Clause 7 - Testing for presence of class A drugs

Part of Drugs Bill – in a Public Bill Committee at 4:15 pm on 1 February 2005.

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Photo of Caroline Flint Caroline Flint Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Home Office) 4:15, 1 February 2005

As I said, heroin and crack cocaine are the specified class A drugs for which people are tested upon charge. All that we are doing is moving the testing process for those drugs to arrest stage instead of charge stage. In that respect, there is no change. As I said in the previous debate, those drugs are specified because of the NEW-ADAM survey, which examined the illegal income of arrestees, and found that 85 per cent. was generated by users of heroin and crack cocaine. I do not want to revisit that argument.

We are not doing anything different, except to move the bar to arrest stage. Generally, there has been agreement with what we are doing at charge stage, so why are we moving it to arrest stage? Through testing on charge, we have had the opportunity to monitor and consider the practice and impact of arresting on charge.

First, it has proved the initial point about drugs being linked to certain groups of crime. Secondly, it has indicated what we already knew from other evidence—it has been backed up by the implementation of those procedures—that large numbers of people have a class A drugs problem as specified by statutory instrument under the Criminal Justice and Court Services Act 2000. Thirdly, as my hon. Friend rightly said, DrugScope, Turning Point and Transform have pointed out that it is also to do with the process of engagement with individuals. I absolutely agree: testing is one part of the process, but the engagement of individuals is also important.

I wish now to address a couple of other matters. One of the issues raised by the police and arrest referral workers now working in that field—it has been referred to by a number of hon. Members—is that individuals who are seriously addicted to drugs are often chaotic in their use of drugs, which creates all sorts of problems in the custody suite at the police station.

One of the problems is that hours can often be lost when waiting to test on charge. The police and arrest referral workers both say that if they could test earlier they could start engaging the person earlier. That is particularly true of heroin addicts. When they are arrested, the police feel that they should be tested in order to ascertain whether there is a link between the   drug and the reason for the arrest; they want to engage the addicts in such a way that they can tell the addicts what is available.

Although more needs to be done, I am pleased to say that the growth in access to rapid prescribing in our drug intervention programmes has been a huge success. In the past 18 months, the waiting times came down, and in some places the turnaround time for that group is very quick. That is important, because we must find a way to capture such people's attention. We need to tell them that they can have a substitute and therefore do not need to leave the police station to get on the street for the next fix.