Psychoactive Substances Bill [ Lords ] (First sitting)

Carolyn Harris Excerpts

Tuesday 27th October 2015 Public Bill Committees

[Carolyn Harris (Swansea East) (Lab)]

With some laboratories charging up to £100 per test for each individual product to be tested, would my hon. Friend agree that trading standards would need extra financial resources to make any future legislation viable?

[Lyn Brown]

I certainly agree with my hon. Friend. The expert panel on new psychoactive substances make it perfectly clear that those forensic science providers will only take on the work if they consider it commercially viable. The state will have to pay competitive rates if it wants to test for the psychoactivity of drugs. I would like the Minister to assure us that the burden of paying for these tests will not fall entirely on the prosecution services or local government. The Bill is a radical addition to our drugs control policy and the Home Office has a responsibility to ensure that it is not acting as a drain on already depleted resources at the CPS. Local authorities and police forces may also want to test for psychoactivity before pursuing action against local suppliers. They too need support in this area.

In the Home Secretary’s letter to the ACMD she argued that data sharing in the police and forensic community would be the key factor in the forensic response to the Bill. She also pledged that the Home Office would drive for the mechanisms to ensure data is shared efficiently. I would like to ask the Minister what progress is being made on this front. We do not want unnecessary duplication adding to the expense of enforcing the Bill, nor do we want prosecutions not be brought because prosecutors do not have the same knowledge of a psychoactive substance as a police force or indeed the Home Office.

The Home Affairs Committee report on the Bill highlighted a number of concerns regarding the expenditure needed to achieve a prosecution. The Chartered Trading Standards Institute argued in its written evidence to the Committee that proving psychoactivity in order to gain prosecution would require

“rigorous scientific testing and analysis to obtain a toxicology report detailing the specific chemical components found in the drug.”

That point was made earlier by my hon. Friend the Member for Swansea East. The CTSI estimated that the approximate cost would be greater than £100 per substance to conduct a basic test. What is more alarming is that typical head shop investigations will require multiple tests to be conducted due to the content of NPS being different in different packets of the same branded drug. One packet of something exotic bearing the same name as another packet will contain different compounds. That just will not stand up in court.