Refugee Children: Family Reunion in the UK

Paul Sweeney Excerpts

Thursday 22nd February 2018 Westminster Hall

[Hugh Gaffney (Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered reunion for refugee children with family in the UK.

I am grateful to colleagues for joining me this Thursday afternoon to discuss issues affecting some of the most vulnerable people on our planet. I also thank you, Dame Cheryl, for permitting me to make a personal comment before I turn to the main thrust of my speech.

I would like to apologise to this House for the inappropriate words that I used in a speech in Edinburgh at a Labour event to mark Burns night. I unreservedly apologise for the offence caused. I used inappropriate and offensive words, and I was wrong to do so. I will be working to restore my relationship with the communities concerned over the coming months, making a positive change, and to ensure that society is as tolerant and inclusive as it should be. Thank you for letting me make that apology, Dame Cheryl.

I thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting this important debate. I want to mention the Members who have sponsored and supported this debate: the hon. Members for Glasgow East (David Linden), for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) and for North Down (Lady Hermon), my hon. Friend the Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Catherine West), the hon. Member for Stafford (Jeremy Lefroy), my hon. Friends the Members for East Lothian (Martin Whitfield), for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Ged Killen) and for Easington (Grahame Morris), the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire (Heidi Allen), my hon. Friends the Members for Wigan (Lisa Nandy) and for Hartlepool (Mike Hill), the hon. Members for Oxford West and Abingdon (Layla Moran) and for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Martyn Day), my hon. Friends the Members for Birmingham, Hall Green (Mr Godsiff) and for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter), the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Angus Brendan MacNeil) and my hon. Friend the Member for Gower (Tonia Antoniazzi). They represent all parts of our United Kingdom, and that is evidence of the importance of this issue. I thank all the humanitarian and international development fields for their support in preparing this brief.

Thanks to Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat and our computer and television screens, our world gets smaller every day. What happens in far-flung parts of the world affects us all; it is made clear and obvious to us and it provides us with a moral responsibility to act. Few people in my constituency, Scotland or indeed the rest of the United Kingdom can say that they have not seen or been affected by the humanitarian crisis that blights our world today.

Some of the context of this debate is very scary. It is criminal that more than half of the 22.5 million refugees across the world are children. In 2010-11, there were about 66,000 children moving across borders. Five years later there was a fivefold increase. At least 300,000 unaccompanied and separated children were registered moving across borders in more than 80 countries during 2015-16.

In a debate in the main Chamber on refugees and human rights on 24 January 2018, the shadow Foreign Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry), said:

“Our global leadership is needed now more than ever, not least because the five challenges that currently leave 65 million people in our world internally displaced or as refugees are getting only worse.”—[Official Report, 24 January 2018; Vol. 635, c. 285.]

There are challenges at home, in all communities across the United Kingdom, but there are challenges abroad too, which the shadow Foreign Secretary went on to highlight in that debate and we all know very well.

On 15 December 2017, the noble Baroness Trafford, Minister of State at the Home Office, announced that the Home Office is currently considering a new resettlement and asylum strategy. The Government say that the new strategy will make “improvements” and “changes” to the United Kingdom’s policies on refugee family reunification.

[Mr Paul Sweeney (Glasgow North East) (Lab/Co-op)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that there is an urgent need to amend the UK’s immigration rules on refugee family reunion, to reduce the dangerous journeys that many refugees are forced to take and to provide safe and legal routes for vulnerable children to reach family members in the UK? That has unfortunately been left out of the upcoming private Member’s Bill promoted by the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Angus Brendan MacNeil) on refugee family reunion, and that omission ought surely to be rectified urgently.

[Hugh Gaffney]

My hon. Friend is right.

Medical Cannabis

Paul Sweeney Excerpts

Tuesday 20th February 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hurd]

Of course, policy must be evidence-led, so Governments of all colours must keep the evidence under review. I think that the next critical milestone will be the output of the WHO review. Cannabis is a highly complex substance, and the review is looking at it from every angle to try to give us the most definitive, up-to-date view on its medicinal and therapeutic benefits.

