Misuse of Drugs Act

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971.

I am grateful to the Backbench Business Committee for granting us the time for this debate, to the cross-party Members who supported the application, and particularly to the hon. Member for Reigate (Crispin Blunt) for co-sponsoring it.

This May marks 50 years since the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 received Royal Assent. Back in 1971 there were three television channels; smoking indoors was normal everywhere from schools to doctors’ waiting rooms; and women could legally be sacked for being pregnant. Our culture and society now are completely different from that time, but our drugs regime remains the same, focusing on prohibition, criminalisation and punishment rather than looking at the evidence on what reduces harm to individuals and to society.

The 1971 Act was intended to prevent the use of controlled drugs, eliminate illegal drug markets and reduce the harms of drug use; it is not working. The data suggests that in 1971 there were fewer than 100 drug-related deaths in England and Wales; in 2019, drug-related deaths in England and Wales rose for the eighth year in a row to 4,393. There has been a 52% increase in drug-related deaths over the past 10 years, and 2,883 deaths resulted directly from drug misuse. These people mattered and many of their deaths were preventable. If there were better laws and properly funded treatment services, many could still be with us today.

In the late 60s, around 1% of adults had used drugs at some point in their life; the proportion is now 34%. While the drug market remains in the hands of criminal gangs, drugs are getting stronger and more adulterated. People are dying because they do not know what is in the drugs they are using. Even the Government acknowledge the failings. A 2014 Home Office report reviewed the evidence and said that

“there is no relationship between tougher/punitive sanctions on drug possession and the level of drug use in a country.”

Last year, Carol Black’s review of drugs for the Government said that the evidence suggests that

“enforcement crackdowns have little…impact on the overall drug supply…and can often have the unintended consequence of increasing violence, for example by creating a gap in the market for dealers to compete over, or increasing distrust in the drugs market.”

The police force in County Durham published evidence in which drug users were interviewed about a large-scale undercover police operation, which lasted six months, cost more than half a million pounds, and resulted in the arrest of over 30 people involved in the supply of class A drugs. When users were asked how long they thought the operation had strangled the supply of heroin for, one estimated four hours, and another just two hours. If people want more evidence than that, I recommend the books by former undercover cop, Neil Woods, who gives a graphic illustration of how the market is there and how, even if that market is interrupted, people come in and fill the gap. We cannot arrest our way out of this problem.

Through county lines, dealing and exploitation, more and more young people have been pulled into drug supply and a life of crime. In 2017 alone, 38,000 people were criminalised for possession of drugs in England and Wales, almost 3,000 of them under the age of 18—people unnecessarily criminalised, limiting their future life chances and their educational and employment opportunities.

A third of the prison population are there because of drug offences or offences relating to drug use. Putting people in custodial settings as a result of their substance use punishes those who need help, does not address the root cause of their issues, and is, more often than not, counterproductive All those things add up to part of the human cost of our drugs policy, but what about the financial cost?

According to the Home Office, in England alone, policing and enforcing current drug policy costs £1.4 billion annually. Half of acquisitive crime is related to illegal drug use. A different Home Office-commissioned report said that the failure of drug policies costs the taxpayer £10.7 billion a year in policing, healthcare and crime. The total societal costs of harms relating to illegal drug use is now £19.3 billion.

Another consequence of the 1971 Act is how it has held back scientific and medical developments. Drugs in schedule 1 such as Psilocybin, MDMA, LSD and DMT are showing real promise as potentially life-changing treatment options for conditions such as depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and addictions. While it is technically possible, it is slow, difficult and expensive to do medical research into schedule 1 substances. Under this policy regime, we are wasting money, wasting the resources of the criminal justice system, wasting the chance to do better research and to find evidence to inform our drug policy and our medical interventions, and wasting lives.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for setting out the scope of the impact of the drugs scene today and the implication that it has on residents, including in my constituency of York Central where there is an incredibly high level of drug deaths. This is how I got involved in the issue. I have been on a journey and learned how a public health approach can be transformative in diverting people away from crime, in ensuring that there is no exploitation, in providing good treatment, including engagement with drug consumption spaces, and in taking that full public health approach. Does he agree that we need a sea change now to see harm reduction, as has been tried and tested elsewhere, which has incredible outcomes that he, too, has seen.

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. This anniversary is surely the time to take stock, to change our approach to one that is rooted in evidence, and to do what is best for public health.

In 2019, the Health and Social Care Committee recommended such an approach. It called for

“a radical change in UK drugs policy”

moving

“from a criminal justice to a health approach.

It said:

“Responsibility for drugs policy should move from the Home Office to the Department of Health and Social Care.”

It supported a consultation on decriminalisation of drugs for personal use. By the way, decriminalisation is supported by the World Health Organisation, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, the Royal College of Physicians and the Royal Society for Public Health.

The Government published their response earlier this year, saying that they had “no intention” of decriminalising drugs. They said:

“Drugs are illegal because scientific and medical analysis has shown they are harmful to human health”—

apart, of course, from alcohol, a drug that is more harmful to the user than most drugs aside from heroin, crack and methamphetamine. It is certainly not less harmful to the user compared with cannabis or ecstasy, for example, and it is legal.

Let us think for a minute, following the Government’s logic, what would happen if we made alcohol illegal because it is harmful to human health. People would not stop using it. They would get it from the black market, as they did during prohibition in the USA. People would die from badly produced moonshine, as they did in the USA, and the profits would go into the pockets of criminal gangs. Instead of that, we mitigate the harm from alcohol use by legalising it, regulating it, making sure that it is not poisonous and making it safe, and we can invest the tax raised from its sale in the NHS and public messaging. No one has ever given me a convincing argument as to why we do not take the same approach to cannabis, as many US states and increasing numbers of countries around the world are now doing. There is simply no logic to the Government’s approach.

On the issue of diversion, I was told a powerful story about how young people, instead of getting a criminal record, were given the opportunity in life for someone to invest in them. As a result, they got apprenticeships and then got a job instead of a criminal record. Surely that is a better way forward for these young people’s lives.

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We have the evidence in the UK. There have been some very good diversion schemes in Durham and the west midlands, and there are others. We do not need to look at the evidence abroad; we can look at the evidence in the UK.

Does the hon. Gentleman accept that, particularly in relation to cannabis, the initial warning and the fixed penalty notice that we use at the moment do not prevent in any way, shape or form people from also being given a diversion scheme and other steps being taken? There is no barrier to that at the moment, for example, in relation to cannabis.

That is true. My problem with cannabis is that the supply is still in the hands of organised criminal gangs. That, for me, is not a sensible way to approach our drug policy.

We can explore models of decriminalisation, and we know that those are associated with reduced risks of recidivism, a reduced burden on police resources and savings to the public purse related to social costs, or we can look at models of legalised regulation. Whatever happens, we need a wholesale, new approach to this problem. The Government need to be honest that the last 50 years of drug policy have been a failure and have come at a terrible human, societal and economic cost. We need to commit to a public health approach rather than a criminal justice approach to drugs policy—one focused on saving lives and rooted in support and compassion for those who abuse drugs.

