Alcohol Strategy Consultation

Debate between Jeremy Browne and Julian Huppert

Wednesday 17th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Browne]

The consultation was held across England and Wales. We received about 1,500 responses and, as I said, the majority of people disagreed with a 45p minimum unit price, while about 75% of people—three quarters—expressed concern that the policy would affect people other than harmful or hazardous drinkers. Such a concern has been expressed universally.

[Dr Julian Huppert (Cambridge) (LD)]

My hon. Friend is right to highlight the fact that 56% of respondents disagreed with a minimum unit price of 45p, but does he know how many thought it should be zero and how many thought it should be higher, for example 50p? What extra concrete evidence do the Government want before a decision can be made on this policy?

Drugs

Debate between Jeremy Browne and Julian Huppert

Thursday 6th June 2013 Westminster Hall

[Mr Browne]

I am very attracted by the right hon. Gentleman’s suggestion. My intention at the moment is not to go to New Zealand, in part because I am mindful of the cost of doing so and I think we should spend public money cautiously. However, I will be speaking by video conference call to New Zealand officials next month—it is quite hard to get a suitable time to speak by conference call to New Zealand, because the time difference is so big, but I will do that. When suitable New Zealand officials or Ministers are here in London—they tend to pass through on a fairly routine basis—I also hope to take the opportunity to draw on their expertise.

I am attracted by the idea of whether people should be made more accountable for the drugs that they produce or sell in this space, but even that is not straightforward, because the issue often arises about who has produced the drugs, and they are often sold as not suitable for human consumption. All kinds of legal problems make what appears, on first inspection, to be a very seductive idea slightly less straightforward in practice than I would wish, but I am open-minded to what more we can do in that area, because it is worth exploring.

[Dr Huppert]

The Minister is making a very good case about there being lots of different types of harm and no single obviously right answer. He is absolutely right to say all that, and to say how complicated it is. He talked about it not being straightforward, so does he not think that he is making a very good argument for a royal commission? It is precisely because it is not straightforward and there is not one clear answer that we need that level of inquiry.

[Mr Browne]

I think that that is a good argument for elected politicians, including those who have participated in the debate this afternoon, to devote more time to thinking seriously about the subject. The point I was making about a royal commission was that we can put together an expert body of men and women who are full of integrity, knowledge and decency, and they could spend a long time thinking about the issue, but they would not produce “the right answer”, because I fear that the right answer does not exist in that form. They would produce a series of interesting observations and recommendations, which may match, to a high degree, the series of interesting observations and recommendations that the Committee made in its report. We would then have a debate along the lines of the one we are having this afternoon. As I said, although a royal commission would be a good opportunity for stimulating debate, I do not think that it would in itself necessarily reach the outcomes that we seek, because I am not sure that the outcomes are ever fully attainable.

A number of other issues have come up. The Government’s strategy has three prongs: reducing demand, restricting supply and building recovery. In addition, we have always said that we are open to learning from best practice in other countries. I have had the opportunity to travel, as recommended by the Committee, to Portugal, and last week I spent 24 hours in Denmark and 24 hours in Sweden. During the remainder of the year, my plan is to visit South Korea, Japan, the United States, Canada, the Czech Republic and Switzerland. We should be open-minded to the ideas that such other countries have come up with, because they are broadly equivalent to us in their economic and social development, and they are confronted by the same problems as us in terms of drugs policy. There is no reason to believe that every good idea in the world originates in this country, and they may well have ideas that we can learn from.

Going to Portugal was interesting—my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge dwelt particularly on that country. I will write a report when I conclude the process, so I will not do a running commentary on a weekly basis. I thought Portugal was interesting, but I was perhaps slightly less bowled over by it than I might have expected to be, because in some ways, the Portuguese codify what, in practice, happens to a large degree in this country anyway. People might think that that is quite interesting in itself. The fact that Portugal has made that formal codification is a significant step, but, in practice, there are very few people in Britain who are in prison merely for the possession of drugs for personal consumption. People are in prison because they have stolen money to buy drugs, or because they have supplied drugs to others, but most people in Britain who present with a severe heroin addiction, for example, are treated. We try and find ways of enabling them to address their addiction and, in time, recover from it, rather than treating them straightforwardly as criminals. Therefore, the gap between what happens in Portugal and what happens in practice in the United Kingdom is perhaps not as great as some might say.

