Drugs and Crime

Lord McNally Excerpts

Tuesday 15th June 2010 Lords Chamber

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord McNally)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Brett, not for a bucket of cold water—rather, I think, for a lifeline for me in responding to this debate. I will certainly take back the point about discussions with European colleagues because it is a very sound suggestion. One of the problems that I now face is that I have 12 minutes. Noble Lords will have seen notes coming from the Box, and I have been taking notes myself that amount to more than 20 pages. I could probably cover a good hour in responding. However, I will make sure that we produce from these notes and the points raised a response that will go to all participants in this debate and to the Library of the House. Taking on board the point just made by the noble Lord, Lord Brett, and that made by the noble Lord, Lord Mancroft, earlier, yes, I will make an absolute commitment that we will have another debate on this issue when the Government have bedded down a little more and have more to say on this matter.

The speakers list to which I will now respond is a checklist of the depth and breadth of experience available to the House on this topic, and I pay tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, for promoting the debate and to her and other noble Lords’ success in influencing the UN to produce the report that has provided its basis. The noble Baroness said in opening the debate that no serious policy-maker can ignore this paper. I can assure her, as a fairly new serious policy-maker, that I do not ignore it and neither will I ignore what has been said in the debate. It is timely and relevant.

Drugs are a scourge in our society. The Centre for Social Justice has identified addiction as one of the main factors linked to social breakdown. Drugs destroy lives and undermine the potential of our youth. Drug addiction feeds crime. Between a third and a half of all acquisitive crime such as burglary is drug-related, and drugs also drive street prostitution, as referred to by the noble Baroness, Lady Masham. This Government are convinced that tackling the problem of drugs is a priority.

The noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, reminded me of that old American saying, “If it works, don’t try and fix it”, because the corollary of that logic is that if it does not work, try something else. Where are we today? Many speakers have referred to the grim statistics. There are at least 330,000 problem drug users—those who use heroin and crack cocaine in the UK. The cost of drugs to our society is enormous. It is around £15 billion overall, of which nearly £14 billion is attributed to drug-related crime. In response, we have been spending around £1.2 billion on various interventions by health services, by the police, in prisons and through our probation services. On average, we estimate that 55 per cent of prison entrants have a serious drug problem, but as has been referred to, many are given short sentences with little time to enter into any serious rehabilitation. We believe that a better balance has to be struck.

Many drug users who leave prison do so with no supervision. Links to the community are there, through healthcare and drug intervention programmes, but too often the join-up is missing. We need to build on approaches such as the integrated offender management programme and innovative work that is being done in the voluntary sector, such as mentoring. Offenders must not fall through the net when they leave prison.

The noble Lords, Lord Thomas of Gresford, Lord Rea and Lord Mancroft, all referred to the drug courts, which are also mentioned in the UN report. Drug courts that support community orders and challenge offenders’ progress through them are starting to develop. Initial results from two courts have been positive, and a full evaluation of four further drug-court pilots is due this autumn. The drug interventions programme has also made real progress by getting those who come into contact with the criminal justice system into treatment early. An evaluation has shown that overall volumes of offending fell by 26 per cent among those studied from this group, and we know that people who enter this treatment through the criminal justice system do as well on it as those who enter voluntarily.

The paper from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime supports the rationale of engaging drug users in treatment rather than relying on punishment alone. Healthcare and support services play a vital role in addressing drug misuse and drug-related crime. Without them, we would stand no hope of getting offenders off drugs. However, we have to carry public opinion with us, including the public opinion at the other end of this building, and we must not lose sight of the impact that this offending has on victims and our wider communities. Offenders must be made to take responsibility for the harm they have caused. Sentencing and tough sanctions should reinforce the treatment that needs to be available in prisons and in the community.

What should be said loud and clear, however, is that treatment for drug misusers is an essential part of our approach and, as the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, made clear, it is cost-effective. A Home Office study estimated that the benefit for all drug treatments stands at around £2.50 for every £1 spent. As I have said, there is now substantial investment in drug-strategy interventions, and a large proportion of that is allocated to drug treatment. However, I am clear that treatment should not become an end in itself, creating a culture of dependency on state-funded methadone maintenance programmes. I was reassured by what the noble Lord, Lord Adebowale, said on this point.

The current approach in this country reflects the broad approach endorsed by the paper. However, we must avoid reading into the paper opinions that it does not express. It is not a blank-cheque endorsement of decriminalising or legalising drug use. The Government’s approach, with the purpose of rehabilitating offenders, will use sentencing and criminal justice services to move them into treatment with the clear goal of turning their lives around, possibly with the incentive of reduced or community-based sentencing if they co-operate. We believe that legalisation takes no account of the consequences of the significant increase in use that might follow and the Government have no intention of legalising the so-called recreational use of any currently controlled drugs. I associate myself with what the noble Lord, Lord Thomas, said about it being a hobby for the rich which finances organised crime.

Our priority is to ensure that investment in treatment provides the best results. That means we must improve the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of the treatment framework in place, including making better use of the voluntary sector. I am very impressed by the range of initiatives within the voluntary sector. This is not an excuse for avoiding the Treasury axe because there is a synergy to be built between what the Government are trying to do and what the voluntary sector can do.

Our programme in government is to take a fresh look at rehabilitation to ensure that sentencing for drug use helps offenders come off drugs, and to explore alternative forms of secure, treatment-based accommodation for drug offenders. We want to develop community sentences so that more offenders finish them drugs-free. We want to make sure that prisons are places where offenders address their drug misuse, not where their problems get worse.

I heard what the noble Lord, Lord Thomas, and the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, said about prisons. My officials are sending me encouraging statistics to show how hard they are working to tackle the problem of drugs in prisons and I shall include these in my round-robin letter.

We want to work with voluntary and private organisations to tackle the root cause of reoffending. Again I associate myself with what the noble Lord, Lord Adebowale, said about these problems often beginning in social and family backgrounds. We want to reduce reoffending through improved management of offenders and to strengthen and empower communities and the voluntary sector to manage those offenders who cause suffering to their local areas.

If we are going to carry public opinion with us on these matters, we have to realise that as well as drugs misuse being a terrible problem for the drug taker and their family and children, it is a terrible problem for the absolutely innocent member of the community who may be burgled or mugged when they come across the need of the drug taker to feed their habit through crime. We have to take them along with us if we are going to get support for the kind of approach that has been so widely advocated around the House tonight. Our approach will not abandon punishment or the criminal justice system but afford priority to treatment and rehabilitation, offering better prospects for the individuals concerned, for communities and for society as a whole.

I know that this position will not meet every hope and aspiration expressed by noble Lords, but I hope that they will see that our direction of travel takes account of the views expressed in the UN discussion paper, as well as the work done in this country and abroad by think tanks and NGOs. I can assure noble Lords that what has been said today will be studied by me and my colleagues in all the government departments concerned. My final pledge is: I will return.