Approved Premises (Substance Testing) Bill

Victoria Atkins Excerpts

3rd reading
Friday 21st January 2022 Commons Chamber

[The Minister of State, Home Department (Victoria Atkins)]

I am extremely grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Aylesbury (Rob Butler) for the excellent work he has conducted over the last few months in introducing this important Bill and for navigating it to this stage. As my hon. Friend the Member for Darlington (Peter Gibson) said based on his own experiences—I congratulate him too on his success this morning—getting a private Member’s Bill through can be a bit of a rollercoaster. It is great credit to my hon. Friend the Member for Aylesbury that there is such warmth and support for his efforts and for this legislation in the House today. I am extremely grateful to my hon. Friends across the House for speaking so well and for giving such support to this important piece of discrete legislation.

My hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Aaron Bell) gently reflected on the fact that it is good to be in this place talking about issues that really matter for our constituencies, and I echo his feelings on that. This legislation, coupled with the Government’s work across our drugs strategy and our prisons strategy, will really make a difference to our constituents across the country.

The Bill will play an important role in helping us to tackle illegal drug use, cut crime and save lives. I thank members of staff across the country, who work day in, day out to assist prisoners and offenders in getting back on to the straight and narrow and, importantly, to protect the public. Individual officers and members of staff do this work often without the public quite realising what they have to do or their enormous personal commitment to helping protect the public. I put on record my thanks to everyone doing this work day in, day out in approved premises, in probation and in our Prison Service.

The hon. Member for Lewisham West and Penge (Ellie Reeves) had a little pop from the Opposition Front Bench about X-ray scanners. I read with great interest the Opposition’s press release today about how X-ray scanners do not work. I do struggle to understand how the Opposition propose that prison officers are to detect concealed items in a person’s body. I have looked at the photographs and, believe you me, it would be quite difficult for a prison officer to reach down somebody’s throat, or another way, and remove something from their intestines, but who knows? The Labour party seems to be against X-ray body scanners. We are very firmly in favour of them. We are also in favour of drugs dogs and of members of staff doing manual searches. These things are just one tool in the Government’s determination to have a zero-tolerance approach to drugs in prison and in our society.

In December, we published our cross-Government drugs strategy, which represents an ambitious 10-year generational commitment to work across Government to address illegal drug use, including increased and enhanced testing in prisons and approved premises. We know the detrimental impact that drugs have on both the individual taking them and the wider community. Our strategy sets out three core priorities, which are: cutting off drugs supply; creating a world-class treatment and recovery service; and achieving a generational shift in the demand for drugs. I was particularly interested in the contributions on that from my hon. Friends the Members for Great Grimsby (Lia Nici) and for Newcastle-under-Lyme. They are right that such work must sit hand in hand with greater education—particularly of our young people—so that people understand the enormous costs involved in taking drugs both for themselves personally and for wider society.

Our vision goes beyond just treatment. We know that people who suffer from addiction also have multiple and complex needs for which they need support. My hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Nickie Aiken) used the word “empathy” about such approaches. She is right, and in a characteristically informed and knowledgeable way she showed how that requires not just our ambitious efforts to crack down on drugs supply but a little understanding of why people may find themselves addicts in the first place. We want to deliver a joined-up package across treatment, accommodation and employment. The strategy is underpinned with total investment of £3 billion in combating drugs over the next three years.

The prisons strategy White Paper, which sits alongside the drugs strategy and this discrete piece of legislation, sets out our ambitious plans to reduce reoffending and protect the public. It defines our goal for prisons to have a culture of zero tolerance to drugs and an approach that ensures meaningful and lasting recovery for all prisoners. Prisoners will be supported to use their time in prison to become free from drugs. On release, accommodation and employment support will help them to stay away from drugs and crime.

It is important, however, that work to tackle substance misuse continues outside prison. The Bill will ensure that we can understand and react quickly to the changing patterns of drugs misuse that exist in approved premises and hamper an individual’s chances of rehabilitation. As my hon. Friend the Member for Aylesbury set out, the Bill will implement a rigorous drug testing framework, enabling mandatory drug testing for psychoactive substances together with prescription and pharmacy medicines. It will enable us to test for a wide number of substances for longer and will help to identify prevalence trends so that we can focus our preventive and, indeed, investigative work.

My hon. Friend the Member for North West Norfolk (James Wild) asked a perfectly fair question about the consequences for someone who fails a drugs test. We very much want to incorporate the empathy referred to by my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster, but we also want there to be consequences. If a resident fails a drugs test, there will be discussions with them, and an improvement plan may be initiated with referrals to appropriate services. We are conscious that although there needs to be rigour and discipline in approved premises, we do not want the exercise to be purely punitive. We therefore aim to signpost and refer residents to substance misuse services, liaising with probation.

My hon. Friend the Member for Stockton South (Matt Vickers) emphasised the vital role played by staff. He is right to pay tribute to them, because the staff in approved premises will be leading the work in helping residents make the changes that we all want them to make.

My hon. Friend the Member for North West Norfolk also asked about regulations. I am told that no further legislation is required—it is more that guidance and authorisations will be required. Officials aim to implement that as swiftly as possible, because we want this work to continue. In closing, I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Aylesbury again for all his hard work in getting the Bill to this stage. As you know, Madam Deputy Speaker, this is also a rare opportunity for Ministers to thank at the Dispatch Box the unsung heroes who exist in every single Government Department, drafting legislation and providing assistance to Back Benchers when they are navigating a private Member’s Bill through the House. As such, I thank the Bill manager, Alice Harrison, and other officials including Graham Mackenzie, Alisha Hubert, Shelley Smith, Janet Thomas, Adam Hartley, Janet Cowdrey, and parliamentary counsel Justin Leslie and Amy Perkins for all the work they have done quietly from backstage, making sure that my hon. Friend is able to achieve what he wants to achieve.

I am pleased to reiterate the Government’s support for this important, discrete piece of legislation, and I wish it well in its progress in the other place.