Examination of Witnesses (Questions 480
- 499)
TUESDAY 1 DECEMBER 2009
MARIA EAGLE
MP AND MR
IAN POREE
Q480 Mrs Dean: Regarding the figures
that you are going to let us have, the percentages are very interesting
and we need those but what we could also do with is the actual
figures of people who are going into treatment throughout the
National Offender Management Service, the numbers who are completing
it and also the success rate. If we could have that in some detail
that would be helpful.
Maria Eagle: You can certainly
have that in some detail, we will send you the tables. I can give
you the headline figures if that would be helpful. The overall
completion rate for accredited drug treatment programmes commenced
in prison is 74%, the completion rate for higher intensity things
like therapeutic communities and 12-step programmes is slightly
lower, as you might imagine, 50% and 62%, and the completion rate
for drug rehabilitation requirements in the community has gone
up to 47% from 28% back in 2003.
Q481 Gwyn Prosser: Minister, there
was a clear pledge in the 2008 drugs strategy covering the issues
you have just been discussing with Mr Davies, that is recognising
that there is a need to manage better offenders during the time
of transition between custody and the community. You have spelt
out about half a dozen or more different programmes that are in
place, but how confident are you that at that vulnerable time
when someone is released after a short prison term—and by
your own admission you would not have had much time to correct
matters in that time—that those ex-prisoners are getting
the sort of drug treatment they actually need?
Maria Eagle: More confident than
I would have been if you had asked me a few years ago and that
is partly because we have been making up the deficit that we have
had in the past around clinical treatment. The integrated drug
treatment system which has been extended across the entire prison
estate now makes arrangements for much better clinical handling
inside—equivalent to clinical handling you get outside—so
I am much more confident that through-care means that people can
access the appropriate levels of treatment that work for them,
given their own particular circumstances, their drug misuse and
dependency problem that is individualised, they can do it whether
inside or outside prison. I am much more confident now than I
would have been a few years ago because the Health Service now
in charge of drug treatment in prisons has raised the game in
prison to the level at which you saw it outside prison.
Q482 Gwyn Prosser: Briefly, on this
issue of short sentences and the discussion you have just had
there is a growing pressure to actually abandon short sentences,
is there not, in particular with regard to women for some other
reasons? What is your view of that?
Maria Eagle: I am wary of it although
I am not saying that there are not some merits to having longer
sentences in terms of effectiveness.
Q483 Gwyn Prosser: I am not talking
about extending someone's sentence in order to give them drug
treatment, I am talking about actually abandoning short sentences.
Maria Eagle: I would have to have
more of an understanding of what you mean by that because there
would be a worry about courts and magistrates simply up tariffing.
There are some unintended consequences to that. I am not saying
it should not be examined but there are some unintended consequences.
Q484 Gwyn Prosser: I am talking about
the criminal justice system adjusting so that sentences of two
months, three months, six months, nine months are just abandoned
and other forms of community enforcement are put in their place.
Maria Eagle: Or alternatively
everybody gets a 12 months plus sentence, which is not necessarily
what you might want.
Q485 Chairman: What is the answer
to Mr Prosser's question because it relates to Mr Davies' question?
What you told this Committee is that there is a large range of
programmes in prison. The Committee is getting the impression
from you that you think there ought to be an abandonment of shorter
sentences, that they should have longer sentences so they can
benefit from this wonderful treatment they get in prison.
Maria Eagle: No, that would not
be an accurate reflection of my own views on this or the Government's
views. The thing that I perhaps have not got across fully enough
to make the Committee understand my position is that the equivalence
of treatment and the through-care we have now from outside prison
into prison and from inside prison back outside the prison into
the community is such that I believe the treatment capacity is
there, and that people can access it whether they are inside or
outside in the community. I do not believe that just ending short
sentences and putting people into prison for longer would make
us more successful at dealing with people's drug dependency problems.
Chairman: Thank you, that is the point
we wanted.
Q486 Mr Winnick: Minister, is there
any evidence that making treatment a condition of bail or a condition
of sentence is more effective than otherwise?
Maria Eagle: I do not know of
any evidence that it is more effective but it can be effective.
In part, of course, prisons do provide an opportunity for drug
misusers to address drug misuse in a very structured environment
and perhaps their lives were not so structured outside of prison,
so for some people that helps, but I do not think I am aware of
evidence that shows that it is better.
Q487 Chairman: On the question of
bail and bail hostels and in respect of the weekend's reports
of somebody being murdered in one of your bail hostels which was
run by the firm ClearSprings, is there going to be an inquiry
into that?
Maria Eagle: There has been an
internal inquiry into the failings that led to that particular
incident and, as a result, in terms of the contract with ClearSprings
there have been some enforcement and rectification arrangements
put into place to make sure that the failings that ClearSprings
demonstrated in that particular instance are very unlikely to
be repeated.
Q488 Chairman: They are keeping their
contract, you are satisfied that they can carry on doing their
job effectively?
