Dangerous Drugs

Norman Lamb Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd July 2019 Commons Chamber

[Norman Lamb (North Norfolk) (LD)]

I join others in welcoming this statutory instrument, but I ask the Minister why it has taken so long. The recommendation from the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs was made in December 2017. Why has it taken more than 18 months to get to this point? Given the changes being made to facilitate research, for goodness’ sake, would it not have made sense to act immediately on its advice, rather than delaying for so long?

I urge the Government, despite their inclination, to go further and embark on a process that focuses on evidence, including the evidence of harm. Does the Minister think that drugs policy should be based strictly on evidence of how we best reduce harm? If he accepts that premise, he will accept the need for significant further reform.

Picking up on the point made by the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart), I urge the Minister to appear before the Scottish Affairs Committee. There is a danger that if Ministers refuse to attend Select Committees it will send out the most appalling signal to anyone else tempted not to respond to a Select Committee request to give evidence. This is such an important matter. The Scottish Government, to give them credit, want to trial new methods. Consumption rooms make enormous sense. There is evidence that we could significantly reduce the number of deaths from dangerous drug use through that sort of approach. It is scandalous that the Government are standing in the way of the trial in Glasgow of that much safer approach—standing in the way of good evidence-based policy making.

If the Minister accepts that we should be guided by the evidence of what works best to reduce harm, he would inevitably explore what they have done in Canada by ending the ludicrous prohibition on cannabis, which has brought about the most appalling side effects. So many young people are being driven into crime, too often ending up with criminal records, and being confronted by violence in the poorest communities in our country. The extent to which young teenagers from the most disadvantaged backgrounds are used by criminal networks to sell these drugs and are putting themselves at risk of extreme violence is shocking.

If the Government are interested in protecting young people from harm—both the violence that is an inevitable consequence of the illegal market and the risks of buying on the illegal market, where the only strains available now in places such as London are the most potent strains of cannabis that pose the biggest risk to a young person’s mental health—the Government will see the sense of regulating the market and taking the market away from criminal networks. We hand billions of pounds a year on a plate to organised crime in the most ludicrous way. We put young people at risk of extreme violence. We put young people’s health at risk. Instead, we could be raising tax revenues to educate people about the dangers of drugs—both currently illegal and legal drugs.

Let us remember that the most dangerous drug of all, in terms of harm to self and others, is alcohol—alcohol which is consumed in vast quantities in this very House of Parliament, for goodness’ sake. The hypocrisy in this debate is breathtaking. Aspirants to become our Prime Minister—members of the Conservative Cabinet—make embarrassing admissions about misdemeanours from their past, while others have been convicted of doing the same thing and have had their careers blighted.

Let us end this hypocrisy. Let us follow the evidence. Let us regulate the market, take the criminals out of the market and protect our young people more effectively.

[Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)]

It is a real pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb), who is a fellow Select Committee Chair: he chairs the Science and Technology Committee and certainly knows a thing or two about good evidence.

It is actually quite encouraging and unusual, in the case of an issue involving drugs, to see the Government accepting evidence and doing the right thing. This statutory instrument is a really good reform of the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971. Of course synthetic cannabinoids, which could be used in research to try to develop treatments which we know could help countless people in our constituencies, should be taken out of schedule 2.

As I have said, it is unusual to see the Government accepting good evidence. They normally approach drugs issues uninformed by evidence, and are singularly unresponsive to developments and debates relating to such issues and to the environment that is an emerging feature of all our constituencies and communities. They turn their face against the international innovations that are springing up not only in Canada, but in Portugal, Germany and other countries that take a very different approach to dealing with the contagion of drugs-related problems in the community. This Government are immune to the mayhem that their general policy on drugs is currently generating.

The 1971 Act is not just in need of minor tinkering. It is in need of widespread reform, review and updating. We in the Scottish Affairs Committee are conducting an inquiry into problem drug use in Scotland, because in two weeks’ time we expect to find that more than 1,000 people have died as a result of drug use. That means that 1,000 families will have been impacted by deaths that need not have happened. There are things that we could do to try to address and resolve this problem.

Our Committee had a fascinating session yesterday and I want to share it with the Minister. We do not know whether he will come to the Committee, but he will have to answer these questions; the Home Office will have to address the way in which it is currently handling drug issues and policies. I ask him to come to the Committee and tell us what he is going to do, because in one way or another we will get the answers from the Home Office.

As I have said, yesterday’s session was absolutely fascinating. It was attended by senior police officers from across the United Kingdom, and even by a representative of the Government’s own Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs. There is overwhelming consensus and agreement that the criminal justice approach to drugs issues is failing. It is failing our communities, it is failing our constituencies, and, in particular, it has ultimately failed the bereaved.

We heard not just about this useful statutory instrument, in which a reclassification is liberalising policy, but about the constant ratcheting up—as a senior chief police officer put it—of drugs classification. Let us take the example of cannabis. Cannabis was classified as a B drug. The classification went down to C and then back up to B. We are hearing that there is overwhelming consensus that something different is required: we must start treating drugs as a health issue and not a criminal justice issue. I know that my colleagues in the Health and Social Care Committee are also looking into whether the general policy and its consequences could be changed and I am grateful to them for that.

