Synthetic Cannabinoids: Reclassification

Toby Perkins Excerpts

Tuesday 6th November 2018 Westminster Hall

[Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

I would like to reinforce the point that the hon. Gentleman is making. Does not the fact that so many police and crime commissioners are writing to us, calling on us to make the very changes that he suggests, reinforce the point that the police will attach a greater priority to these drugs if they are reclassified as class A drugs?

[Ben Bradley]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention: he is absolutely right. In the wake of an Adjournment debate that I held in July, 20 police and crime commissioners wrote to this Minister about the issue, stressing exactly what I am saying this morning: unless these drugs are taken seriously and prioritised by police forces in the way class A drugs are, the police will continue to struggle to deal with them at local level.

The point of reclassification is not to criminalise vulnerable users, but to prevent those users from being exploited by drug dealers and to get them the help that they need. The health Green Paper, announced only yesterday in an initial policy paper entitled “Prevention is better than cure”, is a welcome development. As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care said, focusing on the responsibilities of patients is not about penalising people, but about helping them to make better choices.

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[Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Howarth. I congratulate the hon. Member for Mansfield (Ben Bradley) on securing this important debate, and I rise to speak in support of the case he made. His constituency is not that far from mine and not that different from mine. Many people see Mansfield as a slightly less good Chesterfield, but suffice it to say they share many similarities. In Chesterfield, we have experienced many of the issues he will have experienced in his town centre.

One reason why the issue is felt so passionately is the scope of its impact, not only on the users, but on people right across the community. These drugs have a huge impact on those who become users. Being able to get hold of them is the only purpose in their lives at times. These people are victims and vulnerable people, but their actions impact on a huge number of other people. Many people are frightened to go into the centre of our towns because of the impact of Mamba and Spice users and the alarming state that people get themselves into on these drugs.

At times over the past couple of years, we have seen the homeless community coming together in Chesterfield. The availability of such a cheap and powerful drug is a big part of the attraction. That has a big impact on not only the town centre, but our businesses and on retailers. Retailers trying to run their businesses in tough times have contacted me, saying they have people under the spell of these drugs in contorted positions in their shop doorways. It is impossible for them to conduct their business. The issue has a big effect on shoppers and tourists.

I pay tribute to the work of Hardyal Dhindsa, our excellent police and crime commissioner for Derbyshire. Along with the force, he has put a huge amount of effort into trying to clamp down on these drugs. He introduced Operation Chesnee, which led to 70 arrests and a spate of convictions. At least 40 people have now been charged, and convictions are ongoing. Derbyshire police have put significant resource into cracking down on Spice and Mamba, but while they are class B drugs, there is a limit to the resources they can put in and the returns they can get. There is also the impact on the ambulance service. We have seen a sixfold increase in the past year in the number of ambulance call-outs to people who are on synthetic cannabinoids.

At the all-party parliamentary group meeting that the hon. Member for Mansfield held, people were worried that a reclassification would end up criminalising users. My sense is that we have widespread agreement that we want to try to reduce the incentive for dealers. It is not about going after those who are victims or vulnerable. Because of the availability of these drugs in prison, prison is no disincentive. I am very much of the view that it is not about criminalising users; it is all about reducing the incentive for dealers.

If we increase the classification and sentences rise, police tell me that they will no longer be getting people low down the supply chain. Currently, they are willing to take the rap because sentences are relatively short and they and their families will be looked after while they are in prison. Instead, those sentences will go higher up the drug chain to the people at the top, where they really belong. It is up to us as legislators to ensure that our directions for the courts achieve that aim. People may say that changing the classification will criminalise the victims, but it is up to us, when we get into the legislative process following the instruction this debate will give to the Home Secretary, to ensure that the directions to the courts are sufficiently robust for them to understand what we are talking about.