[Mr Paul Sweeney (Glasgow North East) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Minister says that public health concerns are a key driver of policy making, but, as we have seen with the case just for piloting safe drug consumption rooms, the Government stubbornly refuse to acknowledge the overwhelming body of evidence that shows that public health would benefit. Is this not just another example of the Government putting the inertia of the criminal justice system ahead of an urgent public health issue, with drug-related deaths at epidemic levels? Will the Government not change the emphasis in policy making to matters of public health, rather than the inertia of the criminal justice system, which for 40 years has had an obsolete and arbitrary method of regulating drugs in this country?

[Mr Hurd]

I do not recognise that description of “inertia”. I have tried to give a flavour of the fact that this is a highly complex area that we keep under constant review.

Drug Consumption Rooms

Paul Sweeney Excerpts

Wednesday 17th January 2018 Westminster Hall

[Mr Paul Sweeney (Glasgow North East) (Lab/Co-op)]

Thank you, Ms Ryan, for your agile and dynamic chairing of this debate, and congratulations to the hon. Member for Inverclyde (Ronnie Cowan) on securing it. It is on a vital issue that we need to address in this House.

The Glasgow safer drug consumption facility and heroin-assisted treatment pilot project were initially advocated by the Labour administration on Glasgow City Council. It was led by Councillor Matt Kerr, who was convenor of social work at the time, acting on a recommendation from the Glasgow City Alcohol and Drug Partnership that it was a worthwhile and heavily evidenced method to improve the safety and hygiene of intravenous drug use in the city. Indeed, it received cross-party support and benefited from wide support, including that of the hon. Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss), who at the time was serving on Glasgow City Council.

As many Members may be aware, the issue of drug use and drug-related mortality in Glasgow is particularly acute, and it is a problem that necessitates radical and disruptive new approaches. Almost a third—267—of all Scotland’s drug deaths in 2016 occurred within the Greater Glasgow and Clyde NHS health board area. Per 1 million people, there are 283 drug-related deaths in Glasgow, but the average across the EU is just 20. That means that Glasgow’s drug death rate is an appalling 1,315% higher than the EU average and 329% higher than in England and Wales.

Last year, 1,707 people died in the UK from a heroin overdose, yet no one has died from an overdose in a supervised drug consumption room anywhere in the world at any time. That is due to both the hygienic environment and medical supervision, as well as the readily available supply of life-saving overdose drugs, such as naloxone.

According to the most recent estimates, around 13,600 people aged between 15 and 64 in the Glasgow City Council area are problematic drug users. That represents 3% of the population, which is the highest prevalence rate of all local authorities in Scotland and significantly higher than the Scottish average of 1.75%.

In my constituency of Glasgow North East, there are particularly high levels of drug use in Possilpark and Springburn, which are two of the most economically deprived areas of the constituency following eight long years of brutal austerity. That serves only to drive up levels of despair and alienation in these communities, which is one of the main reasons why people fall into the pernicious trap of hard drug addiction. These areas have also been plagued by the brutal organised crime war between rival factions seeking to control the supply of drugs in the city.

Drug consumption rooms offer hope in this otherwise bleak landscape of despair. They are used as an effective public health measure in the Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, Spain, Norway, France, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Canada and Australia, with 90 facilities currently operating in 61 cities.

It is clear that drug consumption rooms are a worthwhile and practical measure to introduce to Glasgow. They benefit society, for example by reducing drug-related litter and needle-stick injuries, reducing the spread of disease and making our streets safer, as well as having significant health benefits for those who use drugs. Drug consumption rooms significantly reduce fatal overdoses and the needle-sharing that can lead to infections, including HIV and hepatitis, by providing people with sterile equipment. They have also been shown to increase the number of people entering treatment programmes.

