I thank the hon. Gentleman for that information. Of course, his knowledge of European matters is second to none in this House—[Interruption.] I did not say whether or not I approved of it.
The proposed regulation has features that might be appropriate if harmonisation of a legitimate internal market was genuinely required, but when applied to the control of these substances by member states, the proposal greatly exceeds any action required at EU level and thus does not comply with the principle of subsidiarity. For those few psychoactive substances that have legitimate uses, which amount to fewer than 2% of the more than
300 substances identified by the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction since 2005, our framework is already flexible enough to place controls on those substances to restrict recreational use without hindering genuine use in industry.