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DEREGULATION
Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 14A(1) (Consideration of draft deregulation orders),
Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.--[Mr. McLoughlin.]
Mr. Graham Allen (Nottingham, North):
I have initiated this debate to request that the Government help to extend Nottinghamshire's highly successful DARE--drug abuse resistance education--scheme across the United Kingdom. Nottinghamshire pioneered the scheme, and it should be extended, because it has been such a success and because it is helping young people to say no to drugs.
Any disappointment that I might have because the Government's reply will not be made by the Lord President of the Council--who is meant to co-ordinate the Government's anti-drug strategy--is more than made good by my pleasure in learning that the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education and Employment will reply. She has established a reputation as a fierce advocate of anti-drugs activity. Moreover, but for her generosity and accessibility, I could not have prepared for the debate as constructively as I hope I have. I also pay tribute to her civil servants, who were extremely helpful in answering one or two of the most important questions ahead of the debate.
The drug problem in the United Kingdom is one of the worst problems afflicting our society. It registers very high in everyone's concerns, and in all the polls. All parents care very much about the issue, and they want something to be done about it. The DARE programme provides a clear and effective way in which to tackle the problem.
I shall not spend a lot of time on the detail of the project, but, in a nutshell, a police officer visits a school weekly for 17 weeks and talks, acts out role plays, and has fun with the nine-year-olds to educate them in the risks of drug taking, giving them the knowledge and skills to resist those who would push drugs at them. It makes the children more confident, and has a massive positive effect, which is difficult to quantify, on the rest of their education.
Having seen the joy and enthusiasm that the scheme generates among the kids, the police, the teachers and the parents, I can honestly say--even having been in politics for some years and having perhaps grown quite cynical about many things, particularly those that we come across in this place--that I have never been more inspired by anything during my years in politics than I have by the enthusiasm and keenness of everyone from the police officers to the nine-year-olds who get so involved in the anti-drugs campaign.
A vast team of people work to make DARE happen in Nottinghamshire: the infectiously enthusiastic Police Inspector David Scott; WPC Diane Curly and Geoff Stafford, the first of Nottinghamshire's DARE officers; the many teachers who give their time, some of whom I met recently at Brocklewood school in my constituency, where I first saw DARE in action; and the local councillors who are committed to the project--Councillor Sue Scott was the first to point out the project to me.
The list continues, with officers from the United States who flew in to help train the first British police authority to operate a DARE project. There are seven officers from
different American forces in the United Kingdom today. Phillip Ridyard has done a great deal of voluntary fund raising and publicity work. Dozens of local businesses throughout Nottinghamshire deserve credit for their role. Colin Bailey, the chief constable of Nottinghamshire, had the courage to back his judgment and his officers in this bold initiative.
Above all, we should remember the children, whose confidence grew before my eyes as I sat at the back of a classroom while they were going through their paces with the local bobby. DARE is an unalloyed good thing. National Government must now take another step to give it the boost it deserves and the clout it needs.
Every nine-year-old in Nottinghamshire participates in the DARE programme. That includes 342 schools, 700 classes and 15,000 kids. The impact has been terrific. It is said that cautions to young offenders have been slashed by half in Mansfield, where the first pilot project has been running since 1993. I hope that the Minister will be able to press for more thorough research, so that we can quantify the benefits of the project.
Everybody knows that DARE works, but it is easier for hard-pressed chief constables and head teachers to target their limited and valuable resources if they can present hard statistical evidence to their paymasters. I hope that the Minister will consider the possibility of the Department's research programme statistically underpinning the good effects of the DARE programme.
The idea was piloted in Los Angeles in 1983, and was quickly adopted throughout the United States of America. It is now compulsory in all elementary schools. Federal funds were invested in its start-up year, and the programme was then taken up by local government, giving each scheme its own flavour. Television stations helped by showing anti-drugs cartoons, and all manner of celebrities and companies aligned themselves with it. Presidents signed up to it in the United States. I entertain hopes that perhaps princes will do so in the United Kingdom. The DARE logo is displayed on "Power Rangers" and "Baywatch" merchandise. The kids see it reflected in many of the sports, activities and entertainments that they participate in.
