Criminal Justice (International Co-operation) Act 1990 (Amendment) Order 2026

Motion to Approve

Moved by

That the draft Order laid before the House on 26 February be approved.

Relevant document: 55th Report from the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee (special attention drawn to the instrument)

My Lords, in moving this instrument I will speak also to the Controlled Drugs (Drug Precursors) (Amendment and Revocation) Regulations 2026, both of which were laid before the House on 26 February. For ease of discussion, if the House will allow me, I will refer to the first of these two instruments as the regulations and the second as the order.

These instruments are somewhat technical in nature, but they have a bigger picture behind them. Both are intended to tackle the terrible harms caused by illegal drugs. Drug misuse has a profound impact on crime, health and productivity. Nearly half of acquisitive crime and over 50% of homicides are linked to drugs. In 2024, drug misuse deaths in England reached almost 3,500—the highest on record. Drug misuse costs the economy some £20 billion per year. The Government are committed to protecting our communities by reducing drug-related harms.

Drug precursor chemicals—DPCs—are used to make illicit drugs, but some have legitimate industrial uses. Controlling them is a vital way of tackling drug harms. It is important also as a vital string to our bow economically. It is always better to address a problem closer to source, and so it is better to tackle drug supply before a drug has even been made. There are two ways in which we control DPCs. The first is to place controls on their legitimate use, to minimise the chance that substances which were intended for bona fide industrial purposes could be diverted to producing illicit drugs. The regulations we are debating today address this. The second way is to criminalise the deliberate illicit use of DPCs for the purposes of making drugs. The order we are debating today addresses that.

To take the regulations first, currently companies must, in most cases, apply for licences and other authorisations to use DPCs. They must also, in most cases, properly document and label DPC consignments, and they must always tell the National Crime Agency whenever they have reason to believe a DPC may be diverted for illicit use. Those requirements were an EU responsibility before Brexit. Since then, EU rules have continued to apply in Northern Ireland under the Windsor Framework, whereas in Great Britain a similar system applies as assimilated law. These regulations correct some deficiencies in that assimilated law.

First, Ministers currently do not have an effective power to control new DPCs in Great Britain. The list of chemicals subject to control in Great Britain, as it was, has been effectively frozen in time since January 2021. Since then, the EU has controlled 10 new DPCs and 14 related substances. Those controls have therefore applied in Northern Ireland but not in Great Britain, on the other side of the Irish Sea.

The substances are used to produce MDMA, more commonly known as ecstasy, with fentanyl, whose deeply harmful nature is sadly all too familiar and which is particularly in use in America. Substances such as that known as crystal meth and amphetamines are also used. All of those, except amphetamine, are class A drugs, and for good reason. Fentanyl can, among other things, cause people to stop breathing. Ecstasy can lead to serious consequences, particularly for those with heart conditions, blood pressure problems, epilepsy or asthma. It was mentioned 78 times on certificates for death registered in England and Wales in 2024. Methamphetamine, quite apart from its severe health consequences, is linked to violent crime. The regulations will add those 10 DPCs and related substances to the control regime in Great Britain and will allow Ministers to control others in the future.

My Lords, the basic idea that the list of controlled drug precursor chemicals should be in sync across the UK and with international agreements that we have signed up to is a clear and reasonable one. More complicated is the process by which we have got here. It is also less straightforward whether the Home Office is applying the right lessons from the mistakes involved.

The controlled drugs SI would give the Government the power to align the lists of drug precursor chemicals between Great Britain and Northern Ireland in future. Given the problems of delay that have brought us here today, with it taking five years since the end of the implementation period for this SI to come forward, can the Minister set out whether the department has set any targets or guidelines for how quickly it will move in future to use such powers? The Home Office has said that work on this SI started in 2024 and that this is one of its “legislative priorities”, yet we have the SI in Parliament only in 2026. Even if we start the clock after the 2024 general election, that is still the best part of two years to serve up an SI that was already delayed and running late. Is the Minister happy with that sort of turnaround time, and is anything being done to speed up the secondary legislation process in the Home Office?