Maria Eagle: In fact the contract
is being re-competed in the not too distant future so that, of
course, will be taken into account, the quality of the work that
they manage to produce.
Chairman: Thank you for clarifying that.
Q489 Mr Streeter: Minister, I want
to talk about sentencing in a moment, if I may, but first of all
is it part of the Home Office's responsibility to reduce or try
and reduce the number of people in this country taking cocaine?
Maria Eagle: I am not a Home Office
minister, I am from the Ministry of Justice. My job is to try
and look after people once they are sent into the prison system.
Q490 Chairman: Does that mean you
do not talk to the ministers at the Home Office and say "I
am the Minster for Justice so it is nothing to do with me"?
Maria Eagle: That is not quite
what I said, Chairman. I did not say it was nothing to do with
me.
Q491 Mr Streeter: Can I put my question
again? Is it part of the Government's responsibility to try and
reduce the number of people taking cocaine in this country?
Maria Eagle: To the extent that
we are committed to reducing reoffending, and we are, that has
got to be a key part of it.
Q492 Mr Streeter: This is certainly
not an attempt to trip you up. It has come to our attention as
a Committee that for every gram of cocaine taken in this country
an acre or a hectare of rainforest has to be destroyed so that
the drugs can be grown in Colombia or other parts of Latin America.
Is that not an important message that we could be getting across
and could you look into that to see whether the Government could
take a lead in that because a lot of the "luvvy" types
who take cocaine are not aware of that. They want to save the
planet, we hear about that quite a lot, but this would challenge
them in their cocaine use.
Maria Eagle: I am happy to take
that away and come back to the Committee with some response to
that.
Q493 Mr Streeter: It is a serious
point; thank you. Drugs mules that we have been looking at, both
in Schipol and in Heathrow, people who swallow cocaine in pellets
to bring it into this country, what kind of sentences are usually
handed down to them and why do you think they have not been more
effective in stopping people from doing this dreadful thing?
Maria Eagle: They are being quite
effective partly because they are deterrent sentences that are
handed out for that kind of behaviour. Many of these people are
women, of course.
Q494 Mr Streeter: Yes.
Maria Eagle: But not only. There
are deterrent sentences handed out and, again, we could provide
the Committee with statistics on this. It is always difficult
when it is an illegal trade to be clear how many of these people
you are actually catching and so there are always caveats around
statistics about whether the incidence is going up or down, but
we believe that from many of these places the incidence is going
down, in part because we are doing a lot of work in the countries
concerned and part also because of the deterrent sentences that
are then handed down and have been publicised better in the countries
of origin.
Q495 Mrs Dean: Could one of the other
messages that we try to get over to recreational users, particularly
celebrities, be the fact that the mules are actually putting their
own lives at risk in transporting the cocaine into this country
and other countries for those recreational users to take?
Maria Eagle: Yes, I will certainly
take that point away and respond to the Committee on that as well
once I have consulted my colleagues.
Q496 Bob Russell: Minister, this
is the Darlington question which we are finishing with because
the Chairman wanted to save the best to last and I did have a
particular interest in Darlington, you will appreciate that. Does
the Government support the roll-out of the pilot project in Darlington
to prescribe heroin to some heroin addicts on the NHS?
Maria Eagle: That piece of research,
which has got relatively small numbers but has had quite interestingly
positive results, was funded by Home Office and Department of
Health money and Committee Members will have seen what the Secretary
of State for Justice had to say about it in his piece reported
in the newspapers. It is an interesting piece of research but
we would like to look further at it.
Q497 Bob Russell: In addition to
trend-setting Darlington it is also happening apparently in London
and Brighton, so we have got three sophisticated communities where
this is being trialled. I was wondering whether perhaps we might
have a report at some stage on its success or otherwise.
Maria Eagle: I am sure we will
because these trials are always evaluated and we do believe in
evidence-based policymaking when it comes to this and other issues,
so the outcomes of these relatively small-scale pilots at present
will need to be taken into account in policy development.
Q498 Bob Russell: Just as a slight
addition to that question, if medical pilots currently underway
were to identify an effective drug replacement for cocaine, would
the Government support the introduction of a methadone equivalent
programme for cocaine use, and perhaps we could have a pilot in
Darlington on that as well?
Maria Eagle: At present my understanding,
Mr Russell, is that there is no such recognised effective alternative
and so we are speculating about whether or not one might be found
in the future. Clearly it is harder to deal with cocaine and getting
people off cocaine than sedative drugs for that very reason, but
if one such were to be found we would want to look at what the
implications of that were. My understanding at present is that
there is not one and, therefore, it is speculative to consider
it.
Q499 Chairman: You have not had any
contact with the previous drugs czar—your department.
Maria Eagle: I would have to check
on what contact there might have been, Chairman, and come back
to you in respect of that. I do not want to mislead the Committee
but I am not aware of it off the top of my head.
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