It is precisely why usually primary care, although it can be hospitals, has been allowed to overprescribe things that are actually a danger, either through overuse by the individual or misuse by others who get hold of them, sometimes by purchasing them. Benzodiazepines really fit that model in terms of the kinds of markets that are there.

I commend the Minister for this, but there is a great opportunity for this Government to take a leap forward in getting the public health agenda aligned with the criminal justice agenda. For all sorts of reasons, the Government are well positioned to do this in ways that other Governments were more fearful of. I hope that the Minister will look at that. It is not enough simply to make this illegal, because the same people will still be buying it, whether it is legal or illegal. We also need to try to get to the root causes and look at how health does or does not deal with it, and then the country will literally be a healthier place.