Oral Answers to Questions

Ronnie Cowan Excerpts

Monday 18th October 2021 Commons Chamber

[Ronnie Cowan (Inverclyde) (SNP)]

To catch up on what was said there, can the Minister tell me on what research the UK Government are basing this current policy on psilocybin? Can that research be made available?

[Kit Malthouse]

The research is being undertaken in a number of academic institutions, as far as I am aware. I am happy to dig out the detail of where specifically this is being researched—I do not have it to hand. It is worth reinforcing the point that the process for the rescheduling of compounds is that approval is given for a medicine by the MHRA, and advice is then taken from the ACMD as to the rescheduling, as we did with Epidyolex. As soon as those medicines are approved by the MHRA for use, I would be happy to consider rescheduling.

Misuse of Drugs Act

Ronnie Cowan Excerpts

Thursday 17th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Ronnie Cowan (Inverclyde) (SNP) [V]]

The stated purpose of the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 is to prevent the misuse of controlled drugs. By any measurement that we wish to employ, the Act has failed. The fact that it has been allowed to fail for 50 years is an abomination. As was stated, we have gone from fewer than 100 deaths in 1971 to more than 5,000 in 2020. The legislation is flawed and the job we are asking the law enforcement agencies to do is impossible. The legislation is flawed and the job we are asking the law enforcement agencies to do is impossible. The fallout is picked up by the NHS and many, many third sector organisations.

A lot has changed since 1971. Asbestos is no longer a popular building material. Women can no longer be fired for being pregnant. In many situations we have moved forward with the times, but on drugs policy we are firmly entrenched in the past. When we changed our drug policy in 1971, we junked the British system in favour of the misguided policy of Richard Nixon’s America. The result has been an increase in crime, an increase in corruption, an increase in harm, and an increase in the number of drug-related deaths. This involves our communities being subjected to violent crime, vicious turf wars, and the corruption of the young and often vulnerable members of society. We cannot and never will be able to arrest our way out of a drugs war. Substances that were once legal are now made by criminals with scant regard for consumer safety. They are often cut with other products and potency cannot be guaranteed. As a result, many young people have died experimenting with drugs. One tablet—one tablet—is all it takes and a life can be lost because drugs are not regulated.

Other countries are not inflicted by this paralysis. They have decriminalised and legalised drugs. They have drug consumption rooms. They have diversion schemes. I visited Portugal and Catalonia to see what they are doing and it works. It saves lives and it rehabilitates. Theirs are humane schemes because they treat drug addiction and harm as a health issue, not a criminal justice issue. They are creating an environment where people are not marginalised and ostracised. As a result, they are not experiencing prejudice because of their health issue. That can only happen when there is a change of mindset that facilitates the provision of services. We need to waken up to the reality that the policies we are pursuing are not doing any good and, in some cases, are actually making the situation worse. Recent evidence from Canada, as quoted in the Scottish Affairs Committee’s drugs and crime report, showed overdose prevention centres in British Columbia alone saved between 160 and 350 lives in 20 months. Yet the UK Government’s attitude is that the establishment of drug consumption rooms would condone drug use.

This lack of empathy and refusal to bow to evidence makes me wonder if the UK Home Office thinks that the life of a drug addict is a life not worth saving. Neither the Home Office nor the Department of Health and Social Care has provided any evidence to contradict the findings of numerous reviews, including by the European Monitoring Centre on Drugs and Drug Addiction and the ACMD, which said that such facilities have not been found to increase injecting drug use or local crime rates. Listen to the United Nations executive board chaired by the UN Secretary-General and representing 31 UN agencies, including the World Health Organisation and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. They have called on member states to promote alternatives to conviction and punishment in appropriate cases, including the decriminalisation of drug possession for personal use.

Minister, please drop the coming-down-hard-on-criminals rhetoric. It may sound good, but it does not work today and it has not worked for 50 years. It is time to end the war on drugs and start the war on the causes of addiction. And please engage with Scotland’s Minister for Drugs Policy, Angela Constance. Help her to remove obstacles, so we can have a more progressive and more effective drugs policy, one that has health at its core.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Thank you very much, Ronnie. I am sorry you couldn’t have the timing clock visible, but my goodness me you did finish within the five minutes, so thank you very much.

Intelligence and Security Committee: Russia Report

Ronnie Cowan Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd July 2020 Commons Chamber

[James Brokenshire]

I will take no lectures from the Labour party, or indeed the Whips’ question that the hon. Gentleman has asked me. This Government and my party are vigilant on issues of national security, and we will remain so. We will be clear-eyed as to the threat that Russia poses, and where further action needs to be taken, as I have said, we will do so.

[Ronnie Cowan (Inverclyde) (SNP) [V]]

The report said that it was surprisingly difficult to establish who has responsibility for what. That conclusion is supported by the Government’s response, which alludes to the responsibilities of the Paymaster General, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, DCMS, the Home Office, the Defence Secretary, the Foreign Secretary, and the PM. At 10 am this morning, we still did not know who had drawn the short straw and would come to the House to defend the indefensible. Is not this report, the Government’s delay in publishing it and their reaction to it just further examples of the incompetence and arrogance that we have come to expect of this Conservative and Unionist Government?

Public Services

Ronnie Cowan Excerpts

Wednesday 16th October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Ronnie Cowan (Inverclyde) (SNP)]

I want briefly to cover a range of subjects relevant to my constituency of Inverclyde. Despite devolution, it is always important to remind constituents of the influence that Westminster and the UK Government continue to exert over public services in our community. My constituency of Inverclyde has been particularly hard hit by the UK Government in recent years. Our coastguard station was closed, with the loss of 31 expert jobs. That decision was taken at a UK level, and against the will of local people and the experts who said that safety would be compromised as a result of the closure. Likewise, in Port Glasgow, the jobcentre closed in 2017, despite Inverclyde having some of the highest rates of poverty and deprivation in the United Kingdom. Clients of this service must now rely on a single office in Greenock, which covers a wide geographical area from Langbank to Skelmorlie, both of which are outside my constituency.

On broadband, it is time for the UK Government to take notice of Scotland. Telecoms is reserved to Westminster, yet the UK Government are contributing £21 million to the Reaching 100% programme—just 3% of the total. That is in stark contrast to the £600 million that is being provided by the SNP Scottish Government to ensure that all homes and businesses across Scotland have superfast broadband.

The UK Government could also support the delivery of health services in Scotland by taking two specific actions. First, they could support those parents of severely epileptic children by making it easier for them to access medical cannabis. Last year, the Government made all the right mood music, but then failed to provide. In March of this year, I was one of the 80 MPs who delivered a petition with almost 600,000 signatures on that subject. The UK Government have made some minuscule steps forward, but there is no point in legalising certain medications if no one can have access to them. I should clarify that: I said that no can have access to them, but if a person can afford to pay for a private prescription and has the tens of thousands of pounds per year, then they can access medical cannabis. If the UK Government are unwilling to take the necessary action to help those families, they should accept the call made by the Scottish Government in 2018 and devolve the necessary powers to Holyrood.

In that same spirit, it is time for the UK Government to allow a drug consumption room—a safe drug consumption facility or an overdose prevention room, whatever you want to call it—to be established in the west of Scotland. The Scottish Government and Glasgow City Council, with cross-party support, want this measure to progress because the UK Government refuse to let go of their failed and outdated policy on drugs.

Scotland is facing an unprecedented drug crisis; some 1,187 people died last year in Scotland. The UK Government will not allow anyone to try something new, based on rational, evidence-based policy. DCRs across the world, with the correct medical supervision and Naloxone on hand, have seen zero deaths—not one person has died in a DCR. The UK Government must open their eyes to these possibilities.

[Alison Thewliss]

Does my hon. Friend share my frustration that Glasgow’s plans for a DCR have been in place for three years now? The Home Office has not even bothered to come to Glasgow to see why they are so needed.

[Ronnie Cowan]

It is symptomatic of the fact that these people will not look at the evidence placed in front of them. They want to reinvent the wheel at every opportunity. The NHS in Greater Glasgow, Glasgow City Council and the Scottish Government all want this to happen. If people want to visit Glasgow and other areas, they can see the problem at first hand. We are offering a solution.

I tried to intervene during the Secretary of State’s speech, but she refused to take my intervention. She was talking about county lines. I encourage the Government to approach the police and ask them to stop recruiting young people. They are approaching young kids and young vulnerable men and women on county lines and using them as police informants. That is an extremely dangerous policy to pursue, and I ask the Government to revisit it.

In conclusion, much of Westminster’s stewardship of public services can be boiled down to a policy of blocking, stifling or closing public services, which might otherwise act in the public good. Scotland deserves better, but it cannot expect it from the current Prime Minister and his impotent UK Government.

