Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

My Lords, Amendments 244AB and 244CA are probing amendments. My noble friends Lord Low and Lord Walton had hoped to be here but they both have prior engagements elsewhere. They were not expecting to be speaking on this Bill at this time of the evening but have both asked me to impress upon the House their strong support for these two amendments. The problem of legal highs, many of them produced in China and available on the web, is growing rapidly. The Government understandably want to find an appropriate response to a variety of substances involving very different levels of risk. Understandable too is the idea of temporary banning orders while information about the substances is gathered and analysed, albeit that a full evaluation of those substances will probably take about five years. I am not entirely sure what the Minister will do at the end of the one-year period. The only question that I hope we can address today, and it is serious, is whether the Minister will consider opening up the possibility, without making any commitment, of controlling the supply of some of these substances through alternative regulatory mechanisms rather than all of them being controlled through the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971. In putting this question I applaud James Brokenshire, the Minister for drugs policy in the other place, for making it clear that the temporary bans will apply only to the supply, sale and distribution of those substances and not to users, thus avoiding the criminalisation of users during the period of the temporary bans. My concern is that at the end of the banning period many of the substances will, I guess, become permanently banned. As the Bill stands, the substances would all fall within the ambit of the Misuse of Drugs Act. In seeking to find appropriate controls of legal highs, the Government have a wonderful opportunity to explore different methods of control and to evaluate them. It is in the spirit of wishing to work with the Government to find the best way forward that I have tabled these two amendments. Why do I regard the opportunity to evaluate alternative methods of control as so important? There is increasing evidence from across the world that a health-oriented approach to drug use is more effective than criminalisation in reducing levels of addiction. Surely that is our common goal. The Global Commission on Drug Policy concluded that criminalising drugs users has failed to reduce problem drug use. It recommends, rather precisely, the approach of our two amendments: to encourage experimentation, with alternative methods of control of less harmful drugs, evaluation and the introduction of evidence-based treatment. I know that the Minister would wish to take seriously the recommendations of global commission members, among them Kofi Annan, former Secretary-General of the United Nations— he was ultimately responsible for overseeing the implementation of the UN drugs conventions—Paul Volcker, former chairman of the Federal Reserve and George Shultz, former US Secretary of State, all highly regarded world figures, not to mention the raft of ex-Presidents of countries in Europe and Latin America. I am sure that the Minister will want to take most seriously the views of all of those people. Globally, the use of drugs continues to rise at an alarming rate: opiates by 34.5 per cent, cocaine by 27 per cent and cannabis by 8.5 per cent in the 10 years to 2008. In the UK, as we have focused more upon the treatment of users and as the police increasingly, though not uniformly, turn a blind eye to cannabis use we have seen a flattening out of some drug-use statistics. Any switch from criminalising to evidence-based health policies seems to be helpful and I know that the Government plan to increase access to drug treatments. Our aim today is to ensure that the policy for legal highs discourages problem drug use, rather than driving people into the hands of unscrupulous drug traffickers and on to the most dangerous and contaminated substances. What are the consequences likely to be of a ban on legal highs? We can look at the impact of the ban on mephedrone, for example. Did it reduce mephedrone use? Apparently not. In the latest Mixmag annual survey, a higher proportion, 61 per cent of respondents, had used mephedrone in the year following the ban than the 42 per cent in the year before. Three-quarters of those who had ever tried mephedrone had apparently done so since it was banned in April 2010. Some had decided to use ecstasy instead, and 19 per cent said that they had used more cocaine as a result of the ban. I do not necessarily understand all of this, but that information is relevant to our debate today. Regulation of such a market is far from straightforward. Whatever the policy, young people need to know the risks associated with these highs. Will the Minister agree to fund an information campaign on legal highs and evaluate it as one element of the evidence base for future policy-making? A warning signal comes from the Demos/UKDPC study, which points out that banning substances without clear evidence of harm could forestall the research and development of useful medicines. They also point out that bans can result in people turning to more harmful substances. Will the Minister comment upon these concerns? In the Netherlands and Finland, legal highs have been controlled through medicines legislation. Austria has also used medicines legislation to restrict the sale of ““spice”” without criminalising users. There is little analysis yet about the effectiveness of this approach. Have the Government explored the possibility of using medicines legislation in this country and our evaluating it ourselves? New Zealand has tried both the regulation and the prohibition of BZP, a legal high. The New Zealand Law Commission reviewed the alternative methods of control and favoured regulation over prohibition. I would welcome the Minister’s response to the New Zealand commission’s conclusions. The APPG on Drug Policy Reform, which I chair, is planning to undertake an inquiry into alternative forms of control for legal highs. We hope to report in six to nine months. I hope that we can work with the Government to find the best solution to a very difficult problem, but in order to do that we need the door to be kept a little ajar in Clause 152. I beg to move.