House of Commons Hansard Debates for 13 Jan 1997 (pt 28)

9.45 pm

Mr. Sackville: The hon. Member for Knowsley, North (Mr. Howarth) is absolutely right to sing the praises of drug treatment as an alternative to prison and to say that there should be such treatment in prison, for all the reasons that he set out. However, he was also right to predict that I would say that the new clause was unnecessary, for the very simple reason that schedule 1A to the Powers of the Criminal Courts Act 1973, supported by the Criminal Justice Act 1991, provides all the necessary legislation to give courts the power to pass community sentences that are conditional upon following drug treatment. It is all there and nothing more needs to be added to the statute book.

There are many examples. The most significant is in Plymouth, where the Devon probation service is running a drug assessment and stabilisation programme. If the hon. Gentleman has not already done so, I recommend that he should see it. The probation service has purchased 100 places on a drug treatment programme. When I visited it, 94 of those places were taken up by individuals who had not gone to prison, but who had been given a community sentence, with drug treatment provided immediately--hence the necessity to purchase those places--by the local community drug service.

The scheme has proved successful. Very few have dropped out and breached their community sentence. It appeared that all those who were on the programme were not simply avoiding prison, but wanted to get off drugs and had been offered an opportunity to do so. Therefore, they had a dual motive.

As I said, the legislation is already in place. We have to persuade the courts, the police, probation and health services and other drug treatment providers to get together in such a way that the courts would have the confidence to say that although certain individuals would normally be sent to prison, because they appeared willing to follow

13 Jan 1997 : Column 111

a drug treatment programme, society would be better served if they stayed out of prison. Those individuals would probably reduce their offending or eradicate it altogether and have a good chance of remaining off drugs. We want to encourage that. All the drug action teams around the country should be encouraging exactly those arrangements between the courts, the probation service and local drug treatment, perhaps through local health authorities. I make that point whenever I visit drug action teams.

I do not entirely understand a number of points in the new clause. For example, the hon. Gentleman proposes that only those who have been involved with class A drugs should receive the sentence envisaged in the new clause. However, when not injected, amphetamines are class B drugs, so an entire category of drug users who, according to some surveys, account for some 30 per cent. of local offenders, would be excluded. There are a number of reasons why the new clause is unsatisfactory, but it is particularly unsatisfactory because the relevant legislation is already on the statute book.

The hon. Gentleman rightly says that drug treatment should be available in prisons and proposes that courts should be able to demand some assessment of what drug treatment is available. That certainly should not be a major part of sentencing policy. Sentencing should be performed on the basis of the seriousness of the crime. It is up to the Prison Service to decide how to allocate prisoners and where they should be treated.

The hon. Gentleman may think that the new clause would stimulate the provision of more drug treatment in prisons, but there has already been great progress. There are now between 50 and 60 schemes in prisons. He mentioned one of the schemes, at Downview. I visited one of its sister schemes, at Pentonville, which is also run on the 12-steps basis by the Rehabilitation of Addicted Prisoners Trust--although, as he said, it was previously known as the Addictive Diseases Trust. Those prisoners--some of whom have been taking drugs for years, literally in and out of prison--seem to have the expectation of getting off drugs. Such schemes should be encouraged.

As I said, there has been an enormous growth in the number and variety of drug treatment schemes offered in prisons. Treatment has been stimulated further by mandatory drug testing in prisons. However, it is not necessarily possible to accelerate further the process. We must find drug treatment schemes that are accepted by staff and, ultimately, by prisoners--because prisoners who have drug treatment or who enter drug-free wings are essentially volunteers. That process is already happening.

I do not want to sound complacent, because for years there was very little progress on drug treatment in prisons. We witnessed the ridiculous spectacle of people who may not have been drug users entering prison, but who came out, typically, as heroin addicts. The growth in treatment schemes is welcome.

In his speech, the hon. Gentleman made a point that he has already made in Committee and elsewhere, about the apparent switch from cannabis use to heroin and other opiate use in prisons. As he said, according to the best figures available, opiate use is now at 7 or 8 per cent. Some of the increase may be due--I believe that it is a misconception--to prisoners' belief that it is easier to get

13 Jan 1997 : Column 112

away with opiate use. The figures are skewed also because one would have to be an extremely heavy cannabis user to reach the 28-day mark mentioned by the hon. Gentleman. It is likely that the trend has been affected more by the unfortunate fact that there is a great deal of cheap heroin around.