It was interesting, for example, to talk to the Portuguese about the impact of changes in their laws on infection and blood-borne illnesses caused by the injection of drugs. They had a very big rise in instances of HIV infection in intravenous drug users, and when they changed the laws, there was a dramatic fall. It is a striking graph—like a mountain, it goes up and then comes down, and there is a clear correlation. The only thing I would say is that their starting point was higher than the United Kingdom’s. They then went to a point that was dramatically higher than the United Kingdom’s, and they have now come down to a point that is just higher than ours—but they are still higher than us.

For a number of reasons, we have never had that level of infection in the intravenous drug-taking community. Because the scale of our problem is dramatically different from the scale of the problem that they were confronted with when they changed the law, we should not automatically assume that changing the law would have a similar impact on infection rates in this country. There are interesting lessons to learn from talking to people in other countries, but we should not automatically assume that changing the law in the way that other countries have will lead to the same public policy outcomes, as we are starting from a different point in this country.

The Portuguese are having conversations about how their law is working in practice. In my experience—I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge—it was virtually impossible to find anyone in Portugal who wanted to turn the clock back and change the law to what it had previously been. Last week in Denmark, which is one of the more liberal countries in the European Union in terms of drugs policy, I found that some of the liberalising measures that had been taken had become widely accepted, even among people who had initially been sceptical about the changes.

In Portugal, however, there was a debate about whether it could modify its law and in some ways potentially strengthen it. The idea of having 10 days-worth of personal drugs consumption was thought by the Minister to be a high figure. There was a lobby or case for reducing that to five, or even possibly three days. I suppose that if someone who was minded to transport drugs for sale to others had 50 days-worth of supply that they wanted to take to another house five minutes’ walk away, they would be better making that journey five times, with 10 days-worth on them each time, because they would then not be breaking the law. There was some thought about whether that law was perhaps too liberal and could be slightly tighter to restrict the potential for abuse.

[Mr Clive Betts in the Chair]

My point is that there were many interesting features of the experience in Portugal, as there were in Denmark and Sweden. I am genuinely open-minded on this matter. I approach open-mindedly what changes we could consider and potentially even adopt in this country to make our laws more effective.

I heard the point that was made by the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North, who speaks for the Opposition, and others about where responsibility lies for drugs policy in the United Kingdom. It is worth noting that in all the countries that I have been to so far, the lead responsibility lies with the Health Department. In this country, of course, the lead responsibility lies with the Home Office. I am not sure that in practice that is as significant as it is regarded as being by both those who believe vehemently that it should remain with the Home Office and those who believe vehemently that it should not, because we have a cross-Government approach.

There needs to be a lead Department, and of course much of drugs policy is about law enforcement, so there is a persuasive case to be made for that being with the Home Office, but we also of course involve the Department of Health, the Department for Education, the Department for Communities and Local Government, the Department for Work and Pensions, the Cabinet Office and others in a cross-Government strategy on drugs, so I would not want anyone attending this debate to think that the Home Office ploughed on without listening to other parts of the Government.

The three parts of the strategy are demand, supply and recovery. We have a range of initiatives on demand reduction. The FRANK website and programme was mentioned during our debate. That has been updated and relaunched and is widely used as a source of information—particularly, but not exclusively, by young people. Another example is the Choices programme that we have developed. That focuses on preventing substance misuse and related offending among vulnerable groups of young people aged 10 to 19. The programme received funding of £4 million in 2011-12 and engaged more than 10,000 vulnerable young people.