Among the MPs who want to speak in today’s debate, there will not be a single view on the way we go forward and what an alternative to the current approach to drugs policy should look like, and there will be different approaches for different substances. I look forward to hearing the views of Members, but I suspect that we probably mostly agree that, on the 50th anniversary of the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971, it is worth looking honestly at the legacy of that 50-year-old legislation and considering what needs to change to better serve our constituents and our communities. We should take this opportunity for political parties and the media to stop weaponising drugs policy and have a grown-up discussion about how we protect our communities. Today I am calling on the Government to launch a full, open-minded review of this legislation to learn from our mistakes, because we cannot afford another 50 years of failure.

I will leave the final words to Anne-Marie Cockburn, who is a campaigner for Anyone’s Child: Families for Safer Drug Control. Anne-Marie’s daughter Martha, like people through the generations for thousands of years, just wanted to have a bit of fun and get high. She researched on the internet how to get high safely. She was 15 years old when she took an overdose of MDMA that killed her. Anne-Marie says: “As I stand by my daughter’s grave, what more evidence do I need that UK drug policy needs to change?”

This is a very important debate and we have another important debate following. I will not introduce a time limit at this juncture, but I ask Members making contributions to be mindful of the length of those contributions in order that we can get everybody in.

I draw the House’s attention to my unremunerated interest as chair of the Conservative Drug Policy Reform Group Ltd.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Manchester, Withington (Jeff Smith), my co-chair on the all-party parliamentary group on drug policy reform, on securing this debate. I commiserate with him on his promotion from Whip to spokesman on local government. It has been a real pleasure working with a decent and humane colleague with a very different career background from mine. I hope this can continue despite his new Opposition policy responsibilities. I appreciate his leadership in delivering today’s debate.

Fifty years ago, this House passed the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971. Its laudable aim was to deter unlawful controlled drug use and stifle supply. This followed what happened in 1961 when the United States persuaded UN members to sign up to a global narcotics ban. Had the House then seen through the clouds of both excitement and worry about the Woodstock generation—magnified by a popular press which then, as now, was prone to more than a modest amount of exaggeration—to the evidence of the extraordinary success of what was then known as the British system in addressing problematic drug use, by comparison with the American system, it would surely have thought twice. It perhaps also should have paused at the American invitation to follow the same principle towards all other drugs that the USA had deployed, with such disastrous consequences, towards the drug alcohol in 1919. Perhaps we should not be surprised at the global disaster that has now overtaken us.

If the House had known then what we know now, passing that Act would have been an appalling betrayal of its duty to the public interest. In the UK we have invested countless billions in the approach put into law by the MDA, with what success? Illegal drugs are today cheaper, and more available, potent and widely used, than ever. Most of all, victims of drug policy-related crimes are off the scale. They range from exploited children, to young, usually black men knifed on our streets, to half—half!—of acquisitive crimes in the UK. As the hon. Member for Manchester, Withington said, we have seen a 40-fold increase in drug deaths in this period.

I wish to associate myself entirely with all of the comments that my two colleagues have just made from either side of this House. I wonder what it says about our ability to function as a body that makes and reviews legislation that such a significant piece of legislation, dealing with such a major social problem, can lie on the statute book for 50 years without review or amendment. That is all the more incredible when we consider that by any conceivable measure it has been an abject failure in trying to achieve what it set out to achieve. As we have heard, back in 1971 just 1% of the British population said that they used the drugs that the Act would go on to criminalise, whereas today the figure is 34%. We are facing the biggest social policy catastrophe of our generation. Thousands of people are dying every year needlessly because they do not know what they are taking and help is not available for them when things go wrong. Tens of thousands of people every year get a criminal record because of the way in which we try to tackle this problem. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people, living in communities up and down this land, have their lives blighted, not just by the misery of people dependent on those drugs in those communities, but by the brutal violence used by those involved in organised crime to enforce their regulation and supply of these products.

By any measure, this policy and this legislation ought to be reviewed. It is not just the fact that the legislation has not been able to do what it wanted to do; it is worse than that, because the legislation is now an active cause of the problem, because the entire area is looked at not as one of public health and wellbeing, but as one of criminal activity. The centre of the Act is about criminalising people who use drugs, and that does a number of things. First, it immediately means that the state has no role in the supply and regulation of these products, and that responsibility is given to the private sector and to organised crime within it. That is the first consequence of the Act. The second is that if people are getting into trouble and need medical help because of their substance addiction, many of our health and social care staff working in our public agencies are unable or unwilling to put themselves at risk of criminal prosecution by offering that help.

If that is true, how does the hon. Gentleman account for the fact that we have tens of thousands of heroin users on methadone replacement therapy?

I will come on to look at that concept and drug consumption in a minute, but what I am talking about is the fact that people have no ability to come to a health professional and say, “What is this?” They have no ability to ask for clean needles, because these actions are prohibited under the 1971 Act and the schedules to it.

The third thing, which has already been remarked upon, is that the Act stigmatises, big time, those who use drugs and puts them in a position where they are unlikely, because of social opprobrium, to ask for help. We surely need to have a review and a fresh think about a problem that is so manifestly out of control and where the existing legislation is so manifestly unable to provide any assistance.

I always like to try to see the other side of the argument, so I want to ask: why are people resistant to review? Why do they want to hold on to things as they are? I can only conclude that it is because they fear the consequences of decriminalisation or of changing the law. They must somehow think that if we were to do that, we would open the floodgates and unleash supply into communities where there are not already drugs, and that many more millions of people would get caught up in the problem, because we would not have the criminal mechanisms that we have at the minute. I say to any colleagues who think that: wake up and see what is happening on the streets of your constituencies.

Those colleagues should come with me to any medium-sized town in this country, stand in a bar and make their intentions known as to what they would like. Within one hour they will be offered any drug of their choice. If they do not want the personal contact, they could order in advance. If they go on the internet, they will find a mobile phone number on which, through the county lines network, they can order whatever they want and it will be delivered to their door. Sometimes people will even get a customer service message asking for feedback on the supply. That is the extent of what we have at the moment.

It is just fantasy to suggest that there are loads of people out there who are somehow prevented from getting into drugs by the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971. That is not the case, so we surely need to have a grown-up conversation about what we should do given that potentially a third of our citizens could be made criminals by legislation that is so manifestly unfit for purpose.

I ask every Member to focus on not speaking for more than five minutes, if they could. I will not put a time limit on yet, but I may be forced to in order to protect other business.

Politicians are often most criticised for sitting on the fence. While I am sure that Whips across the House like to believe they are skilled in the power of persuasion, there is no hiding the fact that, often, many MPs made up their minds on issues long ago. However, it is clear that the time for an open and honest debate on the future of the UK’s drug policy is desperately needed, not least because the current strategy does not appear to be working.