Oral Answers to Questions

Ronnie Cowan Excerpts

Monday 15th July 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Wallace]

As the hon. Gentleman will know, I have been talking about that issue for a long time, and we have been working hard on it. “Failure to prevent” in relation to tax evasion is now being rolled out, and the National Security Council discussed the issue more than a year ago. The hon. Gentleman will, I hope, wait to see what happens, but we are determined to try to deal with it.

[Ronnie Cowan (Inverclyde) (SNP)]

3. What assessment his Department has made of the effectiveness of the EU settlement scheme application process.

[The Minister for Immigration (Caroline Nokes)]

EU citizens are our friends, our neighbours and our colleagues, and we want them to stay. The settlement scheme is performing well. The latest published statistics show that more than 800,000 applications have been received and the majority of people are finding it easy to apply. Additional support is available to those who are vulnerable, or who do not have the appropriate access, skills or confidence to apply online.

[Ronnie Cowan]

Instead of implementing a scheme that makes EU citizens—many of whom have lived here for a great many years—unlawfully resident if they fail to apply by December 2020, will the Minister introduce a declaratory system whereby people apply for proof of settled status rather than the right to stay?

[Caroline Nokes]

A declaratory system that did not require EU citizens to obtain status and provide evidence of it would risk causing confusion, especially among the most vulnerable, and people might struggle to prove their status in years to come. There would also be a risk of confusion among employers and service providers, and the system might impede EU citizens’ access to benefits and services to which they are entitled.

Knife Crime

Ronnie Cowan Excerpts

Thursday 24th January 2019 Westminster Hall

[Ronnie Cowan (Inverclyde) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Graham, and to summarise the debate and speak on behalf of the Scottish National party.

I thank the hon. Member for Leyton and Wanstead (John Cryer) for securing this very important debate. He took time to stress the importance of an approach that addresses prevention as well as cure. He also asked that we address the causes of crime and, in doing so, adopt a joined-up approach.

The hon. Member for Hornchurch and Upminster (Julia Lopez) asked what could be done to monitor social media, which can be used to promote violent crime. The hon. Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown) highlighted the extended trauma felt within communities and the fear it spreads. The right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr Duncan Smith) noted that violent crimes are sometimes associated with tit-for-tat crime among criminal gangs, and mentioned the role that our media play in that. He also mentioned the violence reduction unit in Scotland, which I will talk about in greater detail later.

The hon. Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy) rightly talked about the victims and their families, and highlighted an increase in violent organised crime and the young people who are, and will be, put at risk until we address this problem. The hon. Member for Eltham (Clive Efford) talked about the need to invest in communities in a way that benefits them—“working with” rather than “doing to”. The hon. Member for Lewisham West and Penge (Ellie Reeves) expressed frustration that we are not keeping pace with the changing nature of the problem, and also referred to the VRU in Glasgow. The hon. Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Meg Hillier) spoke movingly about a young man who survived a terrible attack but whose mother now does not know where to turn. Where is the support for those victims? The alternative is young men and women being recruited into gangs, so we need intervention and support.

The right hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) said that he was weary, depressed and upset that we are still debating violent crime all these years after he came to this place, and that the statistics in England and Wales are getting worse. Like many others, he mentioned policing and county lines, which is surely a subject on which a debate is waiting to be had. Finally, the hon. Member for Croydon Central (Sarah Jones) asked the Minister to listen to the consensus of opinion that she has heard today. The hon. Lady also paid tribute to faith groups, which play an important part in our community, and I am glad that she found time to mention the excellent work that has been done in Polmont. From that brief summary we can feel the frustration and anger at the loss of life and the perversion of aspirations, especially among our young people.

A United Nations report published in 2005 found that Scotland was the most violent country in the developed world, with more than 2,000 people subject to violent attacks every week. In the same year, another report produced by the World Health Organisation determined that Scotland had the second highest murder rate in western Europe. Glasgow was widely claimed to be the murder capital of Europe, as was mentioned by the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green, with more than 70 knife-related murders every year.

Looking back on those statistics, one of the most eye-catching aspects was the rapid increase in crime over a relatively short period. Between 2003 and 2004, for example, the number of murders rose by almost 20% and the number of attempted murders rose by one third. An arms race was taking place on our streets as individuals sought to protect themselves from perceived threats. Drugs, alcohol and gang culture played a key role in that rapid rise in knife crime, and many urban areas of Scotland were affected.

That experience was not felt exclusively by Glaswegians. My constituency of Inverclyde also suffered—or, to be more specific, families suffered from the loss of loved ones as we tried to grapple with violence on our streets. Scotland stood at a crossroads, and it was at that point that Strathclyde police established the violence reduction unit, in an effort to change the circumstances that were giving Glasgow such a brutal reputation. There are similarities with London’s well-publicised problems with knife crime, which are spreading throughout the United Kingdom, in part due to county lines. Perhaps the rest of the United Kingdom is now standing at a crossroads as to how it tackles that problem.

Scotland’s choice was to take a public health approach to knife crime. While custodial sentences for handling offensive weapons tripled in length between 2005 and 2015, a number of other programmes were launched to engage directly with young people. For instance, a pilot scheme called No Knives, Better Lives was first implemented in my constituency of Inverclyde. That scheme was primarily an education programme and included workshops that allowed young people to speak with ex-offenders, victims and medical professionals as they learned about the consequences of carrying a knife. That programme was backed up by high-profile advertising campaigns in cinemas, bus stops and other public locations. By 2010, there had been a 35% drop in knife carrying, and since 2006-07, there has been a 68% decrease in violent crime in Inverclyde.

The VRU has been supported by the work of Medics Against Violence, a group of medical professionals from a range of disciplines who go out and speak with schoolchildren about their experiences with knife crime. It is one thing for a child to get a lecture from their family, or indeed from a politician; it is entirely another thing for them to hear an ambulance driver describe their experience of finding a murder victim, or a plastic surgeon describe the process of reconstructing a person’s face after a knife attack. However, the primary focus of the campaign was not shock and gore: it was the real-life stories that had the greatest impact on the students. Dr Christine Goodall, an oral surgeon, said in 2009:

“We realised that, in order to have some chance of preventing young people getting involved in violence, we had to address the problem early—it was no good waiting till we saw them in hospital after an injury. We realised we should be talking to young people before they accepted that violence was an inevitable part of their lives…We thought perhaps if we could take the doctors out of the clinics and operating theatres and into schools to talk about the consequences of violence from their point of view, we might have some chance of helping some young people avoid injury.”

Another community initiative established by the VRU was the “call in”, which called in more than 600 gang members in Glasgow. Those who attended listened to hard truths from former gang members and the families of murder victims. One attendee, named Paul, said:

“I felt excluded all my life. Now here was the police, who used to exclude me all the time and they were trying to include me.”

Among the 200 gang members who became directly involved in that initiative, violent offending halved and weapons possession dropped by 85%. Violence decreased even among those who did not attend the programme. More generally, the work of the VRU has contributed to the halving of Scotland’s homicide rate. Similarly, the number of recorded incidents of handling an offensive weapon declined by almost 70% between 2006 and 2016. The number of recorded violent crimes has also halved since 2006-07 to one of the lowest levels since 1974.

All of those achievements have been made possible by the more than £17 million in funding provided by the Scottish Government, including £1.6 million to the VRU’s community initiative to reduce violence—which tackles territorial gang culture in Glasgow—and £776,000 to the mentors in violence protection schools programme to continue its work of educating our young people about the impact of violence. That policy is a statement that the Scottish Government will not allow knife crime to be normalised.

Duncan Bew, the clinical lead for trauma and emergency surgery at King’s College London, who was cited earlier by the hon. Member for Croydon Central, stated:

“The VRU is run by the police force, with support from the Scottish government. This is highly unusual—Scotland has the world’s only police force to have formally adopted a public health model.”

I know that London can learn from our experience, and I am pleased to read that the city recently established a VRU. I wish its director, Lib Peck, all the best in her new role, and in spreading the message that violence is not inevitable.

In the words of a tireless knife crime campaigner from my constituency, John Muir MBE:

“We have to be honest about what is going on out there.”

We have clearly had some success in Scotland, but we cannot become complacent. Knife crime still exists, violence is still on our streets, and even one death from knife crime can devastate a community. I sincerely hope that the UK Government can learn the lessons of prevention and are taking a proactive approach, engaging with those at risk of going down the road of violence.

Synthetic Cannabinoids: Reclassification

Ronnie Cowan Excerpts

Tuesday 6th November 2018 Westminster Hall

[Ben Bradley (Mansfield) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the reclassification of synthetic cannabinoids.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship for the first time, Mr Howarth. I am grateful for the opportunity to raise this important issue in a debate. I thank the Backbench Business Committee for allowing me to do so.