Fifteen years later, DARE is still spreading in America, and has been adopted in 41 other countries. A long-term evaluation to consider its progress over 10 years was commissioned in 1986, showing a 65 per cent. reduction in drug experimentation and misuse among children who finished school and went into employment. DARE in the United Kingdom is franchised from America to the trustees, based in Nottinghamshire, and has developed practical methods to teach a generation of children how to say no to drugs.
The programme is aimed at children between nine and 13, and is taught in the classroom by a DARE-trained police officer for one hour a week over 17 weeks. Lessons focus sharply on the development of personal skills and the strategies that young people need to resist the increasing pressures on them to experiment with drugs. There is nothing quite like seeing the local bobby, tunic off and sleeves rolled up, playing and having great fun with nine-year-olds, communicating with them and participating in the development of their awareness of the many ways of saying no to drugs, drink and cigarettes.
Seeing the programme in action is exciting, but it is not enough to see it in action just in Nottinghamshire--we need to see it in action throughout the United Kingdom. I hope that I sound relatively enthusiastic about the programme.
The Minister would be welcome to visit Nottinghamshire and see a DARE class at first hand. I shall take the liberty of asking the chief constable to invite her. During the next two weeks would be a good time for her to go, because seven policemen from seven different United States forces are currently over here working closely with the Nottinghamshire constabulary, training police officers from West Yorkshire--which covers 61 classes and 2,000 kids--and the City of London police force, where today, I believe, the Sir John Cass school became the first DARE school in London. The next group to be trained in Nottinghamshire could include officers from the Royal Ulster Constabulary, the Metropolitan police and the Merseyside police.
DARE is part of the development of rounded human beings. It could therefore fit smoothly into the national curriculum and its programme of personal and social education, particularly as targeted on primary schools. I understand that the School Curriculum and Assessment Authority is looking at the life skills and personal development in the national curriculum and will present its report to the Secretary of State. I hope that the Minister has made or will make representations to the authority on drug awareness aspects of the programme.
DARE gives pupils facts about the harmful effects of tobacco, alcohol and other drugs. It emphasises the benefits of a healthy life style, and teaches young people to make informed and responsible choices. They then make the decision to say no. That is far more important than any number of lectures and slide presentations, giving children the confidence, the nerve and occasionally the courage to resist when some in their peer group--their fellow pupils, for example--are making lots of different and ingenious offers to get them started on the road of smoking, drinking or drug abuse. Children carry that personal inoculation with them, as many of us did from our parents, by drawing in those values and making their own assessment. That is the best inoculation, and that is what DARE provides.
Parents, who in many areas feel anguished and powerless about the threats that drugs pose to their children, are very involved in the programme in Nottinghamshire. They feel that it is for them, as well as for their youngsters. They are involved in the meetings with teachers and with the DARE police officers. They are involved right up to the graduation ceremony, at which children perform plays, poems and songs that they have written from their experience through the DARE programme. At the end of the 17-week process, it is not just back to school. There is a prize giving, so that children have not only a certificate, but a sense of achievement that will encourage them to respect and look after what they have achieved in those 17 weeks, which will live with them for the rest of their lives.
The publicity that DARE has generated means that the message has reached a wider community through press coverage and the media. I pay particular tribute to Blue Peter and other television and radio programmes. DARE has been successfully piloted in Nottinghamshire for three years, with the backing of the police, local authorities, hundreds of local businesses, parents, school governors
and national companies. It is a registered charity, with nine trustees and 350 members. We all owe those trustees and members a massive "thank you" for being unpaid volunteers, creating and sustaining the initiative.
