Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

My Lords, this amendment obviously concerns the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, and I must declare an interest, having been a member of the technical committee of the ACMD until last month. This committee, as everyone knows, has gone through some turbulent times. One can, in some ways, see why the Government’s proposed wording to amend the Misuse of Drugs Act is as it is, because it aims to provide greater flexibility and to avoid situations where the council could not meet if the constitution was too rigid. I understand that the Government have said that they will publish a working protocol governing their relationship with the ACMD, but that has not, as yet, been produced. It is likely to include a list of areas of expertise to which the Home Secretary will have regard when making appointments to the ACMD, and the protocol will be placed in the Library. Unfortunately, my understanding is that the protocol will not be available until after the Bill has received Royal Assent, which is why the amendment is important. We need to know what is to happen. The protocol may not be a sufficient safeguard in the longer term to ensure that there is a well-balanced ACMD. A future Home Secretary would be under no obligation to follow the principles of the working protocol. If it was guidance; they could simply decide to ignore it. The reason for specifying the groups in the amendment is to try to be broadbrush, without being too prescriptive. Having been a member of the technical committee, I became acutely aware of how important the scientists, the drug control people and the behavioural scientists were to that committee. They brought a dimension and understanding to some things that the rest of us did not have, however much we tried to read around the subject. One of the people from whom I learnt the most was a member of the police force on the technical committee, who brought a degree of insight into the functioning of the outputs of the committee that I found most helpful, as, I think, did others. We invited experts to give us evidence, but the collective memory that formed around the table was important. I question the Minister about exactly how the process of appointing new members to the council will be conducted. The experience of appointments made in January this year and the subsequent cancellation of one of those appointments, that of Doctor Hans-Christian Raabe, suggests that improvements could be made to the appointments process. When non-scientific appointments are being made, will be Government ensure the expertise available to the appointment panels to assess the competencies of those who are applying? They might look good on paper, but if the appointment panel cannot ask the appropriate questions, it may miss out on the person who could contribute most to the panel. Under the amendment, I seek assurance about the present safeguards to ensure that appointees have the appropriate level of experience, and how they will be transferred when the Bill comes into force, to avoid a repetition of some of the unfortunate incidents that have occurred recently, and the bad publicity that goes with that, which undermines the credibility not only of the committee but, more importantly, of its decisions. I beg to move.