I am continuing my campaign for reclassification of synthetic cannabinoids, known as synthetic cannabis, Mamba or Spice. These drugs are becoming a serious national problem. I want to raise the profile of this issue to make people aware of the devastating impact of the drugs in my constituency of Mansfield and across the entire UK. It is time to take proper action on the drugs and get Mamba and Spice off our streets.

Contrary to the assumption of some in Parliament, I do not believe that reclassification is a silver bullet or a quick-fix answer. In my recent correspondence with the Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, my hon. Friend the Member for Winchester (Steve Brine), who is responsible for public health and primary care, he stated that

“synthetic cannabinoid use is often part of a complex set of health and social issues; there is no single solution, and short-term approaches can just displace the problem”.

I share that sentiment. We clearly need an holistic approach to deal with these drugs. However, reclassification, although not the only solution, is a step in the right direction to give our police and local services the powers that they need to deal effectively with users and dealers. The current class B classification is limiting the action that local services and the police can take, which is further damaging some of our most deprived areas, where resources are already stretched.

[Ronnie Cowan (Inverclyde) (SNP)]

On the point about giving the police more powers, reclassifying what are termed SCRAs—synthetic cannabinoid receptor agonists—as class A drugs would not grant any additional enforcement powers to the police.

[Ben Bradley]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, but I disagree. My local police are adamant that on the street, in the town centre, they have more powers to deal with things such as heroin use than they do to deal with these drugs, and obviously the sentencing powers available through the judicial system are different. At the moment, when the police deal with things such as Mamba and Spice in Mansfield town centre, they do not work on the basis of drugs offences, but use antisocial behaviour and criminal behaviour orders, because they do not have the opportunity, through drugs legislation, to record what we are discussing today as offences.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ronnie Cowan (Inverclyde) (SNP)]

I thank the hon. Member for Mansfield (Ben Bradley) for bringing this topic back to this place. As he correctly points out, we have to raise the profile of the issue because it exists throughout the United Kingdom and beyond. Pushing it away instead of discussing it will never do anybody any good.

It is clear from hon. Members’ speeches today that we agree more than we disagree, but it is turning into groundhog day. We have had this conversation before. We agree that there is no silver bullet, that these drugs cause enormous damage, and that there is enormous strain on our local services. Where we disagree is on the effect that reclassifying these drugs will have. I repeat what I said at the start of the debate: reclassifying SCRAs as a class A drug will not grant the police any additional enforcement powers. It may make it easier for a police force to reprioritise, but it will not give it any extra powers.

Reclassification is all about longer sentences. The proposed solution would send problematic users, some with serious mental health issues, to overcrowded and understaffed prisons that are full of synthetic drugs, as has been pointed out. I do not see how that could possibly end well.

We are told that making synthetic cannabinoids class A drugs is not about trying to prosecute the end user, but about prosecuting higher up the chain. Are we going to leave the end users on the streets? We have heard how unpleasant our society finds that and how intolerant we are to people with mental health issues. If we are not going to arrest those people, why are we doing this? Is it so we can chase people further up the chain? If longer sentences for class A drugs worked, we would have no heroin or cocaine problem. We have tried that for years and it has not worked, yet we are going down the same path again.

I thank Transform, Release and Volteface for the information that they gave me in advance of the debate. Let me quote from a Volteface report:

“Dr Rob Ralphs, a senior lecturer in criminology at Manchester Metropolitan University, has researched Spice in prisons and within the homeless community in the city. He believes that making Spice Class A will make no real difference to its use, but may make the situation worse. While the market for Spice is, at present, relatively stable with four or five different strains of the drug in circulation, he said its potential reclassification could drive innovation, leading to new strains being developed to circumvent it”,

as has happened in the past. The report further quotes Dr Ralphs:

“Every time there’s been a change in the law, the next generation…has been even stronger… The big thing is why the homeless and prison populations are using it in the first place. It’s about putting money into engaging people into treatment services and trying to reduce the market. If you can reduce the market, the demand for it, then you will reduce it.”

The report continues:

“Professor Harry Sumnall, who specialises in substance use at Liverpool John Moores University’s Public Health Institute, also believes reclassification could make the problem of Spice worse.

‘When you take a police-oriented approach to a complex health and social issue you can never address the fundamental root causes of why some cities in the UK are experiencing harms with these substances…I don’t think the emergence of Spice and the concentration of harms in some users of Spice is down to the fact that the police aren’t arresting enough dealers. I don’t accept the fact that the police can’t arrest people or are unlikely or unwilling to prioritise the pursuit of dealers because it’s a Class B. There’s nothing to stop police prioritising dealers or users of Spice.’

He said the harms associated with heroin and crack cocaine ‘haven’t been resolved by the fact that they’re Class A drugs’ and that focusing on targeting dealers with harsher penalties would not lead to users being safer or healthier.”

The point about safety is important. When we try to chase these things up the chain, as it has been said that we are planning to do, drug dealers protect their marketplace with incredible violence. If they feel threatened or their users are put under more pressure, that violence will escalate.

Criminologists argue that that makes the market more harmful because of the risk increase—an increase in the price of drugs makes the market more profitable, and the more profit involved, the more the violence is used to protect it. The types of organised crime groups that might then enter the market, because the profits are higher, mean that violence and secondary harm increase.

Professor Sumnall believes calls to make Spice class A are a “symbolic response” to the issue, which

“doesn’t actually translate into any meaningful public health action unless there’s a real commitment to ensure good coverage of high quality services for these individuals”

who use it.

Going back to this letter signed by 20 police and crime commissioners, a line states:

“We would urge that synthetic cannabinoid products are reclassified from class B to class A.”

The letter also states its concern, five times—

“an urgent public health issue…most severe public health issue…As public health and substance misuse services are not currently taking the lead in meeting this growing challenge it is falling to the police…public health, mental health and addiction services…a public health challenge”—

that this is, categorically, a public health issue and that those who should be addressing it are not doing so.

According to Professor Sumnall, it is not being addressed because:

“The broader context of the failings in the criminal justice system, the fact that mental health service provision is in crisis, that local areas are experiencing around about a 30% cut in treatment budgets—those are the fundamental issues that need to be addressed rather than a totemic, symbolic response by making it a Class A”.

The blame lies here, in Parliament. The Select Committee on Science and Technology concluded in its report, “Drug classification: making a hash of it”, that the classification system was “not fit for purpose”. Harms of different drugs often bear little resemblance to their status in the ABC system, which has been distorted by political considerations and doomed attempts to send a message. That report was written in 2006, and we are none the wiser.

What can we do about that? Plenty of options are open to us, with plenty of examples around the world. Last week, I spoke to Nuno Capaz from Portugal. I asked him a straightforward question: is there a synthetic cannabis problem in Portugal? His answer was short, sharp and to the point: no. How can Portugal get this right, but we get it so wrong?

Canada’s example is to legalise and regulate real cannabis. In the Netherlands, because cannabis is legally available, the market for Spice is almost non-existent. People prefer the real thing, so demand never developed, as in Canada, Uruguay and many US states. The subtext to that is what Prime Minister Trudeau said last week about legalising cannabis—they are not doing it because it is good for people’s health, but because we know it is bad for our children’s health. That is a mindset that we have to adopt.

In conclusion, to improve life opportunities for people who use SCRAs, it is imperative that we properly fund schemes around employment, education and housing. People who use SCRAs should be diverted away from the criminal justice system. The diversion scheme in Durham, called Checkpoint, diverts people after arrest on the condition that they undertake a four-month programme to address their offending behaviour. As long as they comply, they will not get a criminal record. Initial findings from the pilot found that those who were diverted to Checkpoint had lower reoffending rates than those who were subject to out-of-court disposals such as cautions. Participants in Checkpoint also reported improved outcomes with substance misuse, alcohol misuse, accommodation, relationships, finances and mental health. Is that not what we are trying to achieve? We cannot ostracise a subsection of our citizens, driving them into more damage by pushing them into the criminal justice system, when we all agree that we are trying to provide better social services—a wraparound service—and the only way in which that will ever happen is if we buy into that concept and it is properly funded by this Government.

Drugs Policy

Ronnie Cowan Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd October 2018 Westminster Hall

[Ronnie Cowan (Inverclyde) (SNP)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered drugs policy.

The UK’s drugs policy is not just a combination of the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971, the Psychoactive Substances Act 2016, and a host of schedules and classifications; a range of laws has been developed and put in place over the years, guided by our perceived knowledge and our current attitude. We put those laws in place because we thought it was the right thing to do, and I believe that we got it wrong.