In addition, the chief constable in Nottinghamshire has committed 24 constables and one inspector to the project full time. More than 15,000 nine-year-olds--the entire year group in Nottinghamshire--will move on to their senior schools in the summer with self-confidence, high esteem, pride, values and morality that will allow them confidently to walk away from most of the pressures--particularly the inevitable offer of drugs--that sadly are part and parcel of young people's lives today. It was never so in my school days, but it is now part and parcel of the experience of young people in schools to be offered drugs. They need the protection and the assertiveness that DARE provides to enable them to say no when faced with peer pressure.
In order to assess the success of DARE, North Nottinghamshire Health Promotion was commissioned to evaluate the short-term effects on children of the pilot programme. Its two-year evaluation is due to be published in March, and I understand that it is most complimentary. It shows that, after children have completed the DARE lessons, they know at least one practical way of saying no to drugs, they identify cigarettes and alcohol as drugs, they know that drugs can be harmful and that drink-driving is illegal, and they understand the difference between prescribed drugs and harmful ones.
The report also concluded that the whole-community approach had many benefits for individual organisations involved and for the children, and played a significant part in the success of the project. The report is a ringing endorsement of the DARE project.
The effectiveness of DARE has also been noted in individual Office for Standards in Education reports that comment on the positive contribution it has made to pupils' welfare and guidance. The lessons are there to be learned. The Ofsted report on drug education in schools throughout the United Kingdom is to be published in the near future, and I very much hope that, when the Minister has had a chance to digest the report, she will drop me a line with her considered view on whether DARE can be applied nationwide. I am very grateful that the Lord President of the Council has found time to listen to the debate.
The DARE project in Nottinghamshire has been an outstanding success by every possible measure. The Government--of whatever political complexion; this is a non-partisan debate--should consider whether the experiment can be applied further afield. The inoculation of the DARE programme works. DARE has clearly harnessed an incredible amount of energy and imagination from local communities.
All those to whom I have spoken in the police force, the Prince's Trust, the local education authorities, the county council and local schools are united in agreeing that its benefit could be expanded nationwide. All those who have personally seen DARE in action, from the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition to the Secretary of State for Education and Employment, the Home Secretary and their shadows, all commend DARE.
There has been enough commending: let us start promoting. What can we do at national level? There are many opportunities for the Minister to enhance DARE's already high reputation. Action on even one of the seven points that I shall raise would certainly help.
First, it would be great for morale if the work in Nottinghamshire of the DARE trustees and members of the charity were recognised and commended in the House. DARE needs ministerial support, particularly from the Department for Education and Employment, to promote it within schools throughout the nation. Perhaps the Minister will consider issuing a guidance note to local authorities to help spread best practice and facilitate matters for local education authorities that want to pick up DARE.
I was a little disappointed by the Minister's response to my parliamentary question in October, when she said:
Secondly, Ministers could seize the political lead and co-ordinate involvement of the Education and Employment Department, the Health Department, the Home Office and the Lord President's Office to extend DARE's success nationwide. As the Lord President is in his place, let me take the opportunity to ask the Minister to table DARE in Nottinghamshire and its success at the Cabinet Sub-Committee on drug misuse which is chaired by the right hon. Gentleman.
"Tackling Drugs Together" should be a strategy for prevention as well as the title of a document. While a "drugs Tsar" may not be necessary, a political figurehead and a champion for DARE at ministerial level certainly is.
That the draft Deregulation (Betting Licensing) Order 1997, which was laid before this House on 27th January, be approved.--[Mr. McLoughlin.]
Question agreed to.
7.17 pm
"No estimates of requiring the DARE programme to be implemented nationwide have been made . . . it is for the individual schools to decide".--[Official Report, 28 October 1996; Vol. 284, c. 35.]
Of course it is, and there are a number of good schemes around. But surely, on such a vital issue as anti-drugs strategy, we need to make up our minds which programme is the most effective and works best. We should make it clear as part of the national curriculum. We should be prescriptive, as every day we linger, hundreds of youngsters go astray. Knowing the Minister's deep commitment to the issue, I hope that she will use her influence and weight to press for nothing less.
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