My Lords, before I speak to Amendment 5, perhaps I should say to noble Lords who are wondering what is happening, “Do not go away”. I did not wish to abuse the House by too much toing and froing during the exchange on the first group of amendments but some points came out in that debate that are relevant to Amendment 5.
The noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, made some interesting points and analysis of the situation in regard to harm. I shall quote again from the ACMD’s letter of 2 July on the concept of harm. It stated:
“Without the inclusion of the words ‘harmful’ or ‘potentially harmful’, the ACMD can envisage situations whereby the supplier of benign or beneficial substances could be prosecuted under the Bill”.
It also stated that the expert panel set up to consider this issue,
“recommended the inclusion of the concept of harm and a ‘safety clause’”—
as it called it—
“whereby substances of low or no harm—
and we know the difficulties of setting a threshold—
“would be excluded from such a Bill”.
Self-harm has been raised. It is a social problem within the terminology I have used, which, as I have said, is lifted from the Misuse of Drugs Act.
Without wishing to expand on this, to think now of using this Bill to ban botanical substances—types of sage and mushroom have been mentioned—which have been legal for centuries raises questions about propriety and whether it is too authoritarian and so on. Perhaps that is not an issue for now.
I accept the point about the time taken to show harmful effects causing social problems but we have to put this in the context of the substance producing a psychoactive effect and the time and difficulty involved with that. My amendment would deal with the question of harm without sabotaging the direction of the Bill.
If amendments are made in the Commons, we may welcome them. However, if amendments are not made in the Commons, we will not have the basis for further discussion because at that stage we cannot reintroduce issues that are unrelated to amendments that the Commons have made. I therefore beg to move and I wish to test the opinion of the House.