Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how often the Joint Combating Drugs Unit has met since its establishment; and whether she plans to publish the outcomes of those meetings.

The Joint Combating Drugs Unit is a cross-government unit responsible for driving, co-ordinating and overseeing delivery of the Drug Strategy. It comprises full-time civil servants who are seconded from key government departments.

The Drug Strategy includes commitments owned by the six drug strategy departments (the Department of Health and Social Care, the Ministry of Justice, the Department of Work and Pensions, the Department of Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, the Department for Education and the Home Office) to be delivered over the strategy’s 10-year timeframe.

The Joint Combating Drugs Unit will monitor progress with these and as the Combating Drugs Minister, a cross-government role with overarching accountability for delivery of the ambitions and outcomes in the strategy, I will present an annual report to Parliament. I will also work with the Senior Responsible Owners of local Combating Drugs Partnerships to provide the appropriate support and challenge on local cross-system performance while departments will retain oversight of their delivery partners and specific programmes.