Police Pay and Funding

Sarah Newton Excerpts

Thursday 14th September 2017 Commons Chamber

[Louise Haigh (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab)]

(Urgent Question): To ask the Home Secretary if she will make a statement on the 2017-18 police pay settlement and police funding.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Sarah Newton)]

I am pleased to have the opportunity to answer the question today.

The pay award for England and Wales for 2017-18 was announced this Tuesday after the Government carefully considered the recommendations of the independent Police Remuneration Review Body and the Senior Salaries Review Body. The Government accepted in full the recommendations of the Senior Salaries Review Body. The decision to award officers in the PRRB remit group a pay award worth a total of 2% to each officer in 2017-18, consisting of a 1% consolidated pay increase in addition to a one-off 1% non-consolidated payment to officers, represents a fair deal to the taxpayer and to our hard-working police officers.

Our public sector workers, including police officers, are some of the most extraordinarily talented and hard-working people in our society. I recognise the extraordinary contribution made by police officers in response to some of the most challenging situations that our country has faced for a very long time. I also fully respect the independent conclusions of the pay review bodies.

At the same time, we have committed to taking the difficult decisions to balance the books that have enabled us to repair the damage to the economy, while keeping employment up and taxes down. This will help us to strike the right balance between being fair to police officers and to taxpayers. We believe that the award is affordable within the current police funding settlement, noting that the PRRB has highlighted in its report the potential for further efficiencies.

Police reform is working. Crime, as traditionally measured by the independent crime survey for England and Wales, is down by a third since 2010. However, we know that the nature of crime is changing, and we are engaging with the police to better understand the changing demands on the police and how these can best be managed. That includes looking at what more can be done to improve productivity and efficiency, and to make prudent use of financial reserves.

[Louise Haigh]

Mr Speaker, I am grateful to you for granting this urgent question.

As the Minister said, the review body this week recommended a 2% consolidated pay rise for federated and superintending ranks. The Prime Minister stated during Prime Minister’s questions yesterday that the Government had accepted that body’s recommendations in full. But, as the Minister just confirmed, they have not. The Government’s response to the recommendations was to offer a 1% pay rise and a 1% one-off non-consolidated payment that is non-pensionable. Will the Minister tell us why those recommendations were not accepted in full?

The Prime Minister then went on to suggest that police officers had received a real terms increase of 32%, which, of course, the Police Federation called a “downright lie”. I would suggest that it was a cynical attempt to create a false impression, divorced from the reality for officers on the ground. Does the Minister think that the Police Federation was lying or that the Prime Minister got it wrong?

The Prime Minister confirmed that the pay settlement would be unfunded. The Metropolitan police estimate that this will cost them £17.7 million this year. West Yorkshire police and West Midlands police both estimate that it will cost them around 80 frontline officers this year. Does the Minister accept what chief constables are telling her—that this will cost us more frontline officers? If she does not, how will she advise forces to pay for this unbudgeted increase?

The Government announcement mentioned police reserves, which they claim to have increased to £1.6 billion in 2016. Will the Minister confirm, however, that the vast majority of these reserves are earmarked for projected spending and that only £363 million remains in general reserves? As she knows, police and crime commissioners are under a legal duty to hold adequate reserves. The Audit Commission suggests that this level would be between 3% and 5%, yet some police forces have reserves at levels beneath 1%. Will the Minister therefore confirm whether the Government are actually requiring police forces to run down their general reserves to fund staffing costs? Does she consider that fiscally responsible? From my private sector experience, I gently advise her that it is not.

The Government have repeatedly claimed that they have protected police funding since 2015. We know this is not the case because crime has risen in recent years, despite what the Minister says. This week’s announcement entails a further cut to forces’ budgets. The Government have been on warning for some time that the police are near breaking point. This move may finally break them.

[Sarah Newton]

I am grateful for the opportunity actually to set out some facts before the House, which is hardly what we have heard from the hon. Lady. Before I address the substantive points she raised, I want to say that it really does our hard-working police officers the most horrendous disservice to portray them constantly at breaking point, as if they cannot serve communities. Confidence in the police has been rising and is much higher now than it was in 2010. Those hard-working police officers are doing an extremely good job—day in, day out—for the communities they serve.

We have accepted the independent recommendations. Police officers will receive a 2% pay increase. The hon. Lady’s key point was about affordability. Let me address this head-on. On the latest audited figures, every single police force in this country has reserves of at least 6% of its general budget. The costs of delivering on the extra 1% are a very small fraction of all the police funding this year—less than 0.5%. This is absolutely affordable for forces. They were planning on a 1% increase; the extra 1% they are going to be finding—let me be absolutely clear—is less than 0.5% of the budget. Their reserves are increasing; they are running up to £1.8 billion.

If we look at the latest inspections by Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary, we see that Sir Tom Winsor has made it absolutely clear that there is room for more efficiencies in police services. The Government are supporting police officers on the frontline, as well as their leaders, to make those changes and to invest in technology, so that we can have the most efficient police force, which we can all be proud of.

To summarise, I believe that this proposal is affordable and that the money is there for the chief constables and the police and crime commissioners to fund it, and the Home Office is working with the leadership of the police to make sure that they can continue their really good progress on innovation, while keeping the nation safe.

[Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)]

Ever since I arrived in this House in 2001, it has been clear that the national funding formula does not treat Bedfordshire police fairly, and I have lost count of the number of Policing Ministers to whom I have made that point. My request to the Minister, whom I regard very highly, is that she go back to the Home Office and ask the Home Secretary and the Policing Minister to emulate what our colleagues have done in education, by providing a fair level of funding to every police force, so that we bring those at the bottom up to nearer the average.

[Sarah Newton]

I thank my hon. Friend for his kind words and his very good question. He is a marvellous champion for his constituency and his local police force. Like many colleagues, he has in the past made the case for changes to the funding formula, and the Policing Minister and the Home Secretary have that information and that consideration carefully under review.

[Gavin Newlands (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (SNP)]

Notwithstanding the unrecognisable response from the Labour Front Bench, the SNP welcomes the UK Government following the lead of the Scottish Government in lifting the pay cap for public services—recognising that pay is behind inflation and that pressure is increasing on household budgets. Given that Steve White, the chair of the Police Federation of England and Wales, has said that many of his members would be “angry and deflated” at their pay award, does the Minister recognise that the police force at the frontline of our services must be supported? Does she also agree with the First Minister of Scotland, who said that it is not just police officers but nurses, teachers, firefighters and workers right across the public service who deserve a fairer deal for the future?

[Sarah Newton]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for welcoming the Government’s decision. It is a pity, as he says, that the Labour party is not supporting the fact that the Government are recognising the extraordinary contribution that our police officers make every single day, in facing up to the even greater pressures they have been put under in the last 12 months, as they have responded so magnificently to the terrorist threats we have faced as a country. The Prime Minister has made it absolutely clear that the views of the independent pay review bodies for all parts of the public sector will be carefully considered and carefully listened to, and the Chancellor will respond to those at the appropriate time, which will be when those bodies report later this year.

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

The first duty of the Government is to protect the public, but I have to say to the Minister that there is a very real and very worrying spike in crime right across my constituency, which the police are trying valiantly to deal with. West Yorkshire police are increasing police numbers, and that is very welcome, but what can she do to make sure they can increase them much further and much faster, to help them reassure the public in my constituency, clear up these crimes, and do what we want to do, which is to protect the public and reassure them?

[Sarah Newton]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising that point. I can absolutely assure him that everyone in the Home Office wakes up every morning thinking, “What more can we do to keep our nation safe?” That is our absolute first duty. In terms of the crime statistics, it is not fair to say that all crime is rising. There has been a worrying increase in violent crime, and we have been acting on that at pace, with determination, supporting frontline police officers. There are whole series of action plans related to knife crime, to acid attacks and to the spate of activity we have seen in London around moped-enabled crime. There is very strong partnership working across the criminal justice system to make sure that it has the powers and the resources it needs to go and prosecute these crimes as swiftly as possible so that my hon. Friend’s community and every community across our country feels safe.

[Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)]

The Government clearly inhabit another planet. After a generation of progress on crime, 20,000 police officers have gone—2,000 in the west midlands—and crime is once again rising. Knife crime is up, gun crime is up, violent crime is up, crime across the board is up, and the public are increasingly at risk. Does the Minister not accept that she is now confronting the police service with a double whammy: on the one hand, for our brave police officers, a pay rise that is in real terms a pay cut; and on the other hand, asking beleaguered police forces to fund that pay rise? If the Government do not act, does the Minister not accept that they are betraying the first duty of any Government, which is the safety and security of the British public?

[Sarah Newton]

I yet again reiterate that, within the current budget, these pay increases are affordable. Of course it is our first duty to keep people safe. Again, the hon. Gentleman, like other Opposition Members, is talking down the police force and the huge strides they have made with falling crime. I have absolutely accepted in this House, not just today but in the past, that there has been, and there is, a rise in violent crime. We are acting with determination, at pace, to make sure that police officers in every community have the resources and the powers that they need to tackle that crime.

[Mr Simon Clarke (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Con)]

I never cease to be amazed by the dedication and bravery of Cleveland police officers, who do a fantastic job protecting our community. Does my hon. Friend agree that this award is all about being fair to those officers for their dedicated record of service but also fair to the taxpayer and to the wider public services at a time when we are running a deficit of £52 billion this year, posing a real threat to the sustainability of public services?

[Sarah Newton]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Of course, those brave police officers are also taxpayers, and they will absolutely understand that we have to strike the right balance, because without the strong and growing economy that this Government are delivering, we will not raise the taxes, so that we can have the world-class public services that we all want to see.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Paula Sherriff (Dewsbury) (Lab)]

Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Figures obtained from West Yorkshire police show that they have dealt with 33,000 more 999 calls this year than last—an increase of nearly 10%—yet officer numbers are down by nearly a fifth due to Government cuts. It would cost the equivalent of another 80 officers to fully fund the Government pay settlement. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Louise Haigh), I too used to work in the police, and I know that frontline staff feel that this Government treat them not as public servants but as public enemies. Can the Minister guarantee that we will not face any further cuts to police numbers?

[Sarah Newton]

That is a totally unacceptable thing to say. My sister was a police officer. My nephew, I am very proud to say, has just joined our local police force. I do not see members of my family—members of the community—as enemies, and neither does anybody in the Home Office or any Member on any one of these Benches. Unlike Opposition Members, we have to inhabit the real world and we have to make the tough choices of having a strong and growing economy, so that we can fund the first-class public services that we want to see.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

I am sure that residents in Kettering will welcome this pay rise for the police, not least because every single police officer I have ever met always works more hours than their shift requires. But may I join calls for changes to the national police funding formula? Counties such as Northamptonshire are clearly underfunded relative to their peers.

[Sarah Newton]

I thank my hon. Friend for standing up passionately, over a long period, for his local police officers and insisting that they receive a fair allocation of resources. I am sure that when the Home Secretary is looking at police allocations, she will bear that very much in mind. I want to take the opportunity to say that the Policing Minister is engaging with chief constables and police and crime commissioners all over the country to understand the nature of policing and the way in which it is changing, so that remuneration can properly reflect modern policing in the 21st century.

[Stephanie Peacock (Barnsley East) (Lab)]

A police community support officer in my constituency would face a cut of more than £1,000 if they started as a police constable just up the road in West Yorkshire. Does the Minister accept the impact that that has on police recruitment, and what will she do to tackle it?

[Sarah Newton]

I am pleased to let the hon. Lady know that police forces across the country, including Devon and Cornwall constabulary, are recruiting, and there are many more people wanting to join the police force than there are opportunities available. Clearly, pay and remuneration are not deterring people from coming forward and taking up the marvellous careers that being in the police force offers them.

[Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)]

I warmly welcome the decision to double the amount that was expected to be given to our brave police officers on the frontline. However, the Labour Mayor of London is consulting on widespread police station closures, the amalgamation of boroughs and a reduction in the number of police officers. Is any extra money going to be allocated to London to cover the costs of this pay increase, which I warmly welcome, or is it expected that there will have to be further closures of police stations and a further loss of police officers?

[Sarah Newton]

I thank my hon. Friend for raising that important matter. Local police forces—the Metropolitan police is no exception—have funding from the taxpayer via the Government, but they also have the ability to raise precepts in the local community. All police forces that use their precepting powers are seeing an increase in the amount of money that they have to spend. I strongly encourage all London Members, across the political divide, to ask the Mayor to use his precepting powers, so that cuts do not have to be made to services.

[Dr David Drew (Stroud) (Lab/Co-op)]

I have met both the police and crime commissioner and the chief constable of Gloucestershire over the last couple of weeks. They already faced a very difficult funding situation, but this announcement will only make it worse. They have made all the back-office savings that they can possibly make, and their worry is that restructuring is again on the Government’s agenda. Will the Minister at least rule that out today, so that I can go back to them and give them the assurance that they are not expected to waste yet more time and money on a useless restructuring exercise?

[Sarah Newton]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving me this opportunity to say that it is plain scaremongering to suggest that there is some hidden agenda of reorganisation. Operational decisions are made by police officers.

[Dr Drew]

What about Dorset?

[Sarah Newton]

As a Cornish MP, I can tell the hon. Gentleman that Devon and Cornwall police leaders have decided for themselves to work in partnership with Dorset. That has been a very successful partnership, which is saving back-office expenditure and enabling the force to be more efficient and keep our communities in Devon, Cornwall and Dorset safer. These are independent operational decisions made by the police themselves.

To answer the hon. Gentleman’s question directly, the police in his constabulary area have reserves of more than 6% of their annual budget that they could prudently use—they would have to use only a very small percentage—to reward extremely brave and hard-working frontline officers. I am sure all his constituents would want them to do that.

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

Just last week, the chief constable of Northumbria said that his force was getting “very, very close” to not being able to deliver a professional service because of budget cuts. Does the Minister think that burdening him with extra expenditure without giving him any extra budget is going to make that situation better or worse?

[Sarah Newton]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his question, but I do not consider that paying our brave and hard-working frontline officers, who have faced the most extraordinary year, extra pay is a burden. It is absolutely right that their extraordinary public service should be rewarded with this richly deserved extra 1%; that is absolutely the correct thing to do. Police forces will be sitting on reserves, and reserves are there for a reason: they are there, in part, for extraordinary circumstances. The police have faced extraordinary circumstances this year, and they richly deserve this pay rise.

