- Bill, not amended in the Public Bill Committee, considered.
- Third Reading
- 12:05 pm
- I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the third time.First, I declare my interest as a former non-executive director of Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service and a magistrate member of the Sentencing Council. Approved premises are an unsung part of a largely unsung service, but just as part of the successful functioning of our society and democracy is a criminal justice system that is fair and fit for purpose, approved premises are a critical element of the continuum between custody and community for a significant number of those who have broken the law.There are approximately 100 approved premises across England and Wales, with some 2,300 bed spaces between them. Primarily, they provide temporary accommodation for offenders who have been released from prison but are still deemed to pose a high risk, or those who have the most complex needs and so need to receive additional, targeted residential supervision and rehabilitative support.I make no apology for repeating the point I have made at previous stages of the passage of this Bill: it is rehabilitation that is key. Whatever the views of individual Members or different parties across the House about the causes of crime or harshness of sentencing, we all want to see fewer victims of crime, yet despite the best efforts of skilled, dedicated, committed and caring prison officers and probation staff, to whom I pay tribute, reoffending rates remain stubbornly high. In fact, as hon. and right hon. Members may be aware, around 80% of crime that receives a caution or conviction is committed by a repeat offender.We know that drugs play a massive role in offending, whether that is committing crimes while the offender is under the influence of drugs or committing crimes to feed the habit. Indeed, Dame Carol Black’s review of drugs estimated that the total cost of harms related to illicit drug use in England was more than £19 billion in 2017-18. Drug-related crime was the main driver of the total costs, with recorded offences committed in England by drug users amounting to £9.3 billion in that period. Action to reduce drug use is an important part of helping people who are newly released from prison and at acute risk of succumbing to the temptation of a return to substance misuse.
- I congratulate my hon. Friend on his private Member’s Bill. In the Mayor of London’s suggested new policy, he is looking to allow young people who are caught with drugs in Greenwich, Bexley and Lewisham not to face any offence or be brought to justice and to be let off the hook. Does my hon. Friend agree that really small amounts of drugs can lead to greater issues for young people in the long term and may even lead them to go into crime? Surely it is about teaching young people from the very start that drugs are not the answer to anything.
- My hon. Friend raises an important point. She is absolutely right that drugs are never the answer, and we need to make sure we tackle the blight that they bring. Thames Valley police, which covers the area of Aylesbury, has a very interesting programme of diversion. Diversion for young people does not mean letting people off the hook, but it does sometimes mean steering them towards help, rather than necessarily taking them to court as a first step. That can sometimes be a very valuable part of the process of helping young people make the right decisions ultimately, and that feeds into the approach that staff in approved premises will take towards people who are tested, if this Bill becomes law. I thank my hon. Friend for raising that point, and I will build on it a little when we get to the specifics of how it applies to this Bill.Based on the context I have set out, this legislation is very much needed. Sadly, in recent years the number of deaths among residents in approved premises has increased, and many of those deaths are believed to be related to drugs. As I have highlighted previously, it is an unfortunate fact that patterns of drug misuse both in custody and in the community are changing for the worse. In recent years, psychoactive substances have become much more prevalent in the illicit economy in approved premises—indeed, a recent questionnaire of staff in approved premises suggested that they are now the primary substance of choice.Psychoactive substances can be especially dangerous, not least because of the unpredictability of their effect. In some cases they appear to have almost no effect and perhaps leave the user just dozing slightly, but it can be much worse and they can be left in a virtually catatonic state. In other cases the use of psychoactive substances can result in convulsions, vomiting, the temporary loss of vision or speech, reduced levels of consciousness and anxiety.It is more concerning still that the use of psychoactive substances can provoke extreme, volatile or unpredictable behaviour that can often be violent. That poses a serious risk not only to the person who has taken the substance but to people nearby. Members may have seen a recent television documentary that showed prisoners in jail who were thought to have taken psychoactive substances and who behaved as though they were animals: they were literally on the floor, howling and fighting extremely aggressively. It was profoundly disturbing to watch such scenes.
- I congratulate my hon. Friend on getting the Bill to this stage—and further, we hope, later today. He is right to raise the problem with psychoactive substances and the risk of people turning violent or aggressive. Is there not a risk of a domino effect? If people are on the mend and clean in approved premises but then go into an unstable environment, that is more likely to put them back on the path that we are trying to get them off.
- My hon. Friend gets to the nub of the challenge we face, and I glad he has highlighted it. I express my appreciation for his work with a similar Bill on substance testing in prisons that he stewarded through the previous Session, inspired by our former colleague, the much-missed former Member for Chesham and Amersham, Dame Cheryl Gillan, about whom I shall say a little more later. He picked up the mantle and speaks with great expertise in this policy area.
