Psychoactive Substances Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2015-06-30
Topic: Health
Alan Thomas Howarth (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, perhaps on behalf of the Committee, I can say again how much I believe all of us have appreciated the way the Minister and his colleague, the noble Baroness, Lady Chisholm, have dealt with the proceedings in the Committee. There are profound differences of view as to what the right policy should be, but we have managed to debate these difference of view in, I think, an amicable and constructive fashion. I certainly value that very much and am most grateful to him. I am not so enthusiastic about the Minister’s response to this specific amendment and, when he said that the Government do not intend to delay implementation of the Bill for one minute, I thought he showed himself to be uncharacteristically hard-line The Minister then went on to be a little modest about the success of the Government’s policies, saying that they had been "not without success". That did not seem to me to be a very large or confident claim. He then did make a rather large claim, and I am not convinced that it is a justifiable one. He said that drug use, especially among young people, has been falling. I just wonder whether he or any of us really knows—it is peculiarly difficult to find out what is really going on. The drug scene constantly mutates: you can monitor usage of some particular drugs but you can be pretty sure that if you find that there is a dip in the use of cannabis, it is because there is an increase in the use of ecstasy or whatever. It is very hard to keep track of it. I notice that in the report on new psychoactive substances that Mr Penning’s predecessor, the coalition Minister Norman Baker, produced, it was evident that the experts consulted were really finding it very hard to get a handle on what was actually going on in the field of new psychoactive substances The Minister, in his response, uttered a great many decent sentiments and used some encouraging words. He spoke of the Government taking a "leadership role" with international partners and of working towards "balanced", "evidence-based" and "proportionate" policy—who could do anything other than cheer that? He said that there would be a wide-ranging "sharing" of information and talked of partnership with the World Health Organization and with civil society. That I find genuinely encouraging. If the Government really are intent on developing an open and inclusive preparation process, as he told us, that will be helpful, because a lot of people have a contribution to make I was a bit more nervous when he spoke of partnership with China. I have myself advocated that the Foreign Office develops its relationship with China in relation to drugs, but none of us should forget that China uses the death penalty and that one of the problems about prohibition is that it leads to constant infringement, of the direst kind, of human rights This is complex territory, but I am very grateful to the Minister for agreeing to meet us. He has proposed that we should have a meeting with Mr Penning. If he can persuade the Home Secretary herself to meet the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, myself and some others, that would be even more desirable, but I shall leave that with him. In the mean time, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.