[Chris Elmore (Ogmore) (Lab)]

On Wednesday, the National Police Chiefs Council said that

“without better real terms funding protection from government, an award above one per cent will inevitably impact on our ability to deliver policing services and maintain staffing levels.”

Does the Minister think that the unfunded pay deal will lead to a reduction in the number of officers, or is she suggesting that the council is making this up?

[Sarah Newton]

I say to the hon. Gentleman, as I have said to a number of his colleagues, that if we take the police budget as a whole, the extra 1% is less than—I repeat, less than—0.5% of the budget. All police forces are sitting on reserves of at least 6% of their annual funding, so these pay rises are affordable. I think they are richly deserved by frontline officers, and I thoroughly support the independent pay review bodies that made these recommendations.

[Liz McInnes (Heywood and Middleton) (Lab)]

I hate to burst the Minister’s bubble, but PC Joseph Torkington has just resigned from Greater Manchester police, citing, in addition to the pay freeze, cuts to frontline resources and attacks on terms and conditions. In his words:

“To the government I have nothing good to say whatsoever, they should hang their heads in shame.”

What effect does the Minister think that this below-inflation pay award, which is unfunded, will have on already plummeting staff morale?

[Sarah Newton]

We only have to look at the evidence for the fact that people want to join the police force, and more and more people are coming forward to do so. Police pay is not just made up of this annual increase; they have incremental increases, good terms and conditions, and pensions that they absolutely richly deserve. I think the police force today offers a great career for men and women across our country, and, by the way, the public are really delighted with the work that is being done in the hon. Lady’s community and across the country. Confidence in the police and in their ability to keep us safe is rising, and it is much higher than the level we inherited from the Labour Government back in 2010.

[Jeff Smith (Manchester, Withington) (Lab)]

The Minister says that we should look at the evidence. The evidence is that Greater Manchester police has lost 2,000 staff—officers—since 2010 as a result of Government cuts, and the strain is showing right across south Manchester. How can she claim that these unfunded rises are affordable for police forces such as Greater Manchester police when they are already desperately short of funds?

[Sarah Newton]

I will not repeat myself again, but I will say that I think the police have risen magnificently to the challenge of having to deal with the reductions in their funding. We only have to look at this in terms of the reduction in crime and the rising public confidence in the police. The nature of policing is changing, and the nature of policing needs to change because the nature of crime is changing. The Government are supporting the police in that transformational work. In addition to the annual budgets given to police forces, we also give significant funding for transformation—up to £175 million—and we are doing a huge amount of work on innovation to support crime prevention and crime reduction. The Government are standing four-square behind the excellent and determined work that our police officers are doing all across our country in facing up to and dealing with the new crimes and emerging threats.

[Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)]

Is not making half the pay award non-consolidated a sleight of hand, which officers will see right through? If they are worth a 2% pay increase, why can the Minister not make it a genuine consolidated 2% increase?

[Sarah Newton]

I do not think we can be accused of sleight of hand when we are standing here in Parliament being very clear about what we have done and why we have done it. In addition to all the support we are giving to frontline officers and their leadership through the transformation funding, we are doing a huge amount to enable police officers to be supported by the wider public sector. Every day, police officers have to deal with vulnerable people, who are often suffering a mental health crisis. The Government have supported the wonderful partnership work between the NHS and police officers so people—and police officers—are properly supported. This is about not just the amount of money that is going into police funding, but the transformation and partnership work, which is being enabled far better than it was in 2010.

[Luke Pollard (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Minister will know that the police force that covers both our constituencies has lost 597 police officers since 2010. What estimate has she made of how many experienced police officers will leave Devon and Cornwall police this year because they feel undervalued and devalued by a below-inflation pay rise, which is a real-terms pay cut?

[Sarah Newton]

I always welcome any opportunity to praise the work of our excellent Devon and Cornwall police. When I go about my business there, I see highly motivated police officers and lots of people who want to join the Devon and Cornwall constabulary. As we have discussed before, it is doing very innovative work, not least with the police force in Dorset. I do not accept the very negative picture that the hon. Gentleman is trying to paint. I encourage him to speak more positively and represent its extremely good work in the House. Crime is falling and it is keeping us safe in Devon and Cornwall.

[Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)]

The Minister ended her response to the urgent question by talking about the prudent use of reserves, but why does she think she knows better than the National Audit Office, which demands that police forces keep adequate reserves and says that taking staffing costs out of reserves is financially irresponsible? My chief constable in Humberside explained to me last week how important reserves are when unexpected demands are made on the police service, such as multiple murders that have to be investigated. The money is not there to cover the increased pay costs.

[Sarah Newton]

I thank the hon. Lady for her question. I talked about the prudent use of reserves, but it is important to note that they have been growing year on year. They now stand at £1.8 billion, so there is clearly an opportunity for forces to use them to pay for the extra 1% pay rise. I refer her to the work that Sir Tom Winsor does with Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary reporting on police forces. He has said clearly and consistently that police officers can do much more to improve efficiency.

[Joan Ryan (Enfield North) (Lab)]

The Metropolitan police have warned of steep increases in gun and knife crime in London over the past year: gun and knife crime have risen 42% and 24% respectively, and recorded crime is up across virtually every category, which does not chime with what the Minister is saying. Police numbers fell for the seventh consecutive year in July, and many forces are at breaking point. I do not see how asking the police to foot the £50 million bill for the Government’s disingenuous pay deal will help to solve the crisis. To talk about the Mayor’s precept in London is simply trying to pass on to hard-pressed Londoners the cost of the Government’s failed policies.[Official Report, 9 October 2017, Vol. 629, c. 2MC.]

[Sarah Newton]

I thank the hon. Lady for her question, which gives me the opportunity to thank the Metropolitan police for its deep and consistent engagement with my colleagues in the Home Office working on action plans to tackle the spike in violent crime in London. We do a huge amount of joined-up work supporting our colleagues in the police force in London to tackle these issues. Taxpayers all over the country pay for policing through a combination of general taxation and local precepts. Given that the Metropolitan police consumes about a third of the police budget for England, I do not think it is too much to ask Londoners to pay their fair share of the precept, just as my constituents have to pay their fair share.

[Holly Lynch (Halifax) (Lab)]

In Calderdale in the past 12 months, we have lost 50% of our neighbourhood policing officers. The picture being painted by the Minister could not be any further from the reality on the streets of Halifax. The pay bonus would cost West Yorkshire police an additional £4 million, which is the equivalent of 83 police officers. How does the Minister expect our forces to be able to deliver the pay bonus without it impacting on frontline services? And may I be very clear about this point, Mr Speaker? Those of us on the Labour Benches are speaking up for our police officers, not talking them down.

[Sarah Newton]

As I said, I believe the reserves held by police forces should be used to cover the cost. I do not see that they have to make frontline cuts to officer numbers. Operational decisions are totally down to chief constables and police and crime commissioners. I believe the costs are affordable. I encourage the hon. Lady to go back and speak to her police and crime commissioner about her concerns about local operational decisions. The decision that has been made will enable us to do the right thing for our brave and hardworking police officers, who have had the most extraordinary year facing up to some of the greatest challenges that our country has faced for a very long time. They richly deserve this extra pay rise.

Knife Crime

Sarah Newton Excerpts

Wednesday 6th September 2017 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Sarah Newton)]

I welcome the debate, and pay tribute to the work done by the hon. Member for Croydon Central (Sarah Jones) over the summer recess. She has obviously not had a holiday at all, but has spent a huge amount of time living up to the clear commitment that she made during the general election campaign, when she said that she would do everything she could to stamp out knife crime in Croydon. I am delighted that she has shared all her learning in the House this evening. I am also grateful to the wide variety of colleagues on both sides of the House who have stayed behind, and have made such important contributions.

I entirely share the hon. Lady’s passionate determination that we should do all that we can to stamp out the appalling knife crimes that we have been seeing. She talked about the horrendous instances in her constituency; however, this is happening far too frequently, not just here in London but in other parts of the country. I welcome the creation of an all-party parliamentary group, which will enable me to work with the hon. Lady and other Members, sharing local experiences and the work that we are doing nationally so that together we can try to make the differences and changes that we all want so much to see.

[Sandy Martin (Ipswich) (Lab)]

The Minister has said that she would be happy to do everything to stamp out the growth of knife crime. Does that include reversing the cuts in police officer numbers that we are seeing in constabularies around the country? In Suffolk, for instance, in one of the least policed areas in the country, the number of officers has been cut by 300 over the past 10 years.

[Sarah Newton]

Of course resources are important, but let us be clear: the Government are not cutting the money that goes to police forces. Since 2015, their money will have been going up in cash terms, especially if they use their precepting powers. It is not fair to say that we are cutting that money. Police officers—police leaders, with the police and crime commissioners—make the operational decisions. It is the Mayor of London, working with the Metropolitan police, who decides how London is to be policed and how communities are to be kept safe. Of course the Home Office has a role to play in supporting them, and, since 2016, our modern crime prevention strategy has focused on the reduction of violent crime, including knife crime. That strategy is very clear. When we meet the all-party group—in the few minutes I have got this evening, I cannot do justice to the breadth of work the Government are doing to bear down on this issue—I will, with officials, explain to the hon. Member for Croydon Central and other members of the APPG across the House who want to come along our strategy and the actions that we are taking now. As the hon. Lady says, the Home Secretary announced a whole series of measures that we are about to consult on, and of course her contribution to that will be very welcome.

[Mr Reed]

The Government have directly reduced funding for youth offending services and indirectly reduced funding for early intervention and family support through the cuts delivered to local government. This has become so severe that those working in youth offending services can no longer devote the time necessary to prevent young offenders from reoffending, so we are still seeing reoffending at extremely high levels. That is putting those young offenders at risk and risking future victims. Will the Government look again at these very short-sighted cuts which are not only causing such damage to young people’s futures, but will cost more in the long run because of the consequences of the crimes they commit?

[Sarah Newton]

I absolutely agree with the hon. Gentleman that prevention is vitally important—working with young people to explain the risks they are taking if they carry a knife and, once they get into the criminal justice system, making sure they get all the support they need to be diverted from such harmful behaviour. A key part of the announcement we made in July was that we will be doing more work at a community level. We are setting up the new £500,000 community fund to support those very successful grassroots organisations we have heard about this evening, which are key partners for us in the Home Office, such as St Giles and Redthread. I am sure the hon. Member for Croydon Central has had meetings with those excellent organisations in London. We work with and partner such organisations and part-fund them, along with the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime and the Mayor of London, to make sure the services are there, and that we are identifying the most vulnerable young people and giving them the support they need to make different choices in their lives.

Building on that evidence base and what we have learned in London, services are being expanded across the United Kingdom. We have heard about the excellent work done in A&E departments—the “teachable moments” that happen in our major trauma centres here in London. The Government are part-funding the expansion of that into cities around the UK this year. So we are working at pace with determination using the evidence base of what works—a lot of that has been learned in London—to make sure other parts of the country and communities that are experiencing such problems are getting the support they need.

That brings me back to the hon. Lady’s primary ask that we work together across the House to look at both a national and a local response. Since we launched our strategy, we have been building the capacity in the system to understand this very complex issue: it is sometimes driven by gangs, and sometimes by organised and serious crime; and whereas carrying knives and participating in knife crime disproportionately involves young people, people of other ages are involved as well. We have funded a whole series of local and area-based reviews. One was done in Croydon; the hon. Lady might not have had a chance to speak to the chief executive of her local authority or her borough commander about that work, but it was very useful. We have had very good feedback from boroughs and places all over the country, enabling all the agencies in the community—social services, youth offending services, schools and teachers, voluntary groups, communities and counsellors—to share data and build a picture of what is happening in their communities, so that they can properly target their resources to join up those services to support young people in the communities to make different choices.

That work extends beyond the immediate localities to deal with the county lines issues. This sort of crime is being exported out of London, Manchester and Liverpool to other parts of the country, so we are funding not only local area reviews but national strategic reviews. With that better intelligence and data, we are making a real difference by joining up the different parts of the public services with businesses and voluntary sector organisations, which are so capable of working with young people, to restrict access to knives. That work is being scaled up at pace to meet the challenge that we undoubtedly face today.

[Ross Thomson]

The Minister talks about knife crime being exported out of London and other cities; it plagues the whole of the United Kingdom. Education, justice and health are devolved matters in Scotland, but will she commit to engaging with the Scottish Government to look at how we could adopt a consistent approach to dealing with this issue across the United Kingdom?

[Sarah Newton]

I can absolutely assure my hon. Friend that I am already doing that in relation to all the new measures on preventing young people from getting access to knives and on banning zombie knives. We have asked the Scottish Government to do those things. I have not had time to do justice to the huge amount of information that we have been given this evening, but I want to carry on this discussion. I very much welcome the way in which the hon. Lady has presented the debate. This is a nationwide issue that requires all of us in this place to reach out and work with each other to bring an end to these appalling crimes—

Drugs Policy

Sarah Newton Excerpts

Tuesday 18th July 2017 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Sarah Newton)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered drugs policy.

I am pleased to have the opportunity to open this debate on drugs policy because, as many Members will know, the Government have just published an ambitious new drug strategy, which sets out a range of new actions to prevent the harms caused by drug misuse. The Government’s previous drug strategy, launched in 2010, balanced action against three strands: reducing the demand for drugs; restricting the supply of drugs; and supporting individuals to recover from drug and alcohol dependence. Since the 2010 strategy was published, local communities have been placed at the heart of public health, giving local government the freedom, responsibility and funding to develop its own ways of improving public health in local populations, including action to reduce drug and alcohol use and to support those recovering from dependence.

We have already taken concerted action to tackle new threats, such as the supply of so-called legal highs, through the Psychoactive Substances Act 2016, and there are positive signs that the Government’s approach is working. Compared with a decade ago, drug misuse among adults and young people in England and Wales has reduced from 10.5% in 2005 to 8.4% in 2015-16.