When I speak to individuals from South Yorkshire police, the problem is self-evident. While time spent catching dealers temporarily reduces supply, there appears to be no lack of criminals. An ex-police officer told me recently about a huge drugs bust in April, in which everyone from the top ring leaders to the small dealers were arrested. After thousands of hours of police work, millions of pounds-worth of drugs were discovered, yet according to the former police officer I spoke to, the raid managed to keep cannabis off the streets for a whole two hours. Being tough on dealers does not seem to be working. The gains made by the police are small, and for this reason I have concluded that enforcement alone will never get us to a solution.

Every time someone buys drugs, they become part of the criminal supply chain; put simply, it links them directly to dealers who have no problem with carrying a knife or a gun. Because suppliers operate outside the law, they do not have the police to protect them, so instead they protect themselves with weapons. They do not pay taxes either, nor do they give a receipt. Equally, they are not held responsible if their product leads to hospitalisation or even death. While we are talking about drug reform, decriminalisation where users are not penalised for possessing drugs will not fix these issues.

The answer may be to totally legalise cannabis and, potentially, other drugs. I have heard some say that putting drugs in the hands of the Government or a legal partner takes the production and supply chains and any customer transaction out of the hands of criminals. I have also heard that such a policy makes sense as it would ensure that the quality of products will be controlled, leading to fewer deaths from consumption. Taxes could be raised and we could get consumers out of the supply chain.

The hon. Member makes an important point, but is he aware that the difficulty with cannabis is that it is made up of different compounds? THC and CBD are the two main ones, and the problem with the cannabis we buy on the street, which is mainly skunk, is that it is very high in THC, and that is what causes the problem. If we legalise cannabis and make the product safer by regulating it, we would have a better balanced product that is not as dangerous and will not be leading to the kind of consequences he has talked about.

I thank the hon. Member for saying that, but I still go back to what I said before. If we legalise the cannabis we have talked about and make that safe, I still think the illegal or the criminal element would continue selling the cannabis—[Interruption.] It is not a good place to be.

The questions I have raised today are not new to those involved in policy making, yet such arguments will be new to many of my constituents, who unfortunately have had to deal with the effects of illicit drug dealing in their communities. That is why I believe this House and the Government need to have an open mind when considering reform in this regard. Before we rush into anything, we must ask what the potential effects of reform are, especially for our children and young people.

I therefore believe that, as compassionate individuals, the best thing for us to do is to deter people from starting the habit in the first place. With regard to drugs, this means doing everything we can—as parents, family members, community members, society, Government—to educate our children and look out for them, too. We need to look at who all their friends are, have high expectations for how they behave, keep them entertained and encouraged, keep them fit and healthy and, most importantly, give them a vision of a great future.

We also need to take responsibility for our own actions. That means the minority of successful people out there who are earning good money need to stop their weekend coke habit or their marijuana habit because, contrary to what they think, this practice is hurting communities and putting lives in danger. They need to think again because they are part of the problem. They are part of that chain and they are fuelling demand. Every time these people take drugs in expensive bars and nightclubs, they are part of the chain that has a nine-year-old running drugs, they are part of the chain that puts a knife in the hands of a 16-year-old, and they are part of the chain that leaves grieving parents mourning the loss of a son or a daughter who has just overdosed.

Put simply, there will be a lot less demand if the people who are not addicted but take drugs recreationally stop doing so. This reduction in demand would ensure that the market would shrink, and the number of dealers and crime would be reduced. When our police do the big drugs bust, maybe the streets will be drugs-free not for two hours; just maybe they will be permanently free from these dangerous substances.

I am afraid that I am going to have to introduce a time limit of five minutes, which is still fairly generous compared with what a number of Back Benchers are used to. The next speaker is Adam Holloway. Sorry, Adam, but I know that you are a seasoned contributor and will be able to do it within five minutes.

In my experience, drug addiction is very clearly an illness. Opiate addiction, for example, is a health problem. As we have heard very passionately from three speakers today, we urgently need to move from a criminal justice response to a health response.

A couple of weeks ago, I spent 10 days or so in the US going round homeless shelters on the east coast and looking at what is probably a historic opportunity to stabilise the street homeless population coming out of the pandemic. Of course, the problem of street homelessness in the US is somewhat different from the one we have here, given the benefits that are available to pay for housing here, but they share the common thread that very large numbers of the street homeless are mentally ill or drug addicted.

I spent an extraordinary day with Professor Jim O’Connell, who set up Boston Health Care for the Homeless back in the mid-’80s, when he realised that street homeless people did not have medical records. He now has an enormous operation. One of the things that he does is what the hon. Member for Edinburgh East (Tommy Sheppard) described very movingly as “overdose prevention”; he has a tarmac area, half the size of a tennis court, called the Southampton comfort station, where opiate-addicted people come and shoot themselves up with fentanyl.

I used to be a TV reporter, and I had the same emotional response to seeing those 200 people shooting up, staggering, preparing to inject themselves, as if they were on a picnic or rolling a cigarette. It was an appalling scene. It was—I do not know—like I imagine somehow hell would be. I would not want to live one second of any of those people’s lives. Pam and Sue from Professor O’Connell’s operation wait there to get people breathing again when they have had an inaccurate dose of fentanyl.

As I say, the overwhelming majority of street homeless people here are drug addicted or mentally ill. Whatever someone’s route to addiction, and whatever judgments we want to make about these things, the reality is that these people are addicted. They have a very serious illness. I have taken opiates for pain relief, and I can absolutely see how someone could very quickly become addicted to this stuff.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Reigate (Crispin Blunt) and the hon. Members for Edinburgh East and for Manchester, Withington (Jeff Smith) have said, we have to be pragmatic about this. We have to have a grown-up discussion to find a humane way out of it, not just for the people who are addicted but for wider society. We need to think about all things—at the very least about having overdose prevention places, but also about prescribing, decriminalisation and moving this out of the criminal justice sphere. These people are ill, and, as the hon. Member for Manchester, Withington said, we cannot arrest our way out of this problem.

Thank you for your co-operation, Adam; I am really grateful.

The stated purpose of the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 is to prevent the misuse of controlled drugs. By any measurement that we wish to employ, the Act has failed. The fact that it has been allowed to fail for 50 years is an abomination. As was stated, we have gone from fewer than 100 deaths in 1971 to more than 5,000 in 2020. The legislation is flawed and the job we are asking the law enforcement agencies to do is impossible. The legislation is flawed and the job we are asking the law enforcement agencies to do is impossible. The fallout is picked up by the NHS and many, many third sector organisations.

A lot has changed since 1971. Asbestos is no longer a popular building material. Women can no longer be fired for being pregnant. In many situations we have moved forward with the times, but on drugs policy we are firmly entrenched in the past. When we changed our drug policy in 1971, we junked the British system in favour of the misguided policy of Richard Nixon’s America. The result has been an increase in crime, an increase in corruption, an increase in harm, and an increase in the number of drug-related deaths. This involves our communities being subjected to violent crime, vicious turf wars, and the corruption of the young and often vulnerable members of society. We cannot and never will be able to arrest our way out of a drugs war. Substances that were once legal are now made by criminals with scant regard for consumer safety. They are often cut with other products and potency cannot be guaranteed. As a result, many young people have died experimenting with drugs. One tablet—one tablet—is all it takes and a life can be lost because drugs are not regulated.