This issue is not just about schools. In fact, many people take drugs for the first time when they have left school—when they are adults. Schools have a part to play, but so do other methods of education. It is worth noting that the number of young people taking up drugs and particularly school pupils experimenting with drugs has fallen markedly, so there does not seem to be a shortage of information among young people about the harmful consequences of taking drugs. Indeed, increasing numbers of young people seem to be mindful of those harmful consequences and, as a result, have not taken drugs.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Browne]

My short answer to the right hon. Gentleman’s question is yes, it is wrong. It is a source of great regret and sadness that someone might go to prison, not as a drug taker or drug addict, and become one while they are there. I recognise there are practical difficulties with trying to restrict drugs in prisons, and people find ingenious ways to smuggle drugs into prisons, just as they find ingenious ways to smuggle them into other places, but the Government are doing work, as we should be, to try to reduce that threat.

What I am saying is that we could just as well do random testing throughout the period people are in prison. I have been told that if we tell somebody they will be tested on a set day, they may take steps to make it less likely that drugs will be detected in their body on that day. We are not, therefore, against the idea of testing prisoners, and we are strongly in favour of trying to ensure that people do not take drugs in prison, while those who might be minded to take drugs are dissuaded or prevented from doing so, but the proposed testing regime would not necessarily automatically have the most successful outcome.

On the Government’s approach to reducing demand, it is worth putting on the record that drug use remains at around the lowest level since measurement began in 1996. The 2011-12 crime survey in England and Wales estimated that 8.9% of adults—about 3 million people—had used an illicit drug in the previous year. In 1996, the figure was 11.1%, so there was a fall of a bit less than a quarter—about 20%, according to my rough and ready calculations. There was therefore a significant fall in the number of people who said they had taken illicit drugs in the previous year.

School pupils also tell us they are taking fewer drugs. In 2011, 12% of 11 to 15-year-olds said they had taken them in the previous year. In 2001—a decade earlier—the figure was 20%, so it fell from 20% to 12% in a decade. Some hon. Members may think that 11 to 15-year-olds are not entirely reliable when talking about their drug consumption, but there is no particular reason to believe they were any more or less reliable in 2011 than they were in 2001.

The number of heroin and crack cocaine users in England has fallen below 300,000 for the first time. We have now got to a situation where the average heroin addict is over 40. The age of heroin addicts is going up and up, as fewer young people become heroin addicts in the first place. We are trying to rehabilitate and treat addicts and to keep those figures falling. They are not falling dramatically, but they are falling consistently, year on year, for those very serious drugs, which often concern people most.

On restricting supply, we have talked a bit about the countries that some of the class A drugs come here from and about the work we are doing with European partners and others. Tribute has rightly been paid to the Serious Organised Crime Agency, and the National Crime Agency, which will succeed it later this year, will also have a focus on working with countries around the world to reduce harm in the United Kingdom.

On building recovery, the average waiting time to access treatment is down to five days. There is an impressive support structure available, and drug-related deaths in England have fallen over the past three years. Record numbers of people are recovering from dependence, with nearly 30,000 people—29,855, to be precise—successfully completing their treatment in 2011-12. That is up from 27,969 the previous year, and it is almost three times the level seven years ago, when only 11,208 people recovered.

I do not pretend that we have all the answers or that the situation is perfect, but we should not despair, because, in the light of all those statistics, there is good reason to believe that the harm resulting from many of the drugs that have caused people the most upset and alarm over many years has diminished to a degree.

The problem is evolving. For example, cannabis, which was largely imported a decade ago, is increasingly home grown by criminal organisations in the United Kingdom. The cannabis that people consume is also a lot stronger. I sometimes tell people that the active substance in cannabis is as much as seven or eight times stronger than it was, so people can be talking about quite a different drug. Sometimes, older people talk about cannabis in a bit of a summer of love, Janis Joplin, 1967 way. Now, however, we are talking about a much stronger drug, with the potential to cause greater harm.