Outwith drugs law, we have laws that regulate the production, distribution, marketing and consumption of alcohol. Alcohol is an interesting case, because it is not included in the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971. It remains socially acceptable. It is consumed openly at christenings, naming ceremonies, weddings, civil partnerships and even funerals—society finds a place for alcohol at hatches, matches and dispatches. However, it was not always that way. Prohibition and abstinence were once very strong movements. In the 1920s, some states in the USA made alcohol illegal, and something strange happened. Prohibition, rather than stopping people drinking alcohol, delivered production, distribution and consumers into the hands of criminals who recognised a money-spinning venture when they saw one. The product became more potent, because that meant distributing smaller quantities while maintaining profit margins, and criminal gangs used extreme violence to protect their territory from rival gangs or gangsters. Levels of violence spiralled, and more and more people were criminalised for using alcohol. According to the academic and historian Michael Lerner:

“As the trade in illegal alcohol became more lucrative, the quality of alcohol on the black market declined. On average, 1000 Americans died every year during the Prohibition from the effects of drinking tainted liquor.”

When prohibition ended, levels of crime dropped dramatically and people’s health improved. They continued to drink alcohol, but the product was quality controlled and monitored, and nobody had to use violence to protect their market.

To this day, alcohol continues to damage people’s lives and ruin their health, but it is legal and regulated. Increasingly, people can find educational support, because they have no fear of being criminalised. Maybe in an ideal world, everybody would be so happy and content—so free of stress and anxiety, so confident and self-assured—that there would be no requirement for alcohol, or indeed any recreational drugs. However, we do not live in that ideal world, and we never have. Throughout history, for a variety of reasons, people have taken drugs. One hundred years ago, people could buy cocaine, heroin or morphine at pharmacies and department stores. During the first world war, Harrods sold kits with syringes and tubes of cocaine and heroin for the boys on the frontline. Queen Victoria recommended Vin Mariani—wine laced with cocaine. Anthony Eden was prescribed purple hearts throughout the Suez crisis. Those people lived under what was termed “the British system,” which was a light-touch approach to drug consumption, one of tolerance and treatment.

Things changed during the 1960s. In 1961 the UN single convention on narcotic drugs was passed. It was not popular in the UK, because we could see that the British system was working. That convention, driven by prejudice, became the only UN convention ever to use the word “evil”. Torture, apartheid and nuclear war do not warrant the term “evil”, according to the UN. Genocide is referred to as “an odious scourge” or “barbarous acts”. The term “evil” is reserved for drugs—drugs that had previously been available in many different guises in high street pharmacies. The stigmatising of users went up a gear. In 1971, through the Misuse of Drugs Act, criminalisation became the name of the game. The result has been years of violence, tensions and organised crime, and a monumental increase in addiction.

[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Ind)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on a first-class speech. Could he say roughly what proportion of people in prison are there because of the drugs trade? What are the costs to the criminal justice system, and what is the total social cost of drugs? I hope he will cover those points in his speech.

[Ronnie Cowan]

I did not know there was a quiz. I have a prison in my constituency—I was talking to its governor two or three weeks ago—and the majority of the prisoners are there for offences related in some way, shape or form to the consumption or sale of drugs, or to the drugs market and the violence around it. We also know that there are more drugs, particularly synthetic drugs, available in our prisons than out on the streets.

Members will be glad to hear that the Office for National Statistics began collating consistent data on drug deaths in England and Wales from 1993. Those figures show an increase in drug misuse mortality rates among both men and women since 1996. UK opioid-related deaths rose between 2012 and 2015, increasing by 58% in England, 23% in Wales, 21% in Scotland and 47% in Northern Ireland. UK Focal Point on Drugs estimates that the number of problem drug users is 300,000 in England, 60,000 in Scotland and 30,000 in Wales. Those statistics are the result of current drugs policy, and behind those statistics are lives in ruins.

I fully understand why people exposed to the cruelty inflicted on their loved ones by current drugs policy would want to lash out in retribution. If somebody provided one of my loved ones with a pill at a music festival, and that pill killed them, my initial reaction would be to hunt the seller down like a dog and have them strung up. I would be wrong. At the next festival, another person would be selling the same drugs to other people, and another tragedy would unfold. This understanding is exemplified by the members of Anyone’s Child, who have been directly affected by the loss of, or damage caused to, a close friend or family member. Those people understand that vengeance will not bring back their loved one or undo the damage done. They understand that unless we change our current drugs policy and how we enforce it, more innocent people will die. It is their desire that their experience of loss does not fall on anyone else’s family member or friend. Is the Minister prepared to sit down and talk with members of Anyone’s Child? Nothing?

[Grahame Morris (Easington) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing the debate and making some powerful points. He and I both attended a recent meeting of the drugs, alcohol and justice cross-party parliamentary group, on the topic of drug-related deaths, where we heard Rudi Fortson QC explain how policies could be readily implemented to reduce drug and alcohol-related deaths. Does he agree that it would be good for Ministers to meet Rudi Fortson and hear what policies could be applied instantly that would make a big difference?

[Ronnie Cowan]

It is always good when I hear that people like Rudi Fortson QC—a person who has lived his life through the law—are looking at the current situation and thinking, “We have to change this.” It backs up everything I believe, but Rudi Fortson’s background makes him much more qualified in those terms than I am. I wonder whether the Government are engaging with people of his calibre.

Last week, Canada joined nine states of the USA and Washington DC by legalising recreational cannabis. Various provinces of Canada have taken different approaches regarding age limits: some allow people to grow their own cannabis, limiting them to four plants, while others do not allow home growing. We should be looking to those parts of the world to gather evidence and decide whether their approach is beneficial, and whether we should follow suit. Canada has the same problems as us but, like Portugal, Uruguay and other countries, it has taken a different approach to providing a solution. That solution is not “drugs for everybody”; it is “regulate the marketplace and take control away from the criminals”.

In the UK, parents who fear that their child might be dabbling in drugs, or even developing a habit, are extremely reluctant to engage with support groups that could divert their child from the path they are on. The parents are reluctant because they do not want to place their child on the police radar. They fear that their child could be arrested, get a criminal record or even be sent to prison. Early intervention can be the key to avoiding drug-related harm, and we should not be putting obstacles in the way of those who could be affected. We must encourage users to engage without fear of prosecution and free up police time and resources to fight crime. Will the Minister tell me whether the UK Government have engaged with other countries to access their research, which could assist us in becoming better informed and in taking an evidence-based approach to legislation? We need to listen to those affected, who can see a need for change but are not in a position to effect it.

Prior to this debate, the Westminster digital engagement team put out an appeal on social media, advertising the debate and asking the people of this country, “What do you think?” Nearly 20,000 people were engaged. The majority of the responses came back saying, “Legalise cannabis.” Some called for drugs to be regulated and taxed. A few said that they had lost loved ones as a result of the current policy. Some commenters called for drug addiction to be seen as a health issue, rather than a criminal one. Lots of commenters called for the UK to take the same approach as Portugal. That is the people of this country talking.

The problematic users, the kids on estates recruited to county lines, the medical professionals, the support workers and the law enforcers should be listened to. Peter Bleksley was a young cop during the Brixton riots. He went on to become one of the Met’s most celebrated undercover agents. He was a founding member of SO10, Scotland Yard’s dedicated covert policing unit. He said:

“I look back now and think, well, are there less drugs and guns on the streets because of what my colleagues and I did? And of course the answer is an emphatic, NO. We could wallpaper my bedroom with commendation certificates—they sit in the loft gathering dust. What a waste of time.”

[Mary Glindon (North Tyneside) (Lab)]

The UK Government spent an estimated £1.6 billion on drug law enforcement in 2014-15. Drug treatment has been cut by 14% in the past couple of years. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that that is a false economy, especially as Public Health England estimates that for every pound spent on drug treatment, there is a £4 social return?

[Ronnie Cowan]

I absolutely agree. If we could see the results from the money being spent on the criminal justice system, I would back off and say, “Well, it is working”, but it clearly is not. To extend the hon. Lady’s point, every £1 spent on early intervention saves £7 in the criminal justice system further down the line. Even if someone does not give a damn about these people, it makes good financial sense to step in anyway and get early intervention.

Peter Bleksley is not alone. A host of personal testimony has been gathered by the Law Enforcement Action Partnership. I will offer four more examples from these experts. Patrick Hennessey, a British Army officer in the Grenadier Guards who served in Afghanistan, said:

“In Afghanistan I fought on one ‘front-line’ of the so-called ‘war on drugs’ and in Hackney I live side-by-side with the other and it’s obviously failing at either end. If real generals pursued an actual war like generations of politicians have pursued this farce they’d be court-martialled and sent to prison.”

Paul Whitehouse, chief constable, said:

“Far from making communities safer, current drug laws have the unintended consequence of placing barriers between the police and often vulnerable individuals.”

Graham Seaby, a former detective superintendent in the international and organised crime branch of New Scotland Yard, said:

“The drug problem will continue and escalate if governments fail to recognise that the only way forward is to move towards nuanced regulatory models, thus removing the profit from criminals, and the motivation for their involvement.”

