The hon. Member for Knowsley, North (Mr. Howarth) is absolutely right to sing the praises of drug treatment as an alternative to prison and to say that there should be such treatment in prison, for all the reasons that he set out. However, he was also right to predict that I would say that the new clause was unnecessary, for the very simple reason that schedule 1A to the Powers of the Criminal Courts Act 1973, supported by the Criminal Justice Act 1991, provides all the necessary legislation to give courts the power to pass community sentences that are conditional upon following drug treatment. It is all there and nothing more needs to be added to the statute book.

There are many examples. The most significant is in Plymouth, where the Devon probation service is running a drug assessment and stabilisation programme. If the hon. Gentleman has not already done so, I recommend that he should see it. The probation service has purchased 100 places on a drug treatment programme. When I visited it, 94 of those places were taken up by individuals who had not gone to prison, but who had been given a community sentence, with drug treatment provided immediately—hence the necessity to purchase those places—by the local community drug service.

The scheme has proved successful. Very few have dropped out and breached their community sentence. It appeared that all those who were on the programme were not simply avoiding prison, but wanted to get off drugs and had been offered an opportunity to do so. Therefore, they had a dual motive.

As I said, the legislation is already in place. We have to persuade the courts, the police, probation and health services and other drug treatment providers to get together in such a way that the courts would have the confidence to say that although certain individuals would normally be sent to prison, because they appeared willing to follow a drug treatment programme, society would be better served if they stayed out of prison. Those individuals would probably reduce their offending or eradicate it altogether and have a good chance of remaining off drugs. We want to encourage that. All the drug action teams around the country should be encouraging exactly those arrangements between the courts, the probation service and local drag treatment, perhaps through local health authorities. I make that point whenever I visit drug action teams.

I do not entirely understand a number of points in the new clause. For example, the hon. Gentleman proposes that only those who have been involved with class A drugs should receive the sentence envisaged in the new clause. However, when not injected, amphetamines are class B drugs, so an entire category of drug users who, according to some surveys, account for some 30 per cent. of local offenders, would be excluded. There are a number of reasons why the new clause is unsatisfactory, but it is particularly unsatisfactory because the relevant legislation is already on the statute book.

The hon. Gentleman rightly says that drug treatment should be available in prisons and proposes that courts should be able to demand some assessment of what drug treatment is available. That certainly should not be a major part of sentencing policy. Sentencing should be performed on the basis of the seriousness of the crime. It is up to the Prison Service to decide how to allocate prisoners and where they should be treated.

The hon. Gentleman may think that the new clause would stimulate the provision of more drug treatment in prisons, but there has already been great progress. There are now between 50 and 60 schemes in prisons. He mentioned one of the schemes, at Downview. I visited one of its sister schemes, at Pentonville, which is also run on the 12-steps basis by the Rehabilitation of Addicted Prisoners Trust—although, as he said, it was previously known as the Addictive Diseases Trust. Those prisoners—some of whom have been taking drugs for years, literally in and out of prison—seem to have the expectation of getting off drugs. Such schemes should be encouraged.

As I said, there has been an enormous growth in the number and variety of drug treatment schemes offered in prisons. Treatment has been stimulated further by mandatory drug testing in prisons. However, it is not necessarily possible to accelerate further the process. We must find drug treatment schemes that are accepted by staff and, ultimately, by prisoners—because prisoners who have drug treatment or who enter drug-free wings are essentially volunteers. That process is already happening.

I do not want to sound complacent, because for years there was very little progress on drug treatment in prisons. We witnessed the ridiculous spectacle of people who may not have been drug users entering prison, but who came out, typically, as heroin addicts. The growth in treatment schemes is welcome.

In his speech, the hon. Gentleman made a point that he has already made in Committee and elsewhere, about the apparent switch from cannabis use to heroin and other opiate use in prisons. As he said, according to the best figures available, opiate use is now at 7 or 8 per cent. Some of the increase may be due—I believe that it is a misconception—to prisoners' belief that it is easier to get away with opiate use. The figures are skewed also because one would have to be an extremely heavy cannabis user to reach the 28-day mark mentioned by the hon. Gentleman. It is likely that the trend has been affected more by the unfortunate fact that there is a great deal of cheap heroin around.