Psychoactive Substances Bill [Lords] — House of Commons, 2016-01-20
Topic: Law and Crime
Lyn Carol Brown (Labour, Centre-left): I thank the right hon. Lady for making that point. I know very little about drugs, apart from what I have learned hard over the past few months. I did not even know what poppers were when I first took on my brief—I had never heard of them; I thought they were the little things with the string that we had at parties. When I looked at the FRANK website it did not enlighten me that much. I needed something a bit more basic that would help to enlighten and educate me, and I therefore agree with the point she has made I urge the Minister to accept my amendment 4 and pledge to report to Parliament on the progress made in delivering the Government’s education strategy. It really is not a big ask and if the Government are serious about drugs education—I genuinely believe that the Minister for Policing, Crime and Criminal Justice is—they ought to be committed to monitoring this rigorously, at the very least. He claimed in his letter to the Bill Committee that the statutory review should focus on the operation of the legislation. I agree, but the operation of this legislation will not happen in a vacuum. He has repeatedly said that it must be complemented by a communication and awareness strategy. It therefore seems appropriate to me that a look at the "operation" of this legislation would include a substantive section on education and awareness, just to make sure that we are getting the messages out there and reducing demand I am sure the Minister will agree that we should be keen to review and evaluate the impact this legislation will have, and I am pleased there is provision in the Bill to ensure that that will happen. However, will he provide assurances that in the regular and annual collection of statistics about arrests, prosecutions, sentencing, offender management and treatment, information collected about substances covered by this legislation will not be subsumed into the similar data collected for drugs controlled under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971? Similarly, will he confirm that surveys carried out by the Government on crime and public health will separate out the consideration of information about the Misuse of Drugs Act controlled drugs and of information about psychoactive substances? I raise that matter because it will be too easy simply to obscure the impact this legislation will have if the information is collapsed into the existing systems for collecting data about action taken on drugs controlled under the Misuse of Drugs Act I would also like the Minister to accept new clause 1—a girl can dream! The Government’s approach to PSHE simply is not working and we cannot stand by and let that happen when new psychoactive substances are bringing new dangers into our communities While I am on my feet, I will also speak to amendment 5, which, if passed, will add poppers to the list of exemptions to the ban on psychoactive substances. Poppers would then be treated like nicotine, alcohol and caffeine—substances that we know to be psychoactive, but do not feel it judicious to ban. We support the Bill because legislation is necessary to safeguard against the serious harms created by new psychoactive substances. Our concern to safeguard against harm is exactly why we believe that poppers should be exempt from the ban on psychoactive substances. In our judgment, fewer harms are likely to occur if poppers are added to the exemption list.