Francis Wilkinson, chief constable, said:

“The single greatest crime reduction measure the world could take would be to regulate the supply of cannabis, cocaine and heroin.”

Neil Woods, 14 years an undercover drugs cop, would say exactly the same things. Ron Hogg and Arfon Jones, both police and crime commissioners, say that drugs must be a health issue, not a criminal justice one.

Every time we lock up a criminal gang or announce to the media that we have seized a large quantity of drugs with a street value of so many millions, what they do not say is that that supply has been disrupted for an hour or so. Another gang will step into their shoes and maintain distribution. Often those takeovers involve a spate of violence, and such networks are always maintained by violence and the threat of violence. The fact is that after 30 years of locking people up, a bag of cocaine that cost £10 in 1980 will cost £10 today for the same weight. However, because cocaine is so plentiful, it is purer in the UK today than it has ever been. The damage being inflicted on people and communities will continue to increase if all we do is crack down on the criminal fraternity and those ensnared in problematic drug use. We can lock people up for longer, but it does not improve their situation one iota; in fact, it makes it worse. Will the Minister meet and listen to members of the Law Enforcement Action Partnership?

In July 2017 the UK Government published their drug strategy and announced that they would appoint a recovery champion, whose role was defined as someone who would

“be responsible for driving and supporting collaboration between local authorities, public employment services, housing providers and criminal justice partners, ensuring that these critical public services are able to contribute fully towards securing effective outcomes for individuals suffering drug dependence.”

Fifteen months later, there is still nobody in the role, so nobody is co-ordinating those aspects of the support and recovery programme. I find myself wondering whether there is a UK Government harm reduction recovery programme. When will the Minister appoint a recovery champion?

As legislators, we have a choice. We can change the law. In doing so, we can address the harm that drugs do. Before that, we have to take a constructive approach to our drugs policy. We need to accept that 90% of people who use recreational drugs do not live chaotic lives. We must acknowledge that of the 10% of users who become problematic users, the majority have suffered physical, psychological or sexual abuse. We must acknowledge that problematic use is higher in areas of social deprivation. We must accept responsibility for trying to find solutions and acknowledge our failures. We need to help people with problematic drug use through harm reduction, treatment and wraparound support. Criminalising users does not deal with the underlying issues that lead to drug use; it only makes things worse.

We should have a network of safe drug consumption rooms throughout the UK. They have proved to be a success in Switzerland, Canada, Spain and a growing number of other countries. We must be prepared to learn from other countries’ experiences. The emergency services should carry naloxone and be trained in its use. Will the Minister reconsider legalising safe drug consumption rooms and ensure that naloxone is provided for members of the emergency services? Most importantly, UK drugs policy should be a health issue, not a criminal justice one. Alternatively, we can continue to criminalise users and drive them into the hands of unscrupulous dealers, while ignoring the atmosphere of fear that they live in. All we do is marginalise, stigmatise and ostracise them.

[Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman has just moved on from the subject of drug consumption rooms, but did he note that after his last debate on drug consumption rooms the International Narcotics Control Board produced a report effectively endorsing them. That came from the body responsible for the international enforcement of the relevant drugs conventions, which I know he and I think are outdated and dangerous, frankly, in the global consequences they deliver on drugs policy. If even the INCB is in that place, I hope our Government will take some notice.

[Ronnie Cowan]

I noticed a couple of things after that debate. In it, the Minister denied that Canada had kept its drug consumption rooms open because they are effective. She made a statement that the Canadian Supreme Court had ordered them to stay open. On the back of that, the Canadian Drug Policy Coalition, the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network and the International Centre for Science in Drug Policy wrote a five-page letter to the Minister and I, detailing how the DCRs are working effectively in Canada and why they have been kept open. They described her statement as

“neither factually nor legally accurate.”

We have lost the war on drugs. Our drugs policy saw to that. We need to change our mindset and ensure that we are in a position to win the peace. Finally, when we see a problematic drug user, we are watching a person drowning. We should throw them a lifebelt, not push their heads further under the water.

--- Later in debate ---

[Douglas Ross]

To borrow the phrase of the hon. Member for Inverclyde, I did not realise that this was a quiz. I do not have those figures to hand.

Labour Members mentioned past cuts to alcohol and drug partnerships, and received some sympathy from the Scottish National party Member leading today’s debate. Yet the SNP-led Scottish Government have not helped, especially considering their cuts to alcohol and drug partnerships in Scotland. The money spent is being reduced not just here in England, but in Scotland under an SNP-led Government.

Likewise, the forthcoming revision of the Scottish Government’s national drug strategy cannot come a moment too soon. The current strategy is a decade old, but reflects a much older approach, where instead of helping people to defeat their addictions, they are put on, for example, endless methadone programmes. Is it any surprise that the proportion of people dying from drug overdoses who are on methadone has risen from 21% in 2009 to 37% in 2016? The new strategy, which comes out next month, must address that, and focus on beating addiction completely.

[Ronnie Cowan]

I wonder whether at some point the hon. Gentleman will offer some solutions, or is he just going to try to pick apart what we currently have? I have admitted that the current systems are damaging people. We are trying to build solutions—has he got any?

[Douglas Ross]

I am not sure that we heard any solutions from the hon. Gentleman. Normally in such debates we hear about how great things are in Scotland. As a Scottish Member of Parliament, I think it is appropriate, when we are discussing an issue that is of importance to the United Kingdom, that we put it into context.

I invite the hon. Gentleman and the Scottish Government to consider the “National Drug-Related Deaths Database (Scotland) Report”, from June this year, which said that the Scottish Government’s flagship take-home naloxone programme

“has not prevented substantial increases in opioid-related deaths in Scotland.”

That is a quote from a report in June this year. [Interruption.] If the hon. Gentleman would like to question that report, I will give way again.

[Ronnie Cowan]

Absolutely. We are in the process of rolling out a naloxone project in Scotland that has been taken on board. I visited drug consumption rooms in Barcelona during the summer. Quite unsolicited, the staff mentioned to me the good work being done by the Scottish Drugs Forum and the naloxone programme. They have taken it on board in Barcelona, and it has been a terrific success.

[Douglas Ross]

I am not sure whether the hon. Gentleman is questioning me or the “National Drug-Related Deaths Database (Scotland) Report”. That report, which was issued in Scotland in June, said that the Scottish Government’s policies have not reduced the number of people dying from related illnesses.

--- Later in debate ---

[Grahame Morris]

I am not an expert, but it seems there is a correlation between areas of deprivation and areas with a high incidence of drug-related death. There is a lot of evidence out there, and from anecdotal experience it seems that an issue that was confined to the big cities is now commonplace in older industrial communities, such as the areas and villages that I represent.

[Ronnie Cowan]

I have seen a slide that shows the areas of greatest deprivation in the United Kingdom, and if a matching slide is put beside it that shows the areas where most harm is done by drugs, those maps pretty much match each other slide for slide.

[Grahame Morris]

Absolutely—I thank the hon. Gentleman for that clarification. In conclusion, I implore the Minister to facilitate a new approach to drugs policy and to empower authorities in my constituency, such as our police and crime commissioner, Ron Hogg, and Chief Constable Mike Barton—in the only police force in the country rated outstanding by Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary—who want to try a new approach. Will the Minister allow a pilot scheme so that we can at least evaluate the evidence and see whether it works, as many experts believe it will?

--- Later in debate ---

[Victoria Atkins]

I will of course look into that, and I will ask a Health Minister to write to my hon. Friend.

The drug strategy recognises that we must reduce demand by acting early to prevent people from using drugs in the first place and to prevent escalation to more harmful use. We are taking action to build resilience among young people, alongside a targeted approach for groups at particular risk. Well-off recreational drug users must also recognise the part that they play in funding the criminal networks that supply their drugs and the violence that those crime gangs use.

My shadow, the hon. Member for Swansea East (Carolyn Harris), has already mentioned the issue of county lines. Yesterday, we had a meeting of the serious violence taskforce. It is absolutely clear that the illicit drug market is a major driver of the rise of serious violence, which is why the police must work with our health professionals to tackle it. Schools play a vital role in that, helping children to understand the risks of illicit drugs and build their resilience and ability to say no. The Government are making health education compulsory, as well as funding Mentor UK’s Alcohol and Drug Education and Prevention Information Service to provide practical advice to teachers.

Tough enforcement, however, is fundamental. We are restricting the supply of drugs, adapting our approach to changes in criminal activity, using innovative data and technology, and taking co-ordinated action to tackle drugs alongside other criminal activity. Through the Psychoactive Substances Act 2016, we have choked off the supply of so-called legal highs. More than 300 retailers throughout the UK have closed down or are no longer selling psychoactive substances. Police have arrested suppliers, and the National Crime Agency has ensured the removal of psychoactive substances from sale on UK websites.

