argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Psychoactive Substances Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2015-06-23
Topic: Law and Crime
Richard Rosser (Labour, Centre-left): I think I actually said that it is quite common in the legal highs market for legal high sellers— and there is more than one way of selling it—to send out samples of new psychoactive substances to existing customers and literally use human beings as guinea pigs, with no consideration of the consequences. I do not think that implies that everybody is doing that; it is saying that it is not uncommon for that to be the situation The evidence also shows how far behind the market we currently are. Substances were being banned following parliamentary debate earlier this year, when it had been known that sellers were sending out to potential customers samples likely to be toxic three years previously I wish to quote the Home Affairs Select Committee report, to which I referred earlier. I realise that some have already challenged this statement but it is set out in the Home Affairs Select Committee report. The report states: "England and Wales has almost the lowest recorded level of drug use in the adult population since measurement began in 1996. Individuals reporting use of any drug in the last year fell significantly from 11.1% in 1996 to 8.9% in 2011–12. There was also a substantial fall in the use of cannabis from 9.5% in 1996 to 6.9% in 2011–12" That does not mean there is not still a problem, but the area where things have been going in the wrong direction, as identified in the report of the expert panel, has been as a result of the emergence of new psychoactive substances. The explosion of new psychoactive substances in the last few years is a unique phenomenon which warrants specific legislation. Some 670,000 young people in the UK were thought to have experimented with new psychoactive substances by 2013, and this is leading to an increase in deaths. To my knowledge, no new psychoactive substance which has been referred to the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs has been found to be safe We are not in agreement with this group of amendments, which will delay the introduction of key parts of this Bill, including the blanket ban, when the need for action to address the growing issue of new psychoactive substances, including through education, prevention and treatment, is now.
Psychoactive Substances Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2015-06-23
Topic: Law and Crime
Ivor Seward Richard (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, for the third time, I ask the same question: if the link between delaying the Bill and the part of the relevant amendment which calls for an independent inquiry is broken, does the Labour Party support an independent inquiry into the operation of the Misuse of Drugs Act?
Psychoactive Substances Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2015-06-23
Topic: Law and Crime
Alan Thomas Howarth (Labour, Centre-left): From all his experience, does the noble and learned Lord anticipate that there may be problems in the criminal justice system over definition and establishing that a substance is indeed psychoactive; and that in the case of individuals it is their intention to supply illegally? Also, does he have any anxieties about the practicalities of enforcement? In the interests of the courts and of wider society, it is important that legislation that lays impossible burdens on the police, HMRC and other enforcement authorities is not enacted. They are going to have a large, complex and difficult additional set of tasks under this legislation, at a time of diminishing resources.
Psychoactive Substances Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2015-06-23
Topic: Law and Crime
Joan Bakewell (Labour, Centre-left): Perhaps I might add to this conversation about the need for evidence. At Second Reading, on the matter of addressing the damage being done to these young people, Ireland was cited as evidence of the effectiveness of legislation I refer my colleagues in the House to a report made by a fellow journalist at the BBC. Following Second Reading he went to Ireland to examine what is happening with the Bill. Young people there are taking a great many of these legal highs. He found that one young man had hanged himself from a tree in the middle of the estate where he lived. The parents were frantic. In County Monaghan and in a number of towns my BBC colleague found that there was an abundance of these drugs, and that young people were turning to them After this young man’s suicide the police seized 34 grams. They offered it to the scientists, who analysed its contents. They said that they were not able to prove that it was a psychoactive drug. At that point the police were stymied procedurally, because the scientist to whom they turned could not verify the evidence they needed. My colleague speculated in a conversation with me that the police were turning back to the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971, because they did not know how to handle this matter What ties this issue, Ireland and legal highs to the amendment is that young people are turning to legal highs because they cannot get natural cannabis. That is the crucial link. If we are to stop these young people doing such terrible damage to themselves, we must consider the broader spectrum of motive that turns them towards these legal highs. Young people do not grow up knowing about them. They grow up in a community that perhaps 20 years ago was using cannabis plant. Now, the whole drugs business has accelerated to such an extent that millions of pounds can be made through criminal behaviour, and that has driven the legal drugs industry to invent more substances to market to young people. It is a desperate situation, but we need to examine and unpick the motives that drive young people into this market. That is at the heart of this amendment and the conversation about the Bill.
