Psychoactive Substances Bill [Lords]

Paul Flynn Excerpts

Wednesday 20th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab)]

Can my hon. Friend give an example of any anti-drug use education programme here or anywhere else in the world in this century or the last century that has resulted in a reduction in drug use?

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[Lyn Brown]

Genuinely, if the evidence changes and we can see that there are significant harms, we should ban poppers. This is a bit like alcohol: when it is used excessively, it causes massive harm. As I understand it, the way that poppers are generally used, they do not create the kinds of harms that would require us to ban them. We genuinely believe that to ban them would cause more harm than it would solve.

[Paul Flynn]

Will my hon. Friend challenge the popular myth that, by banning a drug, we reduce its use? That has virtually never happened, and almost every time a previously legal substance is banned, its use increases. That happened with mephedrone and its use increased 300%. It is a complete myth to say that banning a drug will have such effect. What it is likely to do is replace a legal market with a criminal market, which is infinitely more harmful.

[Lyn Brown]

I agree that if we do not place poppers on the exempt list today, we are likely to replace a regulated market with a criminal market, which is in no one’s interest.

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[Mrs Gillan]

I could not put it better myself. That is what concerns me about the Bill. The point was made that if this is seen to be a blanket ban—and a stupid ban because it bans perfectly innocuous substances—that will undermine the very purpose for which the law is being passed.

[Paul Flynn]

Does not the right hon. Lady think that if we treat these nootropic drugs differently from all the other new psychoactive drugs, there is a danger that we give them some credibility or approval? There has been some research into their harm, or otherwise. The trials have been poorly designed, and they have not found any great dangers in them, but they would not be accepted as being right for a medicinal drug. I understand her constituent’s commercial interest, but would it not be dangerous to treat this group the same as any other and thereby give the public the impression that they are harmless, because we do not know that?

[Mrs Gillan]

I do not think that putting them on the exempted list means that anybody should draw the conclusion that they are harmless. They obviously have an effect of some sort on individuals; otherwise, my constituent would not have, as he reports to me, 32% repeat orders for many of these substances. I take the hon. Gentleman’s point. However, in relation to cholinergics, the National Academy of Sciences has said that choline is a dietary requirement, as I mentioned, and the Food and Drug Administration has recommended 425 milligrams of choline intake a day. With regard to racetams, oxiracetam, for example, has been shown to improve step-down, retention and acquisition performance in research carried out on rats, I believe, and was supported in a paper in “Behavioural Brain Research” in 1996. I have various other references citing good research carried out into these drugs; some, I admit, have not had so much research into them.

The purpose of amendment 1 is to make sure that the law of unintended consequences does not apply to this Bill. The Minister needs to reassure my constituent, and the many organisations such as online companies and health food shops that sell these substances, that either they do not fall within the ambit of this Bill, and that therefore they need not concern themselves about falling foul of it, or, if he thinks that these substances need more research, to tell us what needs to be done. I expect, at the bare minimum, that he will undertake to review the products that I have listed in the amendment and to let us know, after discussions with the ACMD, what he intends to do. I hope that he will be able either to add these products to the exempted list or to let us know that the Bill does not apply to them. If it does not, he needs to reassure my constituent by letting me know the timescales within which he will investigate these products and perhaps others that might be brought to his attention.

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs Gillan), who is one of the most distinguished and respected Members of this House, and makes her case very powerfully. I owe her an apology. Because of the speed with which the Home Affairs Committee had to look at the Bill, owing to the timetable that the Government gave us, we did not have the opportunity to explore properly the points she has made or to take evidence from her constituent and others who might have felt that they were going to be affected by it. If we had had more time, we certainly would have had them before us. I am sure that, as is our policy, when we come to review this Bill in a few months’ time we will have the opportunity to consider exactly what its effect has been. I thank her for tabling the amendment and for reminding the House of the importance of all the other products that might be caught by the Bill.

I want to commend the Minister, who is rapidly becoming one of my favourite Home Office Ministers, partly because he agreed to be Father Christmas at the Westminster kids club party, and did it so well, but also because he is prepared to listen to the House. He said he would look at the work of the Select Committee and try to reflect some of it in the amendments he tabled in Committee, and he did so in the case of many of our recommendations. Yesterday he sent me—I thank him for giving me plenty of time to read it for today’s debate—the Government’s response to the Bill’s Committee stage and to our recommendations.