[Ronnie Cowan]

Yet those substances have been replaced by others, which are possibly more damaging, such as Spice and Mamba. We are not solving the problem; all we are doing is pushing it around the table.

[Victoria Atkins]

Interestingly, the hon. Gentleman raised the issue of decriminalisation, and I again note that no single body of opinion has formed about how such decriminalisation would work. Who would administer the drugs, presumably available on the NHS to users? Will that include recreational drugs such as MDMA, so that people can have fun at the weekend? Is the taxpayer paying for that?

I welcome the chance to discuss the issue, but the problem with such a debate is that “decriminalisation” is referred to, but not a body of opinion—certainly none described in this debate—to evidence of what would happen under such a policy. The police and others have to deal with precisely these issues day to day, to protect our communities from illicit drug use, because those drugs harm people.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ronnie Cowan (Inverclyde) (SNP)]

I sincerely thank everyone who has taken part in this afternoon’s debate. I mentioned that I had visited drug consumption rooms in Barcelona—I understand the difference between them and heroin-assisted treatment units. What impressed me most about those rooms were not just the facilities—they were attached to health clinics and psychiatric hospitals, and there was even a mobile unit being driven around the area—but the attitude of the people providing the service in those units. They looked upon the users of their clinics as human beings first and foremost. They had moved away from the idea of categorising and stigmatising people as junkies, crackheads and stoners. They did not see a problem but an opportunity to help people back into life.

It was summed up perfectly to me when it was explained that people living in Catalonia who have a medical card get free medical care; immigrants living in Catalonia are given a medical card, so they get free medical care; and illegal immigrants in Catalonia are given a medical card, so they get free medical care. They have taken the stance that this is about humanity and their approach to their fellow citizens. Only when we do that will we start to address the horrendous problems we have in our society through problematic drug use.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered drugs policy.

Drug Trafficking: County Lines

Ronnie Cowan Excerpts

Wednesday 17th October 2018 Commons Chamber

[Ronnie Cowan (Inverclyde) (SNP)]

I am delighted that the hon. Gentleman acknowledged that we cannot arrest our way out of this problem, but I am a little worried that he wants to bring train guards into this war on drugs. Has he considered the option of regulating and controlling this marketplace, which would take all the power away from criminal gangs?

[John Woodcock]

The hon. Gentleman is a long-time advocate of the legalisation of drugs, but I do not think that that is the route to go down, given the horror that drug use causes, never mind the criminal activity around it. That would not get much support in Barrow.

Properly training public transport staff in what to look for can be a positive thing. I hope that the Home Office will consider investing in training, intervening to stop guards being taken off trains and, importantly, offering rewards to people who are prepared to speak up, tip off the police and stop this trade along the major public transport arteries on which it relies.

Secondly, the Government need to do more to crack down on landlords and property owners who effectively turn a blind eye to this trade, and who get rich off drug money by not asking questions and not looking too closely at what is happening in their property. At the moment, a long-standing provision in the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 makes it an offence for someone to allow their property to be used in that way, but there has to be absolute proof that they had specific knowledge. That allows too many landlords and, potentially, owners of holiday lets, hotels and caravan parks not to ask questions and to make money by allowing these people into our communities to do incredible damage.

Will the Minister consider changing the burden of proof so that a landlord is required to act, and can be prosecuted if they do not act, where there is reasonable suspicion that their property is being used for cuckooing, with drug dealers coming in to deal from the property temporarily? That is another huge part of the problem, and the vast majority of police forces say that it is happening in their area.

I will leave it there because my right hon. Friend the Member for Enfield North (Joan Ryan) wants to speak, and I am happy for her to do so. I look forward to the Minister’s response.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Wallace]

I know that the hon. Gentleman has called for that. The national county lines co-ordination centre is about trying to fill that space. It is not just a couple of desks; it is more than 40 officers and staff, centred, pulling together not only the intelligence, but some of the investigations and response. They are making sure the investigations are in the right place, so that where we pick up someone who is low-level, we can trace across to an organised crime group that is already under investigation by the Met, for example. That is one of the main aims of this co-ordinated approach—the county lines co-ordination centre. I have arranged for some hon. Members to get a briefing by the National Crime Agency on that, and I am happy to facilitate that for the hon. Gentleman if he would like.

Time is tight, so I will not be able to deal with all the points, but I will write to the hon. Gentleman about some of the figures. We recognise the figures that he used. We assess around 1,500 lines in service as of July. The improvements from the national county lines co-ordination centre’s work with the National Crime Agency and the National Police Chiefs Council has started to have an impact already. Last week, the centre co-ordinated the first in a series of regular intensifications of activity targeting county lines. In one week alone, there were more than 200 arrests; 58 vulnerable people, including a number of children, were identified and safeguarded; deadly weapons, including hunting knives, a firearm with ammunition, an axe, a meat cleaver and a samurai sword, were seized; tens of thousands of pounds of suspected criminal cash were seized; and significant quantities of heroin, crack cocaine and other illegal drugs were seized. That is in one week, which shows the benefit of that co-ordination. Whether it is a single force or, I would venture, a co-ordination centre, that shows what can be done when we focus and bring our efforts to bear.

We need to be clever about how we prosecute these individuals. In some cases, we prosecute them under the Modern Slavery Act 2015 for in effect trafficking the children up and down the country. On 4 October, Zakaria Mohammed was sentenced to 14 years for human trafficking offences, but he was leading a county lines drug cartel operation. That was an important way to deal with it.

[Ronnie Cowan]

The Minister is outlining success stories—big arrests, big sentences and big drug seizures—yet the problems continue to get worse. Is it not perhaps time to consider other tactics?

[Mr Wallace]

The problems are getting worse, and this business model is a fantastic business model, as the right hon. Member for Enfield North said, partly because of the turbo boost that communications give these people. Secure communication and end-to-end encryption mean that people can order with total impunity, because it is very hard for us to get into the telephones to see what they are doing. They can use modern technology to resupply and communicate, and to launder the money at the same time. I do not agree that the approach should be to legalise drugs. In my experience, criminals are interested in the margins, not the product. If we legalise one drug, they will push fentanyl tomorrow; if we legalise fentanyl, it will be another. They want the margin: in my experience, it is the money that drives them, which is why we have to do more work.

The right hon. Member for Enfield North correctly talked about prevention. We need to harden the environment. The hon. Member for Barrow and Furness is always full of good ideas, and he will have seen in our latest counter-terrorism Bill that I have absorbed some of them. I think that is a polite way to say that I have nicked them. I certainly believe that he is right about somehow making sure that people take responsibility. We cannot arrest our way out of this problem, so we have to burden-share. We have to educate the public. We have to educate taxi drivers in Barrow. Both modern slavery and county lines often hide in plain sight. It is amazing how many people in effect work in slavery on our high streets and no one does anything about it or thinks about it. Someone might have had their nails done but never said to themselves that most of the women working in the nail bar were probably—more often than not—victims of human trafficking. That is why we have to try to encourage part of the wider community—the hon. Gentleman may say we should legislate—because they have a role to play.

When I saw a Merseyside county lines group get taken apart, it was brilliant to see the way the Merseyside local authority worked alongside the local police. When it came to dismantling the group, the people who needed care got care and the people who needed to be prosecuted—some of them were young; they are not all vulnerable—were prosecuted. One challenge we have is that not all the 15 or 16-year-olds are exploited; some of them are pretty hard and dangerous. At the same time, we took some assets, and in the end the Merseyside police, in public, pulled down the gates of the organised crime group’s house, to show that permissive society was not going to tolerate that behaviour. That group’s operations went all the way into Lancashire, so it was a good success.

I absolutely hear what the right hon. Member for Enfield North said about the need for better prevention, community provision and diversion for these young people. I have a list as long as my arm that I think I sent to some Members in the context of the previous debate on this subject. We have the anti-knife crime community fund. The Home Secretary has announced a £22 million early intervention youth fund and a £200 million youth endowment fund. There is an £11 million modern slavery innovation fund, which is all about trying to deal with that in the communities and how we can wrap around it.

We also support and fund local authorities that are engaged in mapping county lines. I definitely urge hon. Members to encourage their local authority to seek to do that, and the Home Office and the police will support them in delivering such action—with our funding rather than theirs. In that way, local authorities can get an understanding of what is going on in their very community. It is a phenomenon. Although I understand the pressure on the police—I am not deaf to the challenges around that and to the fact that more will need to be done—the biggest single contribution from what I have observed has been mobile communications, encryption and money laundering in a way that is so different from the past. Those lines can be run from the very top of an organised crime group in Colombia. The group can order, resupply and get delivery so that drugs arrive on the doorsteps of our communities.

