Drug Treatment Services

Debate between Paul Sweeney and Seema Kennedy

Tuesday 16th July 2019 Westminster Hall

[Seema Kennedy]

As I say, that is a matter for the Home Office. I sense the hon. Lady’s frustration, but I am not responsible for that area. I have already said twice that I am happy to take that point away. Tabling business in the Chamber really is not my responsibility. I sense and am cognisant of the frustration in the House.

Under the 2017 drug strategy, we are involved in delivering actions across four themes: reducing demand to prevent drug use and its escalation; restricting supply; building recovery; and a new strand focused on global action, which is important. We need a partnership-based approach alongside the treatment system; other partners, such as the mental health and criminal justice systems, have key roles to play in securing the drug strategy’s aims.

I attend a cross-ministerial drug strategy board with Ministers from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, the Home Office, the Ministry of Justice and representatives of Public Health England. Additionally, the Home Secretary has appointed Professor Dame Carol Black to lead a major review of drugs, looking at a range of issues, including the system of support and enforcement around drug misuse, to inform our thinking about tackling drug harms. Dame Carol will report later this summer.

I acknowledge the concerns about the funding of public health services, and that local authorities need to make difficult choices about how they spend their money to be able to continue providing effective drug treatment services. Local authorities will receive £3.1 billion in this financial year, ring-fenced exclusively for use on public health, including drug addiction. In addition, we are investing more than £16 billion for public health over the five years to the end of 2020. It is a condition of the public health grant that local authorities have regard to the need to improve the take-up and outcomes from drug and alcohol misuse treatment services. Public health funding is a matter for the next spending review, in which it will be looked at in the light of the best available evidence.

[Mr Sweeney]

Does the Minister accept that it is within the remit of the Department of Health and Social Care to consider the possibility of not only drug consumption rooms but expanding the scope, based on a heroin-assisted treatment facility, to provide safe prescribing clinics, which have far lower thresholds and which would provide greater access to safe drug use?

[Seema Kennedy]

I will have to respond to that in writing.

It is not possible for the treatment system to bear sole responsibility for responding to these challenges. Where necessary, the Government are prepared to act to ensure that our response enables us to reduce the harms caused by drugs. We are already acting on designating third-generation synthetic cannabinoids, such as Spice, as class B drugs under the Misuse of Drugs Act. In response to the increase in drug-related deaths, PHE has been working to better understand how to best protect people from dying of overdoses.

Although we have made strong progress in tackling the human and financial harms associated with drug misuse, we know that there is more still to do, and that there are emerging challenges that we need to tackle. We will approach these issues with the full range of partners who are essential to delivering the drugs strategy, enabling us to build on such achievements—without being complacent—and drive further progress.