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

Drug and alcohol abuse is a difficult issue to address. What consultations has the Minister had with the various groups and communities that are rightly concerned about the mental health problems related to such abuse? Has she had any discussions?

[Sarah Newton]

We have consulted widely with a range of experts and academics, and we are well served by the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, but we have also consulted communities, users and people with frontline experience of addressing these issues. I totally agree that we have to consider the complexity of the challenges facing individuals who are drawn into substance misuse, and we must ensure that we have tailor-made recovery solutions, which will often include support on underlying vulnerabilities or mental health issues. The strategy, as I will outline in some detail, seeks to take a multifaceted, joined-up approach so that people right at the heart of it can make a sustained recovery, which is what we all want to see.

[Norman Lamb (North Norfolk) (LD)]

The Minister says there are signs that the policy is working, but does she ever pause for thought when she sees the significant increase in the number of people dying from drug misuse in the past three years? That picture is not mirrored in other European countries that take a more enlightened approach.

[Sarah Newton]

There is no complacency in my approach, or in the Government’s approach. In setting out the context of the new strategy, it is worth reflecting on some of our past successes—we have a good evidence base upon which to build for the future. Like the right hon. Gentleman, I am concerned by that increase in the number of deaths, often of people with long-term substance misuse problems. If he stays for the debate, I hope he will hear about our approach to prevent those deaths, which is a key part of our new strategy. I will welcome further interventions at that point. A speech from the right hon. Gentleman, who served so well as a Health Minister in the coalition and who played such an important role in some of the Department’s successes, would be carefully listened to and taken into consideration in our work in the years ahead.

[Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)]

The rate of drug mortality started to rise in 2013, when the ring fence was removed and local authorities became responsible for drug and alcohol treatment. Does the Minister regret her Government’s decision to remove that ring fence?

[Sarah Newton]

I will address how more people with long-term substance misuse problems are dying, but I remind the hon. Lady that the public health grant remains ring-fenced. It is for local authorities, working with partners in their communities, to come up with the best ways of tackling people’s serious and long-term substance misuse problems.

We have seen a phenomenal improvement in our understanding of the overlap between mental health problems and substance abuse problems. Councils not only have the public health grant and their partnerships in local communities; they also have the significant additional funding that the Government have made available for mental health services and community mental health services, as well as the homelessness prevention and troubled families funding. As I will hopefully have an opportunity to say, what is different about the strategy, in part, is the partnership working that we see as being at the heart of driving further improvements.

[Mims Davies (Eastleigh) (Con)]

Parents will welcome the Government’s focus on an updated and joined-up strategy. The mental health impacts associated with cannabis use, particularly by teenagers and young people, are one of the most upsetting issues raised in my constituency surgeries. Does she agree that this joined-up approach to local access is vital to the affected families?

[Sarah Newton]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. I doubt there is a single Member who has not had either a family member or a constituent come to speak to them about their huge concern about the harrowing effect on young family members who get involved in drugs. There is a growing evidence base and deep concern about the impact of cannabis on the development of young minds. A lot of concern is being raised about how psychosis can be brought on by even modest exposure to cannabis. It is essential that we consider mental health and substance misuse together. I assure her that that is at the heart of what we will be doing.

Although we have all far too frequently come across these heart-breaking cases of young people who have faced the terrible consequences of taking drugs, including losing their life, it is worth noting that, overall, fewer young people are taking drugs. Reliable data show that drug use among 11 to 15-year-olds peaked in 2013, and there has since been a continual decline. Again, we are not at all complacent, and we will be doing more work to educate young people about those harms.

Not only are fewer people taking drugs in the first place, but those who enter treatment services are having a good experience. The average waiting time to access treatment remains three days, and within two days for under-18s. Some 80% of young people who enter treatment leave successfully, so we have good foundations on which to work.

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

The Minister is making good points about the seriousness of this issue. Does she agree that, although total drug use figures may be coming down, we all see a small number of high-profile incidents in our communities—often murders—involving drugs and drug dealing? That unsettles our communities. Does she have any hints on what we can all do to try to improve the situation? On the business of curing people, has she had a chance to look at the programmes introduced in Gloucestershire by the Nelson Trust, which takes a tough-love approach that seems to be working well?

[Sarah Newton]

I have not visited the Nelson Trust in my hon. Friend’s constituency, but perhaps in a subsequent intervention he will invite me to come along. It is important that we continue to build the evidence base on what works. We have an open mind on innovation and on new ways of helping people give up their addiction.

My hon. Friend raises a good point on the overlap between crime and substance misuse, and of course there is a strong correlation. The modern crime prevention strategy identifies substance misuse—both alcohol and drug misuse—as a key driver of crime, so law enforcement has a critical role to play in our drug strategy’s joined-up solution.

We want to ensure that law enforcement has all the tools it needs. The Psychoactive Substances Act 2016 has had a positive impact, and hundreds of retailers across the United Kingdom have closed down or are no longer selling psychoactive substances. The police have arrested suppliers, and action by the National Crime Agency has resulted in the removal of psychoactive substances from sale by UK-based websites. The first offenders have been jailed, and we are seeing the police use their new powers, with more people going through the criminal justice system.

[Richard Graham]

I would be delighted if the Minister cared to visit Gloucester to see the county council’s Families First troubled families programme, to look at the Nelson Trust’s drug rehabilitation programme and to meet the Hollie Gazzard Trust, which is doing a lot to educate people in schools about the dangers—Hollie Gazzard herself was murdered.

[Sarah Newton]

My hon. Friend illustrates well that in a local community what is needed is a joining up of services, whereby everything from prevention in schools right the way through to the criminal justice system and recovery services is working well. Of course I will be delighted to visit his constituency to see how those different services are joining up so well in Gloucestershire.

[Mims Davies]

Police and law enforcement issues have also been raised in my constituency. Will the Minister be prepared to consider legislation to deal with situations where prolonged cannabis use is having an impact on neighbours, with long-term users having an impact on the daily lives of children and babies next door?

[Sarah Newton]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. What I would be prepared to do is write to her setting out the range of powers that already exist. I know from my constituency that the police are not always aware of all the civil powers they have, in addition to the criminal powers, to tackle some of the antisocial behaviour associated with persistent drug use. I understand and recognise the challenge she is portraying. The troubled families programme is designed in part to help those families where a drug user has substance misuse problems and, in so doing, help the children living in those households.

[John Mann (Bassetlaw) (Lab)]

We have already had more mentions in the first 10 minutes of the police than we have police officers in Bassetlaw. Will the Minister confirm that we remain the only country in the world, other than the United States, where the Government lead for drugs is in criminal justice, as opposed to health? If the approach is evidence-based, why is that the case?

[Sarah Newton]

I am sure there are many more police officers in Bassetlaw than there are Members in this Chamber this afternoon. I am proud that our drugs strategy is world-leading, and is recognised to be so, because we take this cross-government approach. This is not a simple issue. Tackling substance abuse and preventing people from taking drugs is not a simple thing to do, which is why we take this whole-government, joined-up approach. Our colleagues from the Department of Health are firmly involved in our activity, as is almost every Department.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Sarah Newton]

If colleagues do not mind, I am going to make a bit more progress as I think I will then be able to answer some of the questions.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Sarah Newton]

Okay, I will take a few more interventions.

[Jeff Smith (Manchester, Withington) (Lab)]

Greater Manchester police would argue that since the Psychoactive Substances Act 2016 supply has shifted to the streets, and the product was more consistent in the headshops, whereas now it is constantly changing. Does the Minister agree that that shift is part of the reason for the epidemic of Spice use in Manchester, which is causing huge problems?

[Sarah Newton]

I welcome the hon. Gentleman’s comment. We were all really concerned when we saw those images of people on this kind of new zombie Spice in Manchester, but I was pleased that the 2016 Act proved itself in the case of Spice, because as soon as we saw those dangers emerging we were able to take action to ban it through that Act. As we did the testing to understand the chemical components and how serious they were, we were then able to shift them into the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971, which gave them a proper classification. Just this Friday I was pleased to see that in Manchester the whole community got together with other cities—there were people there from Nottingham and Wrexham. Law enforcement, the mayor, civil society and local authorities all came together to do exactly what we are proposing in the drugs strategy, which is to take a multi-agency approach, so that the issues that brought about those awful scenes we saw, where vulnerable homeless people in Manchester were so wickedly targeted with that type of Spice by drug dealers, are now being properly managed. This allows homeless people to get the support they need so that they do not fall prey to that activity. The more stringent measures and sentencing available under the Misuse of Drugs Act mean that the police in Manchester have the full range of tools they need to take action there.

[Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab)]

The Netherlands has had a pragmatic, intelligent policy of drug decriminalisation for 50 years. It now has a serious prison problem, because there are not enough prisoners to fill its prisons. Is that not a problem we would like to have here?

[Sarah Newton]

I accept that some Members and some people in our country think that we should decriminalise drugs. I do not agree, because we are evidence-based policy makers and all the evidence shows the awful harms caused by the drugs that we ban and restrict. Our primary job is to keep people safe, and the way to do that is to prevent them from taking drugs in the first place.

[Norman Lamb]

I note the point about this being “evidence-based”, but the evidence clearly shows that the most dangerous drug in terms of harm is alcohol. So will the Minister explain the different approaches the Government take to alcohol, the most dangerous drug, and to cannabis?

[Sarah Newton]

I would not agree that alcohol is the most dangerous drug, as we can see if we look at the substances we are restricting. There are people who take alcohol to such a harmful degree that it is devastating for them, and for their family members and the wider community. I fully accept, as the Government do in the modern crime prevention strategy, that the misuse of alcohol has dramatically harmful effects and contributes to crime, but alcohol taken in moderation is not a harmful drug. The Department of Health constantly keeps this under review and is doing research all the time to understand the health impact of alcohol, and it revisits what it considers to be safe drinking guidance. Public Health England has only recently updated the guidance, which suggests that people should be consuming less alcohol.

[Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)]

Last week, I visited Path 2 Recovery, which does the drug recovery work in my constituency. It expressed concern about the effectiveness of the drug rehabilitation requirements, feeling that they did not have enough teeth, took up a lot of staff time and were not very effective. I note that page 23 of the strategy says that the Government are evaluating the framework pilots. Will the Minister say something about her thinking on the current effectiveness of drug rehabilitation requirements, and whether we can do anything differently and better?

[Sarah Newton]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that question. He takes a deep and sustained interest in this policy area. We are very much hoping that when we have the recovery champion up and running, they will take a key role in looking at best practice and developing our evidence base as to what works. We have set out clearly in the strategy that we see sustained abstinence over a 12-month period, getting back into work and playing a full part in society as key outcomes of recovery. That will address some of my hon. Friend’s concerns about how in the past too many drug recovery programmes have really just been a revolving door, where people came in and were there for too short a time, and although they may have got clean, what they needed was support on housing, jobs or education so that they could sustain their recovery. Those programmes were not incentivised to enable that. So we are looking at outcome frameworks over a longer period which make sure people have the best possible chance of recovery, with mental health services and recovery services involved in this.

[Ronnie Cowan (Inverclyde) (SNP)]

I wish to refer back to the point about alcohol abuse, with which I agree. Alcohol is consumed throughout this House; we have 15 bars and restaurants in this place, all selling us alcohol. Some 90% of recreational drug users are not a problem—they consume their drugs and get on with their life—and only about 10% are a problem, so I cannot see why the Minister wants to take alcohol as one problem and drugs as another.

[Sarah Newton]

Our published drugs strategy definitely recognises the relationship between those who take drugs and those who drink alcohol, and understanding that relationship will be a key part of our recovery programmes. In our modern crime prevention strategy, we have a whole series of actions around alcohol. Public Health England and the NHS do a lot of work in that area as well. We are very understanding of the hon. Gentleman’s point, and it will form part of our joined-up integrated approach. Is there a further question I can take before making some progress?

[Ruth George (High Peak) (Lab)]

An enormous part of the harm that is done by drugs is when people, particularly young people, do not know what it is that they are taking. If we are considering a harm prevention strategy, should we not be trying to ensure that we can protect people and help them to know what they are taking? Does that not include making drugs available legally so that we can test them and properly protect people?

[Sarah Newton]

I thank the hon. Lady for her question. We need to be really clear here: we do not ban substances without an evidence base that shows that they are harmful to people’s health. The reason why we put in those protections—whether it is through the Psychoactive Substances Act 2016, or the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971—is that the evidence base clearly shows that these substances are harmful. There is no safe way that people can take these products. It would be terrible to confuse young people by saying that they can, somehow, safely take a legal high. I know how difficult it is to have these conversations with young people; I have three children in their 20s. I understand the world in which they live and the temptations with which they are faced, but that is why it is so important that we have very clear messages and effective education tools for teachers, which we are investing in now. We will be legislating to make personal, social, health and economic education statutory in schools so that every young person understands the risks of taking alcohol and drugs, which will make them more resilient and more able to resist the temptations. I have said to my own children, “If you can’t go into Boots or any other reputable pharmacist and buy something, then it will not be good for you.” It is really important that we have very simple and clear messages for young people.

[Thangam Debbonaire (Bristol West) (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for generously giving way so many times, but I must challenge her. She said a moment ago that there is such a thing as a safe level of consumption of alcohol, but that is not what the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence guidelines say. The NICE guidelines are clear and accurate: there is no safe level of consumption of alcohol. We allow it to be consumed legally and we provide information, treatment and recovery, but we do not criminalise people who are consuming alcohol. Why will she not consider the graph that I can show her—[Interruption.] No, I am not supposed to do that. Evidence is available that shows just how much more harmful alcohol is than any other drug.

[Sarah Newton]

This debate today is about the drugs strategy. I have been very generous in answering questions. We understand that there is a relationship between drugs and alcohol, but I will not be drawn into a wider debate about the current legal framework around alcohol, because we are here today to talk about our drugs policy. [Interruption.] May I just finish my point? Look, our policy is based on independent evidence, and is informed by the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs. The vast majority of academic and medical research backs up our position.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Sarah Newton]

No, I will not give way as I wish to make some progress. I will answer some more questions later.

Let me remind everyone that we are not at all complacent about this. We definitely recognise the scale of the threat that drugs continue to pose to our society. They do destroy lives and have very serious impacts on families and communities. The cost to society is about £10 billion a year, half of which is related to theft and criminal activity around drug usage.