Mr. George Howarth: The Minister has made that point before, and I know that he has received medical advice to support it. I have taken a fairly broad range of medical advice on the matter, and I should tell him that the issue is contentious. He may have received such advice, but many experts would disagree strongly with it.

Mr. Sackville: I agree that a switch from one drug to any other drug in prisons--particularly a switch from cannabis to opiates--is worrying. Drug use is a health matter that greatly concerns the Government, and much is being done to reduce such use in prisons. However, drug use is a matter not only of treatment but of stopping drugs from getting into prisons--by supervising visits, by imposing sanctions against those found to be bringing drugs into prisons and by using a series of new disciplinary offences and practices, which is already happening in prisons.

Although the hon. Member for Knowsley, North and I do not disagree on the basics, I think that new clause 7 is mainly a device to make some virtuous-sounding remarks on the problem of drugs in prisons. I agree with those remarks, but I do not believe that his new clause adds anything to action that is already being taken. Therefore, I cannot advise the House to accept it.

Mr. Soley: That was one of the most incredibly complacent speeches that I have heard for many years from a Home Office Minister. Any visitor from outer space who examined the Home Office's own research would know without a shadow of a doubt that most offences committed in the United Kingdom are committed under the influence of alcohol or drugs. It is high time that we started taking the matter more seriously.

Mr. Sackville: Nothing that I have said contradicts that proposition.

Mr. Soley: Precisely. Then let us do something about it. That is what I am arguing for.

The Minister should focus on new clause 13, because it is very important. With so many offences being committed by people under the influence of alcohol or drugs, why do we not have a range of treatments available in every prison in Britain? The Minister must know as well as I do that, often, people with a history of drug or alcohol abuse are discharged from prison with nowhere to go. The first decision that they have to make is whether to turn left or right when they get outside the prison gate.

I shall tell the Minister a true story drawn from my experience as a probation officer. I know that similar situations occur today. John Healey wrote a book on alcohol abuse, called "The Grass Arena", which was then made into a BBC 2 film that won an award at the Edinburgh festival. He was in and out of prison over and over. At that time--the 1970s--only limited alcohol abuse programmes were available in prison, but at least we had a significant number of programmes outside

13 Jan 1997 : Column 113

prison. Those programmes--or at least those funded by public expenditure--have been reduced by the Government. We tried to fit an offender coming out of prison into one of those programmes so that, even if they had accommodation and job problems, they had somewhere to go.

On one of the occasions related in his book, which is one of the most powerful books written about a vagrant alcoholic and how to get off drink--perhaps the Minister ought to read it to understand the problem--John Healey wrote to me from prison. I had spoken in court, suggesting that he should have a prison sentence to keep him there until the new year so that I could then get him into the Lee clinic in Oxfordshire, which provided one of the best treatment programmes for alcoholics.

However, the court and I had miscalculated the remission period. The result was that I suddenly got a desperate letter from Mr. Healey, saying that he would be released on Christmas eve. We had nowhere to put him and no treatment facilities. He had had no treatment for alcohol abuse during his three months in prison. At that time, the best that a prisoner could get was an offer of a place on the alcohol abuse programme.

I went to see the prison governor, who rightly pointed out that he could not keep Mr. Healey in prison until the new year. The only way to get round the problem, as the governor suggested, was for Mr. Healey to commit a minor offence in prison, so that the governor could give him an extra seven days and keep him in until the new year. Mr. Healey wanted to be kept in so that he could take advantage of the Lee clinic programme.

That was a deeply unsatisfactory solution, so we trawled through Mr. Healey's many previous convictions, among which was an unpaid fine. I went back to the court and asked the magistrate to give seven days in lieu of that unpaid fine. The magistrate did so and we kept John Healey in prison until 2 January.

Such situations still occur. I am not asking for a grand scheme to keep people in prison beyond the court's sentence, but if the appropriate treatment facilities were available in prison, we would be able to spot the problem long before it arose, not a week or two before the discharge date.

There is no coherent overall strategy on drug or alcohol treatment in prison, but drugs and alcohol are two of the major causes--if not the major causes--of crime in Britain. For the Minister to say that we already have enough programmes in place is unadulterated nonsense. Those programmes are not there. People are being discharged without any treatment.