Psychoactive Substances Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2015-06-23
Topic: Law and Crime
Alan Thomas Howarth (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I find it baffling that the Government, presented with the evidence from the two laboratory experiments that have taken place in recent years, in Ireland and in Poland, have none the less persisted in their approach of introducing a blanket ban on the supply of new psychoactive substances. As the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, has just told the Committee, in the four years since the ban was introduced in Ireland, following an initial dip in the use of psychoactive substances and a rapid disappearance of head shops, consumption of new psychoactive substances actually rose to higher levels than before. The Irish, it is reported, are the largest consumers of new psychoactive substances in Europe. That has followed the implementation of a ban essentially the same as the Government are now proposing to introduce in this country Similarly in Poland, three years after the ban was introduced, the number of what the Poles call "poisonings" has risen to above the level before the ban. The evidence is that, in the face of a ban and of the closing down of the sources of supply that users were previously availing themselves of, users have resorted to more obscure and more dangerous suppliers online. The European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction has confirmed that. It also seems highly likely that, with the greater difficulty of obtaining new psychoactive substances, more people taking drugs will have resorted to taking controlled substances and, indeed, may have become poly-drug users There seems to be some very significant evidence available from the experiences of bans in these two countries to indicate that the Government’s approach is fundamentally misconceived. The Minister has insisted that the approach of the Home Office is always to base its policy on good science, good evidence and expert advice. How come then that, in the face of this evidence, it is persisting with the policy that it is presenting to the House in this Bill?
Psychoactive Substances Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2015-06-23
Topic: Law and Crime
Alan Thomas Howarth (Labour, Centre-left): I am not sure whether it is fair to ask the Minister this, but perhaps her noble friend sitting beside her will find an opportunity to comment. While I readily accept that it is unrealistic to expect the Home Office within 12 months to produce a report remotely of the range that I suggested, none the less over time the compass of the report should grow so that it does address itself on behalf of the Government as a whole to that range of issues and concerns I wonder whether some of the difficulty that the Government may find in producing an annual report on their policies in relation to drugs and how they are proceeding may be because there have been such extensive reductions in staffing in Whitehall that it is very difficult for departments to get this work done. It would be helpful to have some comment on that and on the structure within government whereby the Home Office works in co-ordination with other government departments in the broader strategy to deal with the problem of drugs, to which I understand that Government are committed.
Psychoactive Substances Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2015-06-23
Topic: Law and Crime
Alan Thomas Howarth (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, the definition of a psychoactive substance in the Bill does indeed seem to me rather vague. We should be grateful to both noble Baronesses who have so far spoken in this debate for pressing the Government to tighten the definition and to give us some clarification. It would be helpful if the Minister would explain to the House the basis upon which he was able to give us an assurance—I thought he gave it rather tentatively and with less than full confidence—at Second Reading, that if he were to send a bouquet of flowers for the gratification of Lady Bates, he would not be in breach of the law. I see that it is suggested that incense might be caught under the law. How can he be sure that all kinds of substances and activities that, on a common-sense view, people would regard as innocent may not in fact be caught I would also like clarification—if this is not leaping ahead too far—as to what is, in Schedule 1, a traditional herbal remedy. The term is terribly loose. I fancy that it is going to be quite difficult for police officers or courts to be very clear what the term "traditional" in a legally binding context means. How in practice does he foresee psychoactive substances are going to be identified? Will there have to be tests in court? That would seem to be expensive and disproportionate. Will there have to be a large number of placebo-based comparative scientific trials? Again, that would seem expensive, disproportionate and impractical. I think he owes it to us to clarify a little further than the drafting of the Bill does what he means by psychoactive substance.
Psychoactive Substances Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2015-06-23
Topic: Law and Crime
Denis Tunnicliffe (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I shall comment briefly on this group. I hear the debate on Amendments 7 and 8 and will be interested in the Minister’s response. On Amendment 10, similarly, we will be interested in the Minister’s response On Amendment 9, I see this Bill—and I will be grateful if the Minister can flesh out whether he sees it in the same way—as a very narrow Bill. Broadly speaking, everything is illegal except the things that are defined as legal. Bringing in the word "significant" seems to me to be getting into significant bad and not significant good, and therefore we are into the area of legal challenges et cetera. The idea of the Bill, I think, is to be free from legal challenge and that is why it is formed in that way. The Minister will no doubt enlighten me The point of the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, on the process—of how the judgment will be made that a substance is psychoactive—is a good one. I would be grateful if either now, or perhaps in writing, the Minister could spell out how the Government envisage determining whether a substance is indeed a psychoactive substance.