I thank the hon. Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr Burrowes) for last year pushing the Select Committee to hold an inquiry before the House had to consider the Bill on Second Reading. Again, we were caught out by the Government’s timetable being moved forward, as a result of which we did not have all the time in the world to consider these things. However, I thank him for doing it. I thank members of the Bill Committee, some of whom are here today, for the work they did at very short notice to ensure that that happened. The hon. Member for Louth and Horncastle (Victoria Atkins) attended many of the Committee’s sittings despite the fact that she was serving on two other Committees at the same time.

The Government have moved on several of the points that we have made. They were right to legislate—there is no question about that. This has been in the in-tray of successive Home Office Ministers for a number of years. The previous Labour Government were committed to doing something about it—it was in our manifesto, as our excellent shadow Home Office Minister said—and I am sure that if the votes had fallen in the opposite direction, we would have a Labour Minister introducing a similar Bill. I therefore say well done to the Minister for doing this and for incorporating most of what we have suggested.

I particularly want to talk about amendments 1 and 5. It is very important that we give support to voluntary organisations such as the Angelus Foundation, which invariably know more than Government, because they draw on the experience of real, live people, and they are prepared to come together voluntarily to try to warn the public and Parliament about the risks of these substances. I am glad that we are not using the term “legal highs” any more, because, as the report clearly says, that encourages people to want to try them.

I agree very much with the shadow Minister’s comments about education, which I am sure the Minister will echo. We cannot do too much to persuade young people that they should not be taking these substances. My children are 20 and 18, and they are away at university. It is every parent’s nightmare that one of their children, on a night out after studying and doing their work, will be offered a substance that is perfectly legal, take it, and then be ill and, in some cases, die. The Home Affairs Committee therefore absolutely support the Government’s tough approach.

[Paul Flynn]

My right hon. Friend says that the name “legal highs” attracts people to the drugs. Does he not think that if we change their name to “illegal highs”, they will become even more attractive to adolescents?

[Keith Vaz]

They may well do, but we are not going to call them “illegal highs”. The Bill does not seek to change their name. The effect of the Bill is to ban the substances that cause death. It is not about relabelling. I have great respect for my hon. Friend, who was a distinguished member of the Home Affairs Committee. I know that his position is to liberalise the law on drugs, but that is not my position and nor is it that of the Committee. Although we miss him, and I know he would have forced most of our reports to a vote, we do not miss him that much.

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[Anne McLaughlin]

I am not arguing that we should not be discouraging young people in that way. I am arguing that if someone buys these substances for themselves and a couple of friends, we should not criminalise them as though they were drug dealers when they clearly are not. I worry that, further down the line, Members of this House will be contacted by the parents of someone who has foolishly purchased such a substance on behalf of himself and one or two friends and has been convicted of supplying drugs. That young person’s life chances would be greatly diminished. Of course we hope they will be discouraged by our telling them what will happen to them if they make these purchases, but I certainly do not think we should punish them and label them as a drug dealer for stupidly buying stuff for their friends. On the whole, people pass a strong moral judgment on anyone with any kind of a conviction relating to drugs, but an even stronger judgment is passed on anyone convicted of supplying drugs. We are talking about a young person getting these substances for himself and his friends, not a young person who has become a drug dealer, yet that is what the conviction would be for.

[Paul Flynn]

Following the arguments being put forward from the other side, does the hon. Lady agree that the two most deadly drugs, which are taken by millions of people in this country and which cause addiction and a huge number of deaths, are tobacco and alcohol? Has she contemplated the effects that banning those two drugs would have throughout the world?

[Anne McLaughlin]

The hon. Gentleman would not expect me to disagree about the considerable harm that tobacco and alcohol can cause, but today we are talking about new psychoactive substances. I take his point, but it is important to carry on discussing what we have come here to discuss.

Any Member in the Chamber today who has children could face a situation in which their child was silly enough, along with some friends, to experiment with some currently legal highs. They might be fortunate enough not to be damaged physically or mentally by their experience, but they could still be convicted of a drug dealing offence just for stupidly experimenting.

Amendment 14 deals with the question of internet purchases. It seeks to highlight the fact that the Government are criminalising the use of drugs for personal consumption that have been purchased over the internet and that are then shipped into the UK for use by an individual. The Government suggest that they are moving forward and that they are not seeking to criminalise individuals unnecessarily. Indeed, the Bill indicates that those who purchase in other ways will not be committing a criminal offence. However, this part of the Bill will still unnecessarily criminalise people.

