Ten-Year Drugs Strategy

Philip Hollobone Excerpts

Monday 6th December 2021 Commons Chamber

[Kit Malthouse]

I agree with both the hon. Lady and my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Nickie Aiken). Of the £300 million that we will be spending, £145 million will be on enhancing and turbocharging our effort against county lines.

Both hon. Members made a good point about the pernicious nature of the exploitation perpetrated by these drug dealers on young people. I hope that they will both be interested to know that police forces have brought successful prosecutions on the grounds of modern slavery. It would be good to see a prosecution on the basis of child grooming, not least because we think it would be an enormous deterrent to a drug dealer to know they would spend their time inside on the sex offenders’ wing.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

I warmly welcome the Government’s 10-year anti-drugs strategy. Will my right hon. Friend the Minister for Crime and Policing join me in congratulating Northamptonshire police, which has had considerable success in recent months and years in busting county lines drug gangs in and out of Kettering and the county, aided not least by automatic number plate recognition technology? Can we have more ANPR so that we can identify the vehicles that the drugs barons are driving around in?

[Kit Malthouse]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. I agree that Northamptonshire police’s bust a couple of weeks ago was remarkable. It was a huge one, intercepting drugs valued into the many millions of pounds. That will have had a massive impact on that particular business and, I guess, left it vulnerable to those who want to collect the debts.

My hon. Friend is right that the key to interfering with this business—it is critical—is gripping the transport network. As I hope he knows, we have funded a taskforce in the British Transport police, which every day is intercepting drugs and money, and young people exploited on the rail network. Our analysis of ANPR, making sure that we understand movements and therefore raise the likelihood of a drug interception on the road, improves every day. I hope he will see that in his constituency in the months to come.