Islam: Tenets

Lord Patten Excerpts

Thursday 7th December 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Patten (Con)]

The noble Lord’s exegesis on Islamic theology was concerning and, in one or two parts, I think confusing. I do not criticise him for that because I am neither a theologian nor a philosopher. I therefore cannot judge how much scholarly water some of his assertions hold, but I must say that I have previously reflected whether it might be a good thing if many of our government ministries had a moral philosopher or two on their staff to advise Ministers about the rectitude of the course that they were about to enter into.

I do know that there is no text in the great books of the three Abrahamic religions that directly promotes or sanctions terrorism. While the record shows that Judaism has been pretty restrained over the millennia in the matter of religious violence within or without its communities, alas, one cannot say the same about the Christian religion in England—Catholics and Protestants in particular were going at each other for hundreds of years, busily burning and then, to make a change of pace, disembowelling each other in the interests of religion. I am extremely sorry that that ever happened.

Right reverend Prelates are extremely busy doing stuff in their dioceses, but it is a pity that we do not have a right reverend Prelate on their Bench to listen to what is going on this afternoon. Perhaps the most reverent Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury and his brother of York might look at this issue, because we really need their wisdom here. In exactly the same way—there are not so many formal Jewish rabbis in this place—it would have been good to have a noble Lord, Lord Sacks, as it were, to give his views.

Mercifully, the bad habits of the Catholics—and I happen to be one of those; that is a declaration of interest and complete transparency—and Protestants in dealing with each other was dropped a few centuries ago, although sometimes the theological debate can still be pretty robust between us. Christians have, in a phrase, grown out of it. Now in the final long, drawn-out act involving the Islamic world, we must be equally robust in asserting that terrorism and religion do not sit together. One is not an excuse for the other; only perverted minds seek to use religion for their perverted ends. I wonder how many so-called Islamic terrorists have actually read the Holy Koran in detail.

What is to be done? We have lots of advice on this. The new de facto Sunni ruler of Saudi Arabia, Prince Mohammad bin Salman, has just started bouncing around about the issue with his characteristic vigour, and said on 26 November of Islamic terrorism:

“We will pursue it until it disappears completely from the surface of the earth”.


Heigh-ho! That really is hyperbole on stilts at a time when Saudi Arabia is violently and in the name of religion pursuing proxy wars against other brands of Islam all over the Middle East and Africa, from Yemen to Libya and back. Such terror simply begets other terror.

A very important issue that was not touched on by the noble Lord in his concerning introductory speech is how much a debate on Islamic terrorism must begin with a clear recognition that, all too often, it is a case of Muslim on Muslim—Sunni on Shia with, for example, that terrible attack on the innocent Sufis in the Sinai at holy prayers in their mosque a week or two ago. Then of course, in the Middle East, Alawites and Ismailis feel a degree of fear, and feel threatened. However, we in this place and in the West cannot enforce what we see as reason on the Islamic world, nor can we be thought to be lecturing it about deep-seated and sometimes fracturing theological debates which we do not perhaps understand. I certainly do not understand some of them. In the end, the Islamic world has to sort itself out and, just as the Christian world did in England and elsewhere, grow out of the kind of stuff that it seeks now to do with us. I do not expect this to happen very soon. I happen to have a very close Muslim friend, who I have known for 20 or getting on for 25 years. We were speaking only yesterday, and I asked him how many decades it would take for the Muslim world to come out of this present epoch. He paused and said, “It won’t take decades—it will take centuries”. That is a very foreboding thought, grim but realistic. Dealing with Islamic terrorism, or what claims to be Islamic terrorism, is going to be how we live for a very long time.

The only approach to this is to treat all terrorism equally, wherever it comes from. Terrorists are terrorists by definition, regardless of their purported cause. Our security services do a very good job in keeping an eye as much as they can, particularly when things are going quiet. If you just go across the water to Ireland north and south of the border, there is that old saying that there is always a “pike in the thatch” from people on both sides of the religious divide. I believe that that is the case there—and sometimes, when things are quiet, we have to be extremely concerned.

Sometimes defending life means ending life, and that excellent and experienced Minister from his time in Iraq onwards, Mr Rory Stewart, has reminded us about that in another place. Our defences must ever be strengthened, which is why the Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Bill making its way through your Lordships’ House, enabling us to target groups such as Daesh or al-Qaeda, is so essential to delivering safety at home and our foreign-policy aims abroad. But it is always where things seem to be quiet that terrorists will suddenly appear.

As somebody who works in financial services in the City of London, I rejoice to see how they have been put at the service of religion in making it a centre for Islamic finance in this world. My noble friend Lord Sheikh knows much more about this stuff than I ever will. We are very complacently saying that it is terribly good that we have all this going on in the City of London, but those people who use terror look to places like that and businesses like that with venom, so we must not let our guard drop.

Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 (Amendment) (No. 2) Order 2017

Lord Patten Excerpts

Tuesday 24th October 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Meacher (CB)]

My Lords, I apologise to the Minister—I had not anticipated this debate starting quite so early. I well understand the need to control the supply of methiopropamine, or MPA, and I applaud the Government for seeking the professional opinion of the Advisory Committee on the Misuse of Drugs and for following its recommendations. As we know, Governments have not always consulted the ACMD, nor have they always followed its recommendations, so that is to be commended. It is unfortunate that the ACMD and the Government have decided that the most appropriate instrument for the control of this drug is the outdated Misuse of Drugs Act 1971, rather than the Psychoactive Substances Act. The main consequence of this decision is that the users of MPA will be subject to a criminal record and criminal penalty if found in possession of this drug. Users are likely to be people with severe health problems and in need of help and support.