The criminal justice SI involves even longer delays and a failure to act for at least a decade to update domestic law in the light of international agreements, in an area—criminal justice—that has consistently been a priority of different Home Secretaries and Governments. It has been a decade full of tough rhetoric about crime and requests for new legislation from the Home Office, yet also one of failure to keep on top of what should be pretty basic administrative tasks: having a proper legislation log, handover notes and processes for staff, and keeping a list of drugs up to date. Yet we know that was not the case. The Minister and the Home Secretary can reasonably point out that they were not in post for most of that decade, and in correspondence with the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee the relevant Minister has set out remedial steps, which is welcome.

It is welcome that the Minister, Sarah Jones, told the SLSC in response to the committee’s inquiries that she would straightaway get the Permanent Secretary to find out whether similar problems to the one behind the criminal justice SI are occurring elsewhere in the department, but I note that this action to check whether there are other problems has started only because the SLSC asked. This is important, but it is also important that action should have been taken as soon as the problem came to light. Surely a well-functioning department, with Ministers and senior civil servants who are on the ball, would see this SI coming through the system and ask what checks they have made to see whether there is a more widespread problem, rather than wait for a parliamentary committee to ask. I hope the Minister can tell us what action has been taken now to ensure that staff involved in these mistakes are aware of and can learn from their role in them. In future, will the department be more proactive in seeking out whether identified problems are more widespread, rather than waiting for a parliamentary committee to ask?

I hope, too, that the Minister can update us on the progress the Permanent Secretary has made with their investigations, and whether any further action is being taken. It may be that this is a purely isolated problem, but we need a real commitment from the department to learn all the lessons, and I hope that is what we will hear in due course from the Minister.

My Lords, I thank the Minister for setting out these two draft instruments, which together update the framework governing drug precursor chemicals. On these Benches, we support the objectives of these measures. Drug precursors play a critical role in the illicit manufacture of controlled substances, and it is right that the law keeps pace with international developments and the evolving methods of criminal networks. Strengthening controls and closing loopholes is therefore both necessary and welcome.

The draft statutory instruments will bring the UK into closer alignment with its obligations under the 1988 UN convention by updating the list of substances that it is a criminal offence to supply or manufacture where there is knowledge or suspicion of illicit use. They also seek to address deficiencies in the current regime by aligning the list of controlled substances with those subject to criminal sanctions.

While the substance of these changes is sensible and, as the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee has observed, not in itself controversial, the context in which they arise warrants some reflection. The committee has pointed to delays in updating domestic legislation to reflect changes to international obligations and to the time taken to resolve discrepancies between Great Britain and Northern Ireland following the end of the implementation period. There are also concerns about the clarity of the statutory basis for certain authorisations and fees. Although these issues are now being addressed, they underline the importance of ensuring that regulatory frameworks remain up to date, coherent and legally robust. The House is entitled to expect that such matters are identified and acted upon in a timely and consistent way.

In conclusion, we support these instruments and the improvements they make to the enforcement framework. I am grateful to the Minister for bringing these draft instruments to the House today, and I look forward to his response.

I am grateful for the comments that have been made and I understand the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee’s concerns. I hope that the noble Baroness will forgive me if I say that the Government came into office in July 2024 and, as soon as we identified the challenges posed in terms of orders not having been implemented previously, we took action to try to bring this back into some sort of order. There have been, self-evidently, challenges in relation to a number of issues. I cannot ultimately comment on what happened under previous Governments, but I can confirm that we took action on this issue as soon as it was identified.

I can also confirm to the noble Baroness that officials have reviewed electronic records to seek to understand why the Act was not updated earlier. Those records did not indicate the reason for these omissions. That is a fault that we are looking to review. It may be that, since the UN controlled no DPCs between 2000 and 2014, awareness of the need to update the Act when it started doing so was lost within the department. To help mitigate against that in future, we have now created a log of drugs legislation to ensure this does not happen again. Through the order we are debating today, we are trying to put those omissions right.

As the Minister for Policing and Crime set out in her letter to the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee on 23 March, the Government understand the committee’s concerns about record-keeping, which has likely contributed to the delay in including the 12 DPCs and the 16 other elements in the Criminal Justice (International Co-operation) Act 1990. As a result, as I have said, drugs legislation logs have been created. The Government consider that the gap in knowledge is unlikely to have had wider implications across the Home Office, but I can assure noble Lords that the Minister for Policing and Crime has raised this issue with the Permanent Secretary. She has asked him to ascertain what Home Office legislation is dependent on or affected by international obligations and how we monitor those international obligations to ensure that any changes are reflected in UK law.