We all have a role to play—a really strong role—to make sure that schools do not go down the exclusion route, because that puts many of those young people out on the streets to be preyed upon. We have to do a lot of work around the permissive society. What we find is that there are a few areas—they are significant and solid—where these crime routes are coming. There are communities that are permitting the organised crime routes to become strong enough to send people into our communities. Work on permissive societies is something that we all have to address.

Organised crime might involve someone buying an illegal pack of cigarettes behind a bar. They might say that it does not really matter—a bit of a knock-off at the local bar—but people do not realise that that pack of cigarettes is moved by people who move women on a Monday and children on a Tuesday, and flog drugs on a Thursday. Someone might say, “Wink, wink, I got this a bit cheap down the local bar,” but that person is fuelling and helping organised crime. We all have a role to play. We must tackle permissive societies, harden the environment, get everyone knowledgeable about what is out there to stop young people being exploited and help our local authorities to deal with those cases. It will be a growing issue. Co-ordination, planning and investment will be key. I from my end and the organised crime end will help to support such action through the serious organised crime strategy, which is due to be launched very soon, and I know that the Minister responsible for crime reduction is keen to tackle this from the bottom up. We will make sure that we work across the Government and across parties to try to achieve that.

Question put and agreed to.

Organised Crime: Young People’s Safety

Ronnie Cowan Excerpts

Wednesday 5th September 2018 Westminster Hall

[Ronnie Cowan (Inverclyde) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Evans, and to speak on behalf of the Scottish National party. I thank the hon. Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown) for securing the debate. What we have heard about county lines is undoubtedly alarming—the sheer scale of the problem should give us pause for thought. According to one estimate, 46,000 children in England and 4,000 teenagers in London are being exploited. The National Crime Agency notes that the evidence gap means that the true scale of exploitation remains hidden.

Reports have highlighted the link between violent drug gangs and the exploitation of vulnerable people in the north-east of Scotland, particularly around Aberdeen, Fraserburgh and Peterhead. In line with what has been discussed in the debate, the experience there is of the threat or use of violence to exert power, particularly on vulnerable young people. In my constituency, drug deaths have more than doubled in the past decade.

The interconnected drug market that exists throughout the UK means that it is in all our interests to share best practice about how to combat this destructive force and to identify where Government policy is ineffective. That is a key point, because it is precisely our drug policies that have gifted a lucrative market to organised crime gangs who have the money, power and expertise to thrive in such an environment. The trafficking and exploitation of young people is simply an extension of their power.

Understandably, we seek vengeance. We want to see those responsible for the violence and abuse—those who exploit these vulnerable young kids—locked up, but experience tells us that whenever we incarcerate somebody for dealing, pushing or distributing, there is always somebody else in the background to step forward and fill their boots. Neil Woods was an undercover policeman for 14 years. In his book, “Good Cop, Bad War”, he outlines how he put his life at risk, day in, day out, with the aim of locking up drug dealers. Neil reckons that his actions locked people up for thousands of years, and disrupted the supply of class A drugs for a few hours.

Yesterday, there was a well attended meeting in Committee Room 10—better attended than this debate, unfortunately; where are all our fellow MPs? Most people there were serving cops or police and crime commissioners. A common phrase, repeated throughout that meeting, was, “We can’t arrest our way out of a drugs war.” That is from serving law enforcement agencies throughout the United Kingdom. We need solutions, not retribution. I understand it—if one of my kids was sold a tab at a music festival, and that tab could kill them, as we have seen time and again, I would want to hunt down the person responsible and nail them to a wall. That might make me feel good, but it would not stop the distribution, and it would not help the next parent going through the same agony that I had just been put through.

Anyone’s Child is an organisation set up by people who have lost loved ones to the drug war. Its stance is not retribution but that we need to change the legal framework and our drugs policy if we are ever going to make things better. I fully agree with Anyone’s Child and Transform that if we regulate the drug market, we will remove one of the financial incentives to enslave young people. That will also enable authorities to identify those children as victims of modern slavery, rather than criminalise them and drive them further into a criminal underworld.

In becoming involved in a life of crime, even unwillingly, those children are learning to become intimidating and violent. They have to, because the scariest dealers do not get informed on. We must be honest in recognising that that development is a direct result of the police pursuing those children. The more we try to clamp down on the drug problem, the more the violence will escalate. That is the reality on our streets. Indeed, the Home Office’s 2010 drug strategy recognised the unintended consequences of enforcement.

I completely agree with former undercover drugs detective Neil Woods, the chairman of Law Enforcement Action Partnership UK, who said:

“How do people think these kids get recruited? Do people imagine that they just get randomly approached by dealers or cold called asking them if they fancy a life of crime? They are recruited through the cannabis market with the most promising youths being recruited for a County Line, dealing heroin and crack. By regulating the market we separate the link between organised crime and teenage consumers.”

Neil Woods clearly understands that disrupting the supply chain is not enough. A drugs market in flux is a drugs markets of aggressive competition where violence and intimidation will become more common as competing interests try to maximise more lucrative profits. Expendable young people who are enslaved within the system will not benefit from even more violence and turbulence.

Neither are we helping children caught up in county lines by employing them as so-called child spies. That practice casts moral ambiguity on the UK Government at a time when they are criticising the exploitation carried out by others. I am at a loss to see how we can reconcile the UK Government’s responsibility to protect minors with simultaneously exposing them to abuse rings for the sake of intelligence gathering.

Do we fully understand the long-term physical and mental ramifications of using young people in that way? Is there a clear code of practice on how children’s welfare is protected while working with the police or security services? How does an authorising officer weigh the intelligence benefits against the potential impact on the juvenile source? A report published by the House of Lords Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee suggests that the UK Government do not have satisfactory answers to those questions.

I am encouraged that the Scottish Government take a different approach to combating violent crime. As was mentioned earlier, a peak of 137 murders in Scotland prompted the formation of the violence reduction unit. By taking a public health approach to violence, the VRU and the Scottish Government have made significant headway in preventing such crimes. Instead of driving young offenders into prisons, they offer them alternatives—training, mentoring and employment opportunities—thereby breaking the cycle of reoffending. Since 2007, violent crime has almost halved in Scotland and crimes involving a weapon are down by two thirds. That did not happen by accident.

Likewise, I would like our drugs problem to be reclassified as a public health issue and regulated, as I mentioned earlier. If we were to take that road, it would reduce the burden on law enforcement and the NHS, and the saved funding could be invested in treatment, rehabilitation and harm reduction instead. By taking the approach that I have highlighted on violent crime and drug addiction, we can make significant strides against county lines.

We should not be handing the market to violent criminals, and we should not allow the economic conditions to exist that incentivise gangs to exploit children. Legalising and regulating will put the Government in control and drastically reduce the illegal exploitation of children. Finally, I put on the record my appreciation for the work of Transform, LEAP UK, Release and Anyone’s Child, which continue to produce invaluable research.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister for Security and Economic Crime (Mr Ben Wallace)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Evans. I thank the hon. Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown) for securing this debate. I take the issue incredibly seriously, as do my colleagues. As the Minister for Security, my portfolio covers what we have just seen in the Chamber—the GRU, counter-espionage and counter-terrorism. However, the part of my portfolio that scares me the most, which I know I will see in my neighbourhood, my friends’ neighbourhoods and my child’s school, is serious organised crime.

One has to be very unlucky to be a victim of terrorism. One has to be even more unlucky to be a victim of an espionage event. The scale of organised crime and the empowerment of those networks in the past few years poses a threat not only to our young people of all classes through grooming, the growth in the use of drugs and the fuelling of that growth, but to all our communities. County lines have enabled crime to be exported into large parts of the United Kingdom that never had violent crime or serious organised crime. They might have had the local dealer or the local burglar, but they have never had the type of organised violence that is now wreaking havoc on their streets.

I heard the hon. Member for Gedling (Vernon Coaker), whom I have known over the years. He was a Home Office Minister in 2008, I think. What he said was incredibly pertinent. It was a well-crafted speech, if nothing else, and as ever I will horrify my officials by not reading my well-crafted speech or quoting endless facts about fund Y or fund B. I have been in this House long enough to know about listing funds—I have listened from the Opposition Benches to other Governments doing it. I am happy to write to Members with the list of funds for communities.

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right that, to fix this problem, we will need to drive integration both horizontally and vertically. We need to integrate the community response, the local authority response, the healthcare response and the voluntary response with the vertical driving together of local policing, regional policing through the regional organised crime units, and national policing. We will need to do that to get some of the very serious gangsters at the top and bring to bear, where we can, the weight of the state to weaken them. That is not often going to be driven by the experts—the experts know what to do and are just all in different buildings in different parts of Government. It takes a ministerial drive.

One of the weaknesses in our system—I would be interested in whether the hon. Gentleman agrees—is the length of time we as Ministers have to drive the system. It might be one year in the Home Office. I have done this job for two years, and I happen to have a background in counter-terrorism. I went through all those lessons in counter-terrorism in the early 1990s in terms of sharing intelligence, ensuring we tackle permissive communities and supporting communities in distancing terrorists from that support base. I happened to start at a run, but I have been here for two years and who knows how much longer.

