Clause 12 - Attendance at initial assessment
Drugs Bill
10:45 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)
In answer to the first question, the reason why the assessor has to notify the police, rather than a police officer, is purely practical. One is basically informing them that someone has not turned up for, or has left during, an assessment. That issue might be taken up by support staff working with the police, and it is just an administrative matter. Obviously, if there is follow-up, and the offence of not taking part is applied, that would be taken up by the police officer.
It may be that a police station has someone to answer the phone. Many police stations now have support staff working with police officers to help them with the admin. For example, they might deal with calls from crime victims and people who ring up to ask what is happening to their case; they do not necessarily have to speak to the investigating officer. That is a way of providing a more effective police service, and of not tying police officers to desks unnecessarily. I am sure that the hon. Lady will agree with that. So, the measure is purely practical.
The hon. Lady raised a number of points, and if I do not cover them all, I will be happy to write to her more fully about the process. We are talking about the initial assessment or, where appropriate, a follow-up assessment. If the person does not take part, that is linked to committing an offence, and so it is important that the information is relayed to the police.
In terms of wider care plan issues, of course there are different relationships. To take what currently happens to people under the guidance of probation officers, they may be getting support for drug addiction, or other support, and may turn up for an education course or what have you. There has to be someone in the system who takes responsibility for overseeing whether the person is complying. If they are not complying, that has to be logged and reported. That does not mean that other people cannot have relationships with that individual, developed on the basis of whether they are there for drug treatment, education or training, but at the end of the day someone has to be the person in authority; otherwise, there could be chaos in the system.
It is important to recognise that the initial assessment and the follow-up is really for getting to grips with the person, and for deciding whether they want to engage in a care plan, how we develop that plan and so on. Others might have a closer developmental relationship, although in this role it is somewhat different. There could be a number of scenarios. If someone has been knocked over by a bus and cannot make the appointment, or if there were any other issues, the assessor could change the time and place. That would not prejudice the situation and the person would not be guilty of an offence. Similarly, if something else happened, another assessor might be able to take on the assessment at short notice. However, we would not want that to be too widespread. We should have expectations of people, and the arrangements should be made to work at the right time and the right place, as agreed in the first instance.