Examination of Witnesses (Questions 20-39)
THURSDAY 20 MARCH 2003
MR BOB
AINSWORTH MP, MR
VIC HOGG,
MR MARK
ETHERTON AND
MR MICHAEL
RYDER
20. Is this organisation in the hands of zealots,
do you think?
(Mr Ainsworth) We are talking about the Narcotics
Control Board; we are not talking about the Commission here. I
think we will find out, because we will have to pursue the issues
that they raise. We will have to chase these matters. We will
have to ask them for an explanation as to why they came to the
conclusions that they did, and we will have to try to encourage
them to be a little more sensible on future occasions.
21.How long have you lived in Vienna, Mr Etherton?
(Mr Etherton) Nearly four years.
22. So you know this organisation quite well.
What is your opinion of it?
(Mr Etherton) It is perhaps not surprising that an
organisation set up to police the Conventions takes a restrictive
view of what the Conventions should and should not allow. I think
it is also the case that the members of the Board, who sit on
the Board in their personal capacity, are not averse to waving
a finger at Member States when they have the opportunity so to
do. It is quite normal every year for at least one Member State
to complain in strong terms about the reference to it in the Board's
report.
23.Are their comments usually as unscientific
and unjust as the ones in relation to our decision to reclassify
cannabis?
(Mr Etherton) I would not feel in a position to comment
on behalf of other governments, but most of the governments who
do protest, protest in fairly strong terms, and in fact, yesterday
at lunch I happened to meet the Secretary of the INCB, who is
a permanent official, and he said, "We had rather a nasty
letter from you recently." I said, "Yes, I have seen
it." He said, "But we will be sending a nice reply."
24. How are the members of this Board appointed?
(Mr Etherton) There are 13 members. They serve for
five years, and half the Board changes every two or three years.
Three of them are chosen by the members of ECOSOC, the Economic
and Social Council of the UN, on the basis of a list produced
by the World Health Organisation, and the other ten are elected
by Member States from among proposals from Member States. In the
1961 Convention there is a description of them as—I cannot
remember its exact terms—experts of known probity. Some
of them are former policemen. The current Nigerian Chair is a
professor of pharmacology. There is a professor from one of the
London Universities Medical Schools. It is those sort of people.
25. Why are their reports so unscientific if
they have all these experts?
(Mr Etherton) The trouble with the reports is that
they are very long, and people tend to focus on the bits that
are controversial. The reference to our policy was one or perhaps
two paragraphs in a report of 80 pages, for example. A lot of
what they say is purely factual and we would agree with it. It
is perhaps on the areas where interpretation of the Conventions
is less clear-cut that there is more scope for disagreements of
this sort.
(Mr Ainsworth) I am sure that is true. I hope that
the reply indicated that we saw no justification for the comments.
I do not know what the reasons were, whether it was headline-grabbing
or whether it was just reacting to a lobby. It did not seem to
be based on any reference to fact.
26. One more piece of anecdotal evidence: I
met a man, a Colombian professor, who worked for this organisation
for some time, and he said to me that after a couple of beers,
you quickly discovered that most of the people who worked for
it did not believe in what they were doing. Is that your impression?
(Mr Etherton) If he is the Colombian professor who
I think he is, he did not work for the INCB; he worked for the
UN Drug Control Programme, and there are many members of the UN
Drug Control Programme, many officials, who are utterly dedicated
to what they do and recognised to be experts in what they do.
Unfortunately, in recent years the programme has not been managed
in a way that is conducive to good morale among the staff. We
hope that has now changed.
27. Why do you think it has now changed?
(Mr Etherton) Because there is a new man at the top.
His reactions may well have been a product of the time when he
was there and when he left rather than a reflection of what things
are like normally and what we believe them to be like now.
28. Are there signs that things are changing
since the new man took over?
(Mr Etherton) Yes.
Bridget Prentice
29. Harm reduction. Minister, you said in response
to Mr Prosser's questions that it was very difficult—in
fact, I think you said almost impossible—to get a target
to address harm reduction. What is the reasoning behind that?
Why is it so difficult? Is it a policy decision on the part of
the agencies or what?
(Mr Ainsworth) At the time that the Conventions were
agreed, harm minimisation was not nearly as far up the agenda
of many countries as it is now, and therefore it is not formally
recognised within the Conventions, but a lot of countries are
practising or seeking to practise effective harm minimisation.
Our analysis of it is that there is nothing that stops them from
doing exactly that. What I was trying to say in response to Mr
Prosser was that it is extremely hard to reach a consensus for
change in any direction in these international fora. There is
a great degree of controversy in this area, as there is in our
own country. There are different policies and firmly entrenched
views from different countries. If that is so in an international
arena, achieving dramatic movement is very difficult. That is
what the Greek presidency found. They were not supporting de-criminalisation
or legalisation, or at least, most of the representations that
they received were not supporting that, and yet they were unable
to reach any consensus.
30. Part of it then is that for some countries
the very idea of harm reduction is an anathema; they do not agree
with harm reduction as part of the drugs strategy at all, do they?
(Mr Ainsworth) I think there is a majority of countries
in the Commission at the moment that would take what we might
view as a fairly restrictive, conservative attitude towards drug
policy. There would be more propensity to move in that direction,
in all probability, than to move in the other direction.