One of the strengths we have in our system is to drive through, to knock heads together and to box clever within Whitehall, but it is a challenge. How do I get the DCLG—I forget the new name; it is too long now they put an H in front of it—or the Cabinet Office to do something? How do I lobby the Chief Secretary to the Treasury that something needs to be done? We can sit here and talk about cuts and I can talk about debt, but it is also about priorities. If Opposition Members were on the Government side of the House, they too would be having discussions about priorities and where to spend money. We have to have stability.

The great thing about the work that the hon. Member for West Ham has done is that it is more collaborative. The way she has gone about tackling and highlighting the threat of county lines is an example to us all. We are all trying to find a solution collectively, both locally and nationally. If I may, I will address her points rather than those of other Members because of the short time available. She eloquently set out her asks.

First, there is an ask from me on social media and communication. What has accelerated county lines? What has gripped? Organised crime has existed for many years. Violence has existed in some pockets. What has accelerated county lines is social media and secure communication. There is à la carte drugs-buying from people who are posted. Sometimes they are groomed and abused, and sometimes they are willing. They go to other towns and boroughs and people order drugs à la carte through WhatsApp and Instagram. That is communicated safely to the drug barons and the drug buyers with end-to-end encryption. People can buy anything. There is an incredibly good documentary by a girl called Stacey Dooley on BBC—it is about kids buying drugs—that brings the issue home. She went to WhatsApp to show the research, and they would not even answer the door. The fuel on the fire has been that safe environment.

[Ronnie Cowan]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mr Wallace]

I do not have time. I remember Labour introduced the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000, which is where Labour brought in youth covert human intelligence sources. It was not a Conservative thing—it has been going on since 1999. When I was in the Scottish Parliament, the Scottish National party did not oppose it either. Using young people as CHIS has been around for many years.

When we introduce legislation to try to seek ways into encrypted technology there is often a knee-jerk reaction from the likes of Liberty, and too many people go along with it. Legislation is vital if we are to get into the top of those drug gangs and find out what is going on. The head of a cartel was arrested in Glasgow, I think last year. He had military-grade encryption to order directly from cartels in central America. He even distributed to the cartels and then distributed drugs back into Glasgow. We have to tackle that because that has been part of the fuel.

We also have to tackle education. What do we need to spot? It is the cuckooing and the vulnerable people. It is about educating local people, especially those in the leafy suburbs who have never seen it, and who do not know that a young person who has suddenly appeared in a flat is the victim of trafficking. Human trafficking leaks into the issue. There are nail bars up and down the country often manned by Vietnamese people who take only cash. Those people are trafficked 99% of the time, but in middle-class areas everyone still goes in to get their nails done. No one says, “There’s something odd here.” It is in plain sight, and we are working with our local authorities—the regional organised crime units are also working with them—to improve spotting the signs.

On reducing violent crime, I asked my officials to go and see an interesting project in Glasgow. I do not pretend that there have not been cuts to police, but in Glasgow, even in environments where there were falling police numbers, knife crime incidence has been massively reduced, which shows that working better together can sometimes make a significant difference. Some great work has been done in the Scottish Government on tackling that, which is important.

It leaks into the wider grooming piece. I see it in Prevent and in counter-terrorism. It is the same method whether it is sexual exploitation, crime or whatever. We have to take on the social media. That is why we are consulting, including on introducing regulations in this House. I went slightly freelance at one stage and said, “The polluter can pay.” If we have to spend hundreds of millions of pounds on police, I know where I would get that money from. They need to step up to the plate. There is the technology and we can do more. We have to tackle grooming and put people in the category of groomers. They are not glamorous. They are the same as paedophiles. They are dirty little rotten groomers who are sacrificing young people.

I saw a very successful Merseyside operation that was brilliantly done. It goes back to how we are pursuing the organised crime. As the hon. Member for West Ham said, I want to see the bad guys at the top get it. A brilliant operation was done in Merseyside where county lines were coming up into Lancashire. The police went top and bottom and worked with local authorities. Good police forces have something called local organised crime panels. Chief Constable Mike Barton in Durham has used local authorities on a regular basis. On such panels are the Environment Agency and representatives from local government. A whole load of government agencies are on the panel, saying, “If we can’t arrest them for X, we’re going to make their life a misery. We’re going to do them for fly-tipping, and then we’re going to publicly expose them and take the glamour off them.” That is happening, and with good results. Other areas could follow suit better. Some do and some do not.

I totally agree with what was said about witness protection and having a trusted system. I worked in intelligence. If no one picks up the phone, we are flying blind. No matter how many neighbourhood policemen and women we have, if people are doing it in their bedrooms on secure comms we need someone to pick up the phone and to trust the system. That is really important.

This year and next year we are going to move witness protection away from the regions. It will be administered in the regions but it will be nationally co-ordinated by the National Crime Agency. However, the Met police has not opted to do that. I urge the hon. Member for West Ham, as a London MP—this is about working with everyone—to have a word with the Mayor of London about whether that is the right way to tackle it. Some of the biggest exporters of county lines are London into the regions and Merseyside into the regions. I can say that because my home plain is Lancashire. Between the two, we need to think with our Mayors about how we can tackle some of that permissive society—some of it is permissive.

It is not just the raw victims—there is a hard edge, which is why we sometimes have to use youth as CHIS. I can write to the hon. Member for Inverclyde (Ronnie Cowan) with the many safeguards that we put in place around that risking. It is overseen by the Investigatory Powers Commissioner, Lord Justice Fulford. It has been in existence since 1999. Sometimes—very rarely—we do it. We have to do it if we are to penetrate where encryption is used, and some of the county lines where it is not. It is not something we want to do, but sometimes it is useful and we have to do it.

I would be delighted to take up the case of Ashley and Nathan if the hon. Member for West Ham and I could have a meeting. How they have been treated is outrageous. That is not the message we want to send, and I will do everything to ensure that they are given the support that they should be given. I had experience of settling people who were under threat of death if they were caught, and some of them tragically were killed.

Finally, the hon. Members for Gedling and for West Ham asked what we are doing on the organisation to tackle crime. Some 128 tonnes of class A drugs were snatched last year. Thousands of people were arrested by the NCA and 628 guns were seized. As with the Contest strategy, which started under Labour and has been refined with mistakes learnt from and driven into the fingertips of Britain, we have got to a place over the last few years where the policing response is in the right place. We have regional organised crime units, we have the National Crime Agency above that and we have local forces. If somebody goes to visit their local regional organised crime unit they will see that collaboratively such units are bringing to bear some very good resource. I am happy to facilitate that for whoever wants to go.

The Met are not in the ROCU—it chooses to do it separately. I have lots of faith that the Met has the resource—it has much more resource per head than we do in Lancashire and Merseyside—but there is a plus and a downside to that. It is well worth exploring with the Mayor of London whether he thinks that that is the right apparatus. The regional crime units can bring specialists and specialist surveillance. We often find that county lines cross county borders and constabulary borders. That is why the regional organised crime units work. My one in the north-west is based in Warrington. I will visit it again, and regularly. I have been around all of them in the country. Part of what they do is about gathering better intelligence, as the hon. Member for Gedling said, and mapping organised crime groups. Individual forces have been pretty weak at finding a common denominator. Cumbria claims to have more organised crime groups per head than Merseyside or some other parts of the country. That is a bit different, so we have to improve the intelligence.

I am happy to facilitate visits to the NCA where we can. With the upskilling and the changes that we implemented last year to conditions to make them compete better, we are getting much better capability. We are starting to deliver and bringing to bear purely intelligence-led collaborative working. I am not deaf to concerns about neighbourhood policing or cuts to the police. I know that there have been cuts to the police—I do not deny that. We can sit here and argue all day about why that had to happen and whether our priorities are right, but I recognise that we have to do something about it and we are going to try. Certainly it is about prevention as much as arrest. That is true of so many crimes, even this one—we cannot arrest our way out of it. I will not go down the long path of legalisation, but we have to keep empowering local authorities. I will send hon. Members the lists of what we do in local authorities.

One thing that I see from my desk at the Home Office—the hon. Member for Gedling will have seen this—is lots of people not bidding for funds. Colleagues understandably come and complain, and I say, “But your force or local authority didn’t actually bid into it.” I am very happy to share that with anyone if they come and say that they have seen the fund and no one has got it in their community. I can find out about it, and we will go together. We will go to Brighton and say, “Why didn’t you bid for it?” Not everybody can have the funds, but it is interesting that there are some who always bid and get them and some who never bid at all.

Mr Evans, I will sit down now and let the hon. Member for West Ham wind up the debate.