Psychoactive Substances Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2015-06-23
Topic: Law and Crime
Jonathan Toby Harris (Labour, Centre-left): I am grateful to the noble Lord for giving way. I would like to understand—maybe if I had heard some of the other amendments I would have understood, but I am not sure I would have done given the comments that have been made—how, if the police, for example, have seized a product which may or may not be a psychoactive substance, they assess whether it is going to have these effects on somebody’s brain. Do they feed it to a tame police officer, or to a young person whose brain may be less developed? How is this going to happen? Is that something that then has to be replicated in a court room? What is the process going to be for saying, "This is definitely a psychoactive substance"? How will they tell?
Psychoactive Substances Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2015-06-23
Topic: Law and Crime
Richard Rosser (Labour, Centre-left): It seems to me that this is a fairly crucial part of the Bill because the argument, quite rightly under the present procedure, is the length of time it takes to ban a psychoactive substance. I have listened with interest to what the Minister has said, and I suspect he has listened with interest to what he has been reading out—I am not trying to be rude; I mean that. But what is really needed is an indication of how long it is going to take to ban one of these substances as compared with the current procedure. What the Minister has said does not help me form a view on how long it will take to ban such a substance in the future, compared with the current situation, and that surely is the key aim of the Bill: being able to ban these substances with a degree of rapidity.
Psychoactive Substances Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2015-06-23
Topic: Law and Crime
Alan Thomas Howarth (Labour, Centre-left): The noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, makes a very important point, and I think that it was strongly suggested by the noble Baroness, Lady Chisholm, as well. We have to convey that there is no such thing as a safe dose. We are dealing with relative harms. We are helping individuals who are possibly ignorant, gullible and vulnerable—they may be very knowledgeable—to navigate their way through what is very treacherous territory indeed. The Government, in partnership with other well-intended agencies, NGOs and the voluntary sector, should be quite systematic about trying to ensure that the best information is available to people who are going to take risks and may come to appalling harm. In this policy-making process, we are looking for the least bad solution. We are not dealing with an ideal world—there is not going to be a drugs-free world; some would contend that that is not even an ideal. At any rate, the practical reality is that people will always use drugs, so our responsibility as good citizens and the responsibility of the Front Bench opposite on behalf of the Government is to minimise harm and danger Finally, the Minister talked about the value of the European early warning system, which is an important component of the array of policies to try to protect people from harm. But as the noble Lord, Lord Norton, inquired, we need to know how the Government intend to make sure that those early warnings are widely circulated and reach the people who are perhaps most in need of them. Earlier this year there was a spate of stories about people being killed by taking new psychoactive substances, which seem to have arrived somewhere in East Anglia and were spreading quite rapidly across the country. Whether or not there had been an early warning from an official European system, the fact is that people did not get the advice they needed in time. We have to think of all the best practical ways we can in order to help spare people that kind of fate. In the mean time, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Psychoactive Substances Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2015-06-23
Topic: Education
Richard Rosser (Labour, Centre-left): My noble friend Lord Tunnicliffe and I have tabled the second amendment in this group. The first amendment, which we have been discussing, relates to education in secondary schools. Our amendment provides for the Secretary of State to, "establish a scheme to promote public awareness of new psychoactive substances, including the dangers these substances may pose", and to provide an annual report to Parliament. The amendment lists some of the issues that must be included in the report The expert panel report included recommendations on education and awareness. What is needed is a targeted public awareness campaign for young people and one specifically for parents, an evaluation of current education programmes, investment more generally in drugs education in schools and new psychoactive substances training for front-line staff. A comprehensive prevention campaign should include Public Health England, which should run a targeted campaign to alert people to the dangers of these drugs and to counter the myth that "legal" means "safe". That campaign needs also to include the targeting of young people through social media.
Finance (No. 2) Bill — House of Lords, 2015-03-26
Topic: Macroeconomics
Meghnad Desai (Labour, Centre-left): Basically, I would be much more radical than even Lord Kaldor. It is because you are trying to tax income, capital or income from capital that a variety of complications arise in our tax system and our tax code gets ever more elaborate. Beyond the small range of PAYE-type incomes, income is not definable conceptually in economics. Therefore, when you try to tax something called income, you get into complications because people can find ways of redefining whatever it is as not income. The whole approach is really to go down the expenditure tax route—purely expenditure—and not to worry about income of other kinds. If people are deriving income from capital, that is fine. What we would want to know is what expenses they incur in trying to do that, and tax that Especially now when we are in a very different dispensation than we have been used to for the past 50 years, we will have to be radical about rethinking our taxation. I would even go further and not worry about considerations like that.