Use of a safe space provides the opportunity to start engaging people and to build up trusting relationships with appropriate professionals, which supports them to take those first steps towards dealing with their addictions. The benefits of DCRs have already been demonstrated elsewhere, yet attempts to set up the UK’s first DCR have been blocked. That is despite the idea being supported by the British Medical Association.

That decision is typical of a Government who take little heed of scientific evidence of what works and what saves lives. This is primarily a question of public health, as has been said before, and not one of criminal justice. I therefore urge the Government to adopt an open-minded approach, heed the consensus of all relevant parties and expert bodies in Glasgow, and reconsider amending the obsolete Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 to permit the piloting of the safe drug consumption facility in Glasgow. That will allow them to assess the opportunity that that facility may bring to mitigate and solve the extensive harms caused by the unregulated and unsafe drug consumption environment in my city.

Drugs Policy

Paul Sweeney Excerpts

Tuesday 18th July 2017 Commons Chamber

[Norman Lamb (North Norfolk) (LD)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Emma Hardy) on an immensely impressive maiden speech. I confess that I am quite a fan of her predecessor’s—I have not said that until now—but I am now also clearly a fan of the hon. Lady, who, like the other two Members who have made maiden speeches today, spoke incredibly powerfully. The hon. Member for Slough (Mr Dhesi) gave a powerful and moving speech, and I am just glad I was here to witness it. I thank him.

This has been a fascinating debate, in which there have been more voices for reform than I have heard before; I am particularly encouraged by what the hon. Member for Manchester, Withington (Jeff Smith) said. I will come to my thoughts on reform in a moment, but I want to start by acknowledging that there are important things in the Government’s drugs strategy.

I welcome the shift away from an over-emphasis on abstinence, which in many respects was damaging. I also welcome a focus on evidence-based drug treatment programmes and on addressing the underlying causes of addiction, whether poor housing or mental health issues. I acknowledge those good things. I also welcome the references to drug rehabilitation requirements as a sentencing option along with alcohol rehabilitation requirements and mental health treatment requirements. That is a sensible innovation. I note the preparation of a protocol to ensure good access to treatment and the potential for a maximum waiting time, which all make sense.

However, although the mental health treatment requirements, introduced by the last Labour Government, were a very good policy response, they were virtually never used across the country. Organising mental health treatment services alongside the criminal justice system has proved to be beyond most parts of the country, and I do not want the same to happen with drug and alcohol orders. It is really important that the Government focus on making sure that all three of those sentencing options are available everywhere to ensure that when it comes to offences of which the underlying cause is an addiction or mental health problem, the person gets access to treatment and not just punishment. That is incredibly important.

I want to focus on two key objections. The first has been mentioned by other hon. Members: the cut in public health funding. Frankly, that makes no sense at all. If we are to ensure that the NHS as a whole is more sustainable, we have to shift resources to prevention, not cut the funding available, which is completely counter-productive. In a report published just last week, the King’s Fund highlighted the fact that across the country councils have planned expenditure cuts to really important public health programmes: sexual health clinics as well as programmes reducing harm from smoking, alcohol and drugs. A total of £85 million is involved. The spend on tackling drug misuse for adults involves a planned cut of £22 million, or 5.5%. It totally undermines the Government’s strategy, which, in any case, I disagree with, to be cutting funding from the treatment programmes that can help people to recover. Unless the Government seek to address that, they will fail in their objective.

My second objection is far more fundamental: it relates to the philosophy behind the Government’s approach to drug use. Instinctively, I am hostile to drugs. As the father of two boys, now in their 20s, I get really anxious at the thought of my children—our children—taking drugs, or, indeed, engaging in excessive use of alcohol or smoking. Let us remember, in all the talk about harm from drugs, that smoking, which involves a legal product, kills 100,000 people in our country every year. There is no consistency in Government policy at all, and that is simply not good enough. My starting point is not to advocate a free-for-all but to find an effective approach to the use of drugs that seeks to reduce harm. Surely that is what we should all be searching for. However, the Government’s approach and that of successive Governments—indeed, that of much of the western world—amounts to a monumental failure of public policy. We need a fundamentally new approach.

