| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
Mr. George Howarth (Knowsley, North): I congratulate my hon. Friends the Members for Hammersmith (Mr. Soley) and for Barrow and Furness (Mr. Hutton) on their excellent speeches. With his customary knowledge of these subjects and his huge experience, gained partly in the probation service before he came to the House, my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith gave some useful insights and an effective critique of the lack of thought behind the Minister's speech on Monday. I shall say more in a moment about the deficiencies in the Minister's reaction to the new clause.
My hon. Friend the Member for Barrow and Furness made some very useful points. I associate myself with his congratulations to the Prison Service on the work that it already does to rehabilitate drug offenders. From my experience of visiting prisons, I know that a lot of work is done. There is an increasing realisation that prisoners must be forced to confront their behaviour, particularly their addictive behaviour, towards certain types of drug. That is successful. The problem is that there is no systematic rehabilitation programme for drug offenders in prison.
Drug abuse in prison is still too common. Everybody, from Her Majesty's chief inspector to the Prison Service, acknowledges that the problems are severe. I do not want to bandy statistics about, but every hon. Member, irrespective of their opinion of the Bill or the new clause, would be horrified by the amount of drug abuse that still goes on in prison. My hon. Friend the Member for Barrow and Furness made that point well, and I join him in congratulating the Prison Service.
I should like to refer to what happened on Monday. On Tuesday morning, I was travelling to Staffordshire to campaign with a colleague. I picked up a paper, only to find that the Home Secretary had apparently said that the Government had chosen not to move the 10 o'clock motion, thereby terminating Monday's debate, because of the delaying tactics of the Opposition.
I read the entire Hansard report of our debates on the new clauses on Monday, and I found no evidence of any hon. Members on either side of the House wasting any time. Those comments show gross disrespect to the Chair. If any of my hon. Friends or I had practised any delaying tactics, we would have been called up by the
15 Jan 1997 : Column 351
It is not true that we were wasting time. If the Government had had patience, we could have reached Third Reading on Monday night, or perhaps in the early hours of Tuesday. There would have been no problem with that. Theirs was the decision to terminate the debate, and theirs is the responsibility for the Bill not yet completing its Commons stages. The Opposition bear no responsibility for that. The Home Secretary should be ashamed of trying to play cheap politics when we are making constructive suggestions.
The Government's opposition to the new clauses is based on a confused interpretation of what is happening in prisons. The Minister has some contradictory and muddled arguments about the purposes of our new clauses and their effects. On Monday, he said:
I was told in a recent parliamentary answer that the only information available on drug rehabilitation related to time spent in detox. Although we recognise the value of detox, there is clearly a desperate need for rehabilitation programmes that force offenders to address their drug use. Although detox has a valuable role, we cannot get people off drugs simply by the physical process; they have to understand why they need to come off them, what their habit is doing to their lives and the potential of their becoming clean and free of drugs.
On Monday, the Minister made a rough estimate that
Yesterday, I spent some time in Staffordshire. The police confirmed that drugs are a major cause of crime in the county. The Merseyside police and the Metropolitan police have made the same point. Any chief constable in England, Wales and probably Scotland would confirm it. The Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis recently estimated that, in London, the proportion of drug-related crime is closer to 60 per cent.
We need to have an idea of the scale of the problem to evaluate the inadequacy of the Minister's response. In 1996, there were 158 establishments holding prisoners, but according to the Minister's own figures, there are only 50 to 60 drug rehabilitation schemes in prisons, so less than 40 per cent. of the prison estate has a scheme in place. There is no universal standard across the Prison Service, and although most prisons have a drug problem, only around 40 per cent. of prisons have any means of dealing with it. There is no room for complacency, as some 60 per cent. of prisons have no means of rehabilitating those involved in drug abuse. It is a serious problem that needs to be addressed. New clauses 7 and 13 seek to do so in a responsible and intelligent way.
There are no universal standards across the Prison Service. I have no clear idea--nor, I suspect, has anyone in the Home Office--that one scheme works better than the others. There are contentious issues involved, such as those surrounding the use of methadone, and some schemes need to be evaluated more thoroughly. Unless we conduct evaluations and set and adhere to universal standards, the problem will continue.