Finance (No. 2) Bill — House of Lords, 2015-03-26
Topic: Macroeconomics
Bryan Davies (Labour, Centre-left): Not a great deal. I am not arguing that it is such a bad Bill but that it is such an irrelevant Bill. It contains absolutely nothing of any significance. As I said, my noble friend Lord Haskel alighted on productivity, but that was not mentioned at all in the Chancellor’s speech. However, as my noble friend clearly identified, we have to see improvement in that area if Britain is to earn its way in the world. We cannot be ignorant of our current balance of trade problems I listened carefully to what my noble friend Lord Desai argued. He put his case with considerable force and I hope it will get a sympathetic response from those who will lead the next Labour Government after the general election and that they will acknowledge some of the cogent points he made My noble friend Lord Soley is absolutely right to say that we need to concentrate on growth. However, as we established yesterday, the Government spent the first three years in office dissipating any potential for growth, and we even dropped back from the growth levels obtained by the Labour Government in their last year in office. There is, of course, growth this year, just before the general election. It is just like the Government’s public expenditure plans: there will be three years of vicious cuts—greater cuts in three years than the country has suffered in five—but there will be a certain easing back by 2018-19 in preparation for the next general election The Chancellor has a reputation for being political. He has certainly earned it in this tawdry little Bill.
Finance (No. 2) Bill — House of Lords, 2015-03-26
Topic: Macroeconomics
Clive Soley (Labour, Centre-left): I agree with the noble Lord’s general point, but I ask him to do one thing before the House prorogues. Will he ask his officials to put a reference to power of attorney on the tax website so that people can follow the link and find out what to do? That is not difficult to do, actually.
Finance (No. 2) Bill — House of Lords, 2015-03-26
Topic: Macroeconomics
Simon Haskel (Labour, Centre-left): Is the noble Lord aware that the figure I used for productivity per person comes from the Institute for Fiscal Studies? I think it can be considered to be pretty good and independent. On skills and qualifications, the Minister spoke of numbers, but it is important to speak of standards, because that is what will help our economy. We do not need what the OBR calls the rollercoaster attitude towards science; we need the continuous support over many, many years.
Terrorism Act 2000 (Proscribed Organisations) (Amendment) (No. 2) Order 2015 — House of Lords, 2015-03-26
Topic: Law and Crime
Angela Smith (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, as the Minister said, this is the 18th proscription order that your Lordships’ House has debated. In my case it is the ninth or 10th. As always, the key thing is the evidence that the Government are able to provide. We appreciate that we do not have access to the same intelligence information as the Government, so there is always an element of trust involved in these issues. Again, I am confident that the Government would not have brought this order before us today unless they were confident that there was a case for proscribing the organisations, and we support proscription It is clear in these cases that the organisations condemned themselves by their own words when they claimed credit for some of the atrocities that had been committed. The noble Lord referred to some of them in relation to Jamaat ul-Ahrar. I was pleased to see that its Twitter account has already been suspended, because I have previously raised issues about cases where social media has been used after proscription. That does not apply in this case. In both cases it is clear from the organisations’ own accounts that there is a strong case for proscription, which has our support. I gave the Minister notice that I would be raising the following issue. He mentioned in his opening remarks —it is a completely valid comment—that when we proscribe organisations we support the international community. The fight against terrorism can never be for one country alone. As this kind of terrorism knows no borders, the only way in which the fight against it can work is if there is international cross-border co-operation and shared intelligence In view of that, I am surprised that HQN has been banned as a terrorist group by the USA since September 2012, by Canada since May 2013 and by the UN since November 2012. We are now at the end of March 2015, which seems quite a time lag. If Canada, the USA and the UN had information, was that not shared with us or did we not think before now that there was a case for proscription? I note that the attack on the British embassy vehicle was carried out in November 2014, and I hope that it is not the case—I am sure that the Minister can reassure me on this—that we wait for British interests to be attacked before we act, because these are international issues We are happy to support the order, but if the Minister is able to say something about why other countries have acted so much sooner than we have, that would be appreciated.