I would strongly prefer law enforcement agencies to use their time and effort to prevent the large-scale importation of psychoactive substances for distribution in the UK, rather than concerning themselves with the purchase of these substances for personal use by one individual. In a previous debate on the Bill, the Minister for Policing, Crime and Criminal Justice stated:

“The spirit of the Bill is that we do not want to criminalise individuals for possession, but we are going to criminalise the sale and purchase of these substances.”

We asked for further clarification, and he said:

“I apologise: I kind of misled the House unintentionally on individual possession. I was talking about intent to supply, not intent to use. Making a purchase from a foreign website would be caught, but the purchase on its own from a website or foreign website would not, and I apologise if I misled the House on that point.”

My hon. Friend the Member for Angus (Mike Weir) pressed the Minister and pointed out that clause 8 stated that a person commits an offence if

“the person intentionally imports a substance,”

and

“the person…intends to consume the psychoactive substance for its psychoactive effects”.

He went on to say:

“It seems to me that if someone imports and possesses even a small amount of the substance over the internet he is criminalised, but if he bought it in a head shop, for example—

in this case the head shops would be gone, so if bought in the street—

“he would not be criminalised, which seems to be a strange provision.”

The Minister’s response was:

“That is not the Bill’s intention. As we go through the Bill in Committee we will endeavour to iron out those concerns.”—[Official Report, 19 October 2015; Vol. 600, c. 737-9.]

I was unable to be on the Committee as I was serving on another Bill Committee but I can read Hansard, I have hon. Friends who served on that Committee and I know that in Committee the Minister voluntarily offered this statement:

“Possession in a club would not be an offence; indeed, possession is not an offence under any part of the legislation, unless in a secure facility. It is important to send that message out.”––[Official Report, Psychoactive Substances Public Bill Committee, 27 October 2015; c. 37.]

I would like some clarity from the Minister on that.

How much longer have I got, Madam Deputy Speaker?

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[Mr Burrowes]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson). Much of the debate on this important Bill has shown consensus across the House. Along with many others, I have campaigned for this Bill for many years, and for a blanket ban on certain substances, and I recognise the efforts made by the Minister to bring the issue to the table. Unusually, that has been done at some pace, and the Home Affairs Committee—on which I and other hon. Members present in the Chamber sit—sought to keep up with the Bill and to ensure that we added our penny’s worth to the debate. Hopefully that has helped, and it was a pleasure to sit on the Bill Committee and see those long-standing interests come to fruition.

I will speak later about poppers, but in some ways, if one wishes to deal with this issue with a blanket ban, the Bill could be seen as a blunt tool in tackling the evil of NPSs. If one wishes such a ban, there are some anomalies or concerns in the Bill. Amendments have been tabled about other seemingly harmless substances that may be tied into a blanket ban. I am willing to give the Government as much rope as possible to hang not themselves but the target of this Bill, which is those evil pliers of the trade—the “big fish” that were mentioned—and the new substances that are coming on to the market. That is what the target should be, and although there has been a natural concern about poppers—I raised that issue in Committee—and we obviously do not want to criminalise the personal use of them, we must also deal with those other substances. However, poppers are not the target of the Bill.

[Paul Flynn]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Burrowes]

I want to make some progress.

Let me focus on education, because it is important to ensure that there is enough communication to deal with this issue and to have a profound effect, not just through legislation and enforcement, but through education. We must make the most of the opportunity to educate everyone out there about the harms caused by NPSs.

I have been involved in drugs policy for some time, and I had the pleasure and privilege for a number of years of sitting as an honorary member on the inter-ministerial group on drugs. To me it is not surprising—I say this frankly and openly—that no representative from the Department for Education is currently sitting on the Treasury Bench. Although that IMG was well attended—it is one of the best attended cross-departmental groups, and it led to the 2010 drugs strategy in which I played my part—the Department for Education was the most difficult Department to get to the table.

I say that openly and publicly because it is relevant when assisting the Minister to ensure that communication gets out there, and that education is prioritised. I do not believe that the Department for Education has yet been as forthcoming as it should be, not least given the commitment understood by the Committee, which was that meetings between the Home Office and the DFE would run parallel to parliamentary business, so that we could see that the DFE is serious about wanting to educate young people about the harms of NPSs.

My concern is great—I say this in relation to new clause 1. I do not suggest that we need such a prescribed PSHE route, but we urge the Government to include education in the review and to say that 30 months down the line they will look at how well we have done on education, and how well the word has been spread about the harm of NPSs. The Government told the Home Affairs Committee that the strategic communication plan has been set out, but a question tabled by the hon. Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown) revealed that no specific funds have been set aside for its implementation.

