Drug Crime

Sarah Jones Excerpts

Wednesday 20th April 2022 Westminster Hall

[Sarah Jones (Croydon Central) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Pritchard. It looks as though we are going to be called for a vote imminently.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Keighley (Robbie Moore) on securing this important debate. I agree with him entirely that we all want to sing from the rooftops about our constituencies, but we have to tackle the underlying problems that we all probably face. I agree with him about a twin-track approach, with a hard-line response to those criminals who are driving the drug market and support for those who are trying to get out and those we do not want to get involved in the first place.

My hon. Friend the Member for West Ham (Ms Brown) talked well, as she always does, about child criminal exploitation, the need to understand and define it in law and to tackle it. She highlighted the moments of vulnerability, such as school exclusion. If a young boy loses his life to knife crime, there will be a homicide review to learn the lessons. Why do we wait that long? Why do we wait until he has died? Why did we not intervene at an earlier stage? Why is the point at which someone is excluded from school not the point that triggers involvement with the parents and the child about what those vulnerabilities might be?

The hon. Member for Totnes (Anthony Mangnall) talked about county lines and the drugs coming from all directions into his area. There was a drug line from my constituency of Croydon to Exeter. I have spoken to Exeter police about kids who find themselves on coaches to Exeter and how to recognise them when they get off. They do not have bags with them—only a little bag—and they know who they might be.

My hon. Friend the Member for Halifax (Holly Lynch) talked about the interesting findings related to drug driving, and the delays in forensics. It is absurd and awful that people could still be on the road, potentially causing the same problems, just because of delays in forensics. She also talked about the need for core neighbourhood policing teams, which we all agree on.

The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) said he was from the old school where people know the local bobby on the beat. I think we are all talking about a similar version, which is ensuring that the police are in our communities and areas.

The hon. Member for Aberconwy (Robin Millar) talked about his beautiful community, and the drugs associated with such places. I was in Rhyl last year, where there are similar issues. It is a lovely, beautiful town hampered by drug use. I spent some time at a youth centre, where they were doing innovative work with kids on the street who were involved with antisocial behaviour and drugs. They had pulled them in, given them support and help. They had gone up Snowdon as part of a Duke of Edinburgh course, completely out of their comfort zone, doing things they had never done before, and giving them hope for the future. That was what the hon. Gentleman said was needed.

Drug crime is a scourge across the country. It fuels exploitation, violence and antisocial behaviour, and causes misery for communities. Drug deaths are at an all-time high. We have seen the emergence of increasingly violent and exploitative gangs, which use technology that is often way ahead of the Government’s, to groom children and sell them drugs. Dame Carol Black presented damning conclusions in her review on drugs. We have gone backwards over the past 10 years. Drug abuse is up at “tragically destructive levels”, she said, and drug treatment is down, with recovery services “on their knees”.

Prosecutions for drug offences are down 36% since 2010 and convictions are down 43%. The UK has become a target for international drug-trafficking gangs. This country is Europe’s largest heroin market. Serious organised criminals have a grip. Whether people live in a town, a city or the country, they worry about their kids getting involved in drugs, even buying them online. We have already talked a lot about county lines, and I think hon. Members agree on the problem. They are based on deeply exploitative criminal practices, forcing children, through debt bondage and other techniques, to become mules to ferry hard drugs up and down the country. Those children often appear not to be vulnerable, but they are hungry, scared and sometimes squatting in cuckooed properties of other vulnerable drug users.

I saw a picture in the Oxford Mail of a young lad wearing a hoodie and holding a wad of cash. When the police caught him, they asked him about the picture. He said:

“I thought it looked cool… It wasn’t even my money. I looked like a homeless person wearing a worn-out tracksuit. I hadn’t showered for two weeks.”

The reality behind the image is often very different.

In 2021, 49% of child referrals of modern slavery were for child criminal exploitation. The national referral mechanism received nearly 13,000 referrals of potential victims, up 20% on the previous year, which is the highest number ever. The number of specific county lines flags have also increased, up 23%. The evidence suggests a nationwide increase in this grotesque practice, and subsequent misery for the individuals and the communities affected.

I want to touch briefly on the online space. Drugs can now be bought and sold online. If someone goes on to Snapchat, they can buy one, get one free, or introduce a friend. The offers are all there. [Interruption.]

--- Later in debate ---

On resuming—

[Sarah Jones]

I was talking about online drugs and how easy it is for kids to buy them. Fiona Spargo-Mabbs, an inspirational woman in my constituency—the Minister will share a platform with her soon—has brought together a group of mothers whose children died from taking drugs that were bought largely online. I am sure that she will talk to the Minister about the need to educate all our young people on what to do when they are confronted with drugs and on the causes and impacts of taking them. All our children come across or are invited to take drugs in some form or another.

Our police are ill-equipped to deal with the advancement of technology and its use by criminals. Sir Michael Barber spoke of a “Betamax police force” stuck in the analogue era while fighting a digital threat. A Sky News report recently found that officers are not aware of the tools they can use to investigate online crimes or gain online evidence. Crest, the crime and justice think-tank that we all use a lot, notes that there is a technological knowledge gap in police forces.

In the ’80s and ’90s, the Home Office had at its core strong teams that produced top-notch research on the state of the drugs market and its ebbs, flows and patterns, but those teams have been sadly cut under this Government. We have learned from increasing drug use over recent years that we need to understand more about where they are coming from and how to tackle them. In truth, although we welcome the 10-year plan that the Government introduced last year, it was too little and, in many cases, too late. The drug dealers have got so far ahead of us that it will take a long time for us to catch up.

Finally, I have some questions for the Minister on how we can tackle some of those issues. We have talked about the core need for neighbourhood police officers to tackle drugs and some of the impacts of drug crime, be they street begging, drug dealing on our streets or other antisocial behaviour. This week, the Labour party has produced evidence showing that the number of neighbourhood police officers per person has fallen dramatically: there is only one neighbourhood police officer per every 2,400 people in this country, whereas 10 years ago the figure was about one per 1,600. That is a very dramatic drop in neighbourhood policing, and we all think that that needs to be addressed.

I ask the Minister to look at the responses of the sectors to his 10-year drugs plan. The specialist drugs organisations remain concerned about the focus on abstinence, the adequacy of the out-of-court scheme for casual users, and whether the real victims of county lines—the young dealers—will actually be helped. What has he done in response to those responses to his strategy?

Will the Minister consider introducing more police to our neighbourhoods and ensuring that more of the new police officers are on our streets, in our neighbourhoods, as Labour has called for continually? Will he consider police hubs, which we have talked about today and Labour has called for, where we can have police in our neighbourhoods, on our streets, tackling antisocial behaviour and lower-level crime?

Is the Minister considering the number of digital and data analysts in the Home Office and our police forces, so that we can understand some of the newer challenges posed by drugs being sold online? Will the Minister look at the county lines networks? There is lots of evidence that closing a phone line does not stop the drug dealing at all, because most drug dealers will keep their phone numbers elsewhere. If the police take a phone, dealers will just get another one and that will not stop the drug dealing. What conversations is the Minister having with his colleagues in DCMS and beyond about the sale of drugs online? What will he do to tackle that?

[Mark Pritchard (in the Chair)]

Order. Forgive me, I cannot cut the shadow Minister off and I would not want to do so, but I encourage her to draw her remarks to an end, in order for the Minister of State to respond.

[Sarah Jones]

I will. I always have so many questions for the Minister, as I am sure he appreciates. I will draw my comments to a close with the Prime Minister’s own words:

“It’s that much harder to level up a community while criminals are dragging it down.”

I agree with him, but we need more action.