Misuse of Drugs Act

Kieran Mullan Excerpts

Thursday 17th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Jeff Smith]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We have the evidence in the UK. There have been some very good diversion schemes in Durham and the west midlands, and there are others. We do not need to look at the evidence abroad; we can look at the evidence in the UK.

[Dr Kieran Mullan (Crewe and Nantwich) (Con)]

Does the hon. Gentleman accept that, particularly in relation to cannabis, the initial warning and the fixed penalty notice that we use at the moment do not prevent in any way, shape or form people from also being given a diversion scheme and other steps being taken? There is no barrier to that at the moment, for example, in relation to cannabis.

[Jeff Smith]

That is true. My problem with cannabis is that the supply is still in the hands of organised criminal gangs. That, for me, is not a sensible way to approach our drug policy.

We can explore models of decriminalisation, and we know that those are associated with reduced risks of recidivism, a reduced burden on police resources and savings to the public purse related to social costs, or we can look at models of legalised regulation. Whatever happens, we need a wholesale, new approach to this problem. The Government need to be honest that the last 50 years of drug policy have been a failure and have come at a terrible human, societal and economic cost. We need to commit to a public health approach rather than a criminal justice approach to drugs policy—one focused on saving lives and rooted in support and compassion for those who abuse drugs.

Among the MPs who want to speak in today’s debate, there will not be a single view on the way we go forward and what an alternative to the current approach to drugs policy should look like, and there will be different approaches for different substances. I look forward to hearing the views of Members, but I suspect that we probably mostly agree that, on the 50th anniversary of the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971, it is worth looking honestly at the legacy of that 50-year-old legislation and considering what needs to change to better serve our constituents and our communities. We should take this opportunity for political parties and the media to stop weaponising drugs policy and have a grown-up discussion about how we protect our communities. Today I am calling on the Government to launch a full, open-minded review of this legislation to learn from our mistakes, because we cannot afford another 50 years of failure.

I will leave the final words to Anne-Marie Cockburn, who is a campaigner for Anyone’s Child: Families for Safer Drug Control. Anne-Marie’s daughter Martha, like people through the generations for thousands of years, just wanted to have a bit of fun and get high. She researched on the internet how to get high safely. She was 15 years old when she took an overdose of MDMA that killed her. Anne-Marie says: “As I stand by my daughter’s grave, what more evidence do I need that UK drug policy needs to change?”

--- Later in debate ---

[Tommy Sheppard (Edinburgh East) (SNP)]

I wish to associate myself entirely with all of the comments that my two colleagues have just made from either side of this House. I wonder what it says about our ability to function as a body that makes and reviews legislation that such a significant piece of legislation, dealing with such a major social problem, can lie on the statute book for 50 years without review or amendment. That is all the more incredible when we consider that by any conceivable measure it has been an abject failure in trying to achieve what it set out to achieve. As we have heard, back in 1971 just 1% of the British population said that they used the drugs that the Act would go on to criminalise, whereas today the figure is 34%. We are facing the biggest social policy catastrophe of our generation. Thousands of people are dying every year needlessly because they do not know what they are taking and help is not available for them when things go wrong. Tens of thousands of people every year get a criminal record because of the way in which we try to tackle this problem. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people, living in communities up and down this land, have their lives blighted, not just by the misery of people dependent on those drugs in those communities, but by the brutal violence used by those involved in organised crime to enforce their regulation and supply of these products.

By any measure, this policy and this legislation ought to be reviewed. It is not just the fact that the legislation has not been able to do what it wanted to do; it is worse than that, because the legislation is now an active cause of the problem, because the entire area is looked at not as one of public health and wellbeing, but as one of criminal activity. The centre of the Act is about criminalising people who use drugs, and that does a number of things. First, it immediately means that the state has no role in the supply and regulation of these products, and that responsibility is given to the private sector and to organised crime within it. That is the first consequence of the Act. The second is that if people are getting into trouble and need medical help because of their substance addiction, many of our health and social care staff working in our public agencies are unable or unwilling to put themselves at risk of criminal prosecution by offering that help.