I wish to go back to this very serious point about drug-related deaths and how they have increased by 10% in the past year. Again, using the best available evidence, we understand that there is a cohort of people—and of older people—who have been taking heroin and crack cocaine for some time, which has had a very significant impact not only on their mental health, but their physical health. That is a driving factor in our strategy. Using the evidence base, we are able to segment better the treatment and the recovery programmes. We will be doing that with the firm hope that, by tailor-making the support that they need, we will see fewer people die and more people—even if they have been taking drugs for some time—being able to get off drugs and have the independent and fulfilled life that we want everyone to enjoy.

We are also very concerned about the way that synthetic cannabinoids—commonly known as Spice—have been so ruthlessly targeted at the homeless population. We are working on that, alongside our homelessness reduction programmes, with mental health services. In particular, we are looking at young people who might be vulnerable to these types of substances. We want to ensure that everybody has access to the best possible recovery programme.

The strategy builds on the three strands of the previous strategy—reducing demand, restricting supply and building recovery—by embracing a smarter, partnership-based approach, both locally and nationally, and recognising the links between different Government Departments and different Government ambitions. Clearly, we want to reduce crime, improve people’s life chances, promote better health, tackle homelessness and protect the most vulnerable people in our society. The strategy sets out key actions covering the wide range of partners critical to tackling drug misuse successfully, including those in education, health, safeguarding, criminal justice, housing and employment.

The strategy also introduces a new fourth strand on global action to bring out the critical importance of international co-operation. We want to reduce the demand for drugs by acting early to prevent people, especially young people, from taking drugs in the first place and then preventing escalation to more harmful use. This starts with universal action to give all young people the resilience and confidence they need to make positive choices about their health and well-being, including resisting drugs. For example, we will be legislating to make PSHE statutory in schools and expanding the Alcohol and Drug Education and Prevention Information Service for young people. That will be complemented with more targeted action to prevent drug misuse among vulnerable groups, including young people who are not in education, employment or training, looked-after children, offenders and the homeless. There will also be a targeted approach for emerging and evolving threats such as performance-enhancing drugs, so-called chemsex drugs and, sadly, the misuse of prescription drugs.

Tough enforcement is also a fundamental part of our drug strategy and we will continue to bear down on those who seek to benefit from the misery caused to others. We will take a smarter approach to restricting the supply of drugs, adapting our approach to reflect changes in criminal activity. For example, we have taken action to close down the mobile phone lines being used for drug dealing and other dreadful exploitation such as the trafficking of young people to sell drugs. Those mobile phone lines will be closed down. We will also use innovative data and technology to disrupt supply over the darknet. Our Serious Organised Crime Agency and the National Crime Agency have a very important role to play.

[Diana Johnson]

Let me take the Minister back to investment and the idea that if this matter was treated as a health issue, there would be more investment in drug treatment services. Is it not the case that in France, where this is treated as a health issue, the investment is less than it is here where we have treated it as a criminal justice issue and a health issue combined?

[Sarah Newton]

I just do not accept the premise of what the hon. Lady is saying. We do not take it in the way that she describes. We see this very much as a partnership or a joined-up whole Government approach. Of course health and recovery is at the centre of our strategy. It is not a fair interpretation to say that this is led by justice. It is about a joined-up whole system approach. Recovery remains a vital part of the Government’s approach.

[John Mann]

Will the Minister give way?

[Sarah Newton]

I will make a bit more progress. We are absolutely determined to improve support for those dependent on drugs by raising the quality of treatment, and to improve outcomes by ensuring that people get the right interventions for their needs. That means ensuring that they can access the full range of services to help them rebuild their life, which may include mental health, housing, employment and training services, and a lot of support for a stable family life, free from crime. I am pleased that we will appoint a national recovery champion, who will drive progress by visiting different parts of the country to identify good practice and ensure local collaboration. We will also encourage partnership working and transparency by developing a new set of outcome measures to give local areas further support through Public Health England.

For the first time, we are setting out global action. We are already taking a global lead on our psychoactive substance work, encouraging data exchange to give us a richer picture of international trends, and bringing in global bans on the most harmful new psychoactive substances. We will continue our work through the United Nations. We have a balanced, evidence-based approach to drugs. Collaborating with partners around the world will help to give us a better intelligence base and enable us to take better action.

I hope that Members will see that this is a truly cross-Government strategy that requires the commitment and coming together of many Departments. The Home Secretary will establish a new drugs strategy board, of which I will be a member. It will include people from all the key Government Departments, Public Health England, and national police leads. Then we can all plan together to implement the strategy and hold each other to account. I am confident that the strategy is grounded in the best available evidence. We consulted extensively with key partners working in the drugs field, and I am sure that the strategy will make a lasting difference, but we know that there is no easy way to tackle drugs and the harms that they cause, and we need to do much more. Our strategy is flexible enough to enable us to respond to emerging threats.

Finally, by working together across government, locally and nationally, we can genuinely deliver the safer, healthier Britain, free from the harm of drugs, that we all want.

--- Later in debate ---

[John Mann]

Mr Deputy Speaker, you are ever wise, ever accurate and ever factual. Bassetlaw saw a 400% reduction in acquisitive crime. Why? Because it was the drug addicts committing most of the crime.

For 11 years people could go through the front door of their GP’s surgery. Not everyone was happy. I have read the medical advice—not all of it, but hundreds and thousands of papers—and basically there is a two-thirds success rate for chronic relapsing illness, meaning that two thirds will be sorted, wherever the illness is, and a third never will be. There is a cohort of people who will always have problems, and they tend to go in and out of prison regardless, but there are far fewer of them because we have reduced the number by two thirds, leading to huge savings.

That does not totally solve the problem, but it allows the rest of the community to get on with their lives without being plagued. Pensioners were not having their windows smashed every five minutes by people who stole a fiver—the normal heroin theft is to break a pensioner’s window and grab the first thing in sight. The fear and the cost of repairing the window is far bigger. Frankly, I think that if most pensioners knew they would just leave the fiver outside. That is what life was like.

What do the Government do? Two things. First—this is a big improvement in this new drugs strategy—they say, “Recovery, recovery, recovery. We are not going to bother maintaining anybody.” That change is vital. That is what they did in the Netherlands, France, Sweden, Australia and New Zealand—in fact, in every country I went to. They all left it to the doctors.

In 2002 only three countries did not have health authorities in charge of drugs policy: the United States—obviously—us and Iran. When I went to Iran to talk about drugs policy, I found that they had just changed it. They had done that—this is my assessment, not what people there said—because, basically, all the drug addicts had been sent to be looked after by the religious leaders, who would put them in recovery. But it did not work, which was undermining the religious leaders. So those at the top in Iran sent people over to Australia to study the medical system there, and they came back and introduced it in Iran, which therefore now has a medicalised system—and there are big improvements. You see, doctors are rather good at treating people because they know what they are doing. Yes, they sometimes use methadone or buprenorphine treatments, and sometimes they bring in mental health therapies, but the system worked well through the NHS.

What have we done? In 2010, we threw all that out the window and gave it to the local councils, and all of them—including Labour councils—in their great stupidity privatised it. What do those Labour councillors say? “We know better than the GPs and the NHS. It’s got to be joined up. It’s got to be more than the NHS.” So they took it away from the NHS and, since 2013 in my constituency, people have not been able to walk through the front door of their GP practices.

Guess what has happened? I had a meeting on Saturday, in Retford. There have been hardly any burglaries in Retford in the last 100 years, but there are record numbers this year. Who is committing them? The druggies—people who are drug addicted but cannot go through the front door of their GP practice as they could before. I cannot get them in. I used to guarantee to every family: “I’ll get you an appointment within a couple of days.” And I did, and it was easy. They went in and saw their GP. They engaged with their GP, and it was hugely successful.

My recommendation to the Government and to my own party—perhaps my right hon. Friend the Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) will pass this on to my leader—is to put this portfolio in health. That is what the Labour party policy review that I chaired in 2009 recommended, and it had 4,000 submissions. The leader at the time and the one after him ignored it. Third time lucky. Put the portfolio in health and say that a critical part of the policy is that the NHS—primary care GPs—will manage the patients. Say that people in this country have the right to be treated by their GP. Yes, more is needed from other services—absolutely: getting people into jobs, keeping control of crime and getting people into stable housing, but the NHS is at the heart of the issue.

By the way, why on earth have the Scottish Government moved away from their successes a few years ago in places like Glasgow towards this nonsense of people coming out of the recovery system after six months? The Government said, “Six months and that’s it—out you come.” That appears to have changed.

[Sarah Newton]

indicated assent.

[John Mann]

If it has, that is brilliant, but we should never have gone back to that nonsense in the first place; I am sure the Minister will blame the Liberals. That is what we had in 2002: the revolving door. “Oh, you’re out—you’re clean.” “Who says I’m clean?” “Well it’s six months. You have to be.” It was a bit like how it is in the prisons: strangely, someone has some Naltrexone and “Oops! You’re clean!” That is the stats fiddled. Frankly, I could fiddle those stats. It is the system that does it. Totally meaningless.

Let us have a bit of honesty. We would still have a problem. We would not get rid of it all. Dealing with Spice is not as straightforward as dealing with heroin, and the GPs do not have all the answers. But if someone with an addiction goes to a GP, the GP pulls in mental health services, and that does work. Across the world, people have found that. So let us not misquote what happened in Portugal, where I have been, because what I am talking about is the key to that system. Let us not misquote what happens in the Netherlands, where they have kicked out most of the coffee houses and they specifically demonise heroin—very sensibly at the time, in my view. The position for quite a while was, “Our problem is heroin. Do what you want, but you’re not doing heroin”, and they got on top of it. We are not in that situation, so we do not need that kind of overly crude approach. We can look at what the Swedes do and what the French do. In France, the GPs will not do it. With single-practice GPs working from their own home, it is easy—go to the local chemist and get the prescription, and do not even bother supervising it. Do not complicate it, that is my advice, and then we will get better results.

I can only give it as I see it. I have got the documents—the research is there. To new colleagues in all parts of the House, I say, “Read the assessments of what has happened, because there is a plethora of materials that demonstrate this.” We will not get rid of the problem, but we can significantly be on top of the problem. There are some improvements, but frankly not enough. Yet again, the Home Office is the wrong Department. Of course the police advisers all want to decriminalise drugs, because it gets crime down. I have heard this for 15 years: “If we decriminalised and didn’t arrest, crime would come down and the problem would be solved.” No, that is not the answer. Lots of good stuff could be done in terms of how we police and do not police. There are lessons we could learn from abroad.

The starting point is to shift the portfolio to health. We should be bold enough to say, “It doesn’t fit in with how this place works, but we’re doing it anyway. When we’re in power the portfolio will be in health.” That in itself would transform the situation in this country because then we would have to make sure that primary care is funded and would be able to stop wasting money elsewhere. Local councils: love them or loathe them, they haven’t got a clue—big error. We should tell our Labour councils, “Stop privatising and give it back to the NHS.”

--- Later in debate ---

[Graham Jones (Hyndburn) (Lab)]

Lancashire constabulary, due to cuts, has taken the mental health worker out of its police response unit.

[Sarah Newton]

That is out of order.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. I reassure the Minister that that is not the case. It is for the Chair to decide. Thanks for your help, but you are wrong.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sarah Newton]

Before I respond to the substantial questions and items in today’s debate, I wish to pay tribute to the excellent maiden speeches we have heard. I shall start with the excellent speech from the hon. Member for Slough (Mr Dhesi) about Slough’s bright future as the silicon valley of the UK. I am sure he also has a very bright future in this House, and not just because of the bright colours of his turbans. This is a very proud day for our democracy as a glass ceiling has been shattered. He spoke so powerfully about belonging, and everyone, from all parts of the House, wants to welcome him so that he feels that he truly belongs in this mother of all Parliaments.

It was also a great pleasure to listen to my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Jack Brereton), whose great maiden speech described the history and the potential of Stoke, and the role it is playing in global Britain. I am sure he will represent Stoke-on-Trent as a powerful advocate for innovation and all those growing businesses there that he so well described. I am also sure we are all going to be lifting up mugs, plates and any other items we buy to look for the words “Made in Stoke-on-Trent” on them. I share with him a strong link to his constituency, because the china clay that is mined in Cornwall is taken to the potteries and has helped to create those iconic brands such as Wedgwood that he mentions. I am very much looking forward to working with him in the weeks, months and years ahead.

We also heard from the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Emma Hardy), who spoke so powerfully about the importance of making a sacrifice so that we can make the powerful difference we want to see in our country and the sacrifice that our families make to enable us to do that. I am sure her daughters will be so proud of her. Having heard her speech today, I am sure nobody will ever underestimate her or Hull again.

The hon. Member for Wolverhampton South West (Eleanor Smith) also spoke powerfully about the scourge of drug use, and the need to look at the root cause of why people take drugs and then to support them on the road to recovery. She is obviously very proud of her constituency, its history, its people and its culture. My sister is a nurse, and I know what powerful advocates nurses are for their patients. I am sure she will be a great advocate for all her constituents.

We also heard from the hon. Member for Ipswich (Sandy Martin), who spoke of his passion to help marginalised people in Ipswich choose a life free of drugs, and I look forward to working with him in that vital task. It is good to hear that he wants to build on the work of Ben Gummer, his predecessor, in improving the local economy and the opportunities there, particularly the rail links, and I wish him well during his time in Parliament.

I will try to cover in as much detail as I can in the remaining time the issues, questions and challenges that have been posed about the strategy. I welcome the fact that the right hon. Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) welcomed the strategy and recognised some of the achievements of the 2010 strategy. In doing that, she rightly wanted to know what more we are doing in prisons and rightly pointed out the real problem we have with drug use in prisons. I want to reassure her about the actions that are going on now to support prison officers in tackling this dreadful problem. We are enhancing the drug-testing regime, supporting governors by recruiting new officers to our prison estate, looking at how prisons can co-commission drug services with the NHS locally, ensuring that the parameters of prisons are more secure and maintained and improving the searching capability of dedicated teams. It is really important that I have this chance to point out that we are taking a comprehensive series of actions to prevent prisons from being a place where people can readily access drugs.