- I congratulate my hon. Friend on getting his Bill to this stage. Will the results of the anonymous testing be published?
- I believe that will happen. I defer to the Minister for the expert technical advice, but my understanding is that generally the data that arises will be published. The prime purpose of the collection of the anonymised data is to enable HMPPS staff to ascertain patterns of drug use, to look in particular at what types of drugs or substances are used more widely and then to come up with programmes to tackle the problems. I apologise that I cannot give my right hon. Friend a precise answer; I commit to writing to him with the appropriate response if the Minister is unable to answer him in her speech. I hope he will accept that commitment for the moment.It is worth highlighting that even prescription medicines are abused by some residents in approved premises. Occasionally, that can prove lethal. A recent internal survey of approved premises staff found that more than 50% of them felt that prescription medication was a problem. This merits a few words of explanation, because I am talking not about medicines prescribed to the resident who has been tested but about prescription medicines that have been obtained by the person who takes them without a prescription—for example, from foreign companies via the internet—or that have been given to the resident by somebody else to whom they were prescribed. Prescription medicines are of course appropriate for those to whom they have been prescribed, but they can pose a real danger if they are taken without medical advice or in combination with other medicines. If that happens, the consequence can sometimes be fatal because of the level of toxicity reached in the human body.
- James Sunderland (Bracknell) (Con)My constituency of Bracknell has a drugs problem, and drugs are, of course, endemic across the UK and beyond. I wish, briefly, to commend all those involved in the fight against drugs, including the police, the blue-light services, the NHS, probation services, local councils. However, more needs to be done, which is why I commend my hon. Friend for his Bill and thoroughly support it. Does he agree that the utility of his Bill, when it comes to approved premises, is that it identifies those who are clearly still taking drugs as part of that process but, more importantly, it identifies people who may be taking drugs and are in need of further rehabilitation and support? Can I ask him therefore to commend the very positive aspects of his Bill?
- That is exactly the point I raised earlier when I mentioned the key being rehabilitation. I will come on to talk a little about exactly what will happen if somebody fails a drug test once the Bill is implemented, should it end up passing today and making it through the other place.
- My hon. Friend says he will come on to the consequences for people failing a test. However, what if someone refuses to take a test? What actions could happen in that circumstance?
- If my hon. Friend is patient, I will also come on to that point in just a moment. It is all in my speech, I promise.Returning to the need for this Bill, the Prisons and Probation Ombudsman, which investigates deaths in custody, has made repeated recommendations on the urgent need for a comprehensive drug strategy for the approved premises estate, including expanding the range of drugs for which tests can take place. The Bill will do exactly that.Of course, deaths are not commonplace in AP, and we should not imply that they are. However, the impact of drugs on the physical and mental wellbeing of individuals in both the short and long term is profound. Drug use also undermines an offender’s ability to engage in rehabilitation, which was mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Bracknell (James Sunderland), and potentially hampers an offender’s efforts to turn their back on crime at the very moment they most need to desist and begin a new law-abiding life.The Bill will enable Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service to create a comprehensive framework for drug testing in approved premises. It will bring APs in line with the testing regime that was recently introduced across the prison estate—to which I referred a moment ago, in response to the intervention by my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Aaron Bell)—and that was established by the Prisons (Substance Testing) Bill, which was introduced in the last Session in the name of the former right hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham, the late Dame Cheryl Gillan.Dame Cheryl and I discussed her Bill in some detail; she knew I had experience in this area and was very interested in it. She was very clear on the positive impact that these changes could have on prisoners. The fact that her Bill received no opposition during its passage and received Royal Assent is just one further example of the tremendous legacy left by Dame Cheryl. She is very much missed in this place and, I would like to say, across the whole of Buckinghamshire and more widely across the country.
- I congratulate my hon. Friend on bringing his Bill this far, and I wish him well in its further passage. It is an important Bill. He has fluently described the changing patterns of drug use, the different substances and the ever-changing types of drugs used that are a blight on our society. Does he agree that, by bringing forward a robust and regulated drug-testing system, his Bill will provide an effective response to the ever-changing picture of the types of drugs in use? He has mentioned psychoactive substances. Given that ever-changing picture, an approved testing regime will help.
- I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention; once again he demonstrates knowledge of the impact of drugs on the human body. He has expertise on animal bodies rather than human bodies, but he demonstrates none the less a profound understanding of pharmacology and the changing pattern of drugs. There has been great news about prescription medication—we have seen real advances in drugs. However, there is a flipside to that, which is that there is an ever-growing group of criminals who seek to exploit scientific development and advances, and use them to prey on the most vulnerable in society. What we need to do is help those who might fall prey to that victimisation. That is why this testing regime will result in help, guidance and support, alongside potentially criminal consequences if the misuse is continued or results in particularly poor behaviour.