[Dr Mullan]

If that is true, how does the hon. Gentleman account for the fact that we have tens of thousands of heroin users on methadone replacement therapy?

[Tommy Sheppard]

I will come on to look at that concept and drug consumption in a minute, but what I am talking about is the fact that people have no ability to come to a health professional and say, “What is this?” They have no ability to ask for clean needles, because these actions are prohibited under the 1971 Act and the schedules to it.

The third thing, which has already been remarked upon, is that the Act stigmatises, big time, those who use drugs and puts them in a position where they are unlikely, because of social opprobrium, to ask for help. We surely need to have a review and a fresh think about a problem that is so manifestly out of control and where the existing legislation is so manifestly unable to provide any assistance.

I always like to try to see the other side of the argument, so I want to ask: why are people resistant to review? Why do they want to hold on to things as they are? I can only conclude that it is because they fear the consequences of decriminalisation or of changing the law. They must somehow think that if we were to do that, we would open the floodgates and unleash supply into communities where there are not already drugs, and that many more millions of people would get caught up in the problem, because we would not have the criminal mechanisms that we have at the minute. I say to any colleagues who think that: wake up and see what is happening on the streets of your constituencies.

Those colleagues should come with me to any medium-sized town in this country, stand in a bar and make their intentions known as to what they would like. Within one hour they will be offered any drug of their choice. If they do not want the personal contact, they could order in advance. If they go on the internet, they will find a mobile phone number on which, through the county lines network, they can order whatever they want and it will be delivered to their door. Sometimes people will even get a customer service message asking for feedback on the supply. That is the extent of what we have at the moment.

It is just fantasy to suggest that there are loads of people out there who are somehow prevented from getting into drugs by the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971. That is not the case, so we surely need to have a grown-up conversation about what we should do given that potentially a third of our citizens could be made criminals by legislation that is so manifestly unfit for purpose.

I hope that the Home Office and Ministers can begin that process of review with an open mind, rather than just defending the status quo. They should be prepared to look at an evidence-based approach, drawing on international comparisons, and to try to work up a better system that is grounded in protecting public health and wellbeing, rather than trying to criminalise behaviour. I and my party would support—I think there would be support in all parts of the House—any bold Minister who wanted to take that initiative and begin that dialogue. I am not saying prescriptively what should be in such a review; I am not saying how it should be done. I simply want to have the dialogue, the discussion and the debate, because too many people are dying for us not to do so.

While we are doing that, there are some things that ought to be done immediately. I want to turn for a moment to the question of drug consumption rooms—probably better called overdose prevention centres. These are medical facilities, and I have been in them and seen them working in Portugal, Germany and Canada. These are medical facilities where someone can use their own drugs under medical supervision. Such places are not going to make the overall problem any better; what they do is drive a focus into the very sharp end of the problem—the point at which people are dying.

At the moment, people do not voluntarily overdose because they are fed up with life and want to commit suicide. That is not the case at all. People are taking substances and they do not even know what is in them. Sometimes these substances contain a lethal concoction which is much, much stronger than they thought it was going to be. Because it is all criminal activity, it has to be done behind closed doors. It is not something that someone does in the open. By the time someone realises they have a problem—by the time they cannot breathe, they have a heart attack or they need medical help—it is too late to call for assistance. For the limited number of people in those circumstances, being able to satisfy their immediate addiction under medical supervision would literally be a lifesaver. That is what happens in other countries.

It is blindingly obvious that we ought to try to consider having such places here, but the law forbids it. Even pending a change in the law, by regulation the Home Office should allow pilot centres to emerge so that we can see for ourselves whether they would work here. After all, what is there to lose? There is nothing to lose and everything to gain—there are lives to gain.

This idea does not stop people using drugs; it does not get rid of the problem; it does not make people get their life back together; it does not get people the medical help or social services help that they might need; it does not get them a job if they have not got one—of course it does not, but it keeps them alive long enough so that those interventions can take place further down the line. We cannot give help to a dead person, and that is why it is so vital that we have a sensible discussion about drug consumption rooms and supervised facilities. The Scottish Government stand ready and have been pressing the Home Office to allow them to go ahead and do that in Glasgow, which brings me to my final point; I know you did not want people to go on too long, Mr Deputy Speaker, so this will be my final point.