My hon. Friend the Member for Reigate (Crispin Blunt) made a really important contribution to this debate. The fact that we have allowed this debate in Government time—we have had a really good debate with a wide-ranging discussion—demonstrates our commitment to getting this policy area right. We have published a lot of data, which my hon. Friend mentioned. We have worked with a wide range of stakeholders to inform our evidence-based strategy, and we will continue to do so.

My hon. Friend and others have asked whether we will be evaluating the Psychoactive Substances Act 2016. We are already doing so. We have published the framework for that evaluation so people can contribute, and we will be publishing the findings in 2018. We are determined to be an open, evidence-based policy team. We do look very closely at the work of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, as it is the key Government adviser. It is simply not true to say that we have not taken on board all the recommendations that it has made. It has made a really important contribution to this strategy, and will continue to do so going forward.

My hon. Friend the Member for Reigate also talked very movingly—as did a number of hon. Friends—about the stigma around this issue. He was absolutely right. I have met many parents of families myself. I went along to a very moving service in Westminster Abbey only a month or so ago organised by Adfam. I encourage everyone who has a family member struggling with substance misuse to seek that help, to go to their GP, and to pick up the phone to the helplines that are available because they will receive support on how to manage their issues and their substance abuse problems.

[Fiona Bruce]

rose—

[Sarah Newton]

I will give way briefly, but I do want to cover the points.

[Fiona Bruce]

Does the Minister agree that effective treatment means helping those who are suffering addiction to come off the substance to which they are addicted? It is not just about managing their situation, which might mean being dependent on a different substance.

[Sarah Newton]

We have a broad range of strategies, and I will come on to talk about harm reduction, because, clearly, it has a role to play. The ultimate goal is to enable people to have a drug-free life in which they have a job and are playing a full part in society, but there is a role for harm reduction.

[Norman Lamb]

rose—

[Sarah Newton]

I am sorry, but I have very little time. If I can make some progress, I will give way.

Many Members talked about how concerned they were that the police and the criminal justice system were criminalising a whole generation of young people. I can absolutely assure Members that, having spent a lot of time with police officers, that is simply not the case. The police are very, very sensitive to the need not to do that. We have a wide range of options available to police officers and the courts, so that young people in the criminal justice system can be referred straight to health solutions, diversion services and treatment. It is only as a last resort, often with persistent offending, that the criminal justice solution is sought.

The hon. Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Martyn Day) talked about the need for class A drugs, such as heroin, to be used in treatment and recovery programmes. I can assure him that that is absolutely what happens. That was the recommendation that ACMD made and the drugs are available. However, that is quite different from just making a space available for people to take drugs. Having heard the evidence of the hon. Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann), it is really important that if people are to be taking heroin it must be part of a treatment programme with recovery as the end point. I have been to the facilities and seen for myself how people are given clean needles and support and advice, but it is medically led by a doctor. That was a point that the right hon. Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb) made, and it was reflected in the advice that we took from the ACMD.

My hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) talked powerfully about the issue being a matter of social justice, and she is absolutely right. The strategy addresses the problems that she articulated so well of children living in homes with parents who have substance abuse problems, whether we are talking about alcohol or drugs. It is important that we take a joined-up approach to make sure that those families are really supported. She also mentioned the important issue of cheap alcohol and white cider. I very much supported the action that the Treasury is taking in consulting on increasing taxation; that consultation is under way, and I am sure that we will hear the results in due course.

My hon. Friend the Member for Louth and Horncastle (Victoria Atkins) spoke powerfully, drawing on her experience of the serious organised criminals who bring the most harmful drugs into our country. She is absolutely right to highlight the human trafficking and appalling abuse of children that happens in bringing the drugs into our country. The same gangs exploit vulnerable people in our country in order to traffic these drugs around the country. She is right to draw on her experience, and on the view shared by many in the criminal justice system that we need to work globally, through the United Nations and our partners, and share data to prevent these drugs from arriving on our shores.

The hon. Member for Manchester, Withington (Jeff Smith) spoke about the difficulties of families. I really hope that Martha’s mum, who is here, sees how seriously we take the loss of any child. As a mother of three children, I just cannot imagine the horror of getting that phone call to say that I had lost one of my children. I want to reassure her; I hope that she sees, from the nature of this debate, how seriously the Government and everyone in the House take the issue. We want to work against the stigma that families face, so that they can speak out and get the help that they need. I hope that she is somewhat reassured by the strategy’s emphasis on the good advice and information that should be readily available to young people, so that they understand the risks of all drugs, including alcohol, tobacco, and other substances that they might be tempted to take. A lot of progress has been made in the four years since Martha’s tragic death.

The hon. Member for Wrexham (Ian C. Lucas) made a point that he also raised at Home Office questions last week. Winging its way to him is a detailed written response to that question. I recognise the picture that he describes in his community. It is something that I faced in Truro last year. What I saw there is that, as he has discovered, not everybody—not all police officers or people in local authorities—has all the information about the powers that they have to work as a team to tackle these issues. In my letter to him, I describe what I think he can do, and the advocacy and agency that he can bring to bear in getting all the partners together in Wrexham to work on the issue.

I can reassure the hon. Gentleman on the funding for the testing that police officers need to do of substances that they find on people in order to get convictions. That testing regime is well supported by and funded by the Home Office, but as I say, I will write to him in a lot more detail.

The hon. Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn) spoke passionately about the work of Elizabeth Brice and her campaign for the medicinal use of cannabis. I want to assure him and all Members in the House that there is access to medicinal cannabis. It can be used for a wide range of ailments and can be very beneficial. Sativex, for example, is licensed for use. It has been raised with me before that our regime for enabling pharmaceutical companies or medical researchers to use licensed drugs is letting people down, so I have asked the Department of Health and the ACMD to look at this. We have not seen any evidence that the current regime is a barrier to people using banned drugs in medical research, but if the hon. Gentleman has that evidence and wants to send it to me, of course we will review that.

The term “war on drugs” was used repeatedly in the debate, most passionately by the right hon. Member for North Norfolk, who spoke with customary eloquence, but also by the hon. Member for Inverclyde (Ronnie Cowan). I just want to say that I have never used that term, and it appears nowhere in the strategy. It is simply not the Government’s policy to have a “war on drugs,” so I hope that we can sort that out once and for all. We have a far-reaching, cross-Government policy focused on the health harms of drugs, the underlying social reasons why people take drugs, and trying to prevent them, right through to the criminal justice system. We are taking a balanced, full-Government, integrated approach. I can assure hon. Members that we always look at evidence from around the world, so the evidence from Portugal has been considered.

The hon. Member for Bassetlaw quite rightly said that if we are absolutely serious about reducing the number of deaths from heroin, especially among those who have been taking it for some time—and we certainly are; no Minister wants the number of deaths to increase on their watch—we must have an evidence-based approach. I honestly think that the strategy will tackle that. We do recognise that naloxone can play a vital role in saving lives, as he said, and that there is a good evidence base for that. The strategy that was published commits us to the wider use of that in saving lives.

The hon. Member for Bassetlaw also described the excellent work that was done in Bassetlaw up until 2013. That is just the sort of local response that we want to see, with all the agencies working together. The drug champion will of course have a vital role, travelling across the country, finding best practice and sharing it with those communities that perhaps do not have as good an understanding of how to tackle the issue. The strategy board, which will be chaired by the Home Secretary, will include representation from NHS England, Public Health England and the police—a whole range of expertise. They will work together to develop measurable outcome frameworks, which of course we will share over time as they are developed, and we can hold each other to account for their delivery.

The hon. Member for Bristol West (Thangam Debbonaire) claimed that the Government are ignoring the recommendations of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs with regard to deaths from heroin. That is simply not the case. We have taken all of its recommendations into consideration in forming the strategy. We have a good, constructive, ongoing relationship —I meet the chairman regularly. I am sure that the work of the board, led by the Home Secretary, will be informed by the ACMD’s really excellent work.

The Home Office and Public Health England jointly set up some heroin and crack cocaine action areas. The piloting we did in Middlesbrough gave some good ideas about how to move in the right direction, and that is referenced in the strategy. Despite the claims made by some colleagues on the Opposition Benches, there has been a lot of innovation in recent years, and we very much want to build on that. We need only look at the excellent clinical advice that has been developed by Public Health England to help clinicians have a much more nuanced and effective approach to understanding the different types of people who suffer from drug misuse and the different types of drugs they use, and therefore to have a more tailored approach to helping them on the road to recovery.

[Norman Lamb]

I am grateful to the Minister, who has responded to all the challenges in a tolerant and civilised way. The hon. Member for Reigate (Crispin Blunt) proposed that we have a royal commission in order to take the heat and the politics out of this matter and look dispassionately at all the arguments. Will the Minister at least consider that?

[Sarah Newton]

I just do not agree that politics is driving the issue. Our approach is totally evidence-based. If we were worried and felt unable to talk about the problem, as some have characterised us this afternoon, the Government would not have given a whole afternoon of debate to it. I accept the sincerely held views of hon. Members who do not agree with the Government, but that does not mean that our policy is not based on evidence. We are happy to debate the issue; there will be other opportunities and I will welcome those.

The pivotal role of Parliament is to scrutinise the work of the Executive and take on some of the difficult issues in our society. I am proud of our work together in the last Parliament on destigmatising mental health issues. A lot of people in this place were prepared to talk about those issues from personal experience and also with a huge amount of evidence. It is fair to say that there has been a huge culture change in our country. By talking about drug addiction and substance abuse problems, as we have today, we will contribute to a destigmatisation. As a result, more people will come forward. Families will be saved appalling loss and communities will be saved the blight of the criminal activity that goes along with this issue.

[Crispin Blunt]

If a royal commission looked into this matter, I hope that it would consider not only what is happening in the United Kingdom. This is a global problem that needs a global policy to address it. The sand is shifting under our feet as other nations begin to change their policies. If there were a royal commission, the United Kingdom could do some thought leadership about what is happening around the world.

[Sarah Newton]

I thoroughly agree that we must approach this matter from a global point of view. That is the fourth strand of the policy—the global strand. It is about working thoroughly and consistently with colleagues at the United Nations and globally, and looking at the evidence base. Actually, some other countries look to us as leaders in this area, especially on psychoactive substances. We are global Britain. We are always out looking and working in partnership with other countries and we will look at the evidence base from them.

[Paul Flynn]

Will the Minister give way?

[Sarah Newton]

I am going to make a little more progress if the hon. Gentleman does not mind.

The hon. Member for High Peak (Ruth George) touched on the issue of resources. Having a good, well implemented strategy requires resources, of course. There was a lot of misunderstanding about funding this afternoon. The Public Health England budget is ring-fenced. Yes, it is given to local authorities, which need to make decisions, based on consultation with and the health needs of their communities, about the allocation of resources. If some local authorities are disinvesting, that is sad to hear, because we put the evidence out there and the benefits of investment in good recovery services are clear—not just to the individuals concerned, but to the whole community.

I expect local authorities to use their ring-fenced budgets for public health for those services. But there is not just that budget. The Government have made record sums available for mental health services, and the national health budget is growing. The homelessness prevention funding has been ring-fenced and there is investment in innovative ways of working on homelessness prevention. There has also been the troubled families funding. The issue is about joining up those funds so that we can use the money in a smart way and tailor it to the needs of each family and person—they are all different—so that we can be really effective.

[Ruth George]

All the funds that the Minister mentioned are stretched beyond compare, especially the mental health funding. Yes, public health funding is ring-fenced, but it has been cut by £85 million. Drug treatment services are being cut, I am afraid, even though there is increased need.

[Sarah Newton]

What I see when I go around the country is a great deal of innovation where people are learning to use their resources more effectively.

One of the very important jobs of the champion is to look at what is happening well in parts of the country where people are not disinvesting in services and have excellent examples of partnership working. I praise the work that the hon. Member for Bristol West (Thangam Debbonaire) is doing in really getting into the weeds in her community and understanding this issue. In doing so, she knows that it is only by joining up all the services in the community and involving employers that we are going to make the step change that we need to see. I am very clear—

[Paul Flynn]

Will the Minister give way?

[Sarah Newton]

I only have a few minutes left.

I am very clear that this is a very ambitious policy. It has been based on evidence. It has been some time in the coming because we have looked at reports and research that has been done, particularly by the ACMD, to inform what we are doing. I absolutely want to put it beyond doubt that we see this strategy as joining up health, social and crime areas. It is a completely joined-up approach to government. We are trying to help people into recovery. The health interventions that people have so rightly spoken about are absolutely critical to the success of this strategy.

The strategy board will meet when we get back in the autumn. I am sure that Members will see that we have many opportunities to debate the outcomes framework that we will be putting forward, and we will hear about the really good work that the recovery champion is going to do. I hope that Members in all parts of the House will engage with the recovery champion, share the good work that is going on in their constituencies, and share their concern where things are not working, because let us be in no doubt—this is a complex issue that is going to require a huge amount of effort in every community in every part of our country. Despite our views on whether we should criminalise or not criminalise, we are all united in wanting to end the pain and suffering that is caused to too many people and too many communities by the use of drugs.

[Paul Flynn]

I would like to make a brief contribution, Madam Deputy Speaker, because there are four minutes to go.

Independent Monitor Annual Report

Sarah Newton Excerpts

Tuesday 18th July 2017 Written Statements

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Sarah Newton)]

The 2015 Annual report from the Independent Monitor is being published today at: www.gov.uk. A copy of the report will also be placed in the House Library.

[HCWS62]

Acid Attacks

Sarah Newton Excerpts

Monday 17th July 2017 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Sarah Newton)]

I genuinely thank the hon. Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms) for bringing this very important debate before the House today. How timely it is. I also thank colleagues who have made important contributions this evening. I thank the hon. Gentleman for the tone he set for us this evening. I agree with every point he made.

Even before the terrible events of last Thursday, which left five people injured, one with life-changing injuries, it was clear that the use of acids and other corrosives to attack people is a growing threat that must be addressed with urgency. Violence of any kind is unacceptable, but I think there is something particularly troubling about these kinds of attack. Corrosive substances cause severe burns and serious tissue damage. All too frequently, victims’ lives are altered forever. Nobody should have to go through this kind of mental and physical trauma. We have heard from victims who say that the injuries have deeply affected their sense of self. The challenge of returning to a normal life can sometimes feel almost insurmountable.