The Minister will be aware that I and about 100 other MPs and Peers who are members of the APPG for Drug Policy Reform would be grateful for an indication from her, if at all possible, of when the Government will invite the ACMD or another independent body to review the operation of the 1971 Act and, indeed, the Psychoactive Substances Act 2016 and analyse the consequences of these Acts on: the level of addiction to the many banned substances; the substitution of new and perhaps even more dangerous substances for a banned substance immediately following a ban; and the level of use of alcohol and tobacco in response to the bans on these alternative drugs. I would be grateful if the Minister could inform the House whether the Government have any plans to evaluate the efficacy of the 1971 and 2016 drugs laws, particularly in the light of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime proposition at the UNGASS in 2016 that evidence-based public health policies are here to stay.

Does the Minister agree that neither of our drugs laws—neither the 1971 Act nor the 2016 Act—were in any way based on evidence that those legislative propositions would actually achieve the objectives that any Government want? For example, we know that the experience in Ireland of an almost identical law to our Psychoactive Substances Act 2016 was an increase in psychoactive substance misuse and drug deaths—anything but the result that the Government would hope, and that we would all hope, would be achieved by a new drugs law.

The Government refer to monitoring the control measures through the regulatory framework at paragraph 12.1 of the Explanatory Memorandum. I would be grateful if the Minister would indicate whether any analysis of the impact of the ban on this drug, and of the bans on other drugs, will be undertaken. I look forward to the Minister’s comments.

[Lord Patten (Con)]

In strongly supporting this statutory instrument I have three points. First, the Government have acted with commendable speed to implement the recommendations on MPA given by the advisory committee about four months ago, as the Minister said. However, I seek confirmation that they will always be as swift as possible in the implementation of such future recommendations of these experts. That is provided, of course, that they agree with them—the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, has pointed out that from time to time they have not necessarily agreed with the experts in their recommendations.

I like, respect and need the views of experts, particularly those of my doctor and my dentist. I value expert advice all the way down the line, but in the end, even they may not always be right, whatever “right” turns out to be. In the end, yet again, Ministers have to decide. It is sometimes difficult for Ministers to turn down expert recommendations, but they have to make their decisions not as experts but in the public interest as members of the Government. I support them also in making those difficult decisions.

Secondly, we have many other experts around to help us, such as those in the World Health Organization’s Expert Committee on Drug Dependence. That committee gave its views on this very matter last November. It advised, just like the advisory committee, that there is no known medical, research or therapeutic use for MPA; it is just used to abuse and there is no get-out in saying that it can be medically helpful in any way. It has all the side-effects that the Minister pointed out, as well as one that I think she missed—talkativeness, something that some would claim sometimes affects Members at both ends of the Palace of Westminster. I would not suggest, of course, that this is due to substance abuse; it is just due to genetic problems or lack of self-control.

Of course, the World Health Organization has its own problem with experts. Having given expert and excellent advice on this issue, its experts then concluded that the elected dictator President Mugabe should be hallowed for a while as its goodwill ambassador, rapidly backtracking when it spotted that on that occasion they had made a major mistake.

Thirdly, the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, who knows much more about this stuff than I ever will, pointed out that you sometimes get substitution. I worry that there are harder substitutes coming in, particularly the ever-stronger strains of cannabis such as Nova OG, produced by cultivation companies in the United States, and described by one marketing organisation in the United States—hard to resist—as,

“extremely potent, top-shelf, designer bud”.

“Queue up and have this” if you cannot get the other stuff that we are trying to make impossible to get. I apologise, because I am a latecomer to this subject and to this debate, that I did not give the Minister earlier notice, but will she be ready and prepared to ask for the advice of the advisory committee on these much stronger strains of cannabis and to act just as quickly if it is thought to be a danger in the United Kingdom? Of course, a letter in the Library of the House would be a very adequate response to that point.

[Lord Rosser (Lab)]

Since I, too, was caught out by the earlier than anticipated start of this debate, I can thank the Minister for only that part of her explanation of the reasons for and purpose of the draft order that I actually heard. The purpose of the draft order, as has been said, is to make it an offence to possess, import, export, produce, supply or offer to supply the drug methiopropamine, or MPA, without a Home Office licence. MPA is a stimulant, psychoactive substance that has been subject to temporary control orders, the latest of which is about to expire—at the end of next month, if memory serves me right. There is evidence of MPA having adverse effects when taken, including abnormally fast heart rate, anxiety, nausea and breathing difficulties. I have to say that my list is more abbreviated than that given by the Minister when she introduced the order.

MPA has been associated with a number of deaths in the last five years and, as the Minister said, there were 46 cases where MPA was found in post-mortem toxicology, with MPA being implicated in the actual cause of death in 33 of those cases between 2012 and 2017.

MPA has not infrequently been marketed as a legal alternative to cocaine. In June of this year the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, the ACMD, indicated that MPA continued to be misused and, as a result, was having harmful effects that could constitute a social problem. The ACMD recommended that MPA should now be permanently controlled as a class B drug under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971—which means, as I understand it, that among other things, including higher maximum sentences, possession of MPA also becomes an offence, which is not the case for substances controlled under the Psychoactive Substances Act 2016.

The ACMD also found that MPA had no recognised medicinal use, or industrial or commercial benefits other than potentially for research. I simply conclude by saying that we support the decision to accept the ACMD’s recommendation, and hence we support this order.