Clause 5 - X-rays and ultrasound scans: England and Wales
Drugs Bill
2:45 pm
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)
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 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.