Sadly, these disturbing acts of violence are not new. The use of acids goes back centuries. However, the increase in incidents in this country is undoubtedly very worrying. In April, there was the attack in a Hackney nightclub, which left a number of people with severe burns and serious eye injuries, and we have heard the hon. Gentleman speak so eloquently and movingly this evening about the two cousins who were attacked in his constituency. It is vital that we do all we can to prevent these horrendous attacks from happening. We must not let those behind such attacks spread fear through society.

The law in this area is already strong, with acid attackers facing up to a life sentence in prison in certain cases. Meanwhile, suspicious transactions involving sulphuric acid must be reported to the police. However, it is vital to ensure that we are doing everything possible to tackle this emerging threat. Earlier this month, the Home Office held a joint event with the National Police Chiefs Council, which I attended. The meeting brought together law enforcement, Government, retailers, the NHS, experts and local policing to discuss the acid attacks and build up a better evidence picture. The hon. Gentleman made the important point that we must have better data on the scale of the threat to help us to understand how we will tackle it. Last October, with the help of the National Police Chiefs Council, we got more information from the police, which we have put into the public domain—it is on the Home Office website. We will be repeating that exercise, so that we collect data more regularly and have a much better understanding of the scale of the threat.

That meeting provided the basis for the action plan to tackle acid attacks that was announced by the Home Secretary on Sunday. I am pleased that the hon. Gentleman —[Interruption.] I have been passed a useful note telling me that he has been made a right hon. Gentleman—it is richly deserved—so I apologise for not picking that up earlier. The action plan will include a wide-ranging review of the law enforcement and criminal justice response, existing legislation, access to harmful products and the support offered to victims. I want to reassure the right hon. Gentleman and all colleagues here tonight that the points he has raised are being actively considered as part of that review.

[Lyn Brown]

I genuinely thank the Minister for putting the review in motion. I welcome the breadth of the urgent issues that the Government have indicated will be under consideration, but I wonder whether she thinks it is a good time for the review to take a broader look at the safety of the changes made to the sale of substances such as sulphuric acid by the Deregulation Act 2015. I understand that the experts who sat on the former Poisons Board, who had real expertise in this area, had serious concerns and favoured alternative reforms.

[Sarah Newton]

As I say, this is a wide-ranging review. We are definitely looking at the Poisons Act 1972, and I will make sure the hon. Lady’s point is taken into careful consideration. We are looking at the Crown Prosecution Service’s guidance to prosecutors, to ensure that acid and other corrosive substances can be classed as dangerous weapons. In addition, we will look again at the Poisons Act and whether more can be done to cover these harmful substances.

We will make sure that those who commit these terrible crimes feel the full force of the law. We will seek to ensure that everyone working in the criminal justice system, from police officers to prosecutors, has the powers they need severely to punish those who commit these appalling crimes. As the Home Secretary has said, life sentences must not be reserved for acid attack survivors. Further work will also take place with retailers, including online, to agree measures to restrict sales of acid and other corrosive substances. Victim support needs to be at the very heart of our response. We need to make sure that victims get the support they need, now and in the years ahead.

We are working on this with great urgency. We are about to go into recess, but I want to reassure the right hon. Member for East Ham that when Parliament gets back in September I will make sure that I update colleagues who are interested and seek an opportunity to update the House on the considerable progress that we expect to be able to make over the summer.

[Stephen Timms]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Sarah Newton]

I have probably got a few seconds left, so I want to reassure the right hon. Gentleman—[Interruption.] I have obviously misjudged the amount of time I have, so I am happy to give way.

[Stephen Timms]

I am grateful to the Minister, and I look forward to the update in September, as, I am sure, do other Members. Is she able to tell us when she expects the review announced by the Home Secretary to conclude? When does she expect the final outcomes to be announced?

[Sarah Newton]

As I have said, we have already started work. We put a fair amount of it in motion last year during the build-up to last week’s meeting. I cannot commit myself tonight to a particular time by which we will complete the work. As I think everyone will understand, it is so wide ranging that, while some elements will be relatively easy to bring to fruition, others will require a longer period. Some may require changes in legislation, in which case we will seek the earliest possible legislative opportunity. I can absolutely commit myself, however, to the seriousness with which we are taking this issue, and to the urgency, the vigour, and the resources that we are bringing to bear in the Home Office to co-ordinate a whole-system response. We are working with partners both outside and inside Parliament. Different agencies need to come together.

These are horrendous crimes, and I am very much aware of the fear that is spreading, not only in London but in other parts of the country. There is simply no place in 21st-century Britain for such hate-filled, utterly devastating attacks, and we will do absolutely everything we can to prevent them.

Question put and agreed to.

Mental Health Act 1983

Sarah Newton Excerpts

Tuesday 11th July 2017 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Sarah Newton)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Mole Valley (Sir Paul Beresford) not only on securing the debate, but on the measured way he has approached it. He highlighted some of the really serious challenges faced by the police and the emergency services in dealing effectively, but also humanely, with those who are in a mental health crisis. We can all agree that this is a very important topic.

For far too long, the subject of mental ill health has not received appropriate attention. The services for those experiencing mental ill health are sometimes not what they should be, and people have been faced with long waits for the help and support they should have received.

However, the Government have made clear their utter determination to improve mental health services, and we have made considerable progress in recent years to address the serious concerns we are discussing tonight. In particular, the use of police cells as places of safety under the Mental Health Act has fallen significantly. Last year, it was down to as few as only 2,100 instances. Some forces, such as Hertfordshire and Merseyside, have achieved zero use of police stations, while others, including West Midlands, Suffolk, Nottinghamshire, Lancashire and Lincolnshire, have very low usage—right down in the single figures. We expect to see significant improvement when the numbers come out in October.

This has been brought about by a lot of good local partnership working. Only last week, I was with the police and mental health services in Kent, introducing their new strategy, which involves innovative working between the police and local health partners so that they can respond effectively and swiftly to those who are suffering mental ill health. It is also about bringing together the voluntary sector to enhance the support for local people. There are similar partnerships all over the country as part of the crisis care concordat partnership networks, which are driving forward really good improvements.

Most police forces will now have street triage schemes. This means that, although they are quite different in different parts of the country, most police officers will be deployed alongside mental health professionals, so if a call comes into the centre that somebody is experiencing a problem of the type we have heard about, mental health professionals will be sent along with the police officers as they respond. Alongside the reduction in the use of police cells, we have seen a reduction in the use of section 136 powers as these decisions are being made by health professionals to make sure that somebody in such a crisis can get the care that they need immediately. We have seen really good examples in Norfolk and in the west midlands, with dramatic falls in the number of people being sectioned. I am very happy to meet my hon. Friend to discuss this excellent work. In the meantime, I will send him examples that he could perhaps take up with his local police force to make sure that it is drawing on the best possible practice from around the country.

We have increased the availability of liaison and diversion schemes so that those entering the criminal justice system who have mental ill-health or substance misuse issues can be immediately identified and referred into suitable assessment or treatment. These schemes now cover about 75% of the population of England, and we are on track to provide national coverage by 2021. We have provided some £15 million to 88 local projects to increase the provision and capacity of health-based places of safety, focusing on the areas with particularly high use of police cells and limited places of safety. We have announced a further £15 million of funding to continue this vital work.

Just as importantly, we are also bolstering our mental health services. We are investing record levels in mental health and improving access by introducing the first-ever waiting times standards for treatment. We have invested £400 million to improve mental health crisis care in the community and £250 million to establish liaison mental health services in every emergency department by 2020. Since 2010, we have increased spending on mental health to a record £11.6 billion in 2016-17, and a further £1 billion will be invested every year by 2020-21 so that we can deliver the mental health services that people richly deserve.

In addition to this, we are making £1.4 billion available by 2020 for children and young people’s mental health services.

[Sir Paul Beresford]

I do, of course, applaud the Government’s work in this field. However, I am talking about the particular emergency situation where someone is sitting in a police car, a radio call comes through, they tear up to the incident, and they are two miles away from St George’s hospital and the psychiatrist who visits it. They need to do something on the spot.

[Sarah Newton]

I very much appreciate my hon. Friend’s specific point. I wanted to set the scene and describe to him the scale of the investment to ensure that we do have the appropriate medical professional to accompany the police. I think we can all agree that we need those trained mental health professionals to be able to assess the person and to make the best judgment call on the best way to treat them. It is unreasonable to expect a police officer to have enough clinical experience to be able to make that call.

Like my hon. Friend, I have spent time with my local armed police officers. I have been out on the beat. I have seen the extent to which, in the course of their everyday working, they encounter people who have mental health problems, and how brilliant they are at handling the situation. We have heard vividly about how well they are able to manage it, as he has seen himself, but that is usually about containing it. They are not qualified to assess the best clinical approach for the individual in the way that a mental health professional is.

[Sir Paul Beresford]

I completely agree. If section 136 is used in a public place—and if it were used in a private place—the individual goes into care in a mental hospital environment and must be assessed within 72 hours. That is an added protection. No one expects policemen to be wonders on psychiatry, but the assessment follows very quickly.

[Sarah Newton]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point and he will be pleased with recent legislation that has reduced that timeframe from 72 to 24 hours. That is a big step forward. Whether an incident happens in a public place or in someone’s home, we are working towards a situation where a mental health professional will be with the police when they attend. That means that there will be no delay similar to that described so vividly by my hon. Friend. I think that some of the examples he gave happened some time ago. As a result of investment, particularly in the work of the crisis care concordat, which has created the framework for police forces to work with mental health services in their community, all kinds of innovative measures have been introduced to ensure that resources, including mental health nurses routinely working with police officers on the beat and specialist back-up to deal with situations similar to those we have heard about this evening, are planned and delivered locally. That is how we want things to happen.

As I have said, we are putting the resources in place. Although these services are working in most of the country, additional investment is being provided where that is not the case. There is also support through the crisis care concordat to fill those gaps and to ensure that everyone everywhere has the same experience.

[Dr Poulter]

My hon. Friend is making some thoughtful and good points about the extra resources that are going in to support people with a mental illness. On section 136 powers, the mental health professional who accompanies the police is often a nurse, and they do not have powers to section people. A section 12-approved doctor who accompanies the police, however, does have powers to section people, and the same is true under sections 2 and 3 of the Mental Health Act. I think that is where my hon. Friend the Member for Mole Valley (Sir Paul Beresford) is coming from.

[Sarah Newton]

I thank my hon. Friend for his contribution. The point I was trying to make is that a range of health professionals are working alongside the police in different settings to make sure that their response is appropriate. Sometimes it is mental health nurses who will be on the beat with police officers. My hon. Friend the Member for Mole Valley said that the police were called because somebody was in a very aggravated and stressful situation and they might have been prepared to take their own life. A call handler at the emergency centre would triage that situation, understand its severity and send the appropriately qualified medical professional so that they can make those decisions.

I think we are largely in agreement on the progress we have made. I want to focus on my hon. Friend’s key point, which is that he does not think that the police have sufficient powers to act quickly in relation to people in private homes who are mentally distressed. I have read through his previous contributions and I am sympathetic to his point. I appreciate how utterly frustrating it must be for police officers who find themselves in a situation where they feel helpless to take action in a reasonable amount of time when they would have those powers if they were in a public place. Having read previous debates and contributions, however, I think it is right that we consider somebody’s home differently from a public place. For most people, their home is their refuge. It is a special place. We allow people to do all sorts of things in their homes that we do not allow them to do in a public place. We have to reflect carefully before taking more powers on the state to allow us to intervene in people’s private space. We seek to strike the right balance so that we can intervene to keep people safe and ensure that they get access to services without violating their privacy. We have consulted quite widely on the matter, and we considered it when we were looking at a review of the legislation. There was a lot of discussion about it, and the view was that we had struck the right balance and did not need to take the extra step that my hon. Friend wants us to take.

New powers have been introduced, as I mentioned, in the Policing and Crime Act 2017, and we are monitoring how they are working. I reassure my hon. Friend that if that monitoring suggests that we can or should do more, we will take further action. We expect to see a lot more data from the police this autumn about how sections 135 and 136 are implemented on the ground. We will be analysing the results of a new annual data return to establish whether there are any new trends or patterns that need further response. We will have the opportunity to consider the whole issue in the round as we look, as promised, at the Mental Health Act.

I am happy to meet my hon. Friend and any other colleagues who have a close interest in this policy area, along with Professor Rix and officials from the Department of Health and the Home Office, to make sure that we have this absolutely right. We want to join up mental health professionals and police professionals appropriately to prevent the sorts of situations that we have heard about this evening. I look forward to building on the good progress that we have made, and I will continue to work well with my hon. Friend to make sure that that happens.

Question put and agreed to.

Oral Answers to Questions

Sarah Newton Excerpts

Monday 3rd July 2017 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Sarah Newton)]

We will establish a commission for countering extremism to reinforce current efforts to tackle extremist ideology in all its forms wherever it occurs. Already, through the 2015 counter-extremism strategy, we have taken steps to protect children from the threat of extremism, taken action on hate crime, and provided protective support for places of worship. We are also supporting civil society groups to tackle extremism in their communities.

[Andrew Bowie]

I thank the Minister for that answer. Ten years ago last week we saw the terrorist attack on Glasgow airport, and since then we have sadly seen instances of extremism and terrorism in Walsall, Exeter, Manchester, Yorkshire, and of course here in London. What is being done with the devolved Administrations, as well the combined authorities and regions, to ensure that extremism, and therefore terrorism, has no place in the United Kingdom?

[Sarah Newton]

I very much welcome my hon. Friend to his place. I am sure he is going to make a significant contribution here at Home Office questions, as well as serving his constituents. He is quite right to point out that there is simply no place in our society for extremism or terrorism. In launching the counter-extremism strategy in 2015, the Government agreed with the devolved Administrations that they were not going to be part of the strategy at the time, but we continue to work with them. As we carry on working with them on setting up the commission for countering extremism, we will consult them widely. It is very important that we work together and learn together to keep the whole of the United Kingdom safe.