31. Can you tell us whether you think that the
UNDCP is out of kilter with other UN agencies like the World Health
Organisation and UNAIDS and so on? Do they take a very different
philosophical view?
(Mr Ainsworth) I think that some of the NGOs operating
in this area are deeply disaffected with the UNDCP and they need
to try to build a better working relationship with them. As I
have tried to say, the Conventions are fairly broadly drawn. There
are sometimes allegations made that they are effectively preventing
us from doing things that they are not preventing us from doing.
None of the harm minimisation proposals within our own drugs strategy—we
are firm on this—fall foul of the Conventions at all. There
are sometimes suggestions, maybe from people with a different
agenda to our own, that we have a problem in that area. I am convinced
that we do not, and we will be seeking to clarify that at Vienna
and elsewhere.
32. Do you think there need to be any changes
to the Conventions to help with harm reduction programmes?
(Mr Ainsworth) I think we would need to look carefully
at any proposals that were made. If there were a proposal specifically
ruling in sensible, well-regulated harm minimisation measures,
then we would be very interested in examining that.
33. Can you give me an example? Have there been
any suggestions so far?
(Mr Ainsworth) I think it could remove some of the
uncertainty that exists in some people's minds. As I have said,
we are pretty clear that needle exchange, heroin prescription
programmes, the provision of sensible pieces of paraphernalia
that help in harm minimisation, such as we are looking at ourselves,
are all allowed. There are those who sometimes suggest that they
are not, so at the very least a bit more clarity in that area
might be helpful.
34. Do you think we would be successful in that,
when people like the INCB, describing the Swiss, say, "instead
of aiding and abetting drug abuse"—that is a pretty
bold comment to make about a country's drugs programme—"through
drug injection rooms and similar outlets, they would be better
off with sound medical practice," and so on and so forth?
Is the divide not just too great for anything to happen?
(Mr Ainsworth) It is a wide divide, and that is what
I am trying to say to the Committee. Do not think that there is
room for dramatic movement here. If we are going to hold people
together, it is going to be difficult to bridge some of the differing
views that there are. That comment was made with regard to injection
rooms, not what we are proposing, heroin prescription, and I know
what you recommended. We are not going to be advocating in an
international forum what we are not advocating domestically. We
are not advocating injection rooms, although I do not see why
language of that sort should be used where another jurisdiction
feels that they ought to be properly analysing gains and benefits
from such facilities, and doing that in the interests of harm
minimisation.
35. How do you decide on the balance between
holding people together, as you describe it, and pursuing a policy
that we in this country think has a good scientific basis in this
area?
(Mr Ainsworth) We have a reputation as a country of
playing a full part in all international fora in whatever area,
and I think that we would want to do that with regard to drugs
in UN fora and in EU fora. We are not the kind of country that
just walks away from involvement in international fora. We can
bring something to those discussions. We can make a contribution
and we can move the agenda on. I would not like to see us walk
away from that, despite the fact that, as I have said, the gap
is pretty wide, and there is a variety of views expressed. There
is a role that we can play. Our analysis is that none of the Conventions
are in any way preventing us from doing what we want to do. If
we felt that they were, we would review our position, but at the
moment I do not think they are, despite what some people say.
Mr Clappison
36. It is possible to measure the benefits which
come from harm reduction programmes, is it not? I am particularly
thinking of reducing the transmission of deadly infections such
as HIV/AIDS and Hepatitis B and C.
(Mr Ainsworth) I would have thought it is probably
more possible to measure the benefits in the harm minimisation
areas than it is in many other areas of drugs policy. We are easily
able to measure the numbers of drugs-related deaths and measure
the impact on the spread of Hepatitis C and HIV.
37. Is it possible to use successes which we
may have had in this field to inform the debate in other countries
about this?
(Mr Ainsworth) I hope so.
Chairman
38. You were saying, Minister, that we would
be prepared to look at any proposals that anybody comes up with
for amending the Conventions. Why do we not make some proposals
ourselves?
(Mr Ainsworth) If we needed changes to the Conventions
in order to be able to pursue our own policies, then we would
most certainly be doing that. There are those—and in some
regards, Chairman, the Home Affairs Select Committee may be in
this camp, with some of the recommendations it has made to us,
a lot of which we accepted but one or two which we did not. Let
us take the one that is at the edge of some of these issues, injection
rooms: we are not proposing to have injection rooms, so why should
we be making proposals that allow injection rooms to be specifically
brought within the Conventions when that is not what we are proposing
to do domestically? It would be wrong for us to be advocating
something in an international forum that we were not suggesting
we ought to be doing domestically.
39. Are you saying that injection rooms would
be outlawed under the terms of the present Conventions?
(Mr Ainsworth) It is an area that is not clear. As
I have indicated, I think, in my response to Mrs Prentice, I do
not believe that the Conventions ought to be so structured that,
if there is a jurisdiction that wants to attempt sensible, well
thought out, controlled, harm minimisation measures, the Conventions
ought to be stopping them from doing so. If there are other people
who are suggesting that the Conventions be clarified in this way,
we would not be looking to block that. We are not interested in
supporting proposals that open the way to legalisation of any
controlled substance, but sensible, well thought out, controlled
harm minimisation projects, pilots, surely ought to be there to
inform the debate, and if there are people who want to do that,
I do not think we should support the Conventions effectively preventing
them from doing so.
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