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Mrs. Ann Winterton: I commend the hon. Gentleman on what he is saying. Is he aware that it would be better practice if the whole prison population were tested at one go, and that that could be done quite easily with a urine test and litmus paper? Slightly dodgy tests could be subject to the more expensive test. Such testing would ensure that we knew the real state of drug abuse in the prison population. Currently, we have not the faintest idea of the real situation.
Mr. Stinchcombe: I agree with every single word of that. The laboratory test costs £70; the litmus paper test costs 50p. For each lab test, we could have 140 litmus paper tests. Currently, with laboratory tests, we can afford
to test only once every 600 days, but with litmus paper tests we could afford to test every four or five days, thereby breaking into the three-day cycle of opiate detectability. It is an easy strategy to adopt.
What about cutting the demand for drugs in prison? The hon. Member for Beckenham (Mrs. Lait), who has now left the Chamber, said that, outside prison, drug taking is sometimes caused by people not having busy and fulfilled lives.
A couple of weeks ago, I visited Winson Green prison, where 70 per cent. of the inmates are locked up for 23 hours a day. There is no education, no work and no exercise--just a cell, every day, virtually all day. No wonder prisoners turn to drugs--not uppers, amphetamines or ecstasy, but heroin. They do so simply to get through the day. They do so because they are in a prison which was not designed to hold them long term. It was designed for remand prisoners.
We are holding prisoners inappropriately in the existing prison estate, and we are causing some of them to go on to drugs although they were drug-free when they were put in custody. We are making them into addicts when we should be intervening to stop them being addicts.
It will be difficult to solve that problem, but the first step is simple. We need a fundamental rethink of how we use the existing prison estate. It is a question not just of building more prisons but of looking at how we use our existing prisons. Prisoners must be kept in local prisons in their own communities; remand prisoners must be kept in remand prisons; in each area there must be opportunities for work and education available in prison; and we must have within each area consistent, high-quality, needs-based drugs counselling and detoxification. If we do that, we make it possible to have synchronised care and support once the prisoner leaves prison to go into his own community.
Mrs. Cheryl Gillan (Chesham and Amersham):
The debate today is a small triumph for my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Mrs. Winterton), who has requested a debate on drugs on several occasions from the Dispatch Box. I am delighted that the Government, after two years in office, have finally taken the topic seriously enough to devote a morning to it. I believe that there should be an annual debate on drugs.
Mr. George Howarth:
It was my suggestion that we have this debate--to which my right hon. Friend the Minister for the Cabinet Office agreed--and a proposed annual debate was part of a wider suggestion.
Mrs. Gillan:
My hon. Friend the Member for Congleton requested this debate at business questions on a number of occasions, and I am delighted that the Government have responded. I hope that the Minister will confirm that the Government, while they are in office, will come forward with a proposal to hold a debate on this topic in Government time every year between now and the general election. That would be welcomed on both sides of the House.
Apart from the glaring differences between myself and some of my hon. Friends, and other hon. Members--for example, the hon. Member for Bolton, South-East (Dr. Iddon), who expressed his views quite bravely--there is a lot of common interest and shared hope in this House concerning drugs because of the enormity of the problem.
It bears repeating that about half of those under 25 in this country have used illegal drugs. At least half of all recorded crime in this country has a drug-related element. There are probably around 200,000 addicts in the United Kingdom, and the annual costs of the most serious drug misusers alone are well over £4 billion, which is an enormous drain on the economy of the UK.
The topic is complex, and we can see that it ranges from drugs in prisons to the international situation, from children to the amount of money that is spent on tackling the problem once an addict is on the books. It is true that there needs to be a vast amount of co-operation between politicians, police, parents, teachers, Customs and Excise and the armed forces. No Government have come up with the solution to the problem that they face, but we have a chance to air some new ideas.
The hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr. Stinchcombe) proposed some useful suggestions in a well balanced and well-thought-out speech, and I hope that the Minister will consider them carefully.
For our young people, this is a most important problem. The last time I spoke on drugs in this House I was responding to an Adjournment debate initiated by the hon. Member for Nottingham, North (Mr. Allen) on the DARE project in Nottingham, which has been mentioned today. I am particularly keen on the DARE project, which educates youngsters between the ages of nine and 13 on the dangers of drugs. We need to get to our children long before they are in danger of taking drugs.
I am a smoker, but I stopped smoking in March. I look on myself as taking a rest from smoking--it will just be longer between cigarettes. I can tell the House how difficult it has been for me to stop smoking, but I cannot imagine how difficult it must be for a young person to give up drugs.
We must ensure that the Government spend a certain amount of their resources on educating people and getting to them before the drug dealers and marketers of this pernicious trade. I would always support the allocation of extra resources to that end. I asked the hon. Member for Nottingham, North about the DARE project last night and he said that it was still thriving in his area, but I would like to hear from the Minister what further resources the Government may put into the project and how it is spinning out around the country.
The drugs industry is a vast international industry and the statistics are frightening. It probably represents 8 per cent. of all international trade. It is comparable to the gas and oil industry. In an excellent article in The Independent on the world drugs trade, Diane Coyle, the economics editor, said that the drugs business is not only the third biggest economy in the world but could be starting to catch up with the United States as the leading player in the world economy. That should strike horror into all our hearts.
The United Kingdom has estimated that drugs cost us about £4 billion a year. That is 1.2 per cent. of gross domestic product, so if one multiplies that by all the
economies in the world, one begins to think that drugs represent one of the most severe problems faced by Governments today. I hope that I do not exaggerate, but considering that drugs destroy families and communities and divert resources from other areas of need, major international action is needed. What have the Government done on the international stage?
Several hon. Members have highlighted harm reduction as an approach to the problem. The hon. Member for Bolton, South-East went even further; I believe that he favours the legalisation of all drugs, albeit in a step-by-step process. I disagree with him fundamentally. I believe that the philosophy of harm reduction has caused many problems, as evidenced by the half-baked experiment in Holland.
Mary Brett, who works at Dr. Challoner's grammar school in my constituency, has been at the forefront in the fight against drugs among our school children, and she provides me and other hon. Members with material from time to time, to keep us up to speed with the views on drugs. She has been especially worried about harm reduction theories and the way in which people's attitude to drugs is starting to soften. Holland is often cited as a great example of that.
The effect of the Holland experiment is not confined to that country but extends to the rest of Europe and throughout the world. Customs officers in the United Kingdom, France and Belgium who said that Holland had become the drugs capital of western Europe are absolutely right. Customs and Excise in the United Kingdom estimated that 80 per cent. of the heroin seized in the United Kingdom either passed through or was temporarily warehoused in Holland.
The Paris police estimate that 80 per cent. of the heroin consumed in the French capital comes from Holland. According to French customs officials, there is an explosion of drugs coming into France from the Netherlands.
Mr. Brian White (Milton Keynes, North-East):
Will the hon. Lady tell the House how much of that traffic through Holland is the result of the pre-eminence of Rotterdam as a major port?
Mrs. Gillan:
I do not have those statistics to hand, but I would be willing to discuss them with the hon. Gentleman. Once I have looked at the source material, I shall provide him with it. I shall not give him statistics off the top of my head when I do not have the material to back them up, but I am using material from accredited sources, such as Customs and Excise.
The article that appeared in Foreign Affairs, volume 78, No. 3, written by Larry Collins, is recommended reading for the hon. Gentleman. It records the remarkable candour of the Amsterdam police commissioner, Jelle Kuiper, who said:
"As long as our political class tries to pretend that soft drugs do not create dependence, we are going to go on being confronted daily with problems that officially do not exist. We are aware of an enormous number of young people strongly dependent on soft drugs, with all the consequences that has."
2 Jul 1999 : Column 581
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