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

Last year, Twitter suspended 125,000 accounts that were linked to global terrorism, but millions of videos of such material remain on the internet. In Germany, companies can be fined up to £43 million for failing to take down illegal videos. When do the Government intend to introduce legislation of that kind?

[Sarah Newton]

The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to point out the vile hatred that is being spread on the internet. I am pleased to report that the action we are taking is regularly enabling thousands of images to be taken down. We leave no stone unturned, and the Home Secretary is working closely with all the bodies responsible for the internet to make sure that we take more action to remove every vile piece of hatred from it.

[Theresa Villiers (Chipping Barnet) (Con)]

Will the Minister set out what the Government are doing to tackle anti-Semitism on campus, where the activities of hard-line groups often create an intolerant and intimidatory atmosphere for Jewish students?

[Sarah Newton]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right to raise the issue of anti-Semitism. There is no room at all in our society for hatred of anyone based on their faith, race or ideology. The Government have put a safeguarding responsibility on universities and schools to make sure that they protect young people from being exposed to vile hatred and radicalisation.

[Liam Byrne (Birmingham, Hodge Hill) (Lab)]

May I press the Minister on the answer she gave to the former Chair of the Home Affairs Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz)? Social media giants remain the command and control platform of choice for extremists. I wrote to the Home Secretary on 29 March to ask whether she was considering similar laws to those in Germany and in Ireland, where a new watchdog is being created to police social media giants, or indeed proposals similar to those in the US Senate, such as the Feinstein Bill, which would require social media giants to report terrorism content. Governments around the world are taking action; when will this Government follow suit?

[Sarah Newton]

I can assure the right hon. Gentleman that the Government are taking action by leading the international efforts to make sure that internet platforms take their responsibilities seriously. The Home Secretary has made it absolutely clear that nothing is off the table. We are considering all options to make sure that the vile ideology and hatred that is pumped around the internet is stopped as soon as possible.

[Sir David Amess (Southend West) (Con)]

18. Maajid Nawaz is a former constituent of mine whom I once visited in prison in Cairo, where he was being held because of alleged terrorist activities. Is my hon. Friend aware that he has completely turned his life around and is the founder of Quilliam, an organisation dedicated to tackling extremism in the UK?

[Sarah Newton]

That is really good news. Of course, the Government want to work with the Quilliam Foundation and any other organisation that seeks to stand up to extremism and terrorism and fight against evil ideology, to keep us all safe in our country.

[Nick Thomas-Symonds (Torfaen) (Lab)]

I thank the Home Secretary for her welcome.

A working and workable definition of what extremism means is central to any effective strategy for tackling extremism. Can the Minister assure me that the new commission set up to tackle extremism will construct a definition that is not only statutorily robust but will be able to withstand the scrutiny of the courts?

[Sarah Newton]

I not only welcome the hon. Gentleman to his place but very much welcome his views. The whole purpose of setting up the counter-extremism commission is to see what more we can do and what further steps we can take. I think we all understand what our shared British values are, and our strategy is making good progress. Of course, one of the commission’s actions will be to look at the definition that the hon. Gentleman mentions.

[Amanda Milling (Cannock Chase) (Con)]

4. What steps her Department is taking to encourage greater collaboration between the police and fire services.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Sarah Newton)]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for raising this question. We did meet; I met her and the other Merseyside MPs, and I have met the chief constable, Andy Cooke. I can absolutely confirm that the National Crime Agency and the regional organised and serious crime units are giving a great deal of support to help to tackle the appalling increase in gun crime in Merseyside. We will continue do everything we can to support the police there.

[Mr Laurence Robertson (Tewkesbury) (Con)]

When I spent some time on the night shift with the local police, they told me that when they arrest a person they spend most of the remainder of the shift filling in forms relating to that arrest. The police obviously have to be accountable when depriving somebody of their liberty, but that system can surely be speeded up.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ian C. Lucas (Wrexham) (Lab)]

T7. The prohibitive cost of testing for novel psychoactive substances is causing considerable expense to police forces in enforcing the current law. The present law on novel psychoactive substances simply is not working, so will the Home Office team please initiate an immediate review of it?

[Sarah Newton]

I simply do not agree with the hon. Gentleman. The Psychoactive Substances Act 2016 has proved to be an incredibly useful tool for police officers to identify really harmful substances and keep people safe.

[Wendy Morton (Aldridge-Brownhills) (Con)]

Following the very tragic and fatal stabbing the weekend before last in my constituency, will the Home Secretary update the House on the plans being undertaken to tackle knife crime?

[Sarah Newton]

I thank my hon. Friend for raising the very, very tragic case of James Brindley, who was so brutally knifed and killed in her constituency. The local police force’s investigations are well under way, and a huge amount of work is being done to tackle knife crime. The local police force, West Midlands police, often takes part in Operation Sceptre, with the next operation happening in July. Every Member has an important role to play in going out there to tell young people in their communities about the real dangers they are presenting to themselves by carrying knives.

[Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)]

Having lost more than 800 police officers and almost a quarter of its funding, Northumbria police have just announced that they are closing every single Newcastle police station front desk outside working hours. Given all the reassurances we have heard today, why is Northumbria police still being obliged to make operational decisions based on cost cutting, and not on preventing and detecting crime?

Draft Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 (Amendment) Order 2017

Sarah Newton Excerpts

Thursday 20th April 2017 General Committees

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Sarah Newton)]

I beg to move,

That the Committee has considered the draft Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 (Amendment) Order 2017.

The draft order was laid before Parliament on 14 March.

It is a great pleasure, Mr Rosindell, to serve under your chairmanship. I am sure that you and all hon. Members present will join me in welcoming the Hansard trainees, who are observing our proceedings this morning. As we all know, Hansard plays an incredibly important role in the life of Parliament. For hundreds of years it has been providing an invaluable service. They will be joining some very illustrious recorders. If we think back in history, some of the greatest writers, such as none other than Charles Dickens, were Hansard recorders. In this digital age our constituents, and indeed anyone around the world, can follow the proceedings of Parliament, so accurately reported by Hansard recorders, and that is an invaluable part of democracy that has been copied all over the world. I genuinely wish them great success in their traineeships: I hope that you stay on, become recorders and that we see you at events such as this, so we can look up from the Benches and see you in your places—a very warm welcome.

As Members might expect, especially the hon. Member for West Ham, who is a regular attendee at these Committees, the information that informs the draft order was provided from the expert advice of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs. That advice has led to the order.

The draft order relates to one opioid, U-47,700, 12 methylphenidate-based drugs and 16 benzodiazepines. It places U-47,700 in class A under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971, in schedule 1 to the Misuse of Drugs Regulations 2001, because the associated harms of U-47,700 are similar to those of other synthetic opioids controlled under the 1971 Act.

In relation to the methylphenidate substances, at the recommendation of the ACMD, 12 compounds will be placed as class B drugs under the Act. They include the seven originally under a temporary ban through a temporary control drug order, which is due to expire on 26 June. That recommendation was informed by a report from the National Programme of Substance Abuse Deaths that, as of November 2016, ethylphenidate had been found in 28 cases of post-mortem toxicology and was implicated in the cause of death in 17 cases, albeit with other drugs present in many of the cases.

The 16 named benzodiazepines, including etizolam, are to be controlled as class C drugs. That is consistent with the classification of other benzodiazepines, which are already controlled under the 1971 Act. The ACMD has recommended that they are classed as schedule 1 substances. We will continue to monitor them to ensure that their scheduling remains appropriate given that one of the benzodiazepines, etizolam, has been authorised for medicinal use in Italy. The draft order will make it an offence to produce, import, export, supply, or offer to supply the in question drugs without a Home Office licence. For those reasons, I accepted the ACMD’s advice that the substances should be subject to the order before the Committee today.

Given the recent media focus on synthetic cannabinoids, or spice as they are sometimes known, it is worth highlighting the Government’s action over the past few years to tackle the problems associated with those drugs. The hon. Lady will recall that as recently as December third-generation synthetic cannabinoids, such as those found in spice, were controlled as a class B drug under the Misuse of Drugs Act. That subjects them to the stricter controls and penalties of that Act, including by making the possession of them illegal. That measure followed the Psychoactive Substances Act 2016, which outlawed the production and supply of so-called legal highs. The Act covers the formulation of synthetic cannabinoids capable of producing a psychoactive effect.

The combination of those measures has helped to arm enforcement agencies with the powers they need to tackle these substances, while making it clear that the Government will not tolerate such dangerous drugs. We believe that the harms associated with drug misuse are best tackled through a combined approach that includes reducing demand, restricting supply and improving recovery. We expect the order to have a significant effect on the availability of the three types of synthetic substances and to reinforce the message that the misuse of them poses an unacceptable health risk if they are not placed under the controls of the 1971 Act. I commend the order to the Committee.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sarah Newton]

I welcome the constructive comments of the hon. Member for West Ham and will attempt to respond to them now. She raised some detailed points about evidence from the ACMD, and I will be pleased to write to her about them. She is right to say that all our decisions are based on the ACMD’s advice; I am very grateful for the work of Dr Owen Bowden-Jones, who so ably chairs the organisation, and that of the people who share their expertise to enable us to make the best possible decisions. I will write to the hon. Lady about the details, but I will say a few words about our approach. We asked the ACMD to look at the scope of the scientific research on the particular questions that she raised. That work is ongoing, and I will give an indication in my letter of when we anticipate that the ACMD will complete it.

It is really important that we understand how harmful these substances are. We must make every effort not only to send out very clear messages about their harmfulness, but to restrict supply—both internationally, by preventing such substances from coming into our country, and domestically, by preventing those that are being manufactured here from getting into the hands of the vulnerable people whom the hon. Lady described so well in her speech. Equally, some controlled substances can have a positive medicinal effect, and it is important that we have a regime that permits that to happen. I am very pleased that the ACMD is getting on with looking into and revising the structure of it to ensure that it is really fit for purpose and that we are striking the right balance. I look forward to its coming back to me shortly with its review.

I hope that that has addressed the issues that the hon. Lady raised about these substances. I agree with her that although it is essential that we take action to ban such substances, as we are doing today, that is not everything that we need to do. We must also prevent people of all ages from desiring to take them in the first place, in order to prevent all the terrible consequences—the health consequences for users and the consequences for society more broadly.

The hon. Lady invited me to comment on the Government’s direction of travel. It is absolutely clear that, irrespective of whether it has been published, the strategy is really focused on an evidence base for how we can best educate young people in particular about the harms of wanting to take drugs. We need to enable them to be resilient and understand the risks so that they do not even want to take them in the first place. I am sure she agrees that the Government’s decision to make PSHE and sex and relationships education compulsory is vital for that. Extremely good work is already being done by PSHE teachers throughout the country. We also have the excellent resource “Frank”, which pools all the best available information for young people.

[Lyn Brown]

I was trying to be sisterly by not intervening any earlier, but the issue of “Frank” has got to me. When we discussed “Frank” on the Psychoactive Substances Bill Committee, we agreed across parties that it was not the best resource that could be available and that it needed a massive overhaul and update. I say gently to the Minister that it would be lovely if she wrote to me to let me know how that work is progressing.

[Sarah Newton]

I appreciate the spirit and manner of the hon. Lady’s question, and I can assure her that the comments that she made were obviously taken on board. That work is ongoing, and it is regularly updated. I have met the PSHE Association, and I have been to conferences where there have been experts from around the world, so we are constantly learning and updating that resource.

It is pleasing to note that the number of young people taking drugs is really declining. The high was in 2003, and the number now is less than half the number then; it is down to just over 8% of young people who are experimenting with drugs. That is 8% too many, but it is a significant reduction in the number of young people who want to take drugs in the first place.

The interventions to support people to come off drugs are also improving. The number of people going into therapy has increased—it is up on the 2010 number. People get access to that treatment, and the percentage of people who are sustaining not taking drugs after they leave treatment is about 80%, so we have seen significant progress.

I would love to get on and publish the drugs strategy, but I assure Members that even without that strategy we are moving with vigour and at pace to address what we would all agree is a scourge for the people concerned and the communities involved. The hon. Lady mentioned the situation in Manchester. I have been in touch with the police there, and they have reassured me that they have the resources needed. The police budget has been protected, but operational decisions about how the police are deployed are very much down to the police themselves. Of course, measures such as the one we are now considering will give them more enforcement powers. They will be able to go after people even for possession offences, to reduce the prevalence of this harm on the street.

I hope that I have given enough evidence today to enable Members to agree with me that this order is an important step in tackling a very challenging issue for our country, and that alongside work to prevent people from taking drugs and to make sure that good-quality recovery opportunities are always available for people, it will really help to prevent the harms that we associate with these substances.

Question put and agreed to.

Disclosure and Barring Service

Sarah Newton Excerpts

Thursday 16th March 2017 Written Statements

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Sarah Newton)]

The 2015-16 annual report and accounts for the Disclosure and Barring Service (HC 451) are being laid before the House today and published on www.gov.uk. Copies will be available in the Vote Office.

[HCWS541]

Child Abuse Offences (Sentencing)

Sarah Newton Excerpts

Monday 13th March 2017 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Sarah Newton)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Moon. I am sure you will agree that this has been a well-informed debate, and I very much appreciate the spirit in which all Members have made sincere and thoughtful contributions.

This is an incredibly important issue, and I thank the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell) for leading the debate and bringing the issue to our attention today. It has allowed us to have such a thorough discussion. Other Members have said this, but this issue is not really something that any of us wants to debate. It is horrendous to think that such appalling acts of depravity and crime are happening in our country in the 21st century.

Before I address all the very thoughtful questions that have been put to me, I want to speak directly to the family of April Jones—to her parents Coral and Paul, and to Jazmin—who are here today. I cannot imagine the horror of what you have had to experience. You are an inspiration to us all. You have managed to take such grief and the worst imaginable situation and use those feelings so constructively to campaign for changes to ensure that no other family or community has to experience what you had to experience. I thank you sincerely for your bravery and persistence in bringing this matter to the attention of the people of Great Britain and us here today. It is not a problem that any one of us will deal with alone; it requires a whole society approach, and each and every one of us has an important role to play. I thank you very much for everything you are doing.