We have a bit of a disjuncture in the interrelationship between the devolution of political authority and Administrative action in the United Kingdom and this particular problem, in that the whole criminal framework—the 1971 Act and others—is a reserved matter for Westminster, which sets the problem, if you like, but dealing with the consequences of that, including the health and social care and the economic fall-out from that policy, is a matter for the devolved Administrations. Without getting into the arguments about Scottish independence or whatever, it seems to me a matter of ultimate sense and grown-up policy to have the same part of government responsible for the regulation as is responsible for mopping up the consequences of the problem. That is why, when the time comes, we need to urgently look at devolution of the controls currently in place in the ’71 Act, and whatever replaces it, to the devolved Administrations, and to locate them within a health and social care context, which is already devolved.

In advance of that, I have spoken with the Minister several times on this matter, and I trust that he is thoughtful about it. I think he is prepared to consider other points of view and evidence, but I think he feels himself mightily constrained by tradition, convention and, perhaps, political pressure elsewhere. However, he has now received a letter from the Drugs Policy Minister in Scotland, Angela Constance, asking for a four nations summit to consider, among other things, establishing pilots of these types of medical facilities. I hope very much that he will today confirm that his reaction to that is positive and that, if we cannot change things overnight across the whole UK, he is prepared to let us employ the apparatus of devolution to allow one part of the UK to go beyond where other parts are perhaps willing to go at the minute and to collate the evidence to point a way to the future, which could then lead to best practice being adopted throughout.

We have a responsibility not to continue to stick our heads in the sand on this matter; there has been a collective exercise of ignoring the blindingly obvious for far too long. We are not voting on this today, but I appeal to colleagues to do what they can through the various structures of this place and within their political parties—this matter should not divide us on party grounds—to consider why we need a review after this half-century and why things are so clearly wrong that we must do something. We cannot continue to stick our heads in the sand and pretend that things are okay. Now, 50 years after the passage of the Act, is the time to admit that it is not working and to do better. The citizens of this country deserve that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Kieran Mullan (Crewe and Nantwich) (Con)]

In my time both as a doctor and a volunteer special constable, I have seen up close the harms that drugs do to our society, and I have also seen this in my personal life.

I wish to begin by focusing on areas of agreement with the hon. Member for Manchester, Withington (Jeff Smith), my hon. Friend the Member for Reigate (Crispin Blunt) and others. It is clearly right that the best outcome for an individual addicted to drugs is to be supported to overcome that addiction. It is clearly better for individuals who end up using drugs that they can do so in a way that minimises the risk of harm. It is clearly true that often it is not going to be the best use of police time to pursue individuals who are using drugs on a personal basis. Those are things I think we can all agree on, but some of the other arguments put forward today fail on a number of fronts. They fail to understand the reality of the policing of drug use in society at the moment. They fail to understand the nature of criminality associated with drug production, and they fail to understand the complexity of addiction recovery. As is so often the case with those on the left, they take for granted all the quiet benefits of our current approach to drugs that could potentially be lost in reform. Fundamentally, abstinence-based policies are stopping very many people from taking illicit drugs. The overwhelming majority of people do not take drugs. What Members have done today, without any evidence whatsoever, is to draw association with cause. An enormous number of social ills have exploded over the past 30 years. We cannot say that, because our approach was X, it has been the cause of that. There are many, many factors that drive drug use and we have no idea what drug use would have been had we taken a different approach.

Let me ask a question of the hon. Member for Manchester, Withington, who I know DJ-ed in nightclubs that I frequented a long time ago in Leeds and Manchester. How many times were his nightclubs raided by police bent on catching everybody who was taking amphetamines? How many times has he seen police with their sniffer dogs outside a festival desperate to catch people taking these types of drugs? As I mentioned earlier, the overwhelming majority of people who are caught with cannabis are charged only with possession if they are an adult. If they are not causing any other problem for the local area, such as smoking it publicly or being involved in criminality, they will end up with a warning notice and a fine. Very few of the people who have been talked about for being in prison for drug offences are there for consumption. Overwhelmingly, they are in there for dealing. If they are there for consumption, it is usually because they have had a string of other interventions—whether it be a suspended sentence, a community order, or other things. Ultimately, it is fair that, if they continue to cause misery in their local communities, they face a prison sentence for that. They are not there because we are sending people away to prison because they smoke cannabis or because they take ecstasy. That is just not the reality of the situation.

The question that we might ask ourselves is why do we not just decriminalise these drugs, especially if people are relatively able to use it in proportion. It goes back to what I said earlier. First, I do not endorse that situation. My strong view is that criminalisation deters an awful lot of people from using drugs. Members cannot have it both ways. They cannot say on the one hand that there is all this stigma around drug use, that people cannot get treatment, cannot speak about it, and cannot be freely open with it, and then say that decriminalisation will not increase usage because it is freely available anyway and people can just get it. We cannot have both those scenarios; we must have one or the other. There is either a stigma, which will have a social effect, or there is not; we cannot have it both ways.

Let me turn now to the nature of criminality related to drug dealing. Drug dealing and drugs being illegal do not create criminal gangs. Those gangs exist because sections of our society are willing to step outside the rules and the norms, use violence, be thugs and do things that the rest of us will not do to make a quick buck. They happen to be doing that with drugs, and decriminalising them will not change that. First, they will just do more of other things. There will be more racketeering, more counterfeit money, and more people trafficking. There will always be people who will look to make money and to be violent as a result.

As has been mentioned, whatever limits we put on drugs—unless Members here really think that Boots will be giving out injectable heroin—there will be limits on the drugs that will be decriminalised. The evidence in Amsterdam is that it has one of the biggest problems with potent cannabis. Decriminalising the use of cannabis in Amsterdam has not stopped that, so, whatever we do, there will always be people who want that hit—it is the nature of addiction. The nature of addiction is that people want a bigger hit. They want more than they got the first time, so they will always hit those limits and want someone else to go above what the law will allow, while accepting that there will be some kind of barriers.

Finally, I want to draw on my experience at university. As a doctor, we had former heroin addicts come in to speak to us. There was a lady who had multiple problems with addiction. Her ongoing addiction was not as a result of not being able to get treatment; she had multiple opportunities to seek treatment. She went on some treatment courses, but, actually, it was when she hit rock bottom, having no help from anyone and having exhausted everything that was available to her, that she turned it around. I am afraid that even the very best addiction programmes are not particularly successful unless people go on them multiple times and go on a bit of a journey.

The idea that we will fix this problem by giving people treatment is naive I am afraid. The problem will carry on regardless because of the inherent nature of these substances, which, on balance, should be banned. We have to weigh up the costs to society of even a small increase in the number of people who take these drugs, and, of course we feel sorry for them, but they have ended up taking them anyway.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stuart C. McDonald (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (SNP)]

In a sense, it is a real pleasure to take part in this debate, as has been said, principally because it has been a terrific one with some fantastic contributions from all parts of the House. I commend the hon. Members for Manchester, Withington (Jeff Smith) and for Reigate (Crispin Blunt) for securing this debate on an incredibly important topic, and for their persistent pursuit of a policy-based approach to the subject. I could offer the same commendation to lots of Members in the Chamber, including hon. Friends.

In other ways, I very much regret having to take part in this debate. First, because, as other Members have said, I do not think it should be home affairs or policing spokespersons speaking today; it should be health spokespersons and we should be debating this issue absolutely through the prism of public health, not criminal justice. Secondly, like every hon. Member in this debate, I wish that we did not have to be here because drugs had been suppressed or eliminated a long time ago, but clearly we are as far away from that being a reality as we ever have been. That is fundamentally why Members are pushing for reform. There is no sign of significant change under the current regime.

Hon. Members have illustrated eloquently that this is a crisis, in terms of scale and the impact that it is having on individuals. Addressing this crisis will absolutely require the use of the full range of tools at the disposal of Governments: measures to address poverty and inequality; education; prevention; tackling stigma; treatment; harm reduction; recovery; mental health; housing; and, of course, law enforcement and criminal justice too—every arm of government must be involved.

We have debated and will continue to debate all the different policy responses, but today the focus is on the Misuse of Drugs Act at 50, the legislation that underpins and, I am afraid, casts a shadow over everything else we do to combat drugs. I share the analysis of the vast majority of hon. Members who have spoken that, in the 50 years since it was passed, the evolution and, sadly, the growth of the drugs trade has been extraordinary, as has been our understanding of it, but our legislation has tragically failed to move on in response. Indeed, many would argue that it was the wrong response at the outset, as the hon. Member for Reigate eloquently said.

[Dr Mullan]

If the central analysis is that the legislation is the cause of the problem, and the legislation is exactly the same in Scotland as in England, how does that account for the fact that the problem in Scotland, on some metrics, is more than twice as bad?

[Stuart C. McDonald]

Two things. Yes, the metrics in Scotland are very bad. The metrics for the whole United Kingdom are terribly bad—[Interruption.] Some metrics; I am not sure which particular metrics the hon. Member is referring to. However, that is not the point. With respect, I also do not think the point is to ask, “What is the cause?” We could say that, in some ways, the Act has caused all sorts of harms, but it is beyond dispute that it has failed to fix the problem. We are all calling for an evidence-based debate on whether we can do better, and whether different legislative approaches can do better. I cannot really see how Government Members can say that this is as good as it gets. Yes, there are other things that both Governments—all Governments—are doing, but if this is as good as it gets, we are a hopeless bunch. I think we should try to provide some hope to our constituents. That is what we are trying to do today. This debate should not really be about whether reform is needed but should rather be an evidence-based debate about the nature of that reform and how far we should go. I think even Government Members think changes can be made. Some of us will want to go much further, which I will come to right now.

There is an abundance of evidence on not only the need for reform but what sort of reforms work, coming from health and medical experts; law enforcement, as we heard; those working on the frontline with those with addiction; and those who have experienced addictions directly. International best practice can be a guide as well. That is why report after report, including reports from cross-party Committees of this House, have all called for reform. I will focus on three brief recommendations that both the Health and Social Care Committee and the Scottish Affairs Committee flagged up.

First—as I said, so I do not need to expand on it anymore—this policy area should be led by the Health and Social Care Department, not the Home Office. Secondly, both Committees said that, at the very least, we need to pilot and look at the use of overdose prevention facilities or drug consumption rooms. We heard from numerous hon. Members how these have been shown to save lives and reduce harm. They assist in ensuring that those who most need it can access support and treatment, and they protect the public from antisocial and dangerous public injection.

Thirdly, both of those cross-party Committees said that there should at least be a consultation on decriminalisation of possession. The SNP believes that there is already enough evidence for that, and we acknowledge that international evidence shows that that leads to less problematic drug use and less harm as a result, and less waste of police and justice resources. Let us at least look at it and review that.

I absolutely appreciate that the Government will not announce today that they will rip up the Misuse of Drugs Act and start again. However, knowing that the Government will not do that, and knowing that they are conservative and cautious about the possibility of reform, they surely to goodness must at least trial and research some of these possible new approaches. If they do not want to do that, they should devolve powers so that we can try—to Scotland, but also to other parts of the UK willing to pilot a new approach. As has been said, we will all benefit from what we learn as a result; whether it is a success or a failure, let us try. Instead of being scared of public opinion, test it. Put it to a citizens assembly and build consensus. I believe that the more folk understand about this issue, the more they see the need for reform. If nothing else, people see that it is their brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews, sons and daughters who the Government are criminalising rather than helping.

Finally, I have one or two nuts-and-bolts questions that I would be keen for the Minister to answer. First, as has already been asked, will he respond positively to the request for a four nations drugs meeting, which could hopefully include discussion of drugs overdose prevention facilities? Can he update the House on the issue of pill press regulation? What is his latest position on naloxone and widening distribution? Will he also look at drug checking facilities and allowing that approach to be trialled? Let us work constructively, follow the evidence and leave no option unexplored as we seek to tackle this crisis. That should include the possibility of radical reform of drugs legislation.