Ten-Year Drugs Strategy

Sarah Jones Excerpts

Monday 6th December 2021 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Jones (Croydon Central) (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for advance sight of his statement. Over the last 20 years, we have seen a stark pattern of class A drug use. Between 1996 and 2011, the use of class A drugs was on a downward trend year on year. Since 2011, the use of class A drugs has increased every year. Drug deaths are at an all-time high and we have seen the emergence of increasingly violent and exploitative gangs that use technology that is way ahead of the Government to groom kids and sell them drugs.

The question Dame Carol Black answered in her review on drugs was why that has happened, and her conclusions were damning. We have gone backwards over the last 10 years, with drug abuse up and drug treatment down. She said that

“drug misuse is at tragically destructive levels in this country…Funding cuts have left treatment and recovery services on their knees. Commissioning has been fragmented, with little accountability …partnerships…have deteriorated. The workforce is depleted…and demoralised.”

I could go on.

There has never been a greater need for a 10-year plan to try to undo the 10 years of damage caused by Conservative Governments. In his statement, the Minister talked of ambitious plans, but what is missing is any recognition that the policies followed by Conservative Governments over the last 11 years have caused such damage. The truth is that the Government have dropped the ball on drugs and on crime.

I have been going round the country over the last few weeks and I have seen the damage that has been done. Communities of good people with hopes and dreams have been invaded by serious organised crime that trashes our streets and preys on our young by offering false hope of money and a future. There are two-for-one deals on Insta: “Introduce a friend and get your drugs half price. You help us, we’ll help you.” Thousands of children at risk of abuse are taking a punt on their futures at the hands of thugs, and whole communities are having to deal with antisocial behaviour and the crime that follows drug addiction. This is Tory Britain.

I will not join the Prime Minister’s fanfare about the biggest investment in a generation, because this Government have overseen the biggest failures of a generation; and I mourn the loss of life. Instead, today I hope that the Government mean what they say, and want to welcome the strategy—at last—and ask some questions of the Minister.

I welcome the funding, the commitment to 54,000 new treatment places, the closure of the 2,000 lines we hope to close and the ambition to save 1,000 lives, but will neighbourhood policing be brought back to the levels we saw in 2010—so crucial for catching those who sell drugs in our communities—because we know that only 400 of the first tranche of 6,000 officers are in frontline roles? Will the 50% of police community support officers we have lost be replaced?

Can the Minister explain why he is not funding treatment to the level that Dame Carol Black has called for? We count a shortfall of over £200 million. Will the Minister look at the new offence of child criminal exploitation, accept Labour’s suggestion of putting modern slavery offenders on a register similar to the sex offenders register, and look again at all the amendments we have tabled to the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill to impose longer sentences for adults who involve children in criminal enterprise?

While this Government have dithered on drugs, those selling and producing them have been working hard. They have new, exploitative ways of pushing their products around the country, and they have chilling ways of advertising them online to our children. A shocking 58% of 18-year-olds reported seeing drugs being sold online, often via Instagram and Snapchat.

Can the Minister confirm that the statistic that the Government have shut down over 1,500 deal lines actually means they have taken or shut down an individual phone or phone number, not that they have necessarily caught the groomers and the exploiters? Most criminal gangs will keep copies of their customer list that can be sold for thousands of pounds. I have heard the police talk about using an order to force a communications provider to disconnect a device or phone number, and the line was back up in an hour. How many actual networks have been shut down?

What is the Minister doing to recruit more analysts? What is he doing to work with social media companies, which should not allow the sale of drugs on their networks, to get ahead of the criminals online? How are the telecommunication companies involved in his plan?

Finally, prosecutions for drug offences are down 36% since 2010 and convictions down 43%. This is alongside an overall drop in prosecutions since 2010—down 40%. Why has this happened, and what is the Minister doing about that? All around this country, people know what impact drugs are having on our communities and they want something done about it. This statement and this drugs plan, however the Minister presents them, are not about levelling up; they are compensation for cuts over the last decade, for lives lost and for communities that have had to bear the brunt of the Government’s complacency on drugs.

[Kit Malthouse]

I am afraid that, while I obviously welcome some of the hon. Lady’s pleasure at what we are doing in the plan and I recognise, as she does, the need for some action, these exchanges between us have a slightly tiresome pattern, if I may say so, which is that I announce some new initiative and the hon. Lady starts talking about the events of 12 years ago, somehow implying that we are not really doing anything at all. Even if I accepted her premise about the pattern over the last 10 years—which, for the record, I do not—it would be refreshing, would it not, if she and her party were willing to accept some culpability for the financial situation that we inherited well over a decade ago. Somebody had to sort out the finances of this country, as we had to in 1979 as well, and if we had not done that and sorted out the money side of it then, I hesitate to imagine what financial situation we would be in now.

While the hon. Lady points to the pattern of consumption, she strangely seems to forget that drug consumption now is well below the level it was in many of the years of the previous Labour Government. In fact, consumption of class A did not really start to turn in this country till about 2014, not 2011, as she pointed out. That was because the industry, as it were, or the business of drug distribution reacted as any business would: it found different products and new ways to distribute, made products cheaper and stronger, and started to exploit people in a way we had not seen before.

We commissioned Dame Carol Black to do this study. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, who has just left the Chamber, commissioned it when he was the Home Secretary, because we recognised the alarm being caused in neighbourhoods, towns, cities and villages across the country, and we wanted to do something about it. That plan has now resulted in our strategy that we are publishing today, and we firmly believe it will make a big difference over the next decade.

The hon. Lady should not imagine—and I slightly take umbrage at her accusation—that we have sat on our hands more recently. As you will know, Mr Deputy Speaker, over the last two years that I have been in this job, I have dedicated myself to the Prime Minister’s command that we should roll up county lines. We have closed 1,500 deal lines, which has resulted in 7,400 arrests and, importantly, over 4,000 young people have been rescued from the clutches of those gangs. [Interruption.] I hope she, and her colleagues muttering at me, will welcome those results and, frankly, congratulate the police on manufacturing a modus operandi of dealing with these gangs that is often dismantling them permanently.

The three big exporting forces of London, West Midlands and Merseyside have seen significant investment by the Government over the last two years to deal with this problem, and as a result, we have seen big falls. If we look at a county like Norfolk, only 18 months ago it had well over 100 county lines, and the number of county lines in that county can be counted on the fingers of two hands. There have been great results across the country, and I am disappointed that the hon. Lady has not recognised that. So the idea that somehow there was some dithering on drugs is completely unfair. We have closed down a large number of deal lines, but there is still a long way to go. We think we are down to about 600 active lines now across the country, and that over the next two years, with the investment we have put in place, we will be able to drive them down even further.

The hon. Lady did ask an interesting question about the role of telecommunications companies and the use of technology. One of the things we have learned over the last two or three years is that these businesses, as it were, of distributing drugs are uniquely vulnerable because of their use of telecoms to distribute, market and communicate with their customers. We will be talking to telecommunications companies about how they can help us.

On the hon. Lady’s final accusation that this is not about levelling up, we know that the impact of drugs has been disproportionate across the country. The north-east, for example, suffers much more than any other part of England. Again, Blackpool, where we have put a Project ADDER and where we are doing significant work, has the highest number of drug deaths in England. There is a disproportionality out there, and we are determined to address it. We will start our work in those kinds of areas, and that will be a key part of our levelling-up agenda in the years to come.