here - United Kingdom Parliament

277WH
Drugs
6 JUNE 2013
Drugs
278WH
right to highlight. This is wrecking many countries. We
did not look at the situation with heroin and marijuana,
but the same damaging effects apply in different countries.
President Santos has been taking a strong stance,
saying that his country will try to control this problem;
but we cannot expect countries to be torn apart for ever
in an effort to control a problem that cannot be controlled.
I am delighted that, in 2016, the United Nations General
Assembly will have a special session to look again at its
international drugs policy. I hope that, whatever flavour
of Government we have then, we will be working with
people like President Santos and with the reformers to
try to solve this global problem.
We have worked for 40 years with a criminalisation
process that has not delivered what we said it should
deliver in 1971. It has not worked for the users of drugs,
for society at large or for the Treasury. There are much
better ways.
2.20 pm
Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab): I
welcome you to the Chair, Mr Bayley. It is a pleasure to
serve under your chairmanship. I apologise, but I have a
very sore throat, so my voice is not quite as it should be.
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Cambridge
(Dr Huppert). I will certainly look to his pronouncements
in future for an indication of Liberal Democrat policy.
I start by recognising that the report is an important
piece of work. I pay tribute to the leadership of the
Select Committee’s Chair, my right hon. Friend the
Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz). I also pay
tribute to all the members of the Committee who
contributed to the report, which draws upon the huge
experience of different people and organisations. As we
have heard, many different countries have been considered.
I had an opportunity to listen to some of the witness
sessions. I heard Sir Richard Branson and Russell Brand
give evidence, and I attended the Committee’s one-day
conference in Parliament. I think it was very useful to
invite the general public in to hear the deliberations of
that Committee.
I visited Colombia after the Select Committee’s visit,
and I know from my conversations with the Serious
Organised Crime Agency officers based in Colombia
that they were delighted to be able to explain the
international role they play in addressing the drugs
problem. They do some very important work, which I
am pleased has been recognised in the report.
The report is wide-ranging and contains many
recommendations. Because of the time, I will go through
some of the recommendations that I believe are key. I
look to the Minister to answer some of my questions on
the approach the Government will take to addressing
the Committee’s recommendations.
I start with the recommendation that the lead for
drugs policy should be shared between the Home Office
and the Department of Health, with a designated point
person co-ordinating policy. That might seem an unlikely
place to start, but I think it is absolutely essential that
drugs policy is co-ordinated across Departments. I will
address that theme in the points I raise this afternoon.
The Opposition recognise the importance of a co-ordinated
approach, and it is certainly important to recognise that
there has been a high level of cross-departmental work
on drugs over the past 10 years.
The Minister, although based in the Home Office, is
responding on behalf of the Government, and I know
he takes seriously his responsibilities on drugs. I question
whether it should be necessary for two Departments to
be involved with drugs, because the Minister is able
today to discuss aspects of the drugs strategy that sit
not only within the Home Office but within the Department
of Education and other bodies, such as Public Health
England and the NHS.
That leads me to the report’s recommendation on the
need to strengthen and open up the inter-ministerial
group on drugs, which the Minister chairs. One of the
recommendations is that the group’s minutes, agendas
and attendance lists should be published. I have spent
much of the past 18 months trying to get details of
those minutes, agendas and attendance lists through
parliamentary questions, and I have resorted to freedom
of information requests. I have been continually thwarted
by the Home Office, so I think that recommendation
would help us to understand and appreciate what is
happening across Government.
We can see the importance of cross-Government
working when we look at the record of achievement
over the past 10 years on reducing the health harms of
drug use, particularly heroin and crack cocaine use. All
the key indicators are improving, and some of them
have already been mentioned.
The number of drug users is falling, particularly
among the 16 to 24 age group, although, as the hon.
Member for Cambridge highlighted, that may not give
us a true picture if we take legal highs into account. The
number of drug deaths has fallen even more sharply—more
than halving between 2001 and 2011—partly because
we have had much better access to treatment and because
treatment is more successful. The average waiting time
to access treatment was nine weeks in 2001; it was five
days in 2011, and it is getting more effective. Only 27%
of treatment programmes were successful in 2005, but
the figure rose to 41% in 2011.
Finally, and probably most importantly, more people
are completing treatment. In 2005, 37,000 people dropped
out of treatment before completion, whereas only 11,000
completed it. By 2011, those figures had almost reversed:
17,000 people dropped out of treatment, whereas nearly
30,000 completed it. I am sure we could see further
improvement, and I am not complacent at all, but we
ought to recognise that there has been huge improvement
in treatment outcomes over the past 10 years. I say that
in particular because much of what has been achieved
was within the framework of collaboration.
The National Treatment Agency for Substance Misuse
was set up as a joint Home Office and Department of
Health project to ensure that drugs treatment had the
required priority in the NHS. Although the NTA was
funded by the NHS, the Home Office had representation
on its board because there was clear acceptance that the
Home Office had a key part to play. We knew that drug
treatment was important in reducing crime. We wanted
to ensure that those two parts, treatment and crime
prevention, sat together. I think the NTA was an
unprecedented success, and I pay tribute to the recently
retired chief executive, Paul Hayes, who did an excellent
job over many years.
I saw at first hand how collaboration can work effectively
when I visited a drugs treatment facility in Wakefield
run by Turning Point. In one building there were police