The hon. Member for Mansfield referred to antisocial behaviour, but that phrase understates the scale of the issue and its impact. “Antisocial behaviour” makes me think of children riding around on bikes in their local communities being noisy and knocking on people’s doors. The terror that is caused in our communities by behaviour that does not actually hurt people, but certainly frightens them, is much stronger than the phrase “antisocial behaviour” implies.

The hon. Member for Chelmsford (Vicky Ford) talked about the impact on prisons. I recently visited Nottingham prison, which is one of 10 that gets specific direction from the Government on improving standards and reducing suicides. The impact that Spice and Mamba synthetic cannabinoids have on the running of the prison is incredible. People get themselves sent into prison deliberately to bring drugs in. Huge and complicated initiatives are put in place to get drugs into the prison. The prison governor is entirely realistic about the impact that that has and the inability of our Prison Service to address it. When drugs are so rife in prisons, it is absolutely impossible to do any kind of rehabilitation work. The prison governor told me about a video of one of his inmates who was on Spice. He talked to him and showed him what he was like and the guy simply said, “When I’m away on Spice I just don’t care about anything else in the world.” The drug has a substantial impact on our prisons.

The hon. Member for Mansfield was at pains to point out that reclassification is only one part of the solution. None of us has claimed that it will solve the issue. It is a social ill that afflicts us, but the chief cost of it and the comparatively low sentencing are important issues for us to tackle. Alongside that, where do we want to take the debate further? We need further resourcing for policing. If we are going to reclassify Spice ask them to and try to solve the problem, we will need to make sure there is additional resource for policing. We need a real attack—it has been inadequate so far—on homelessness. We need to recognise the link between welfare policy and many social ills. We need to ensure that drug prevention services are sufficiently robust and that we have proper support in our health system for people who want to come off drugs. We need to ensure we have targeted policing and sympathetic sentencing. We all recognise that reclassification is only one part of a much broader solution. Just because that does not solve everything does not mean that we should not try to do something. That is why I support the case made by the hon. Member for Mansfield today.

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[Mr Hurd]

The fact that two Stoke-on-Trent MPs are taking part in the debate tells its own story about the sense of urgency and concern in that city. That will be noticed by me and by the House.

Prisons featured in several contributions, and I know that the hon. Member for Chesterfield (Toby Perkins) visited Nottingham Prison recently and was shocked by what he saw. There is clearly a significant drug problem in prisons, exacerbated by the emergence of synthetics and psychoactive substances. I can, again, point out a stream of action being taken. A new drugs force is working with law enforcement to restrict supply, reduce demand and build recovery, and is working with 10 of the most challenging prisons; £6 million is being invested to tackle drug supply in those establishments. There is a new national partnership agreement for prison healthcare and a new £9 million joint Ministry of Justice and NHS drug recovery prison pilot at Holme House Prison. I could go on, but I see evidence of a proactive Government approach to drugs in prisons.

A number of colleagues mentioned rough sleeping, and made the relevant links with these drugs. Again, that is an unacceptable feature of too many town centres, high streets and shop entrances. I hope that there is cross-party support for the new rough sleeping strategy. The £100 million package is a step towards achieving the vision of a country where no one needs to sleep rough, by 2027. I could go into the details of that but I think that the House is aware of it.

There was, rightly, substantial comment about the need for effective treatment and prevention. I could not be more supportive of the emphasis that my hon. Friend the Member for Mansfield placed on that. If we have learned anything in this place from many years of evidence on many issues, it is that it is always smarter to invest in the fence at the top of the cliff than in the ambulance at the bottom. That is nowhere more true than in the matter of drugs. I can see from the statistics that people are seeking and receiving treatment from drugs services. Data from the national drug treatment monitoring system show that 1,223 adults presented to treatment for new psychoactive substances in 2017-18 in England, and 703 of those cases were for synthetic cannabinoids. Presentations for synthetic cannabinoids represented 0.6% of all adults who presented to drug and alcohol treatment in 2017-18.

