Clause 3 - Drug offence searches: England and Wales
Drugs Bill
9:10 am
Ms Caroline Flint (Parliamentary Under-Secretary (reducing organised and international crime, anti drugs co-ordination and international and European issues), Home Office; Don Valley, Labour)
I look forward to you chairing today's proceedings, Mr. Illsley. I hope that we make good progress.
I shall resist the temptation to have a lengthy debate about prisons and drugs; suffice it to say that record sums are going into tackling drug addiction. That includes ensuring that we have appropriate access to treatment across the Prison Service and that we take a coherent approach from the time that someone is arrested so that they are given support if they go to prison and afterwards. That is why record resources are going into dealing with this issue.
The drug interventions programme is very much about dealing with what has been a weakness over many generations: when people with a drug problem have gone to prison, little attention has been given to their problem, and they have ended up passing through the revolving door time and again. That is why testing is important and why the process of engagement needs to start before people go to court. It needs to continue when they go to prison and—let us not forget—when they leave prison and go back into the community.
We are trying to tackle some of the problems about which the police have informed us. People may, for example, hide drugs in the cavities of their bodies and refuse to have an intimate search, which has caused the police problems. That is what lies behind the clause. The amendment would include prison officers in the definition of an ''appropriate officer''. I have looked into the matter and have had extensive discussions about whether it is right to leave prisons officers out of the clause. I have asked what happens when a prisoner, a visitor to a prison or, regrettably, somebody working in one is involved in drug activity. While they are on duty, prison officers have all the powers of a constable, including arrest. Prisoner custody officers, who are the officers at contracted-out prisons, do not have the powers of a constable, but they have a citizen's power of arrest. There is likely to be a change to the Management of Offenders and Sentencing Bill that will give prisoner custody officers the power to detain a suspected smuggler for two hours, pending the arrival of the police. That will be a helpful strengthening of their role.
If a prison officer suspects that a visitor is trying to smuggle drugs into a prison by concealment, that visitor will be stopped, arrested and detained pending the arrival of the police. The visitor will not be subjected to an intimate search at the prison, either by prison officers or by the police. The police will decide whether to release the visitor or to take him into custody, where he will be removed to a police station and processed as would any other suspect. In that situation, following the authorisation by an inspector that is covered in the clause, the suspect might be subject to an intimate search at the police station under the provisions of section 55 of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984. The clauses, if agreed, will apply in that situation. I have asked whether we are missing something—whether prison officers, having received authorisation, should be able to ask a person whether he will comply with an intimate search. The feedback has been that it is not necessary because, if that point is reached, it will be a police matter, and it should be dealt with in a police environment. However, I hope that I have made it clear that that is not to deny that prison officers and prisoner custody officers have a role in tackling the use of drugs in prison and their being brought in.