It is a bit like going from drinking a pint of real ale to drinking a pint of neat vodka. In both cases, an alcoholic drink is being consumed, but most people would accept that the potential for harm is quite a lot greater in the latter case. That is what we are discussing. The strength of modern cannabis is seven times greater, which raises some interesting public policy questions about how we deal with cannabis and how much concern we should have about people consuming it.

[Dr Huppert]

The Minister is absolutely right to say that there are different strengths of both THC and some of the psychoprotective components of cannabis. It is of course hard to regulate and set standards for something that is fundamentally illegal. Has the Minister looked at the experience in California, for example, where medical marijuana is available? The different levels of strength are clear, so people can judge what they actually want to buy. I have no idea what will happen, but will the Minister keep an eye on the legalisation trials in Washington state and Colorado?

[Mr Browne]

As I mentioned earlier, I am going to the United States of America and I am visiting both Colorado and Washington state, which are the two states that have voted to legalise cannabis. I was in Denmark last week and the mayor of Copenhagen is keen to legalise cannabis, but the pretty liberal Danish Government are keen to remind the mayor that it is not within his power to legalise cannabis and that it is not a policy that they want to pursue.

The point is that the public policy debate around cannabis is evolving. The potential health harms caused by cannabis are greater than when it was a much less powerful drug. People sometimes talk about cannabis as being the softer end of the drugs market and say that cannabis could be legalised while everything else is kept illegal as if it were a benign drug and all others harmful. If that were once the case, it is less the case now. Cannabis does have cause to concern people.

I move finally on to psychoactive substances, which is a whole new area that is evolving a lot. It is good that we see significant reductions in people consuming heroin and crack cocaine, which are very harmful drugs, but new psychoactive substances are a fast-evolving threat to many people. In the most tragic cases, some people have died after taking such drugs. People sometimes assume—this is interesting for public policy—that because something is legal it is safe. People have quite paternalistic assumptions about the state even when they are not necessarily minded to believe the Government in other areas of public policy. Just because something is legal, that does not mean that it is safe to consume.

Some such drugs get under the barrier by claiming not to be for human consumption and serious harm has been caused to people by consuming so-called novel psychoactive substances. We have tried to adapt how we respond to such substances to take account of their fast-moving nature. As has been mentioned, we have introduced temporary class drug orders and just this week the Government laid such an order in my name that will take effect from 10 June for two groups of NPSs known as NBOMe and Benzo Fury. We are discussing families of drugs, because, as has been said, these chemical compounds can be manipulated and form whole categories of drugs. We therefore do not just ban street names or individual drugs; we ban groupings of drugs to try to stop people breaking the spirit of the law but staying within the letter of the law. The problem, however, is constantly mutating and we want to maintain the academic rigour that enables the ACMD to consider such matters at length while also having the speed to deal with evolving threats more quickly than it otherwise could. That is why we have the temporary orders lasting 12 months and a more considered process following on from that. I do not pretend that this is an area in which any country does not have public policy challenges to consider. How such drugs are couriered and supplied is also a potential new cause for concern, because people order them on the internet and the drug smuggling does not take the familiar, conventional form.

This is a big area of public policy and there are some causes for cautious optimism. Some drug consumption trends in this country are positive. If they were going in the opposite direction, I suggest that there would be far more Members at this debate and a bigger clamour to ask the Government what they were doing about increases in heroin or crack cocaine consumption. We should momentarily reflect on the good news and progress, where it is being made.

However, this is an area of public policy that never stops evolving, and many new drugs are becoming available. The patterns of drug consumption are evolving. It is subject to fashion and trends, and we must be alive to the harms, educate people about them, try to persuade people not to take drugs, look at where we can restrict supply to benefit public health and help people to recover. All of those are part of our strategy. I welcome the contributions of hon. and right hon. Members and I remind open-minded as to how to ensure that we can work as intelligently as possible to reduce the harm to the British public.