Drugs Bill


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The Chairman: Order. I am sorry to interrupt the hon. Gentleman, but I have looked very carefully at clause 5 and it does not deal with the matters to which he is addressing himself. It deals with X-rays and ultrasound scans. I appreciate that a little background may be in order, but try as I may I am finding it increasingly hard to determine that he is in order.

2.45 pm

Dr. Iddon: I will try to focus on the main point, which is about swallowers coming into airports. I am willing to be corrected, but as I understand it, the clause gives police at airports and in urban and rural areas the right to subject people they suspect of swallowing hard drugs—class A drugs—to X-rays and scanning. My point is that the biggest problem is at our airports, whether it be at Heathrow or Manchester.

I was trying to describe what happens in the Netherlands, and I shall finish talking about the position there. One police force deals with all swallowers coming into airports, and it has a tremendous set-up. If the Minister has not visited Schiphol, I strongly recommend that she spend two or three hours there seeing how the force deals with swallowers.

The last amendment dealt with purpose-built facilities, but most airports already have, or are building, special medical facilities. People come off planes with all kinds of medical problems, and the medical facilities at a large international airport such as Heathrow may already have X-ray equipment, so it would not always be necessary to take a swallower to the local accident and emergency unit.

The real reason why I support the clause, which gives the police extra powers, is that people die transporting drugs into Britain. In the Antilles, a former Dutch colony, children as young as 12 spend
 
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hours trying to swallow the largest grapes that they can collect. Then, of course, they are introduced to swallowing the real thing—condoms packed hard with cocaine, which are mightily difficult to get down. Of course, flights are profiled, and someone looks at who buys tickets, who gets on the plane and how passengers behave on board. If passengers do not eat or drink on the plane, they will obviously be under suspicion immediately because they may be worried about passing the balls of cocaine. Indeed, they sometimes do, and a hell of a smell develops in the cabin. There are many ways of dealing with those people, and highly profiled passengers—those picked out before boarding the aircraft or on arrival—who get off planes at international airports such as Heathrow or Manchester will be observed, taken away, searched and interviewed. The trouble is that they have to be kept in cells for an awfully long time before the evidence can be collected.

Sometimes, packages burst on the aircraft, and those carrying them die; indeed, quite a number of mules die. The Dutch told us that they had caught 14 mules on one plane from Kingston, Jamaica. They probably did not get all the swallowers on the plane, because international flights from the Caribbean rim are being swamped, and that is the main way of getting cocaine into Britain.

Mrs. Gillan: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the problem affects women in particular? The largest proportion of female foreign nationals in our prisons is from Jamaica. The majority received custodial sentences after they were used as mules.

The Chairman: Order. I am sorry to spoil this party, but the clause has nothing whatever to do with the matters that are being discussed; it is specifically about the technicalities of X-rays and ultrasound scans. Can we please return to the matters in the clause?

Dr. Iddon: I take your second indication that I should focus on the subject, Mr. Gale, but it is important to point out that people die after swallowing balls of cocaine. The clause is about diagnosing mules when they arrive at airports, and that is why I support it. People sometimes arrive in great pain as a result of having swallowed drugs, and many subsequently die. The Dutch police told us that they had found butchered bodies in harbours because the security forces had failed to catch people coming off a plane. When they died, their bodies were butchered to get the drugs out. I am trying to show the Committee that the clause is amazingly important and that it may well save lives. That is why I support it. Thank you for your indulgence, Mr. Gale.

John Mann (Bassetlaw) (Lab): I intend to ask the Minister two specific questions about subsection (1)(a) and one about subsection (2).

My question about subsection (2) relates to ion scanners. Although I support the clause, the problem of people swallowing drugs when they think they may be arrested is small. My police have a bigger problem
 
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with flushers: those who flush drugs down the toilet. That is a common problem. On drugs raids, the first thing that the police do—I have witnessed this on several occasions—is head for the toilet to ensure that drugs are not flushed down it. The clause does not attempt to deal with that problem.

I move on to our successes. We lead the world with our technology for scanning for drugs. We supplied the equipment used in Jamaica, where every suspected cocaine-swallower leaving the country must go through ion scanners, which are supervised by British Customs and Excise staff. Are those scanners defined as X-ray equipment in this context?

Are the Government succeeding in their strategy on this issue? Information from the Hibiscus charity in Jamaica, which the Government partly funds, is that the number of drug-swallowers exiting the Caribbean for the UK has reduced by more than half in the past few years. It seems that we lead the world in some of the technologies and methodologies that we use. Will the expertise that we have built up, particularly in the Caribbean, through Customs and Excise, have a direct impact on how the police will use their powers under the clause? Will ion scanners be classified as X-ray equipment available for police use?

Caroline Flint: There are important issues relating to people who are manipulated to act as mules or who feel that that is the only option available to them because of poverty or other reasons, but the clause is designed to address intent to supply.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann) says, it is of concern that people try to dispose of drugs by swallowing them. Drug squad officers from Doncaster have told me of an occasion on which they had a house under surveillance where they knew that supply offences were taking place. They wanted to raid the property and catch the suspect—he was known to them and had been under surveillance—with drugs on him that he was going to use for supply offences. The police have become wised up to such operations, and have, on occasion, had officers not only going into the house, but checking the down pipes from toilets to ensure that they get to the drugs before they disappear. However, because the police have become much better at those sorts of raids, and are better about searching places where drugs might have been disposed of, such as rooftops and back gardens, some dealers are swallowing.

That brings us back to the debate about getting a person's consent to X-ray or scan, and the fact that an inference can be made in court if they refuse. As I said, the person might have a legitimate reason for not having an X-ray or scan. The measure primarily concerns that situation, rather than that of people being used as mules.

As my hon. Friends the hon. Members for Bassetlaw and for Bolton, South-East (Dr. Iddon) said, there has been tremendous success in Jamaica, where technology has reduced numbers. We welcome the international co-operation with the Jamaican authorities on that, as we could not have done it without their support. My hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw is right: there has been a drop of at least
 
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50 per cent. in the number of people coming through. That is important, because the longer these people have the drugs inside them—it is a long plane journey—the more they are at risk. I will check what my hon. Friend said about the use of ion scanners in this area. Obviously there could be a cost implication, because there are a whole number of places around the country in which someone could be arrested and charged. I will follow that up because, if there are opportunities to tackle that and identify drugs as technology advances, we should look at them. Identifying reasonable evidence of drugs is what the Bill is all about. I hope that will suffice for my hon. Friend at this point.

I take the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton, South-East about police intervention. Let us not forget that people in a busy airport may not be acting as mules while still involved in the supply of drugs. Someone could be detained and arrested who swallows a drug because the concourse of the airport is their patch, where they are supplying drugs. There might be a need to follow that up. There might be occasions where an airport that already has facilities to deal with the more traditional mule route could make facilities available to the police to deal with those who engage in supply activities within the airport perimeter. I take my hon. Friend's point on that.We have had an interesting debate. The clause is about detention. It is about suspects who have tried to use every trick in the book to frustrate the police in their attempts to get evidence. If they realise, given the safeguards I have outlined, that their denial—refusing X-rays or scans—will be looked at by the courts, my hope is that the clause will not necessarily lead to a huge increase of people going for X-rays and scans. It might help to reduce the police time involved by getting people to be more up front about their offending behaviour.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 5 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 6

X-rays and ultrasound scans: Northern Ireland

 
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