The Royal Society for Public Health, in its response to the Government’s strategy, says that it

“falls far short of the fundamental reorientation of policy towards public health and away from criminal justice needed to tackle rising drug harm. Decriminalisation of drug possession and use is a critical enabler that would enable drug treatment services to reach as many people as possible as effectively as possible. Instead, the Government still continues to lead with unhelpful rhetoric about ‘tough law enforcement’ that contributes to the marginalisation and stigmatisation of vulnerable drug users”.

If the Government are interested in ensuring that they follow the right approach, surely they should be listening very carefully to those experts in public health.

The British Medical Journal editorial from November last year makes an incredibly important point, saying that

“the effectiveness of prohibition laws, colloquially known as the ‘war on drugs’, must be judged on outcomes”—

what is actually achieved. It continues:

“And too often the war on drugs plays out as a war on the millions of people who use drugs, and disproportionately”—

this is a really important point—

“on people who are poor or from ethnic minorities and on women.”

If the effect of the Government’s policy is as it says in the British Medical Journal, then surely the Government need to think again. The editorial also says:

“All wars cause human rights violations, and the war on drugs is no different. Criminally controlled drug supply markets lead to appalling violence—causing an estimated 65 000-80 000 deaths in Mexico in the past decade”.

That is an extraordinary death toll that surely we should not ignore.

I want to focus on the number of people who die through drug misuse. We heard earlier that a third of such deaths in Europe are in the UK. Ten families are bereaved every single day as a result of drug use. That could be a loved one of any of us in this Chamber. If we think that official Government policy is perhaps contributing to that—and I argue that it is—we need to think again. In 2015, the number of deaths was up by more than 10%. The previous year it had risen by more than 14%, and the year before that by nearly 20%. That is a shocking failure of official policy. Deaths from heroin doubled between 2012 and 2015.

[Mr Paul J. Sweeney (Glasgow North East) (Lab/Co-op)]

One interesting way of reducing harm from intravenous drug use—particularly heroin, which the right hon. Gentleman just mentioned—is the use of safe and hygienic facilities for intravenous drug users in a non-stigmatic environment. Glasgow is piloting that solution in the city, and perhaps it is worth noting as an option that we should look at and consider the results of with interest.

[Norman Lamb]

I totally agree with the hon. Gentleman, and I was going to mention that solution in a moment. Let me quote Anne-Marie Cockburn—she has been mentioned in the debate—from the Anyone’s Child project:

“I invite the Prime Minister to come and stand by my daughter’s grave, and tell me her approach to drugs is working.”

That is a parent who lost their daughter as a result of the current approach to drug policy.

The claim in the strategy that the increase in the number of deaths relates to a problem of ageing drug users simply will not wash. The same demographic is replicated across Europe, including in Portugal, but the increase in deaths is not, and we have to ask why. The number of deaths per 100,000 of population in the UK is 10 times that in Portugal. I appreciated the Minister’s statement that she would listen carefully to what I said, and I hold her in high regard as well, but when our death rate is 10 times that of Portugal, which has chosen, incidentally, an approach that commands cross-party support in the country, from left to right, surely she should stop and listen. Surely she should investigate further Portugal’s approach, which has resulted in such a reduction in the number of deaths from drug use.

In 2015, 1,573 people died of a heroin overdose in this country. That is shameful. In the past, those people might have been dismissed as victims of their own stupidity, but we can no longer accept such thinking. These are people. They are citizens of our country, and they are losing their lives. They would not have died if they had had access to the treatment rooms that the hon. Member for Glasgow North East (Mr Sweeney) referred to. So why are the UK Government resistant, as I understand they are, to the project proposed in Glasgow, which has the potential to save lives? Surely that should be part of the strategy, but it does not even mention drug use rooms of that sort. Why on earth not, given that all the evidence points towards significant reductions in the number of deaths? No one dies of an overdose when they take their drugs in such safe rooms. Why are we not moving towards that? It is a disgrace, frankly, that we are not.