Clause 1 - Aggravated supply of controlled drug
Drugs Bill
9:10 am
Mrs Cheryl Gillan (Shadow Minister, Home Affairs; Chesham and Amersham, Conservative)
The hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Carmichael) moved his amendment extremely well, and I have few quibbles with what he has said to date. It cannot have escaped the Committee's notice that many amendments have been tabled to the clause. However, they are mostly probing amendments to try to get at the Government's intentions and, as I said, to try and strengthen the Bill.
The Government, in subsection (1), are seeking to amend section 4 of the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 and apply these new provisions if an adult is committing the offence in the vicinity of a school. Amendment No. 28, which stands in the names of my hon. Friend the Member for Reigate (Mr. Blunt) and myself, replaces the age of 18 with the age of criminal responsibility, in a similar fashion to amendment No. 9. Amendment No. 30 seeks to add another subsection to catch anyone hoping to supply drugs to children. I appreciate the imperfection of the drafting at this stage; it is only intended to point us in the right direction and to give the Minister the opportunity to make any alterations that she sees fit.
The way in which drugs are permeating through our society is alarming. It seems that children are taking drugs at younger and younger ages and being exposed to the drug culture. Few of us who saw a recent television report on drug-taking in London would have been anything other than horrified to see that concealed cameras had captured a child of about three, who was sitting in the passenger seat of a car, with the CCTV camera seeing in through the windscreen. She was seated next to an adult, alleged to be the child's mother, in the driver's seat, while the mother was taking crack cocaine. The child was helping her by using the lighter, and at one stage tried further to help but was pushed to one side. For prime-time television, I thought that that was an alarming but salutary lesson to us all of the younger and younger age groups that are being exposed to regular drug taking.
According to statistics from Home Office research on drugs, all sources confirm that the use of drugs is widespread among young people and that the average age of first drug use is falling, quite dramatically. One in 12 of all 12-year-olds has tried drugs at least once, as have one in three 14-year-olds and two in five 16-year-olds.
Even the age of the couriers has reached a point that is almost unbelievable. When I was reading some of the background information on dealing in the United Kingdom, I came across an horrendous story of an event in Gloucestershire that the police witnessed. The police found that children as young as four were being used to deliver packets of heroin. They watched a suspect's four-year-old daughter walk out of the family home clutching a bag and leave it on the ground for an addict. Subsequently, the user came to pick up the bag and the dealer met the user some time later to pick up his cash.
The tough stance of the police on street dealing in the area in question had made it increasingly difficult for drug pushers to operate in public, so the pushers immediately became much more devious in transacting their illegal business. Police in Gloucestershire say that such practices are now quite a habit and that youngsters of about 12 or 13 are frequently used to carry drugs, often by their parents. The police have also found increasing instances of children as young as four or five being used in that fashion, although they admit that that is rare.
I suppose that using children in that way is common sense, because if the police are more successful in an area, it is one way for the dealer to keep the drugs close to him and know that they are safe. At the same time, however, he can deny that they came from him, and if the drugs are found on a child, one defence, for example, would be to say that the child had just picked them up on the street.
With younger and younger children being used as couriers and exposed to drugs, it follows that younger and younger children will potentially be dealing in drugs as well. In order to send out the message that anyone, of any age, dealing drugs in the vicinity of a school will not be tolerated, I would like the Minister to say why she did not make the provisions in the Bill apply to any dealer who had, for example, attained the age of criminal responsibility.
I asked the Minister about some statistics, which, like the Bill, use the cut-off of 18 years. I asked how many people under 18 had been arrested for possessing or selling class A drugs in each of the past seven years. Sadly, she could not tell me, because that is not the basis for the Home Office statistics. I have only the figures from its drugs seizure and offenders' table for 2001 and 2002, and it would be helpful if she could make available the statistics for 2003 and, if possible, 2004. That aside, the table, which uses 17 as the cut-off, shows that the number of under-17s found guilty, cautioned or given a fiscal fine for unlawful possession rose from 7,870 in 2001 to a massive 9,300 in 2002. The number who were in possession of drugs with intent to supply unlawfully rose from 240 in 2001 to 250 in 2002. Likewise, the number dealt with for unlawful supply rose from 230 to 260 between those two years.
I appreciate that the increases in the last two categories are not remarkable, but they are increases and it would be interesting to see whether the trend is followed through in 2003 and 2004. The dramatic increase, however, has been in the number of under-17s found to be in unlawful possession of drugs. Given that the Minister is using 17 as the cut-off age in the statistics, will she explain either why has she chosen 18 in the Bill or why the Home Office does not collect statistics based on the 18 cut-off?
I agree with the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland that it would not be sensible to change the age for the courier, but the amendments were devices to initiate debate, and it is quite understandable to raise the issue. I hope, however, that the Minister will highlight her reasons for choosing 18 and for not amending the Bill to reduce the age, if that is what she chooses to do.