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Dr. Cunningham: That is an absurd thing to say. They have only been introduced relatively recently.
Dr. Cunningham: Seven months, the hon. Gentleman says. How long does the drugs problem in this country go back? What was his party doing for 18 years. We are deliberately piloting the orders so that we can gauge their effectiveness, or lack of it. If they are shown not to be an efficient use of resources, we will have to make changes. The hon. Gentleman's comment demonstrates a complete lack of understanding of the nature of the problem and how we are trying to deal with it.
It would be unusual if there were not some major difference of opinion on such a statement between the Government and those on the Opposition Front Bench. I again pay tribute to the hon. Member for Congleton (Mrs. Winterton) for her measured response. However, when she said what she did about Customs officers, I parted company from her because it was her Government and her party that supported a reduction of 500 Customs officers and planned a further reduction of 300. It was only this Government, on election in May 1997, who prevented that further reduction. As a result of the comprehensive spending review, my right hon. Friend the Chancellor gave more resources for use in the sector.
As the hon. Lady knows, increasingly the interception of drugs is intelligence led; it is not a matter simply of the number of people on the ground any more. She was right to say that we need to work hard with our partners in Europe and in the United Nations, as we are doing first, to improve our intelligence and understanding of the cartels, and secondly, to eliminate at source the growth in production of drugs.
With that one difference of opinion with the hon. Lady, I again welcome warmly what she had to say about the policy.
Madam Speaker:
Order. That initial exchange took 25 minutes. I hope that we might now proceed in a much more brisk fashion.
Mr. Chris Mullin (Sunderland, South):
I welcome my right hon. Friend's statement as clear evidence that the Government are taking very seriously this very serious and debilitating problem, and that they are putting their money where their mouth is. I particularly welcome the proposal to spend about £60 million in prisons, where--as we have a captive audience--there is a window of opportunity to deal with a very serious problem.
May I ask for my right hon. Friend's assurance that all outcomes will be properly monitored? In the past, in relation to community sentences and the Probation Service, one thing that we have discovered is that, of the several hundred schemes in existence, only a handful were
able to produce sufficiently rigorous figures for us to make any serious judgment on outcomes--which, given the rigorous targets that he has set, will be essential.
Dr. Cunningham:
I am grateful to my hon. Friend. I am not so sure about windows of opportunity in prisons, but I agree that we need rigorously to examine all the programmes and schemes to determine first, whether they are working and delivering the outcomes that we want; and secondly, whether we are getting value for money from the schemes. If not, we shall have to change them.
Mr. A. J. Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed):
Is the Minister aware that we strongly support the work that Keith Hellawell is doing, and the work that others are doing in co-ordination with him? However, does the right hon. Gentleman realise that the targets--which he has called difficult--even if achieved, pre-suppose a continuing very large drug problem in the United Kingdom? Is he aware that we want to encourage much wider use of drug testing and treatment orders? Indeed, is he aware that we are interested in the idea of drugs courts--which have been quite successful in the United States in discouraging reoffending? We need more drug treatment programmes in the community. Where there is a waiting list for drug treatment programmes, people will get into drug-based criminality sooner.
Does the Minister know that, today, the RAC Foundation has announced a campaign on driving and drugs? Will he give as much backing as possible to that campaign? Many deaths result from drugs and driving, and much could be done about them through labelling and by informing the public. Does the right hon. Gentleman recognise how much has been achieved by the hardening of public attitudes against drinking and driving? With the whole drugs problem, is it not true that there will be a very major change only when the public come to recognise and convey to others that the dangers posed by drugs and drugs misuse are such that people should not use them? The change of attitude that has happened on drinking and driving could happen with drugs. Currently, however, any change is not going the right direction.
Dr. Cunningham:
I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his strong support for what we are trying to achieve. Of course he is right to say that, even if our ambitious targets are fulfilled, a large and serious problem would remain. I listened to what he said about drugs courts, and he knows that some attention has been paid to the idea.
Drug treatment facilities in the community are not adequate, and there is a danger that people will have to wait so long that they will simply never receive any treatment. We are examining that issue, too.
As I am sure the right hon. Gentleman is aware, driving and drugs is already an offence. We are examining with the police the possibility of roadside testing for drugs abuse while driving a car, but we are not yet in a position to make a statement on that.
Mr. Paul Flynn (Newport, West):
I welcome what seem to be two slight changes of direction in the Government's policy, and in that of all other Governments: the emphasis being placed on treating those who use hard drugs not as criminals, but as patients; and the way in which the Government are placing the greatest emphasis on hard drugs.
Sadly and tragically, however, the Government face the same fate--which is the result of years and years of failure--as every other Government of the past 20 years. In three years, when we face the electorate, the drugs problem will be far worse than it was when we came into office. In Britain, however, one awful new feature of that failure does not occur in any other country--the epidemic of heroin use among teenagers and younger children.
Is not the best way to tackle this not to spend 90 per cent. of our money and police and court time pursuing soft drugs, which the majority of young people use, but to try to collapse the evil trade in those drugs, which is in the hands of criminals? The only way that can be done--and it has been done in other countries--is to replace it with a market that can be regulated, licensed, policed and controlled. In Holland, that approach has spectacularly reduced the use of heroin. Can we not take a fresh look at what is happening in other countries, including Holland and Switzerland? Instead of repeating our old failures, we should imitate the success of others.
Dr. Cunningham:
I am grateful for the first part of my hon. Friend's remarks. We are increasing the focus on class A drugs and on treatment, education, advice and rehabilitation. We think that is the right thing to do.
My hon. Friend says that our policies will meet the fate of all previous ones. I do not accept that as inevitable; it is a defeatist attitude. We deliberately set a long-term strategy--a 10-year programme--in the White Paper and we are at the very beginning of that programme. My hon. Friend may well be right to say that we face an epidemic--a huge increase in the use of heroin--and we must do our best to prepare for that, but I do not agree with him at all that we should decriminalise cannabis. All drugs are harmful and there is plenty of evidence around to suggest that not only soft drugs but alcohol and smoking at an early age are the precursors to later hard drug use among young people.
Sir Brian Mawhinney (North-West Cambridgeshire):
Given that over many years under Governments of both parties Britain has developed one of the worst records of drug abuse in Europe, why does the Minister believe that continuing the existing strategic thinking and the presuppositions that underlie current policy will be any more effective in the future than it has been in the past?
Dr. Cunningham:
The right hon. Gentleman is wrong. We are not continuing with existing thinking and the policies and assumptions that we inherited from the previous Administration. Precisely because we recognised that they were not working and that changes had to be made, we produced the White Paper, set the 10-year strategy and are changing the emphasis towards education and information, support, help and advice, and rehabilitation; and we are moving resources accordingly. We are doing that because previous policies were not working, as the right hon. Gentleman rightly said.
Dr. Brian Iddon (Bolton, South-East):
I too congratulate my right hon. Friend on shifting the emphasis to treatment and on the proposed concentration of enforcement measures on class A drugs. Is he aware that recent surveys have shown that the number of treatment places has fallen during the past three years, and that that is a real problem? There are just not enough people to deal
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