To support those services, there is guidance on treatment for synthetic cannabinoids, including the recently updated drug treatment clinical guidelines, NEPTUNE’s “Guidance on the Clinical Management of Acute and Chronic Harms of Club Drugs and Novel Psychoactive Substances”, and Public Health England’s new psychoactive substance toolkits for the community and prisons. However, as my hon. Friend pointed out, there is also more investment going into the NHS. The Health Secretary has made it clear that prevention is a core pillar of his approach to the brief. He is right about that, and we must see the dividend from more effective prevention work in years to come.

I join others in offering congratulations on some excellent examples of partnership and multi-agency working and police work in Derbyshire, south Wales, Gwent, Staffordshire and Mansfield. There is clearly good leadership on the issue around the country, which is fundamental. The importance of local multi-agency working is clear in our drug strategy and modern crime prevention strategy. This is not just a police issue. We are not going to arrest or sentence our way out of it. The key is such local leadership and such multi-agency partnerships. Having been reading up in preparation for this and previous debates, and having got to understand a bit better the work going on in Mansfield, I join my hon. Friend in commending the work of Mansfield police and their partners. It seems extremely commendable —arguably “best in class” across the system. Part of my responsibility and engagement with the National Police Chiefs Council is to challenge the system, and learn from the rest of the system, about what works and what partnership working is really effective.

I want in my closing remarks to move things on a bit, as I think my hon. Friend is already aware of the things I have talked about so far; we have had such exchanges before. I am persuaded by his previous debates, this debate and correspondence from police and crime commissioners of different political persuasions that we need to go further. I hope he welcomes the major review of drugs that the Home Secretary announced on 2 October, including a focus on the workings of the drugs market and synthetic cannabinoids, which will be in the scope of the review. That is a major piece of work.

I have also asked the National Crime Agency to undertake a threat assessment of synthetic cannabinoids, which will be reported to the Department in spring. It will provide a richer picture of the threat faced by law enforcement. I hope my hon. Friend welcomes that too.

[Toby Perkins]

I think I welcome what the Minister is saying, but I want to clarify something. By saying that he is persuaded that we need to go further, is he saying that he will institute a review or that it will become Government policy that synthetic cannabinoids will be reclassified?

[Mr Hurd]

The hon. Gentleman has jumped ahead of my remarks. I am sure he understands the context, because he is a sensible man. In this complex situation, when dealing with something fast-moving, the Government have to take decisions based on good evidence and a good understanding of the risks, the threats, the drivers of the market, the changes in the market and the likely consequences and implications of decisions, including about classification. I am setting out a series of urgent pieces of work that will look at the drugs market in a broader sense, which is a big step in itself, and a specific commissioning of the National Crime Agency to look at the threat assessment of synthetic cannabinoids—for the first time, as I understand it—with a commitment to report back to us in spring.

I am also asking the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, whose advice we rely on for decisions on classification, to advise on refreshing its assessment. We have not done that in the last few months because the honest truth is that it has not been that long since the council last took a view in 2014. In this fast-changing environment, however, and given the representations of real concern made by Members of Parliament and by police and crime commissioners, it is the right moment to ask the council to refresh that assessment of synthetic cannabinoids’ harms.

Hon. Members, and not least my hon. Friend for Mansfield, have been clear that reclassification is not a silver bullet—to use that cliché—and that we need to get several other things right. We should also be clear that reclassification would arguably not significantly increase the police’s powers to deal with the possession, supply and production of these substances. Instead, it would primarily increase the penalties for possession from a maximum of five years in prison to seven years, and for supply and production from a maximum of 14 years in prison to life. The House will have its own view on whether that change would have a material impact as a deterrent.

The Government rely on advice from the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, whose last assessment was in 2014. Even though that does not seem that long ago, based on representations made to me, it is the right to time to ask it to refresh its assessment. I give that undertaking to hon. Members. I congratulate and thank my hon. Friend for Mansfield for his tireless passion in pursuing this cause, and other hon. Members for making it clear to the Government that there is no room for complacency.