People still go into prison without a drug habit, pick up a drug habit there, and come out addicted. Unless we can apply universal standards across the Prison Service, the problem will continue. The complacency of the Minister's response is a matter for serious concern.
The Prison Service has no estimate of the time spent on rehabilitation or the number of prisoners who pass through existing schemes. There is a similar problem in the community outside. There are no national standards for rehabilitation, so there are significant regional variations. If an addict lives in an area where rehabilitation schemes are available but does not know where to go for treatment, he will not have the opportunity to get off drugs and into a drug-free life style. Given the scale of the problem nationally, we have to address it in a co-ordinated way by applying standards across the country and by providing opportunities for people to get out of drug abuse.
Sentencing practices lack consistency across the country, even within prison catchment areas. That highlights the need for guidance and direction from the Home Office towards diversion into treatment, or treatment in prison, as appropriate.
15 Jan 1997 : Column 353
The provision of treatment for drug-using prisoners who wish to kick the habit will solve only part of the problem. The Minister seems to think that provision for less than 40 per cent. of the prison estate will satisfy the needs of all prisoners who wish to address their addiction. Frankly, that is inadequate. The Minister appears to have overlooked the options that force offenders into treatment. On Monday he said:
In addition, the costs of mandatory drug testing--the introduction of which we supported--may have unintentionally acted as a drain on resources for rehabilitation. To date, no evidence has been put forward to support the Minister's claim that mandatory drug testing has stimulated rehabilitation; as the Opposition suggested on Monday, it may be quite the opposite. A small but definite trend in the statistics show that there is a shift in drug abuse in prisons away from the use of cannabis towards the use of opiates such as heroin and cocaine.
On Monday, the Minister stated:
"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".
That is fair enough. He went on to say:
"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 the courts the power to pass community sentences that are conditional upon following drug treatment."
However, the Minister failed to provide supporting evidence for those assertions. He did not take into account the need to mandate those offenders in prison to treatment. There is no compulsion--a point that he also made. The purpose of new clauses 7 and 13 is to mandate treatment during community and prison sentences. If, as he asserts, all the necessary legislation has been on the statute book since 1991 and
"nothing more needs to be added",
why, by the end of 1996, could the Home Office not provide even a rough estimate of the amount of drug rehabilitation in prisons? I shall happily give way if the Minister wants to provide evidence, but the evidence to support his contentions simply does not exist.
"There are now between 50 and 60 schemes in prisons."
He made no estimate of the number of prisoners undergoing treatment. Nor do any of the schemes force prisoners into treatment. He cited a scheme in Plymouth
"where the Devon probation service is running a drug assessment and stabilisation programme."
He praised the scheme's success, and I join him in that. He continued:
"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."
15 Jan 1997 : Column 352
However, the success of one community scheme in no way supports his argument that nothing more needs to be done. He does not appear to have grasped the size of the problem or the inadequacy of the Government's current response.
Let me refresh the Minister's memory. In 1995, there were 37,164 registered addicts. Empirical evidence suggests that around half all property crime is committed by people seeking to fund a drug habit. That is not an excuse; nobody would excuse any crime committed for that reason, but many drug users commit crimes to feed their habit.
"Treatment has been stimulated further by mandatory drug testing in prisons. However, it is not necessarily possible to accelerate further the process . . . because prisoners who have drug treatment or who enter drug-free wings are essentially volunteers."
That is true. The Minister implied that enforced treatment simply would not work, but the evidence, if he bothered to read it, is that enforced treatment can be just as successful as voluntary treatment. A Home Office report by Michael Hough entitled "Drugs Misuse and the Criminal Justice System" published in 1996 noted:
"legally coerced treatment is no less effective than treatment entered 'voluntarily'".
Treatment that includes an element of compulsion can be highly cost effective. American research suggests that every $1 spent on treatment saves $7 in criminal justice and other social costs. Schemes that focus on early intervention and intensive supervision of drug-addicted offenders can lead to immediate savings in criminal justice costs.
"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 but who came out, typically, as heroin addicts."--[Official Report, 13 January 1997; Vol. 288, c. 110-11.]
I agree with him. Unfortunately, what he described is still happening. He speaks as if, as a result of the introduction of mandatory drug testing, all the problems have gone away--they have not; they are still there. We have tabled new clauses 7 and 13 because we believe that more action must be taken.
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |