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Mr. Flynn: Which of the previous Government's policies were successful?
Mrs. Laing: We have had a whole morning of debate about that. Policies of education and of clamping down on drug dealers and confiscating their assets have been successful to an extent. I am certainly not saying that those policies have solved the problem. Nobody is arguing that. The Government are building on the successful policies of the previous Government and I am sure that when the Under-Secretary responds to the debate, he will tell us what will be the Government's future direction.
My hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham also referred to more training for GPs in treating drug addiction. Will the Under-Secretary respond to that point? I appreciate that he cannot answer for his colleagues in the Department of Health, but the Minister for the Cabinet Office said at the beginning of the debate that the strategy stretches across all Departments. I suppose that it is part of joined-up government. Although I sometimes deride that concept, I was pleased to hear the Minister say that this issue is to be one for joined-up government because it permeates all areas of life. Will the Under-Secretary say whether there will be any guidance to help GPs in treating drug addiction?
The hon. Member for Bolton, South-East (Dr. Iddon) greatly assisted the House with his knowledge and experience in chemistry. I acknowledge his important role as chairman of the all-party drugs misuse group. We all look forward to the findings of the inquiry being undertaken by the hon. Gentleman and his colleagues. I share his horror about the tragic case of the little boy in his constituency who was killed during a drugs raid involving his father. Such tragic cases bring the problem to life in a vivid, upsetting manner. I am sure that that only makes us all the more resolute to try to solve it.
However, the hon. Member for Bolton, South-East confused me by his argument. He said--and I agree--that young people needed role models. I also saw the point of his argument about clinical trials in order to discover the medicinal properties of cannabis. There can be no harm in trials; that is not to take the next step. He went on, however, to give an instance of teachers who had grown their own cannabis and then lost their jobs. He suggested
that that should not have happened, but surely teachers are important role models for the children whom they teach and, indeed, for other children. I prefer the role model part of his argument.
The hon. Member for Twickenham (Dr. Cable), who, sadly, is also not able to be present, was right to describe drug dealing as an international business. I welcomed the intervention of the Minister for the Cabinet Office to agree that decriminalising drugs in one country has a significant effect on other countries. The problem must be treated as an international one. I hope that the Minister and his colleagues will be taking opportunities to discuss such matters with their counterparts in Holland and other relevant countries.
The hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr. Stinchcombe) made a most welcome speech on the problems in prisons. He opened all our eyes considerably, and I thank him for doing so. I am pleased that he agrees with my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton about the need for simpler, cheaper and much more frequent tests on prisoners. I hope that the Minister also agrees; we will be interested to hear what he has to say on that point.
My hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs. Gillan) made a most lively and amusing speech. I certainly support her endorsement of the DARE project, which several hon. Members have mentioned. It will also be interesting to hear what the Minister says on that. I agree with my hon. Friend as much as one possibly can about the importance in matters such as this of early education. I am sure that we all sympathise with her agony of giving up cigarettes. Since she has not had a cigarette since March, we can almost see her halo. She is a very good example of persistence in getting rid of addiction, if I may call it that.
My hon. Friend made me realise that I am an example of someone who benefited from early education in these matters. When I was a very small child in the mid-1960s, Richard Dimbleby, the late, great broadcaster, made a documentary for television about the dangers of cigarettes and heavy tobacco smoking and its links with lung cancer. I do not remember the documentary at all--I was far too young--but I realise that it was the first time that the link between cigarettes and severe danger to health had been properly identified. Two weeks after Richard Dimbleby had made that documentary, he died of lung cancer. My father, who until that point had smoked 40 cigarettes a day, laid down his packet of cigarettes and never smoked another in his life.
I make that point because, as a result of such dramatic early education, neither my brother nor I--I do not hold us up as paragons of virtue--has ever smoked a cigarette. It is a pity that my hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham did not watch Richard Dimbleby.
The hon. Member for Newport, West (Mr. Flynn) made his usual very different contribution. He is right to be controversial and I admire his tenacity and consistency, but I disagree with his argument, he will not be surprised to hear. Most of my hon. Friends do likewise.
My hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Mr. Letwin) made his customary clever analysis of the basic question. Over the next few days I shall recommend to hon. Members who have not been here today that they read his speech. As usual, he cut through the arguments and set the issue out clearly: on what grounds can we as law makers legislate to prevent people from harming
themselves? I entirely agree with his enlightened argument and his conclusion that taking drugs is different from other activities to which it is compared, such as taking alcohol and tobacco, and that it should therefore be treated differently. The vast majority of hon. Members agree.
My hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs (Mr. Flight) talked about the importance of family involvement. He, too, hit the nail on the head when he said that decriminalisation would merely shift the problem. If we decriminalise drugs, for whatever reason, we shall still have to deal with the same problems of addiction and misuse, but we will not then have the same weapons to combat them.
I also commend the speeches of the hon. Members for Barnsley, West and Penistone (Mr. Clapham), for Hemsworth (Mr. Trickett) and for Milton Keynes, North-East (Mr. White). They all gave practical examples, which opened the eyes of many of us to the on-going problems of drug abuse.
As I said, I agreed with some of the points made by the hon. Member for Harrow, East. Another point on which I agree with him is that this problem occurs throughout the country and in every walk of life. One aspect of the problem that we must tackle is that of fashion, peer-group pressure and the recklessness of youth. That occurs in every walk of life. I am pleased that the hon. Gentleman agrees with my hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs that we shall simply change the focus of the problem if we legalise drugs.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. George Howarth):
I welcome the hon. Member for Epping Forest (Mrs. Laing) to her first outing at the Dispatch Box. Her speech was consensual, which on this subject is entirely appropriate, and full of common sense. From my experience in the House, I know that even in this place common sense sometimes prevails.
My hon. Friend the Member for Harrow, East (Mr. McNulty) said that the problem was widespread and the hon. Member for Epping Forest confirmed that. It is true. Every housing estate, village, town and city in Britain has some sort of drugs problem. They may not all acknowledge it, but it exists. For the families and individuals involved, the personal tragedy is no less if they are Tara Palmer-Tompkinson or someone in my constituency, in Bolton or in Milton Keynes. The consequences of that personal tragedy are serious, regardless of a person's wealth or social standing. Although some people have more ready access than others to treatment, the personal tragedy is the same for everyone.
This has been a very good debate, ranging from references by the hon. Member for Beckenham (Mrs. Lait) and other hon. Members to the problem's international dimension, to accounts of the problem in local communities. The local dimension was described in particular detail by my hon. Friends the Members for Hemsworth (Mr. Trickett), for Barnsley, West and Penistone (Mr. Clapham) and for Milton Keynes, North-East (Mr. White).
The hon. Member for Congleton (Mrs. Winterton) and other hon. Members highlighted the well-established link between drugs and crime. Clearly, those who traffic in drugs are committing a crime, but the fact is that most of those who use hard drugs finance it by various criminal activities. It is no good pretending that that link does not exist, because all the evidence shows that it does.
Other hon. Members raised important points about drug prevention and drug treatment. My hon. Friend the Member for Erewash (Liz Blackman) and the hon. Members for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs. Gillan) and for Congleton commented on the DARE programme, which I shall deal with in more detail later in my speech.
Many other points were made in the debate, and I may not be able to reply to all of them--not because of any unwillingness, or inability, to do so, but because we have limited time. However, I shall read today's Hansard and write to hon. Members whose questions I am unable to answer today, to try to give them some enlightenment on the issues that they raised.
Some hon. Members--including, perennially, my hon. Friend the Member for Newport, West (Mr. Flynn)--raised the issue of legalisation and/or decriminalisation. I should like to make it abundantly clear that the Government have no intention at all of decriminalising or legalising any of the substances that are currently illegal in the United Kingdom. I also believe, very sincerely, that it would be wrong to do so. Legalisation or decriminalisation would send the signal, particularly to young people, that it is all right to take drugs. But it is not all right.
My hon. Friends the Members for Milton Keynes, North-East and for Harrow, East mentioned, as did the hon. Member for Congleton, albeit indirectly, the problem of a drug culture, both in the United Kingdom and elsewhere. I believe that, ultimately, efforts to find celebrities from the sports or entertainment world to stand up and say, "Drugs are bad--I think you should stop taking them", will be self-defeating. I am not saying that those people should not send that message, but we should not invest too much hope in that approach solving our problems. Very often, people who take such a stand discover that, because of the nature of our popular press, an aspect of their previous life is dragged out, totally undermining the message that they try to send. The sad truth is that, when such approaches have been taken, they have had an effect completely opposite to that intended. I say that not to be clever or to try to make a debating point, but because it is a sad fact of life.
Several hon. Members mentioned drugs education, which I think is a more productive approach to addressing the issue. In the late 1990s, nearing the new century, how should we approach young people on the drugs issue? More importantly, how do we do so in a way that makes an impact on them? It is no good developing programmes that do not have an impact. We must use the available evidence to construct programmes that work.
The previous Government started a programme--which we have continued--through which we have evaluated the programmes of more than 60 different initiatives taken in local communities. We know from that what has been successful and what has not. I have visited one project involving Manchester city council and Manchester City football club, which focuses on young people training for sport. It uses the football club to make the distinction between a healthy life style--which does not involve drugs, tobacco or alcohol--and an unhealthy one that does not sit well with sport.
Other projects involve communities coming together, with professional help, to get powerful messages across to local young people that taking drugs damages their lives. There are many examples which must be independently evaluated to see what works, and we are doing just that.
The perennial argument made by my hon. Friend the Member for Newport, West, among others, concerns legalisation or decriminalisation. I shall say a brief word about medical use. If any product can be developed that proves to be helpful to people in a medicinal sense and can be clinically trialled and shown to work, the Government--as my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health and others have made clear--will not stand in the way of that product being marketed and licensed in the usual way.
It would be irresponsible to base policy on the medical use of cannabis purely on anecdotal evidence. The decision must be based on science. As and when science proves that it is medically beneficial in some cases, that will be the appropriate time to take such action. To do anything else, or to say that cannabis should be dealt with differently from any other drug that may or may not have medicinal properties, would be wrong.
My hon. Friend the Member for Newport, West and others have said that decriminalising or legalising cannabis would have some impact on consumption, and would certainly have an effect on criminality. The simple truth is that in this country somewhere between 10 million and 11 million people smoke. As we all are in confessional mood today, I can say that I am one of those people. I wish that I could give it up, as the hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham has done. There are something like 20 million to 30 million people in this country who regularly drink alcohol. Appropriately, I am glad to see the Minister for Public Health on the Front Bench, because she has important things to say about the damage that tobacco and alcohol abuse can do to people's lives.
There are currently between 1.5 million and 3 million people in this country who have used or regularly use cannabis. One simple conclusion drawn by the hon. Member for Twickenham (Dr. Cable) and by the hon. Member for West Dorset (Mr. Letwin) is that if cannabis were legalised, the number of people using it would creep up towards the 11 million who smoke. It could even creep up towards the 20 million or 30 million who drink alcohol. The companies that decided to produce and sell cannabis products for recreational use would market them aggressively.
We should not automatically assume that the black market would disappear. Many people have a big stake in the illegal market and they would probably continue by
undercutting the legal producers. The point made by the hon. Member for Beckenham about tobacco and alcohol smuggling simply underlines that point.
There is mounting evidence of the problems that cannabis can cause. The hon. Member for Congleton referred to some of them. The World Health Organisation published evidence last year showing that there are consequences to smoking or using cannabis. I am sorry that my hon. Friend the Member for Newport, West is not here to hear me saying that one of the things that I find mildly frustrating about him is that whenever he speaks he claims the status of a scientist to justify his arguments and then proceeds to base them on anecdotal evidence. I suspect that if he thought more deeply he might decide to look at some of the scientific evidence rather than listening solely to anecdotes.
The hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham spoke about crop substitution, which is an important initiative. My right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister and I attended the United Nations Special Assembly last June, where the policy on that was agreed internationally. I am proud to say that we support three crop substitution projects: one worth £3 million in Pakistan; one worth £720,000 in Bolivia; and a third worth £2.5 million in Peru.
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