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Mr. Carmichael: I should first apologise to the Committee for being unable to remain here beyond 5.15 pm—I will not hear the Minister's response and I will not be present at the conclusion of the Committee's business. Therefore, without incurring your wrath, Mr. Gale, I shall stray just for a second and express my gratitude to you and Mr. Illsley, other members of the Committee, officials and others who have made our deliberations so smooth and, for the most part, enjoyable if not always exciting.
The hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham was right to draw parallels between khat and magic mushrooms—my thinking is informed by the same parallels. My argument in relation to magic mushrooms is that the classification of drugs is due a review. For us in this Committee to classify khat in this way without proper consultation would not be particularly helpful. For that reason, I fear that there is an element in this of making policy on the hoof, so I am not minded to support the new clause.
I was struck by the description that the hon. Lady gave of the effects of khat—from my past life as a director of a women's refuge in Aberdeenshire, I recognised them as being not very different from those of alcohol. When we think about the classification of drugs, and the way in which we treat them, we have to look at them in the round, rather than considering just those that we currently regard as being controlled.
Mrs. Gillan: The fundamental difference is that we know the problem that this drug causes and we have the opportunity to place it in the same category as that in which the Minister has placed magic mushrooms. Why lose the opportunity at this stage? It seems logical to me.
Mr. Carmichael: It would not be wise for us simply to do that at the end of the Committee stage, without the proper consultation or the proper advice from the relevant Government bodies. We shall have to agree to differ on that point.
With regard to the new clause seeking the reclassification of cannabis as a class B drug, as I indicated earlier, I was not particularly impressed—although my party supported it—with the reclassification to class C. Reclassifying it along with things such as anabolic steroids and painkillers, and tranquilisers such as diazepam and temazepam was not helpful and I feared that it would cause confusion. I should bring to the Minister's attention the words of Sheriff Douglas Cusine, sitting in Aberdeen Sheriff court last Friday. He said—I am quoting from memory; I do not have it in front of me—that he found it difficult to see exactly what the Government sought to achieve with that reclassification. In his view it had led to significant confusion among people who were appearing before him in a very busy court. The sheriff is an eminently sensible, well qualified lawyer, who, in an earlier incarnation, had the misfortune to
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try to teach me conveyancing when he was Professor Cusine. Otherwise, he is a man to whom the Government should be prepared to listen.
Given the danger of confusion, I would not be minded to support the hon. Lady's amendment. To reclassify a reclassified drug would merely heap confusion on top of confusion. I must stress again that, rather than mucking around with categories that are no longer fit for purpose, we should look at classification as a whole.
Mr. Eric Joyce (Falkirk, West) (Lab): I listened with interest to what the hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham had to say on new clause 4. On one level, much of it was simple common sense. She was right about the effect on users of khat and cannabis. However, that the purpose of a classification system is to make it clear that there are different grades. If we were to upgrade both those drugs back up to B, it would create additional confusion. There are three levels: we understand that class A drugs are very serious, B is a bit less and C is a bit less again. It would send out the wrong signals to change it the other way. The three grades work well.
It is also important to say that the drug of choice of most older adults, probably most of us here, is alcohol. The abuse of alcohol creates far more trouble in our high streets and our homes than does the use of khat or cannabis. If we think about the things that take up police time, alcohol abuse takes up far more police time and leads to far more offences than khat or cannabis. The latter tend to keep people relatively quiet. Very few people commit violent offences when they are taking khat or cannabis.
5.15 pm
Mr. Tom Harris (Glasgow, Cathcart) (Lab): In the spirit of helpfulness, does my hon. Friend believe that we should classify alcohol as category B?
Mr. Joyce: I would be very reluctant to classify alcohol as category B.
This debate goes on when we talk about how we should classify any type of drug. Ultimately, one of the most serious drugs is one that we tolerate enormously in society—everyone is this Room uses it, in moderation, of course—and it is alcohol.
The hon. Lady mentioned the Police Federation and its view that the policy would lead to confusion. My instinct would be that the Police Federation would welcome any policy that would enable them to direct the resources appropriately towards the use of alcohol, which leads to other offences. I suspect that the net effect of getting it right would be not just to reduce the abuse of alcohol and drugs, but to reduce the total number of offences in the high street, in our homes and in all our communities.