I also commend the family’s excellent MP, my hon. Friend the Member for Montgomeryshire (Glyn Davies). He has given the family a lot of support and gave voice to their concerns today. What a powerful advocate he is for the family—and he is well supported by his neighbouring MP, my hon. Friend the Member for Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire (Simon Hart). As others have said, the issue transcends all party politics. Members of Parliament representing all parties work together constructively to ensure that the Government are doing everything we can to prevent, detect and prosecute these horrendous crimes.

I want to answer some of the questions that have been asked. The first set of questions were about what we are doing about who is on the sex offenders register. I understand why people think that anyone who has committed any such crime should go on the register and stay there for life without any reconsideration. I understand that strong sentiment, but the Supreme Court ruling in 2010 has been mentioned, and I want to go into a bit more detail about it. It prevented us from not giving sex offenders the opportunity to be removed from the register: we were told that there must be opportunities for that to be reconsidered. There was an objection about human rights and the offenders being denied the right to a family life. At the time, the Government were disappointed by the ruling, and we remain disappointed today. I am sympathetic to the demands of the petition and the concerns of the Jones family. I understand why they feel that the petition is necessary.

It is precisely because we are determined to do everything we can to protect the public from predatory sexual offenders that we made the minimum possible changes to the law to comply with the Supreme Court ruling, while ensuring that the police and others can protect the public from the serious and appalling sorts of crime that have been committed by individuals on the register. That means that no offender comes off the register automatically. The most dangerous offenders—those we cannot afford to leave unmonitored in this country—will stay on the register for life; they do not have a right to request reconsideration of their status on the register.

We have provided for a review carried out by the police, but no more than that. Offenders have the right to ask the police to reconsider, but they have no recourse to appeal. We believe that approach complies with the Supreme Court ruling, but it also ensures maximum public protection, which remains at the heart of managing sex offenders. They can seek a review of their indefinite notification requirements only once they have completed 15 years. For juveniles, it is eight years. People have to wait a long time before they can even request a review.

The review takes a range of considerations into account. Information is provided from a wide range of agencies operating within the multi-agency public protection arrangements framework. This ensures an individual assessment of the risk before any offender is considered for removal. As I have said, the most serious offenders are never even considered for that. The process has proven robust and workable and puts public protection at the heart of sex offender management, while at the same time preventing sex offenders from being able to waste public money by repeatedly challenging decisions in the courts.

We want to make sure that victims are also engaged in the process. We want to ensure that the feelings of victims’ families—for example, in the tragic case of the Jones family—are taken into consideration. Victims’ needs and safety are absolutely fundamental in the process. It is important to remember that many victims who have undergone appalling acts against them want to move on with their lives. They have had therapeutic interventions and they want to put it behind them. We need to bear in mind their views as well. The police look at cases to make sure that victims’ voices are heard in a sensitive way. They are not necessarily publicly forced into anything; they are treated according to their needs.

When we made the changes in 2012, we also introduced additional safeguards to tighten the notification arrangements even further, making it compulsory for sex offenders to report to the authorities before travelling abroad, whenever they are living in a household containing a child under the age of 18, and when they have no fixed abode. It is important that we always know where they are. Collectively, the safeguards ensure that the public continue to be protected from the sex offenders who continue to pose a risk.

We have continued to work with the police and other law enforcement agencies to ensure that the right powers are available for the authorities to tackle sexual crimes and bring perpetrators to justice. For example, we have introduced new civil orders that capture a range of risky behaviours and allow the police to further restrict the behaviour of those who pose a risk, preventing them from escalating to contact abuse. I want to be absolutely clear that victims and survivors of sexual and other forms of violence against women and girls are at the heart of all our policy making. Over the spending review period, we will spend more than £100 million to make sure that victims get the help they need when they need it and to ensure that no victim is turned away.

The petition that we are debating today also calls for better policing of search engines and internet service providers. I agree that that is absolutely critical. Under the Protection of Children Act 1978, it is illegal to take or distribute an indecent photograph of a child under 16. The penalty can be up to 10 years’ imprisonment. Possessing indecent photographs of children is an offence with a maximum sentence of five years’ imprisonment. However, we know that more can be done.

Through the campaigning of Paul and Coral Jones, major search engines have tried to address the abuse of technology. Since 2014, both Google and Microsoft have introduced changes that make it significantly harder to find child sexual abuse material online. Using new technology, they have experienced an eightfold reduction in search engine attempts over an 18-month period. The message is clear: when industry works together with law enforcement to take action, it really can deliver results.

The Government’s response has been significant, with law enforcement agencies taking action against online offenders, developing new capabilities to find and safeguard victims, and working with the industry here and overseas to make sure that we remove as many images as possible. All UK police forces and the National Crime Agency are connected to the child abuse image database, which was launched in 2014. CAID provides law enforcement agencies with effective tools to search seized devices for indecent images of children, reducing the time taken to identify such images and increasing the ability to identify victims.

Recently, the NCA was able to use CAID to review one of its largest ever seizures within six weeks. Based on the case size, that would have taken six months to review before CAID. Collaboration and use of the new tools that are available are dramatically reducing the time it takes to search, find victims and secure prosecutions. That has resulted in around 400 arrests each month for online CSE offences, and we estimate that it is safeguarding around 500 children each month.

Child sexual exploitation and abuse is one of the national priorities in the strategic policing requirement. The threat will be more visible and there will be more consistent understanding, prioritisation and planning of capabilities to tackle child sexual abuse. The strategic policing requirement enables forces to collaborate and to share resources, intelligence and best practice, and provides improved access to specialist capabilities.

Some Members have asked whether we are giving the police enough money to do the work. I absolutely want to reassure everyone here that the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre, the main specialist agency within the National Crime Agency, has had its resources nearly doubled. We have committed an additional £20 million over the spending review period. It also gets a significant amount of help from specialists within GCHQ, so our top intelligence community, which is there to keep the nation safe, is now deployed to help CEOP. I regularly meet police officers in CEOP. Every time I visit, I ask them, “Do you have the resources you need to tackle this crime?”, and they all say yes. The amount of investment that we put in is something we keep under constant review.

One Member asked whether we were investing in WeProtect. The need to work internationally has rightly been raised today because the threat is global. I can confirm that the £40 million commitment that the previous Prime Minister, David Cameron, made to WeProtect over this spending period is absolutely secure and is being spent. The UK leads the world in this effort, and we will continue that work. As has been rightly said by many people here today and outside this Chamber, all companies have a responsibility to ensure that they do everything they can to make sure that their platforms and services do not allow the exploitation and victimisation of children. They must address the abuse of what is otherwise legitimate technology. It is really important that they step up to the plate and do everything they can.

The Prime Minster, the Home Secretary and I have regular meetings with all the internet providers—the Prime Minister herself chairs a meeting—to make sure they do everything they can. In the light of the revelations reported by the BBC about Facebook, the Home Secretary will have an urgent meeting with Facebook to ask why the images were not taken down after being reported. We must be satisfied that lessons are learnt by Facebook. We must not leave any stone unturned.

There has been quite a bit of discussion about sentencing. Although it is a matter for our courts, in December 2013, as a result of a lot of pressure, the Sentencing Council issued revised guidelines on sentencing for sexual offences, which came into force three years ago. They include guidance on assessing offender behaviour and the appropriate sentence level in proceedings relating to indecent images of children. The Sentencing Council keeps the maximum penalties under review to ensure that the courts have adequate powers to deal with offences effectively and proportionately, while taking into account the circumstances of the offences and any mitigating and aggravating factors.

More adult sex offenders are being imprisoned and they are being imprisoned for longer. The number of prisoners serving immediate custodial sentences for sexual offences is at its highest since 2002. At the end of last year, more than 13,000 adult sex offenders were in prison. That is a rise of 9% on the preceding 12 months, and is up by more than 5,000 since 2010.

[Gareth Johnson]

The Minister will recall that the manifesto that she and I stood on at the last general election included a commitment to extend the scope of the unduly lenient sentence scheme. Even after the Budget, our manifesto must mean something. Does she therefore agree that it is time to extend the scope of the unduly lenient sentence scheme to include the distribution and creation of indecent pictures of children?

[Sarah Newton]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising that important issue. He must have read my mind, because I was coming to it. The manifesto we stood on does mean something, and I am pleased to confirm that the Attorney General is undertaking that work as we speak. The scope of unduly lenient sentences is being reviewed at the moment. I hope that gives my hon. Friend the satisfaction for which he rightly asks.

I was asked by other hon. Members to look at other aspects of the criminal justice system. Although they are the responsibility of the Ministry of Justice, I will do so. I agree that it is important that, if perpetrators who are arrested have a range of digital devices, they should be forfeited and searched for inappropriate images. As we have heard, that puts a lot of demand on the police, but new digital tools, such as CAID and fingerprinting, enable much faster recognition of images and should enable the police to manage the increased demand.

[Simon Hart]

In the Minister’s representations to the MOJ, will she commit to raising the issue of whether the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority reflects the 21st century? It has been put to me that it treats the crimes of sexual assault by penetration and rape entirely differently. Any victim of those crimes would find that an extraordinary distinction.

[Sarah Newton]

My hon. Friend makes a very important point. Of course I will speak to my colleagues in the Ministry of Justice.

I want to finish my point on perpetrators time-wasting, demanding things of the police and extracting information from forfeited devices. The hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Liz Saville Roberts) gave an example of a teacher who undoubtedly, as they were going on the sex offenders register, would never be a teacher again. They did not need the teaching plans and resources that they wanted to extract from their computer. That was a dreadful waste of police time. I will certainly take that up to see what more we can do to clamp down on it.

The Prime Minister recently said that she is minded to introduce a new Bill in the next Session to look at what more we can do about domestic abuse and domestic violence. This debate is specifically about child sexual violence and abuse, but that Bill will enable us to look at what more we can do legally. The Home Secretary will chair a group of experts to look at what more we can do to support victims in the criminal justice system to ensure their experience is as positive as possible. The evidence that we get will secure the best possible outcomes. As that Bill is developed, there will be opportunities to look at some of the issues that have been raised today.

A question was asked about what is called Helen’s law. We heard about the absolutely horrendous situation of families who want to know where the bodies of their loved ones have been put by the horrendous criminals who perpetrated those acts. I am a mother myself, so I understand that families want to know exactly where their children’s remains are so they can be reunited with them, lay them to rest and have a place to visit them. The Justice Minister made it clear that he is looking at options to encourage offenders to say where the remains are, including making their release conditional on declaring that information. The Ministry of Justice is doing good work to ensure that happens.

[Catherine McKinnell]

The Minister is giving a very thorough response to many of the issues that were raised, but one issue that she has not touched upon, which does not always seem a priority but could go a long way to protecting children in the future, is rehabilitation. Does she have a response to the questions I asked about funding for the rehabilitation of offenders or potential offenders?

[Sarah Newton]

I am very happy to talk about that. We are undertaking a comprehensive piece of work in the Home Office with experts, academics, law enforcement officers and some particularly good charities that have a good track record, to ensure that young people understand what consent is, what good relationships are and what the law of the land is. We have seen reports about the amount of sex offending committed by young people against other young people. The very tragic case that we are talking about today involved an older person who perpetrated a terrible crime against a child, but there is a growing category of younger people who commit appalling abuse—even rape—against children younger than themselves. We are doing a lot of work to educate young people that that is simply wrong and about what good relationships look like. The Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre, the association for personal, social and health and economic education—the PSHE Association—and the Department for Education have developed extremely good tools to enable teachers, parents and youth workers to engage young people.

I expect that people have seen Disrespect NoBody, a large campaign that the Home Office funds every year. It uses material developed by children that they can see online on their phones and iPads to get those messages across. We work with young people to develop age-appropriate messages, and campaigns are thoroughly evaluated to ensure that they are having the right effect. Now that sex and relationship education and PSHE are to be compulsory, there will be even further opportunity to send that message to everyone.

We know that a lot of young men view images of young girls online, but that they do not realise that what they are doing is illegal. They seem to think that it is a victimless crime. They do not appreciate that a girl is being abused to make those images, that every time someone watches them she is being re-abused, and how devastating that is. We have worked with experts in the field to make hard-hitting little films that are put out on the internet to communicate to young men—I am afraid that it is young men—who might be tempted to view that material or who might inadvertently come across it. The films are to educate them about the harm and to prevent them from becoming criminals—if they were caught, they would be convicted of a criminal offence and go on the sex offenders register, which would have a devastating effect on their life.

We are working with the Lucy Faithfull Foundation. Where we know perpetrators are watching images, we want to send out clear messages that they are illegal, and about the harm they are doing. We want to give them access to helplines where they can get advice on how to wean themselves off their addiction—it is an addiction. We also fund care and support services for the perpetrators, enabling them to say, “I want to stop this behaviour but I need help to do it.”

That is all new and emerging work. It is important to build up the evidence base on its effectiveness, so that we understand what works, what does not, the risk profile of the perpetrators, and who can be diverted or prevented from behaviour escalating into contact abuse. We take that seriously and invest in it, and we want to leave no stone unturned in preventing people from watching those dreadful images and all the abuse that goes with them. I hope that that is a full answer for the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North.

Some hon. Members mentioned the comments of Chief Constable Simon Bailey. As politicians, none of us is a stranger to being misquoted, or having our quotes being taken out of context so that we do not say everything we would want. That is what happened to the chief constable in this case. It was helpful for the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee to write to ask him about some of the comments he made and the media published. My understanding is that he has written back a full response, which will be published on the Select Committee’s website. The chief constable does not need me to speak for him—he is more than capable of speaking for himself—and it is important for Members to read what he has to say. He might be appearing before the Select Committee, when Committee members will have further opportunity to ask him about what he said so that there is absolute clarity.

I can assure the House, however, that the Government’s policy has not changed. As we have discussed today, issues to do with sex offenders are complicated and contentious, but our position is crystal clear and unequivocal: we will reduce the harm to children and other vulnerable people; we will continue to protect the public; and we will keep dangerous people on the sex offenders register for as long as they are a risk. I am proud of the progress we are making to tackle all aspects of violence against women and girls and to protect all victims, but the truly terrible murder of April Jones highlights how much all of us need to do to protect victims. In my time as Minister, I am determined to do absolutely everything I can to protect people in our country and to bring those perpetrators to justice.