Psychoactive Substances Bill [Lords]

Debate between Stephen Phillips and Lyn Brown

Monday 19th October 2015 Commons Chamber

[Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)]

The Opposition support the principles of the Bill. The 2015 Labour manifesto included a commitment to ban the sale and distribution of dangerous psychoactive substances, which is why we are with the Minister tonight.

The illicit drugs situation in the UK and throughout the world is constantly changing. Protecting young people from harm is our responsibility, even if we know that there is no silver bullet to reduce the trade in drugs. New psychoactive substances can be a significant danger to public health, and they have taken people’s lives. Jimmy Guichard was a fun-loving, sporty 18-year-old bloke living in Kent. He had heard of legal highs and decided to try them. He bought a packet of Clockwork Orange from a local head shop, and he may have taken a high dose, possibly the same as he would have done for ordinary cannabis. He had a severe reaction, suffered a heart attack and, sadly, died the next day.

Owain Vaughan was 14 when he tried a brand of synthetic cannabis with friends and was overcome by its potency. He described the effects to BBC News:

“It made me physically ill, I collapsed, I started fitting, I tried to get up, but fell straight back down and banged my head…I felt my own heart stop and I was scared.”

Unfortunately, stories like Jimmy’s and Owain’s are not isolated incidents. The Office for National Statistics reports that there were 67 deaths in England and Wales involving psychoactive substances in 2014, so the problem is clearly growing.

We do not have comprehensive evidence about the overall harm of psychoactive substances, but people have died as a result of taking these drugs. Some of the substances can cause severe adverse effects such as heart palpitations, panic attacks, hallucinations and even psychotic episodes.

The supply of these drugs is becoming an industry. They are made, marketed and supplied by unprincipled organisations for financial profit. Our understanding of the dangers of legal highs has been greatly enhanced by the work of the Angelus Foundation, and I pay tribute to Maryon Stewart, who established the foundation after losing her daughter Hester, a medical student, to the legal high GBL in 2009. Research by the Angelus Foundation has estimated that there were more than 250 head shops in the UK selling these products in 2013. According to the crime survey of England and Wales, around a third of all new psychoactive substances purchased in the UK came from such businesses. Head shops claim that they do not sell illegal substances, but Home Office tests have shown that almost 20% of packets of new psychoactive substances contain illegal drugs.

Head shops and other high street retail outlets normalise drug taking and encourage people to experiment with and use drugs. The names and packaging are designed to attract young adults to experiment, and free samples are regularly used as part of marketing strategies. The fact that substances can be bought on the high street in broad daylight without any sanction whatever gives the illusion that the substances are both safe and legal. There are hundreds of internet sites that sell these substances online, with little or no knowledge of who they are selling to. The Home Office estimates that the industry has an annual turnover of £82 million. Overall, the UK has the largest new psychoactive substances market in Europe.

As the Minister stated, drugs have traditionally been controlled in the UK through the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971, under which the Home Secretary has the power to put substances on a banned list, so long as he or she has consulted the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs. Since the middle of the previous decade, that mechanism has been put under great strain by the explosive growth of new psychoactive substances. We have managed to control some of them, but let us be under no illusion—that has not solved the problem.

The relatively easy process of creating new psychoactive substances means that these new drugs are appearing on the market all the time. In each of the past six years, more substances appeared on the market than was the case in the previous year. The Home Office and the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs cannot keep up because the traditional process of classifying the drugs, with its independent and objective process of assessing the overall harms of a particular substance, can be cumbersome. It is a game of whack-a-mole that the authorities are hard pressed to win. In 2011, the Government tried to deal with the problem by introducing temporary class drug orders. TCDOs allow the Government to ban the production and sale of new psychoactive substances while the ACMD gathers more information on the risk and harm associated with those drugs.

There are problems with TCDOs. First, they are inherently reactive, and there is always a time gap between a drug coming on to the market and being subject to control. The second problem is that TCDOs last for only 12 months, which puts significant pressure on the ACMD to assess the harm caused by the drug quickly. Another approach taken by the Home Office under the Labour Government was to add generic groups, rather than specific compounds, to the list of controlled substances. Although this procedure has had some success in controlling new psychoactive substances, it is clear that we are dealing with an evolving problem that our current legal framework cannot get to grips with.

In December 2013, the Government appointed an expert panel that recommended that the most effective way to deal with new psychoactive substances would be to introduce a blanket ban on the supply, importation and exportation of any psychoactive substance that was not specifically controlled or exempted. This approach, as we have heard, is modelled on legislation passed in the Republic of Ireland in 2010. There were 102 head shops in Ireland at that time, according to the Irish police force, and they have now “virtually disappeared”. The expert panel was clear that the number of clients attending drug treatment services had declined: 368 people received treatment for problems in 2011 and that number fell to 220 in 2012. Although I accept that it is too early to make a long-term judgment on the success of the Irish model, it seems to have made a start at tackling the problem.