I cannot remember the figures off the top of my head, but I believe that there has been a substantial net gain in terms of thousand man and woman hours that police officers saved by directing efforts properly towards far more serious and important offences. That is not to say that we should be casual about any kind of drug abuse, but we want to direct the police to the more serious offences. I am thinking about the
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kind of thing that I see when I walk about my constituency on a Friday or Saturday evening downtown. It is alcohol that causes most of those offences.
I am thinking not only about the abuse of alcohol but about the offences that lead on from it. A couple of months ago I was burgled by some guy who just happened to be walking past my house. He climbed in through the front window and thought that it would be a good idea to steal a few things from the living room and then to walk out of the front door. He was drunk, and I had left the front window off the latch. That is the kind of thing that people will do when they are high and excited. Alcohol does that. Young men are much more likely to get into fights and to commit violent offences when they are drunk late on a Saturday night or early on a Sunday morning.
I believe that the classification system that we have is right. I recognise that the abuse of any drug is a bad thing, but the particular drug that concerns me is the drug that causes violence on the high street and causes far more serious offences than people using khat and cannabis. New clause 4 is therefore a bad idea.
Mr. Bellingham: I support my hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham. I do not want to detain the Committee for very long, so I will not refer to new clause 1, but I want to say a quick word about new clause 4 and the reclassification of cannabis. I agree entirely with my hon. Friend. She made it quite clear that the main concern is about what signal that sends to the wider community. In the Government's document ''Tackling drugs. Changing lives'', on page 9, under the heading ''Reducing availability: putting drug dealers out of business'', there is a big tick next to a paragraph that states that the Government have been:
''Focusing efforts against Class A drugs by reclassifying cannabis. Arrests for cannabis possession have fallen by 30 per cent. since reclassification, enabling police time to be released to deal with Class A drugs.''
It does not give any evidence that that has been achieved; it is simply a general statement. I would question—
Mr. Michael Clapham (Barnsley, West and Penistone) (Lab): Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Bellingham: I wish to make progress.
My hon. Friend referred to what has been going on in the constituency of the hon. Member for Vauxhall (Kate Hoey)—the so-called Lambeth experiment. I have spoken to police officers in Vauxhall and Lambeth who have made it absolutely clear that they are extremely unhappy about what has been going on, especially in Brixton, where there has been a proliferation of street dealers who are using the reclassification of cannabis as a Trojan horse to peddle more hard drugs. That is the main concern and it is a great pity that the Government have not looked very carefully at what has been going on in Lambeth and Brixton. Why have they not done a proper assessment and analysis of what has been going on? Why have they not listened to what the Police Federation has been saying?
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I find it interesting that the new Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Sir Ian Blair, said the other day that he would bear down very hard on middle class cocaine parties. He made no mention at all of cannabis. The recent report by the Royal College of Physicians makes it clear that persistent and regular cannabis use can inflict substantial damage, including damage to the brain. Youngsters, at a time when their brains are developing, are particularly vulnerable to that.
Caroline Flint: The hon. Gentleman is right that cannabis is harmful, but does he not accept that cocaine is a far more serious drug? The commissioner is quite right, and I am sure that the Royal College of Physicians would also say that cocaine has an even greater impact on the health of the individual. Does the hon. Gentleman agree with that?
Mr. Bellingham: I entirely agree, but that is not really the argument. The question is: should the Government have reclassified cannabis? Have they sent the right signal in doing so? Have resources been refocused and redeployed in a way that enables the police and the Government to bear down on hard drugs? I am not convinced about that, but I am convinced that the wrong signals are being sent.
I am convinced that a lot of youngsters are confused. I have spoken to a lot of teachers and youth groups in my constituency, people who work in drug treatment and members of the primary care trust. They are also concerned that the signal being sent to recreational cannabis users is that it is okay to smoke cannabis, as it has been reclassified. People are confused and the police are confused. I would like far more analysis of those areas where we know a problem exists and where there has been a focus on that problem but no proper analysis.
On that basis, I support my hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham, who spoke to the new clause extremely competently. I hope that we will have a vote on it and that it will be the start of a campaign for the reclassification to be reversed.
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