[Mr Burrowes]

That speaks directly to amendment 4, which was also tabled in Committee. That is in effect what the Minister has committed to and that is very welcome.

I have seen my way, when I was on the inter-ministerial group, through four Home Office Ministers. I recognise my right hon. Friend the Minister’s commitment to tackling drugs and, although there has been a revolving door of individual Ministers involved in tackling drugs, Department for Education Ministers need to show that same commitment.

[Paul Flynn]

Will the hon. Gentleman tell us what attention the Committee gave to the fact that the only two countries in the world that have passed similar legislation have seen large increases in the use of these drugs? In Ireland, there was an increase from 16% to 22%, and in Poland there was a level increase of 3%, the biggest in its history. Is the Bill not going to have the same bad effect?

[Mr Burrowes]

I am not convinced by the hon. Gentleman’s premise. We consistently disagree on drugs policy. The evidence from Ireland is clear. Its blanket ban has been a success, with the closure of head shops and less accessibility to new psychoactive substances.

Everyone agrees that this is the most significant change in drugs legislation since 1971. This is a huge step-change and represents progress in tackling the new drugs on the market. It is not matched, however, with the same commitment to provide funding for education and information. The Department for Transport spent £1.952 million on developing, delivering and evaluating its communications campaign to ensure people became aware of enhanced police powers in relation to drug-driving—I know the Minister was very much in favour of putting that in the statute book—and in particular driving under the influence of cannabis. We do not see that same matched funding commitment to such a significant Bill. We need to see where that will come from to ensure that the good words expressed in the strategic communication plan have a real effect. We need the public to be informed. We need a strategy that covers social media. We need to involve the Angelus Foundation. For the foundation not to be linked to FRANK is frankly ridiculous. That needs to change. FRANK needs to talk better with Angelus and learn from it, in particular from its film awareness campaign. It is so important to have the common goal of alerting young people to the harms presented by NPSs. I look forward to hearing some reassurance on that from the Minister.

I would like to touch very briefly on two other aspects of the Bill. There are amendments on cannabis. I want to link them to new clause 6, which seeks to suggest that arrests and detention for class A drugs should trigger assessment and treatment. I want to highlight the fact that the big issue for young people, along with NPSs, is their use and misuse of cannabis. Cannabis is having a profound effect on them. I visited Highbury Corner magistrates court with the Justice Secretary, the Lord Chancellor. He heard that cannabis has an impact on many young people, but only Islington has a drug treatment facility or the ability to deal with that treatment. Justices have at least one hand tied behind their back when it comes to getting young people the treatment they need. We need to tackle that, along with treatment facilities for NPSs. We need to get up to speed with where the market is going. It is going away from substitute treatment for addiction to the old opiate substances and towards needing an holistic approach to treatment and education. We must get up to speed and the review needs to convince us it is doing that.

Finally, I come to poppers. In Committee I raised concerns about the ban on behalf of many people, including the gay community. I am very pleased that the Government have, belatedly, reached a point where they are going to look seriously at the evidence and at exempting alkyl nitrate. I agree with the Government that there are some complications, however. I raised in an intervention the fact there are already controls around the supply of alkyl nitrates. Under-18s are caught by the Intoxicating Substances (Supply) Act 1985. All of these areas need to be looked at, because there is commonality. The problem with poppers-alkyl nitrates is that they can be tweaked and abused so that the substance becomes harmful. Historically, that has been the case.

The reference to the Home Office about this is somewhat historical. It is not new, and it should not have led to an 11th-hour conversion to consider putting it on the exemption list. The Bill has been around for months—this issue was raised in the other place—so it is encouraging, if also disappointing, that we are still, at this late stage, considering exemptions. I am willing to go with the evidence, however, because it is complicated and we do not want the blanket ban diluted. We need to ensure that this is done properly, with evidence, so that, as the Home Affairs Committee said, there is eventually an exemption.

There are many other issues to talk about, but I want to give others the opportunity to speak. I broadly welcome the fact that, at long last, we will have a blanket ban on the statute book. It will be a force for good, particularly in protecting young people.

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[Johnny Mercer (Plymouth, Moor View) (Con)]

I rise to express my broad support for what the Government are trying to do. This is a major issue in Plymouth. At the beginning of this week the local paper ran a story about an individual who had drowned in a local harbour in October 2014. A toxicology report showed that among a number of other drugs a legal high was present in his system. Sadly, I need only look back a further five days in the same paper to find another story about these chemicals, which have now become a haunting menace to society.