[Norman Lamb]

I meant to mention the following case when I spoke earlier: a family in Norwich have just had to spend well over £1,000 on a private prescription for their young son who has epilepsy. They will not as a family be able to afford more than a few weeks’-worth of paying for this privately. It is ludicrous that that family, desperately in need of help for their young boy, cannot get it through the NHS; I think there have been only three prescriptions so far under the NHS.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. I have allowed the debate to drift a little away from the scope of the debate, but I do not want it to drift too far. I ask Members to bear that in mind.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister for Policing and the Fire Service (Mr Nick Hurd)]

I thank the hon. Members for Swansea East (Carolyn Harris) and for Paisley and Renfrewshire North (Gavin Newlands) for their constructive approach to this narrow statutory instrument, which is essentially a tidying-up exercise to comply with requests from our research community. I am glad that that has been understood and welcomed. Mr Deputy Speaker, many speakers have taken advantage of your traditional generosity in straying over the boundaries of this SI into a broader conversation around drugs policy, and I acknowledge that passions on this run high. The demand for a review of policy will not go away, but I believe that this needs to be led by the evidence. Speakers today have presented one side of the debate, but those on the other side believe with equal passion that the evidence tells a different story. However, I do not think that this is the day to have a debate on drugs policy.

There is a lot of passion about attendance at the Scottish Affairs Committee, and if I was unclear in my response on that, it is because I am not technically the Minister for drugs. That invitation has gone to the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, my hon. Friend the Member for Louth and Horncastle (Victoria Atkins), the Minister with responsibility for crime and safeguarding, and I am assured that she will respond in due course. She has not declined to attend, as has been suggested—[Interruption.] Well, I am assured to the contrary. Anyway, I am sure that she and her officials will have heard the passion behind this request and will respond in due course.

The fact of the matter is that today, the Government’s policy on legalising cannabis and drug consumption rooms is set. Hon. Members will also be aware that a new Prime Minister will mean a new Administration, a new Government and an opportunity to reopen these debates where necessary. I am sure that many Members on both sides of the debate will be encouraging that to happen. I should say to the Chairman of the Science and Technology Committee, the right hon. Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb), for whom I have great respect, that I strongly believe that policy in all areas should be driven by evidence. That is why I welcome the fact that the Home Secretary has asked Dame Carol Black to lead one of the largest reviews of drug demand and supply for many years.

[Norman Lamb]

I welcome the appointment of Dame Carol Black to do this work. Will she be able to look at the experience from Canada, so that we can look at all the options in making our decisions about the right way forward?

[Mr Hurd]

We are determined to look at all aspects of drug demand and supply, and the terms of reference of the review are public. I want to add, because this is relevant to the context of the narrow debate that I thought we were going to have, that in the interests of updating evidence—this relates particularly to the right hon. Gentleman’s point on updating evidence on harm—I have asked the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs to review the current classification of synthetic cannabinoids in this context. That review is due to report by the summer of 2020, and I hope that he will welcome that.

I want to talk briefly about the issue of medicinal cannabis, which a number of Members took advantage of your generosity to address, Mr Deputy Speaker. As the Minister who led the work, under the direction of the Home Secretary, to change the law, I am pleased that we took that step at the pace that we did. It was clear to me that it was absolutely necessary, when we were confronted by the evidence from families who were suffering what I believed to be unnecessary hardship and pain as a result of regulation and law. As has been pointed out, the law liberalised the situation but effectively required prescriptions to be issued by specialist clinicians. As was disclosed in evidence to the Health and Social Care Committee, which reported today, there is clearly an issue around the levels of clinical confidence at the moment, and my colleagues in the Department of Health and Social Care are absolutely determined to work closely with partners to try to build that clinical confidence, which is clearly a priority, so that more families do not have to suffer the pain and frustration that are clearly out there.

[Norman Lamb]

I am grateful to the Minister for his tolerance. What advice do we give to the family from Norwich whom I mentioned who are spending well over £1,000 on just three weeks’ supply of cannabis oil for their son with epilepsy through a private prescription? They simply will not be able to afford to carry on, so what should they do?

[Mr Hurd]

The legal route that we have opened up is that if the situation complies with the various conditions in the framework set by the regulations, a prescription for such drugs is allowed, as long as that is what is recommended and approved by the specialist clinician looking at the case. Given where we are with the evidence base, and although our decisions were informed by expert advice, the right hon. Gentleman will understand that we had to put strict conditions in place in relation to the change being clinically led. This is not about decisions by politicians and not necessarily about decisions by GPs; it is about decisions by specialists in the area. I am sure that he will understand the reasons for our caution in that respect. As I said, the issue is now about how to build the research and evidence base to increase clinical confidence inside the NHS. That must be the priority at this time.

I have enjoyed this debate, which has ranged further than I expected, and I welcome the support for this SI and the proposed changes following recommendations from the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That the draft Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 (Amendment) Order 2019, which was laid before this House on 4 June, be approved.