Approved Premises (Substance Testing) Bill — House of Commons, 2022-01-21
Topic: Law and Crime
Aaron Stuart Bell (Conservative, Centre-right): After what has been a difficult week for many of us, it is absolutely lovely to be here in the Chamber with so many colleagues, and so many Conservative colleagues, working together and doing important business in this place—scrutinising Bills and getting Bills passed. I briefly offer my congratulations to my hon. Friend the Member for Darlington (Peter Gibson) on the successful passage of his Bill a half-hour or so ago. I fervently hope that in half an hour’s time, I will be offering the same congratulations to my hon. Friend the Member for Aylesbury (Rob Butler) I congratulate my hon. Friend on everything that he has achieved with this Bill. From his declaration of interest, it is clear that he literally fits the bill in this instance, given his experience as a magistrate and with the Sentencing Council and everything that he talked about. I was pleased to be able to attend the Chamber and intervene on him on Second Reading. I was disappointed that I was unavailable for his Public Bill Committee, but I have read through the good debate that took place in that Committee as well As my hon. Friend said in his speech today, 80% of crime that involves cautions or convictions involves repeat offences. Anything that we can do to support rehabilitation, in both the criminal sense and the health sense, we should do, and approved premises, as he has rightly identified, are a huge part of that. They are of course undermined, as he said, if residents are accessing drugs—in particular, psychoactive substances such as Spice, or Skunk. As I said in my intervention, there is the problem of the domino effect: if drugs are in a place, it makes more people likely to use drugs because they realise that there is not a regime that takes that seriously, and it is more likely to put them in an unstable position that sends them back to the place they have come from As my hon. Friend said, the existing regime is now inadequate for the challenge that we face. His Bill is very much part of the answer to that. It is only part of the answer; Government investment and Government strategy are absolutely key on drugs, too. Therefore, I was glad that in Committee, the Policing Minister outlined the Government’s strategy and their investment into tackling the scourge of drugs, which he said is happening on three levels: first, trying to cut off the supply of drugs and preventing drugs getting into the country through tighter control of our borders and airports; and thirdly—I will come to his second point in a moment—there is a generational shift in the appropriateness of drugs. More teenagers probably took drugs when I was a teenager than now. We are winning the war on drugs. For a long time, it has been fashionable to say that we are not winning, but it is a winnable war. What my hon. Friend the Member for Aylesbury is doing today will be a huge part of that The Minister’s second point in Committee was that we are creating a world-class treatment and recovery system, which is germane to the Bill. There is also money going into tackling drugs. Good intentions and strategies need to be backed up by Government investment, and nearly £900 million of additional funding is being put in over the next three years, which brings the total up to £3 billion I will be brief, because I know that several hon. Members wish to speak. With that investment and the Bill of my hon. Friend the Member for Aylesbury, I am greatly reassured that the Government—unlike the Labour Mayor of London, as my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Nickie Aiken) said—are determined to tackle the scourge not just of drugs and the damage that they do to people’s health, but of crime that is associated with drugs that ruins other innocent people’s lives. Once again, I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Aylesbury on his efforts to get to this point and I look forward to voting for the Bill in the near future.