Other countries are not inflicted by this paralysis. They have decriminalised and legalised drugs. They have drug consumption rooms. They have diversion schemes. I visited Portugal and Catalonia to see what they are doing and it works. It saves lives and it rehabilitates. Theirs are humane schemes because they treat drug addiction and harm as a health issue, not a criminal justice issue. They are creating an environment where people are not marginalised and ostracised. As a result, they are not experiencing prejudice because of their health issue. That can only happen when there is a change of mindset that facilitates the provision of services. We need to waken up to the reality that the policies we are pursuing are not doing any good and, in some cases, are actually making the situation worse. Recent evidence from Canada, as quoted in the Scottish Affairs Committee’s drugs and crime report, showed overdose prevention centres in British Columbia alone saved between 160 and 350 lives in 20 months. Yet the UK Government’s attitude is that the establishment of drug consumption rooms would condone drug use.

Thank you very much, Ronnie. I am sorry you couldn’t have the timing clock visible, but my goodness me you did finish within the five minutes, so thank you very much.

I come at this debate from my experiences as Justice Secretary in Scotland for seven and a half years. It would also be fair to say that I think I reflect the views, privately, of many senior individuals in both law enforcement and the judiciary. Mike Barton was mentioned. Only a few have had the courage to speak out, but privately many will tell you, as I have come to see, that this issue cannot be solved by justice. It has to be treated as a health problem.

I always recall that when I started as Justice Secretary a drug debt was seen as being recovered or paid off by a stab in the buttocks. By the time I was demitting office it was the production of a firearm. Now in Scotland, it is almost invariably the use of that firearm. The levels of violence are escalating. What was seen on the streets of London is now seen on the streets of Glasgow. What was viewed as the norm in Glasgow is now prevalent in Edinburgh. The whole equivalent of the county lines is spreading across our country and we are not defeating it in any shape or form. If it could be done by law enforcement or by military power, the United States would be drug-free, but it is not and this approach is a total failure, despite all the US weaponry and the assets at its disposal. That is why there has to be a change. It is affecting our safety with not only the escalation of crime, but the level of the corruption of our economy. Whole areas of our economy are literally being taken over by the drug trade and laundered money.

I recall asking senior police officers in Scotland whether there was a clean one in a particular trade in Glasgow that would be viewed as clean—I will not name it, for those who are the clean ones—and the answer I was given was, “Probably, but we do not know of them.” This will be the case not only in particular cities in Scotland, but across the UK. I am referring to the so-called “colourful businessmen”. We know who they are and where they get their money, and the Misuse of Drugs Act fuels that and provides for it. That is why we have to change.

Of course, it would take the wisdom of Solomon to provide a solution, because at the heart of the drug addiction problem are deep roots—poverty, health, inequality and hopelessness. Of course there are some elements of hedonism, but in the main those who suffer are people who are tragic, who are individuals, who are captured and caught, and we need to help and treat them, not to punish them and worsen their situations. As other Members have said, other countries have shown that a different path can be taken. The Portuguese method is the way that should be chosen. The power should be devolved to Scotland so that we can go on a different path. If we get it wrong, it will not impact on the rest of the UK. If we get it right, ours will be a method whereby people here will be able to see what has happened. After all, there has been no calamity on the Iberian peninsula and no effect upon Spain. All the suggestions that every drug addict in Spain was going to depart to Faro on the Algarve have been shown to be false. Portugal has managed to improve the situation. It is no Valhalla, but it is better. If the Minister is not prepared to devolve drug policy as a whole, there has to be some flexibility.

In my time both as a doctor and a volunteer special constable, I have seen up close the harms that drugs do to our society, and I have also seen this in my personal life.

I wish to begin by focusing on areas of agreement with the hon. Member for Manchester, Withington (Jeff Smith), my hon. Friend the Member for Reigate (Crispin Blunt) and others. It is clearly right that the best outcome for an individual addicted to drugs is to be supported to overcome that addiction. It is clearly better for individuals who end up using drugs that they can do so in a way that minimises the risk of harm. It is clearly true that often it is not going to be the best use of police time to pursue individuals who are using drugs on a personal basis. Those are things I think we can all agree on, but some of the other arguments put forward today fail on a number of fronts. They fail to understand the reality of the policing of drug use in society at the moment. They fail to understand the nature of criminality associated with drug production, and they fail to understand the complexity of addiction recovery. As is so often the case with those on the left, they take for granted all the quiet benefits of our current approach to drugs that could potentially be lost in reform. Fundamentally, abstinence-based policies are stopping very many people from taking illicit drugs. The overwhelming majority of people do not take drugs. What Members have done today, without any evidence whatsoever, is to draw association with cause. An enormous number of social ills have exploded over the past 30 years. We cannot say that, because our approach was X, it has been the cause of that. There are many, many factors that drive drug use and we have no idea what drug use would have been had we taken a different approach.

Let me ask a question of the hon. Member for Manchester, Withington, who I know DJ-ed in nightclubs that I frequented a long time ago in Leeds and Manchester. How many times were his nightclubs raided by police bent on catching everybody who was taking amphetamines? How many times has he seen police with their sniffer dogs outside a festival desperate to catch people taking these types of drugs? As I mentioned earlier, the overwhelming majority of people who are caught with cannabis are charged only with possession if they are an adult. If they are not causing any other problem for the local area, such as smoking it publicly or being involved in criminality, they will end up with a warning notice and a fine. Very few of the people who have been talked about for being in prison for drug offences are there for consumption. Overwhelmingly, they are in there for dealing. If they are there for consumption, it is usually because they have had a string of other interventions—whether it be a suspended sentence, a community order, or other things. Ultimately, it is fair that, if they continue to cause misery in their local communities, they face a prison sentence for that. They are not there because we are sending people away to prison because they smoke cannabis or because they take ecstasy. That is just not the reality of the situation.

I really do feel privileged to speak in this debate. It has been an absolutely terrific debate, with some fantastic contributions. I do not wish to denigrate the contributions of the hon. Members who take a different point of view, but I particularly associate myself with the remarks of my good and hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Withington (Jeff Smith), and the hon. Members for Reigate (Crispin Blunt), for Edinburgh East (Tommy Sheppard), for Inverclyde (Ronnie Cowan) and for East Lothian (Kenny MacAskill). This is an important subject, and I thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting time for the debate.

Clearly, we have had 50 years of failure with the Misuse of Drugs Act. Any objective analysis indicates that the current policies are not working, and for me that means it is time to try something new. There have been some terrific suggestions about pilot schemes, which I have advocated for a number of years now. Originally, I had the same views as some Government Members, but I have taken the time to get involved with the subject and to meet people like the late Ron Hogg—our former police and crime commissioner in Durham, who was extremely brave and introduced some heroin-assisted treatment programmes and diversionary programmes—and Mike Barton, our chief constable. Introducing those measures was brave because they were not popular with the general public, but they were effective in reducing crime and the number of avoidable drugs deaths, and successful in removing some of the burden from the criminal justice system.

Problematic drug or alcohol deaths are higher in areas of significant deprivation. I think that is a given, and it is another reason why I am very concerned about the issue. I do not consider drug use an individual moral failing; I do not make such judgments. There is a complex interplay of economic, societal and family factors that affect someone’s chances of developing substance misuse issues.

We need to ask ourselves what the Misuse of Drugs Act has achieved. As we have heard, in the late ’60s about 1% of adults had at some point used drugs that are now criminalised. That figure is now 34%. Heroin use has risen exponentially—25-fold since 1971. Cannabis use has risen fivefold. Tens of thousands of people have been imprisoned, and hundreds of thousands of years have been served. More enforcement will not solve the problem.

The timing clock should now be visible on video connections.

The Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 has failed. It has not stopped the flow of illicit drugs into our country. It has not prevented people taking drugs, and it has not kept them alive. In communities up and down these islands, predominantly but not exclusively those where deprivation has been rife, families bear the scars of loved ones criminalised and lost to drugs. Generations of policy and politicians have failed them. It is inexcusable, and it cannot go on.

Drugs legislation is reserved to Westminster under schedule 5 to the Scotland Act 1998, which specifically mentions, at B1,

“the subject matter of…the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971.”

In small areas such as needle distribution, life-saving naloxone provision and the excellent heroin assisted treatment programme operated by the Glasgow health and social care partnership under licence from the Home Office, allowances have been made under the Misuse of Drugs Act, but the UK Government could go much further. I would have them tear up the Act and start again or devolve all drugs policy to the Scottish Parliament, but in the meantime they could allow the Scottish Government to take further action to reduce harm and save lives.

Medically supervised drug consumption rooms, safe injecting facilities or overdose prevention rooms—there are different names, but their purpose is the same—get those who are injecting drugs inside, out of the pouring rain, the bin sheds, the filthy waste grounds and the lonely back lanes, and into a place where they will be looked after and get access to support, advice, a cup of tea and some dignity. If they overdose, they can receive treatment right away, not whenever a passer-by happens to find them. People can move from DCRs towards treatment and recovery when they are ready, and stay alive long enough to get there. It is not asking much; it is what we would all want if someone we loved was in that position. DCRs will not fix everything, and I would never claim that, but they are part of the picture.

I was lucky enough to visit the Quai 9 DCR in Geneva in 2019. It marks its 20th anniversary this year with some reflection on where it has come from. In 1986 Switzerland had among the highest reported HIV prevalences in the world. According to Miriam Wolf and Michael Herzig, between 1991 and 2010 overdose deaths in Switzerland decreased by 50%, HIV infections decreased by 65%, and new heroin users decreased by 80%. This is the result of a public health, rather than a criminal justice, intervention. Switzerland is not alone. As colleagues have made clear, countries around the world have taken similar paths.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Withington (Jeff Smith) for securing this significant debate. Fifty years of the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971, according to the charity Transform, are 50 years of failure, and I agree. It is time we took a public health approach to drugs policy that puts people before prejudice, and it is time we reviewed and reformed the Act.

I will speak first about the prejudices before I speak about the public health approach. Professor Robert Reiner, a retired lecturer at the London School of Economics who I had the privilege to learn under, has spoken about the over-policing and under-protection of black young men for decades, and for decades very little has actually happened to improve their plight. They have been stigmatised by officers; they have experienced stop and search, often for suspected drugs. They have experienced inequality of strip searches that lacks adequate monitoring. They have experienced inequality of due care and concern while in a police cell. They are less likely to be given a warning and more likely to be given a caution. They are often released from custody in the early hours of the morning and have to walk miles to return home. They experience inequality of sentencing and often receive a harsh sentence.

Hon. Members may be wondering where I am getting this information from. Most of it comes from my constituents. The impact on children is especially heartbreaking. I have heard stories of boys as young as 12 from the black community being groomed and exploited by gangs to sell drugs and to carry knives. These boys may have been doing well at school and had dreams for their future. Once they are caught in the net of drug dealers, it is almost impossible for them to leave without their lives being harmed. The stories I have been told are of older men offering to buy them trainers and give them money, and offering them a place to hang out in their homes. When they cannot be coerced, manipulated or bribed, they are often threatened: “We know where you live. We know your family, your sister.” It becomes sinister and then they are made a slave to crimes, but that is not their sin: they are powerless to their masters, and we must remember that they are children.

I trained some 15 years ago as a primary school teacher in a very deprived part of what is now my constituency. I will not name it because people are rightly tired of their community being characterised by drugs alone. There is, however, a huge drug problem.

I was doing a placement with primary sevens, so they would have been about 11 years old, just getting to be gallus but still quite clearly innocent kids. It did not take long for me to become attached to every single one of them. Some of them were funny, some super smart, some very caring, others artistic or musical. They all had things they were good at and distinct personalities.

One day, during the lunch break, the wonderful woman who was their teacher told me that every single one of them had a live connection to drugs. I am changing names here, but she told me, “Connor’s brother died of an overdose. Sharon’s mum was murdered because she owed a dealer money. Peter’s dad is on the run from the police. You can see Nicole’s sister on the street most days asking people for money to feed her habit.” Every single one of them had a live connection. The most heartbreaking thing to hear was that she believed that most of them would not be able to avoid that connection in their adult lives, because that was what she had seen over the previous 20 years.

That teacher had taught Nicole’s sister and said that she was every bit as lovable as Nicole at that age. She pointed out to me that if I saw Nicole’s sister on the street asking people for money to feed her habit and clearly off her face, I would possibly feel irritated or even angry with her, and I might even wonder why she did not just pull herself together. We have all been there—none of us is a saint, and we have all judged. But she pointed out to me, “I know you’re very fond of wee Nicole, and if you saw her doing that, you wouldn’t be angry—you’d be terrified for her. And I know, Anne, that you would want to scoop her up and find a way of helping her—anybody would.” She explained that she had known Nicole’s sister, now 20, since she was five years old, so when she saw her in the grip of her addiction, she saw that little girl.

The United Kingdom Government must ultimately commit to adopting the evidence-based solutions to drug use. This means no longer rejecting evidence-based recommendations and ignoring evidence that shows that the current approach is simply not working.

Let me briefly provide the House with my personal experience of being a frontline police officer and a detective in London during the 1970s and 1980s. At the time, the Misuse of Drugs Act was well established as the Government’s preferred method of dealing with drug use, on the basis that people would not use or be found in possession of controlled drugs for fear of arrest and prosecution. The Government’s solution was to arrest their way out of the problem by criminalising every aspect of illegal drug supply and possession. Some of the provisions in the Act were very successful in introducing specific offences making involvement in the production or supply of drugs punishable with long prison sentences. It is right that those concerned with the supply of drugs continue to face these increased penalties.

However, where the Government got it wrong at that time was in criminalising the possession of even the smallest amount of controlled drugs, particularly cannabis. The police’s prescribed method of dealing with possession of cannabis was the same as for drivers who provided a positive breath test for alcohol: a zero-tolerance approach with absolutely no discretion. When someone was stopped and searched, for whatever reason, and cannabis was found, irrespective of the quantity, they were immediately arrested. The suspected drugs were then analysed by a scientist to provide legal proof that the substance was in fact cannabis. The arrested person would be taken to a police station and bailed to return at a later date when they would be formally charged with possession of cannabis, their fingerprints and photographs would be taken, and they would be bailed to attend court. That was in the days before the Crown Prosecution Service when the arresting officer prosecuted every single individual case personally, requiring the officer to attend court. The defendant invariably pleaded guilty and received a fine of probably no more than £30. This happened in hundreds of cases every week and remained the procedure for many years. All that for a few grams of cannabis for personal use: on reflection, what a complete and utter waste of everyone’s time, police and court resources, and taxpayers’ money. It benefited absolutely no one.

Enforcement of this legislation for possession of cannabis undoubtedly created serious tensions and distrust among the police and communities and led to increased racial tension. It continues to do so to this very day. Another serious consequence of this was that tens of thousands of people—disproportionately young black men, already facing barriers to employment—would receive a criminal record and be deprived of the opportunity to improve their life chances by being disqualified from ever entering certain professions.

I am relieved to be able to speak in this powerful, emotive debate today but I am also very angry that, half a century on, this country is still somehow clinging to an Act that has signally failed in its intention. It has failed more than one generation and it is time that we listened to the voices raised against it, including the families appealing for help.

I am sure beyond any possible doubt that when the Misuse of Drugs Act was originally debated in this place, the genuine belief was that it was needed to tackle a problem that had already taken lives, destroyed families and promoted crime and antisocial behaviour across the country. However, can anyone now be in any doubt that the Act and the war on drugs that it epitomises have failed? If criminal convictions were the measure, we might be able to argue for its success. There have been more than 1.8 million convictions under the Act since 1971, but those convictions are actually also another indication of failure—failure to change the fact that the illegal drugs trade has been a driving force in crime in this country.

If we look at the real impact in terms of lives destroyed and lost, it is clear that the belief in the Act was, although well intentioned, misplaced. If we look just at Scotland, in 1969, there were 244 drug deaths. In 2019, that figure was almost 1,300, but those are just numbers, and there are so many more. Heroin misuse has risen twenty-fivefold. The UK drug-related death rate is five times the EU average. Scotland’s drug-related death rate is more than 15 times the EU average. However, this is about so much more than statistics. It is about every life lost and family left desolate by the death of a loved one. It is about lives stamped out amidst an epidemic that is destroying and has destroyed futures every day for the past 50 years, and yet, somehow seems to go unnoticed.

My constituency is not immune from the problem. None of our constituencies, none of our communities and no family can be sure that they are safe from it. In response to the point that was made about the role of families, I know parents who have worked hard to educate their children, spend time with them, talk about drugs, provide for them and create a good, stable family life for them, but that could not protect them. Yes, drug problems can be more prevalent in areas of deprivation—we know that—but not exclusively. We are all vulnerable. Recently, a mother in Scotland allowed the BBC to film the funeral of her son who died of an overdose of street Valium. The heartbreak was difficult to watch. His mother wanted his story to serve as a warning to others, to remind politicians of the grief caused by our common failure to tackle successfully the problem of drugs on our streets. She let us witness it.

The Misuse of Drugs Act has damaged individuals, families and communities and entrenched social injustice. The war on drugs has been lost. This Government have failed, and there is nowhere with more evidence of the problems of criminalisation than here in Scotland, when we consider the stark number of drug-related deaths. Rather than adopting a public health approach, this Government ignore that possibility. They have failed on an unprecedented scale. In Scotland, this is a public health emergency, and it must be treated as such. This Government have an opportunity, on the 50th anniversary of the legislation, to consider whether the Act is still fit for purpose.

The UK Government wish to take a hard line on this issue, but that simply is not working. The introduction of safe consumption facilities to reduce public harm is one solution, but they have blocked reform at every turn. The Government are entrenching the problem by refusing to amend or repeal this outdated legislation, and the Scottish Government, who wish to fall in with international best practice by decriminalising the use of drugs and introducing safe consumption rooms, are unable to do so. In comparison, Portugal ended the criminalisation of drug use 20 years ago. Since then, drug-related deaths have fallen and remained below the EU average, the number of drug offenders in prison has more than halved and the number of drug-injection-related HIV diagnoses has fallen dramatically.

Does the Minister agree that we should aim for a similar outcome in the UK? If he does, when will he take action to make that happen? The UK Government must now allow the Scottish Government to implement a range of public health-focused responses, including the introduction of supervised drug consumption facilities, or devolve the power to do so to the Scottish Parliament. We are facing a public health emergency. This Act continues to fail too many families, and too many have lost loved ones. We can change this, and we must change this. If this Union is truly strong, surely it can withstand this. It can take a pragmatic approach and it can act. If this Government will not act, they must devolve the power to Scotland to take that action. Inaction is not a solution, and their compliance and ignorance are complicit in the problem. Drug-related deaths are real. These are not just figures; they are real people, real families and real communities, and they need real action.

I am really encouraged by the voices across the UK and across the Chamber, including those of the hon. Members for Manchester, Withington (Jeff Smith), for Reigate (Crispin Blunt), for Edinburgh East (Tommy Sheppard) and for Edinburgh West (Christine Jardine) and the compelling contribution from my colleague in the Alba party, my hon. Friend the Member for East Lothian (Kenny MacAskill).

I also pay tribute to frontline workers in my Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath constituency: Pauline Buchan, Kelly Rodgers and their team at the Kirkcaldy Cottage Family Centre and Dave Dempster and team at ADAPT. They are dealing with this problem head on. As a result of the current crisis in Scotland, I have spoken to them recently and will continue to meet them and give them all my support. The challenge that they face is a frightening number of drug deaths. In 2019, 1,264 drug deaths occurred in Scotland. Behind each number is a person with hopes and dreams. Not one of them dreamed of becoming addicted to drugs or having a criminal record; it happened in the context of the prohibition under the 1971 Act. It is unacceptable and change is essential.

To become a drug user is not a rational choice. The idea put forward by Nancy Reagan—the ineffective “Just say no to drugs” soundbite—sounds easy, but often it involves just saying no to poverty, just saying no to abuse, just saying no to neglect and deprivation, just saying no to hopelessness, just saying no to joblessness and just saying no to childhood trauma. “Just say no” serves only to demonise and stigmatise, criminalising and othering the most vulnerable in our society and communities—addict, dopehead, junkie, waster, stoner, user—and just like poverty this is not an accident.