Over Christmas I did what many of my hon. colleagues will have done, and went and served Christmas lunch to the homeless at the hostels, and they are being plagued outside these hostels by people selling these illegal highs. This is a real problem in Plymouth.

I also go out with the emergency services at least once a month. When doing so, I see the challenge presented to our law enforcement by these substances. I fully support the Minister in his efforts to identify the new psychoactive substances and react more quickly to them.

I ran a campaign briefly prior to Christmas attempting to raise awareness of these substances, and I strongly support other councils on this. I would like Plymouth to lead the way in getting these substances banned locally before this Bill is enacted.

Ultimately, for me this comes down to one key thing. We often talk in this House of how we support those who challenge the most challenging parts of society, such as police officers and prison officers. They strongly support what we are doing here. It is not good enough simply to stand up in the House of Commons and say, “We fully support the police” and “We fully support prison officers” and then not give them the tools to do their job, which is what I think is being done here. That is why I support the Government’s position.

[Paul Flynn]

Before I start, may I point out one major error? A picture of me has been widely retweeted by Members of the House. It was taken from American television, where tens of millions of people were informed in the caption that I was leader of the Labour party. I just want to point out that this information is a tad premature.

It is generous to describe this Bill as a landmark in legislative futility, because it is in fact worse than that: this Bill will do harm, as all the other prohibition Bills in the 28 years in which I have been here have—they have all done harm. The Home Affairs Committee does not seem to have considered what has happened in the two countries that have passed legislation very similar to this Bill. In Ireland what happened was that, certainly the head shops closed down—of course they did; they were illegal—and the sites closed down, but they were replaced by other illegal head shops; they were replaced by a market that is criminal and irresponsible. Furthermore, in Ireland the market among young people for using these drugs increased from 16% of the population to 22%. Those are figures from the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction. Meanwhile in Poland there was a 3% increase. So now the countries that have passed similar Bills to this one have the greatest use of psychoactive drugs in the world.

This Bill will be counterproductive. In 1971 we passed the Misuse of Drugs Act. At that time we had 1,000 cocaine and heroin addicts in Britain. We have now got 300,000. I wish Members would consider the possibility, in respect of what they are doing and the ideas they have, that the conventional wisdom is the conventional stupidity. It would be madness to ban poppers, as everyone says.

This Bill should be considered on the evidence alone. Should we support the attempt to move cannabis into an area where scientists can work on it? That is an approach that is based not on superstition, rumour or prejudice, but on science, and it should be supported.

[Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

I shall be brief.

I wish to emphasise that although so many elements of the Bill are important, it is essential that it is strengthened in the field of education. New clause 1 addresses that and does answer what was set out in paragraph 76 of the Home Affairs Committee report, which says:

“Successive governments’ spending on education on the dangers of NPS has been shockingly inadequate to date. Action must be taken now, to educate young people”.

Therefore, we are dealing with a plea and a recognition that there has been an absence of education. This is not about politics; it is about evidence-based practice, which is why I am hopeful that the Government will support new clause 1.

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[Mike Penning]

We need to stop these products from being available to young people, middle-aged people and old people like me. It is absolutely crucial that we do that. One of the ways that people can get these products, as we have heard today, is online. We need to ensure that the criminal offence of selling one of these substances will have the penalties it deserves, because there is no point having a blanket ban if we do not actually enforce it.

[Paul Flynn]

rose—

[Mike Penning]

I will not give way again.

Let me now touch on what is an important, and understandably emotive, provision in the Bill. This relates to amendment 5, tabled by the hon. Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown). I desperately have no intention of making life difficult for any individual group; my sole role as a Minister at this Dispatch Box is to protect. When I first looked at the proposals in the Bill, one of the things I asked straight away was, “Okay, tell me about poppers and alkyl nitrites”—I knew very little about them.

Bearing in mind that my role is to protect people and to make sure that this legislation does its job, one of the first things that was put in front of me is the fact that since 1993 these nitrates have been mentioned 20 times on death certificates. Then after that—quite late on, to be fair—I started to listen to other groups, because it was the first time they had asked me to do so. The Bill had gone through the Lords and started its Committee stage when, in Committee, I offered to meet, as I always do, any group that wanted to come and see me. Groups that were going to be affected by the poppers ban came to see me and started to give evidence that these substances were not as dangerous as I had said—and have probably just said again.