The Bill takes up the expert panel’s recommendation and makes it a criminal offence to produce, supply, import or export these drugs. I am not so naive as to think that we are going to shut down the industry altogether, even though that is what many people would want, but by more quickly containing production and supply upstream, we will hopefully reduce the harms to young people downstream.

[Stephen Phillips]

Does the hon. Lady share my concern, which we need to consider when we think about the Bill, that the closure of the head shops makes it possible that the entire trade will be driven underground, that it will link itself with the illegal drug trade, and that those who might at present go on to the high street or into a garage and purchase what they think are legal highs, which may be very dangerous for them, will end up using much more serious class A and class B drugs?

[Lyn Brown]

I accept what the hon. and learned Gentleman says, but one of the things I find particularly repulsive is that our young people see these head shops in front of them on the high street, and then think that the shops are legal and safe because if they were not, the police would have come along and nabbed them. I will answer him later because we do need to think about what happens with an underground market.

This Bill sends out a message to young people who are unaware that these substances are dangerous. Many of those that are sold in the shops are illegal now, let alone before we ban the lot of them. As I support the aims and general approach of the Bill, I want to ensure that it is drafted and implemented as effectively as possible, so I will press the Government on several issues and worries. I hope that the Minister will take my recommendations and concerns in the constructive manner in which they will be intended.

My first point is about education. The Bill is an appropriate way to try to tackle the supply of dangerous psychoactive substances, but we need to reduce demand. Unfortunately, there is a load of misinformation about psychoactive substances. Research by the Royal Society for Public Health found that a quarter of young people aged between 16 and 24 believed that so-called legal highs were safer than illegal drugs. This is a dangerous misunderstanding, because some of the new psychoactive substances have gone on to be controlled and designated as class A, indicating that they were some of the most harmful drugs around before they were controlled. Passing this legislation has the potential to put to bed the dangerous myth that psychoactive substances are safe, but the measure will do so only if it is supported by a concerted communication and education strategy.

The Labour Administration in Wales have shown us how that can be done by putting education at the forefront of their drug prevention strategy. There is now a core substance misuse education programme in 97% of Welsh primary and secondary schools to ensure that almost all Welsh schoolchildren receive accurate, consistent and credible information about the potential harms of drugs, rather than having to rely on myths and guesswork. Labour Members have consistently emphasised the role of PSHE—personal, social, health and economic education—in reducing drug use. I have voted to make PSHE compulsory in schools, and that needs to be considered again.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lyn Brown]

I thought I had said that, but I obviously did not say it well enough. However, I thank my hon. Friend for his assistance.

I understand that the ACMD has offered to work with the Home Office to try to overcome the problem of needing to prove psychoactivity, and that the ACMD believes the issue can be resolved. I look forward to the Minister informing the House about what progress is being made on that issue so that we can be assured that the Bill has the teeth it needs. The definition of psychoactivity should be at the core of the Bill, so I am rather surprised that the Government felt able to move the Bill’s Second Reading without that point being resolved. The ACMD recently met the Home Secretary, and the House really needs some detail on how the discussions are progressing.

I want the Minister to consider monitoring and evaluation. I am pleased that the Government are now making a statutory commitment to review how well the Bill works. However, it is important that we are given more details of the intended scope of the review. We need to know that we are breaking up not just the legal market, but the overall supply chain as well. Ultimately, the ban may have the effect of reducing the number of users of NPSs, but of increasing the risk for those who continue to use them. It is clear that a wide-ranging and comprehensive review, backed up by thorough and better research, will be necessary.

I also want the Minister—he can see that I have a long list—to speak to his colleagues in the Ministry of Justice to see whether the impact on prisons can be given particular attention. I am sure that he was as alarmed as I was by the prisons and probation ombudsman’s report in July, which found that new psychoactive substances were a factor in the deaths of at least 19 prisoners between 2012 and 2014. The annual report of Her Majesty’s chief inspector of prisons was just as concerning. It found that NPS

“has had a severe impact and has led to debt and associated violence.”

That is a real problem for our prisons, and we need to know that it is being dealt with.

[Stephen Phillips]

A point that may not have occurred to the hon. Lady arises from the two points that she has put to the Minister—the impact on the MOJ’s budget of the difficulty of proving that something is a psychoactive substance within the meaning of clause 2. That issue will inevitably have to go to a jury, and will therefore require expert evidence on both the prosecution and the defence sides. Has she considered the potential financial effects on the legal aid budget if clause 2 is not amended?

[Lyn Brown]

I am clearly being far too subtle. I am not often accused of that. I talked about resources and clearly we understand that that will be an issue. I thank the hon. and learned Gentleman for drawing the point out and for being so succinct.

The Home Secretary has said that the Home Office is actively considering the point about prisons and intends to table an amendment in Committee. I hope that that is still the Government’s intention. I will examine any such amendment carefully.