Users are blamed for their substance use, their social circumstances and the failure of the scant treatment schemes available to them. Substance misuse is undoubtedly associated with deprivation and unemployment, and users are blamed for the lack of opportunity and shamed for their failure to meet neoliberal notions of a productive citizen. The pejorative of strivers versus skivers, as used by Mr Cameron, really illustrates that sentiment. All the while, the structural causes of substance misuse and inequality are ignored and dismissed, reinforcing that stigma. Demonising and criminalising vulnerable people serves only to misdirect the public from the abject failure of drug and social health policy.

In a sense, it is a real pleasure to take part in this debate, as has been said, principally because it has been a terrific one with some fantastic contributions from all parts of the House. I commend the hon. Members for Manchester, Withington (Jeff Smith) and for Reigate (Crispin Blunt) for securing this debate on an incredibly important topic, and for their persistent pursuit of a policy-based approach to the subject. I could offer the same commendation to lots of Members in the Chamber, including hon. Friends.

In other ways, I very much regret having to take part in this debate. First, because, as other Members have said, I do not think it should be home affairs or policing spokespersons speaking today; it should be health spokespersons and we should be debating this issue absolutely through the prism of public health, not criminal justice. Secondly, like every hon. Member in this debate, I wish that we did not have to be here because drugs had been suppressed or eliminated a long time ago, but clearly we are as far away from that being a reality as we ever have been. That is fundamentally why Members are pushing for reform. There is no sign of significant change under the current regime.

Hon. Members have illustrated eloquently that this is a crisis, in terms of scale and the impact that it is having on individuals. Addressing this crisis will absolutely require the use of the full range of tools at the disposal of Governments: measures to address poverty and inequality; education; prevention; tackling stigma; treatment; harm reduction; recovery; mental health; housing; and, of course, law enforcement and criminal justice too—every arm of government must be involved.

We have debated and will continue to debate all the different policy responses, but today the focus is on the Misuse of Drugs Act at 50, the legislation that underpins and, I am afraid, casts a shadow over everything else we do to combat drugs. I share the analysis of the vast majority of hon. Members who have spoken that, in the 50 years since it was passed, the evolution and, sadly, the growth of the drugs trade has been extraordinary, as has been our understanding of it, but our legislation has tragically failed to move on in response. Indeed, many would argue that it was the wrong response at the outset, as the hon. Member for Reigate eloquently said.

If the central analysis is that the legislation is the cause of the problem, and the legislation is exactly the same in Scotland as in England, how does that account for the fact that the problem in Scotland, on some metrics, is more than twice as bad?

Two things. Yes, the metrics in Scotland are very bad. The metrics for the whole United Kingdom are terribly bad—[Interruption.] Some metrics; I am not sure which particular metrics the hon. Member is referring to. However, that is not the point. With respect, I also do not think the point is to ask, “What is the cause?” We could say that, in some ways, the Act has caused all sorts of harms, but it is beyond dispute that it has failed to fix the problem. We are all calling for an evidence-based debate on whether we can do better, and whether different legislative approaches can do better. I cannot really see how Government Members can say that this is as good as it gets. Yes, there are other things that both Governments—all Governments—are doing, but if this is as good as it gets, we are a hopeless bunch. I think we should try to provide some hope to our constituents. That is what we are trying to do today. This debate should not really be about whether reform is needed but should rather be an evidence-based debate about the nature of that reform and how far we should go. I think even Government Members think changes can be made. Some of us will want to go much further, which I will come to right now.

There is an abundance of evidence on not only the need for reform but what sort of reforms work, coming from health and medical experts; law enforcement, as we heard; those working on the frontline with those with addiction; and those who have experienced addictions directly. International best practice can be a guide as well. That is why report after report, including reports from cross-party Committees of this House, have all called for reform. I will focus on three brief recommendations that both the Health and Social Care Committee and the Scottish Affairs Committee flagged up.

First—as I said, so I do not need to expand on it anymore—this policy area should be led by the Health and Social Care Department, not the Home Office. Secondly, both Committees said that, at the very least, we need to pilot and look at the use of overdose prevention facilities or drug consumption rooms. We heard from numerous hon. Members how these have been shown to save lives and reduce harm. They assist in ensuring that those who most need it can access support and treatment, and they protect the public from antisocial and dangerous public injection.

It is always a pleasure to follow the SNP spokesperson. Before I begin, in the last hour, the Manchester bombing inquiry has published its first report. While the findings no doubt will be debated, I think it is right and appropriate that we send our sympathy and thoughts today from this House to the families and those who are bereaved, and indeed to the city of Manchester.

It is fitting that my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Withington (Jeff Smith), who is such a tenacious campaigner on the issues that we have discussed today, secured this debate, along with the hon. Member for Reigate (Crispin Blunt). I congratulate them and all Members who have spoken in this afternoon’s thought-provoking and impassioned debate. The perspectives that we have heard—from those who have worked in the NHS or the police, and from colleagues with a long-standing interest in this area—have been hugely beneficial.

We know that drugs, and the wider causes and effects, are a huge issue for our country. We know that the restless grip of drug abuse and substance addiction has a shattering and pervasive impact on people right across this country, in every community. It not only causes desperation for individuals and families alike, but affects the very fabric of our communities and wider society.

We know that the harms resulting from illegal drug use and the tragedy of drug-related deaths in this country have, I think it is right to say, been on a disturbing trajectory for some time. As has been mentioned, in 2019, there were nearly 4,500 drug-related deaths in England and Wales alone—the highest level since records began. That represents a shocking 52% increase over the last decade. The total cost to society of illegal drugs, including drug-related crime and social harm, is estimated to be £20 billion, and the UK has one of the highest drug-related death rates in Europe. It is clear, then, that we as a country are not where we would want to be, or indeed should be.

While this is admittedly a profoundly complex area, I am duty bound and obliged to say that the Government’s current strategy is failing badly. Whether on the key metrics of reducing harm to those vulnerable to drug addiction and those exploited in the drug trade, of providing adequate education and awareness of the associated dangers, or of backing our police with the tools needed to tackle the serious violence and crime that proliferates from drugs, the Government have fallen short. They failed to get a grip on the use, prevention and treatment of harmful class A narcotics, the use of which was on a downward trend between 2009 and 2013, but has since continued upwards.

I thank the hon. Member for Manchester, Withington (Jeff Smith) and my hon. Friend the Member for Reigate (Crispin Blunt) for calling this important debate. Indeed, I am grateful to Members from all parts of the House for their commitment and passion in what has been, as the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for St Helens North (Conor McGinn) rightly pointed out, an interesting and thought-provoking debate.

There are obviously a wide range of views on the best way to tackle drugs and the harms they cause, and I remain open to listening to those views to ensure that our approach is both balanced and evidence-based. I recognise the importance of a balanced approach with tough enforcement against the right people in the right way, alongside treatment and recovery support for those dependent on drugs.