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[Steve Brine]

May I echo the words of both Front Benchers about what a pleasure it has been to work on this Bill and to work with Members from the three main parties? During this process there had been complete consensus and we had no Divisions even in the Public Bill Committee; I served on the Health and Social Care Bill Committee in the last Parliament and I am not used to such Bill Committees. It therefore came as a bit of a rude shock when, at the end of this process and like the No. 10 bus, we had three Divisions in a row—

[Paul Flynn]

rose—

[Steve Brine]

I hope the hon. Gentleman will not mind if I do not give way, because two of my colleagues wish to speak and we are going to finish on time. I want to say just three things. Although I do not wish to downplay the importance of the subject, it is unfortunate that we have spent so much time discussing amendment 5 on poppers. All I will say is that it is a hugely important issue, and we need to get it resolved and to move quickly on from it. I really appreciated it when the Minister said “immediately” and “by the summer”. I wrote those phrases down, and, as his former PPS, he knows that I will hold him to his word.

I have been in the House since 2010, and have found that the interest in this subject has been huge. Debates in Westminster Hall and questions to the Prime Minister in the previous Parliament led to the matter being included in manifestos at the general election. Here we are today, and we are almost done with it. To explain why it is important I wish to return to the story of an 18-year-old from my constituency who died at a music festival. She had everything to live for—she was an Army cadet, and a Duke of Edinburgh gold award winner—but for £40 her life was gone. Her dad said at the inquest:

“I always imagined if any harm came to Ellie it would be on a bungee jump, canoeing down a fierce river, or in an accident on a mountain—but nothing like this. She was so sensible. It is an absolute tragedy for our family. It was one act of stupidity that has destroyed a family.”

That says it all about why we are here.

Let us remember that new psychoactive substances are notoriously difficult to identify. Currently, they have to be regulated on a substance-by-substance, or even group-by-group, basis because of the diversity and the speed with which they are developed to replace drugs that are controlled under the 1971 Act. The cruellest danger of the so-called legal highs is that I have seen them sold as “harmless fun” at so many festivals that I happily attend with my friends and, this summer, with my family, and they are of course anything but that.

Do I think that the Bill addresses the problem? I believe so, because it is the blanket ban that we were promised. It is a Bill that we have been crying out for and campaigning for over many years. The current response in Hampshire, which I represent, is built around reducing demand, restricting supply and the use of Trading Standards. Hampshire Trading Standards has tried everything, but it has been unable successfully to secure a prosecution using existing legislation for the sale of NPS by head shops in the county. Instead it has focused on supporting the police using current antisocial behaviour legislation where that can be associated with a problem retailer. It does not take a genius to work out that that is merely fiddling while Rome burns. It is all good work, but, without this legislation, we have been tying our hands behind our backs, and we are now nearly there.

I mentioned head shops. There was one on Stockbridge Road in my constituency and it was still there on Second Reading. I am glad to say that it was closed down last month under antisocial behaviour legislation. My hope is that this legislation will lead to the end of many, many more head shops, as happened in Ireland.

Have we improved the Bill as it has gone through the House? As I said, I sat on the Bill Committee where we introduced, under clause 1, the new offence of possession of a psychoactive substance in the secure estate. That is absolutely crucial, and like the Minister, I share a great deal of hope that that will make a big difference. There is a huge problem in the secure estate right now, and we have a responsibility to tackle it.

In conclusion, this is a very good Bill. It has been a long time coming, and it has been a pleasure to play even a small part in it. It was a manifesto commitment, and we are getting on with delivering it. We are here to do no harm, and to do as much good as we possibly can. As the Minister has said, although the Bill is not perfect, it is a giant leap forward.

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[Paul Flynn]

Evidence-free and prejudice-rich, this Bill will do harm. It is evidence-free because the House has ignored the evidence of the countries that have taken this step before and have increased drug use. We banned mephedrone, and the result was that its use increased again. By banning a drug, we make it more attractive, drive it underground, increase the prices, and have more irresponsible people selling it.

I have been in this House for every cannabis debate—every drugs debate—for the past 28 years. It is the shared foolishness of the House to believe that prohibition works. It does not: it makes things worse. Drugs will not be controlled by this Bill just as they are not controlled in our prisons, where there is illegal drug use in every single one. This is a foolish Bill based on prejudice and not on evidence.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read the Third time and passed, with amendments.