Communities and Local Government/Environment, Food and Rural Affairs

Certainly, there have been successes in crime reduction, but the hon. Lady makes my point: the focus of the Government’s drug strategy has been to use the criminal justice system and to enable addicts to receive treatment, rather than to consider the wider harms and impacts on the families of drugs addicts and those associated with them. The Government’s strategy has been top-down—removing the power from individuals, perceiving all drug addicts as a threat to society, and thus implementing an imbalanced drugs strategy. Addicts matter to the Government as offending reduction statistics, rather than in terms of their impact on the community and those closest to them, often their families. Change is needed, and the Government have not shown any sign of that in this Queen’s Speech or previously. According to the Government’s approach, heroin addicts come into treatment centres, receive their methadone prescription and walk out of the front door again. The vital need to address the causes of their problems and concerns is not being tackled. The holistic approach to problem drug use is not being met. Sustained counselling and after care is needed, which is not part of the strategy. As the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr. Sheerman) and my hon. Friend the Member for Wealden (Charles Hendry) have mentioned, prisons are also an issue. The Government are losing the battle against drugs in prisons. It is a scandal that prisoners are suing the Prison Service for being put on drug-withdrawal programmes. My local prison, Pentonville, is overcrowded, lacks detoxification programmes and is now having to hive off prisoners to police stations. What possibility of proper rehabilitation exists there? Drug treatment and testing orders have had £53 million ploughed into them in pursuit of the Government’s primary aim to break the link between drug misuse and crime. Evidence suggests, however, that only one in five addicts are reducing offending, with one in nine stopping the use of opiates. Proportionately, young people, who were part of the strategy in the early days, hardly figure in the take-up of DTTOs. Yet another drug policy failure is in the area of drug rehabilitation residential referrals. Over the years, referrals to residential units have decreased: 85 per cent. in 2005 and 80 per cent. this year. With pressures on local government social services budgets, many such departments are being forced almost to suspend the residential rehabilitation referral rate. There are limited places available now across the country, and there is a real risk that many will close. The Government seem reluctant to address the funding crisis in residential rehabilitation. I want to emphasise my theme in relation to alcohol, relating to which there is a profound failure of Government strategy. There is no effective approach to tackle the alcohol abuse that we are seeing throughout our communities, particularly among young people. Drugs have been the policy attraction for the Government—that is where the funding has gone—but there is evidence of greater harm caused by alcohol abuse. There has been no significant expansion of services to tackle alcohol dependency, which probably affects six times as many people as dependency on illicit drugs. As we know, alcohol abuse causes absenteeism and pressure on accident and emergency services. At my local hospital, Chase Farm, great pressure is caused by alcohol-related admissions. Rather than adopting the strategy of closing many accident and emergency hospitals such as Chase Farm, perhaps the Government could at an early stage have adopted an approach to deal with the real problems caused by alcohol-related admissions. Domestic abuse is particularly affected by alcohol addiction, as are children’s falling attainment levels, crime and many other problems. I could go on and on. Teenage binge drinking has gained particular prominence recently. We see that young people are drinking more and drinking younger. The Government’s educational programmes are failing to hit their targets. There is still a culture that suggests that it is acceptable to drink to excess. The Government, however, focus on the criminal justice system and category A drugs rather than on the large number of people, especially young people, who are affected by alcohol and, indeed, cannabis abuse. According to recent figures from the Office for National Statistics, the number of people dying from drink-related causes has doubled. Government policy is failing to affect the most vulnerable. In her opening speech the Secretary of State mentioned homeless people, but where are the funds to deal with alcohol abuse and homelessness? There is no dedicated funding for the National Treatment Agency for Substance Misuse to provide alcohol rehabilitation services; it is left to primary care trusts and hard-pressed social services departments to pick up the bill. It is hardly surprising that there is little after-care provision for alcohol rehabilitation. Finally, I want to say something about the powers in the Greater London authority Bill. When we consider issues of concern in our communities such as drugs and alcohol, we see a missed opportunity, as was pointed out by my hon. Friends the Members for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill) and for Croydon, Central (Mr. Pelling). We are not against the principle of devolution or more powers for an elected Mayor, but what is being done to improve the Mayor’s strategic role in matters of real concern to people in Enfield, Southgate and, indeed, across London? What about issues such as public health, and drug and alcohol policy? Such issues should be freed from the restrictions of the National Treatment Agency for Substance Abuse, which is often far removed from local communities, and from the expensive, bureaucratic and fixed criminal justice model of the national drugs strategy. Why not give powers of that kind to an elected Mayor? What we are left with in the Bill is not based on the principle of devolution—the principle of more powers for the local community. It seems to be based on pleasing the current holder of mayoral office, on hoovering up important policies and guidance on such matters as planning, and on ensuring that we have a Mayor who is pleased by this Government. My hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst gave one example; I can give another from my constituency. The Mayor was not pleased by Enfield council’s decision on an application by Middlesex university to build on green-belt land. Local people opposed it, and the council decided not to allow it in accordance with its unitary development plan. For his own reasons, the Mayor did not like that. Could it be that he wanted authority to make the decision himself under his strategic powers? Local people in Enfield, Southgate had said no, and local councillors had said the same. They do not want the Mayor to take their policies away from them. In fact, the Mayor has enough to deal with. He is currently failing to deal with the question of the North Circular road, which involves considerable strategic influence—and if he cannot deal with that, we tremble to think what he would do with the greater strategic powers involved in planning. Whether we are talking about the powers of the London Mayor or about drugs and alcohol policy, the Government are clearly out of touch. They are out of touch with the communities of Enfield, Southgate, and out of touch with the people of this country.