On the issue of drug controls, I think it is important that we come at it from the perspective of what keeps the public safe while enabling healthcare and legitimate business and research to flourish. Controls on harmful drugs continue to be adjusted in the light of new evidence and information, including, for example, the changes over recent years to allow specialist clinicians to prescribe, where appropriate, cannabis-based products for medicinal use.

Members should make no mistake: drug misuse has a profound and tragic consequence that is felt right across society, and that can occur even in the official and regulated sector, as we have seen sadly in the United States with the opioid crisis. It devastates lives, communities and neighbourhoods, with the most deprived areas facing the highest prevalence of drug-driven crime and health harms.

The Government recognise that this problem demands a whole system, cross-Government approach, and that is exactly what we are pursuing. The Home Office is working extremely closely with partners, including law enforcement, the Department of Health and Social Care, Public Health England and others right across Government. Our activity in this area of policy is necessarily broad, but there are two key elements of the strategy that I would like to emphasise: first, the use of targeted enforcement to restrict supply; and, secondly, our focus on providing truly effective treatment and recovery services. This approach responds to the evolving threats and challenges that continue to emerge from drug misuse, including changing drugs markets, changing patterns of use, and an ageing and more complex group of people who need wide-ranging support to recover.

On that point, is the Minister willing to commit to working with police and crime commissioners to try to ensure that in all force areas there is a treatment-first approach to offenders with a history of substance misuse?

I do not have to commit, because that is exactly what we are already doing in five parts of the country. As the hon. Gentleman may know, I instituted a series of projects going by the acronym ADDER—addiction, diversion, disruption, enforcement and recovery —in five areas of the country to build a new modus operandi on drugs, bringing police and crime commissioners and enforcement alongside health, local authority, housing and other therapeutic providers to see if we can shift the numbers in Blackpool, Hastings, Middlesbrough, Norwich and Swansea Bay.

If we are to refine and improve our response, we must have a comprehensive picture of what is happening on the ground. That is why part one of Dame Carol Black’s review on drugs—a number of Members mentioned it; its findings were published in February last year—was such a valuable and insightful contribution to our understanding of the problem. The report underlined the impact of the so-called county lines criminal business model, where illegal drugs are transported from urban areas to be sold in smaller towns and villages. That is one of the most disturbing and pernicious forms of criminality to emerge in our country in recent years, as the hon. Member for Manchester, Withington mentioned. We are making significant progress, which I will talk about shortly.

In July last year, the Department of Health and Social Care commissioned part two of Dame Carol Black’s review on drugs, focusing on prevention, treatment and recovery. It will build on Dame Carol’s work to ensure vulnerable people with substance misuse problems get the support they need to recover and turn their lives around. It will look at treatment in the community and in prison, and how treatment services work with wider services that enable a person with drug dependency to achieve and sustain recovery, including mental health, housing, employment and the criminal justice system.

In 2019, the Government appointed Dr Ed Day as the Government’s recovery champion to provide national leadership around key aspects of the drug recovery agenda and to advise the Government on where improvements can be made. His first annual report was published in January. When I have spoken to Dr Day he has talked passionately about the importance of recovery and the work he is doing with a huge number of fantastic advocates in the sector, including people with lived experience of drug misuse who are celebrating being in recovery. It is very motivating to hear their stories and the extent to which recovery can provide hope and help people to turn their lives around.

I welcome that the Minister is talking about the impact of harm. What is his assessment of the harm-reduction model, particularly that deployed in Portugal?

I am just coming on to what we are doing about harm reduction. As I said in my opening remarks, I think that should be at the forefront of our mind. Opinions may differ across the House on the balance between enforcement, and treatment and recovery, in the mix of dealing with this pernicious social problem. My view is that they have to be balanced. I am not sure that experiences around the world on decriminalisation, for example, necessarily give us quite the silver bullet that Members have suggested, but I will come on to that in a minute.

In January this year, we announced £148 million of new investment to cut crime and protect people from harms associated with illegal drugs: £80 million for drug treatment services, the biggest rise in funding for 15 years; £28 million for the ADDER projects across the UK that I have already outlined, building a new modus operandi for tackling drugs and creating a foundation from which I hope we will expand; and £40 million to tackle drug supply and county lines. As the hon. Member for St Helens North illustrated, we are surging our activity against those awful groups, focusing on them as businesses as much as groups of criminals, and we are seeing significant success.

Although some have expressed the opinion during the debate that enforcement does not work, I would point out that our new approach—the new tactics that we have agreed with the police—is resulting in significant results. In Norfolk, for example, 16 months ago there were over 100 county lines; that is now down to under 20. Bangor in north Wales was declared county lines free, along with Swale and Tonbridge. Kent has halved the number of county lines moving drugs into that part of the world. There is a lot that we have done: over 780 lines closed; 5,100 arrests; £2.9 million of cash seized; and, importantly, 1,200 vulnerable young people safeguarded. That funding demonstrates our commitment in this area and the effect that we can have when we focus.

If I may crave your indulgence, Madam Deputy Speaker, I want to deal with one or two particular issues that have been raised. My hon. Friend the Member for Reigate and I have been in ongoing correspondence and conversation about the impact of the legislation on research and the business that may come from it, and he raised that during his speech. As he will know, there are clinical trials already under way into the use of the compound psilocybin, and I am hopeful that they will produce positive results. If they do—if there is a proven clinical and medical use—then obviously, as we have in the past, we will have to adapt to that as we go. I have commissioned the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs to look more widely at barriers placed in the way of clinical research in all sorts of areas of narcotic and other drugs, to ensure that we are getting the balance right to enable that legitimate form of research, and the health benefits that may come from it, to be pursued.

I thank the Minister for his response—I am pleased that he is open to listening on this issue—and my good friend, my hon. Friend the Member for St Helens North (Conor McGinn), and the SNP spokesperson, the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East (Stuart C. McDonald), for their contributions, although I agree with the SNP spokesperson that it is regrettable that those three individuals, rather than health representatives, should be responding to a debate on drug policy.

We await the second report of the Carol Black review. The first report set out the very significant problems very well. However, the Government were very clear, in the remit she was given, that she is not able to look at legislative change, and I think that it is regrettable. I agree actually with the Minister that there is no silver bullet. This is a complex issue, and all I have been saying really, and all that most people have been saying, is: let us look at the evidence, let us review the Act and let us see if it is still fit for purpose. I personally do not think that is too much to ask.

This is the first time we have had a debate on drug policy in this Chamber since 2017, which is a shame because it is an issue in many—probably most—of our constituencies. As politicians, we really need to address this issue thoughtfully and with careful consideration to find the right way forward. I hope it is not another four years before we discuss this issue and look at the best way forward by looking at the evidence of how we reduce harm to our communities.

Finally, I thank all the speakers who have taken part in the debate today and, again, the Backbench Business Committee for allowing the time.

That this House has considered the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971.

I will now suspend the House for three minutes in order to allow arrangements to be made for the next item of business.