Precisely. Then let us do something about it. That is what I am arguing for.

The Minister should focus on new clause 13, because it is very important. With so many offences being committed by people under the influence of alcohol or drugs, why do we not have a range of treatments available in every prison in Britain? The Minister must know as well as I do that, often, people with a history of drug or alcohol abuse are discharged from prison with nowhere to go. The first decision that they have to make is whether to turn left or right when they get outside the prison gate.

I shall tell the Minister a true story drawn from my experience as a probation officer. I know that similar situations occur today. John Healey wrote a book on alcohol abuse, called "The Grass Arena", which was then made into a BBC 2 film that won an award at the Edinburgh festival. He was in and out of prison over and over. At that time—the 1970s—only limited alcohol abuse programmes were available in prison, but at least we had a significant number of programmes outside prison. Those programmes—or at least those funded by public expenditure—have been reduced by the Government. We tried to fit an offender coming out of prison into one of those programmes so that, even if they had accommodation and job problems, they had somewhere to go.

On one of the occasions related in his book, which is one of the most powerful books written about a vagrant alcoholic and how to get off drink—perhaps the Minister ought to read it to understand the problem—John Healey wrote to me from prison. I had spoken in court, suggesting that he should have a prison sentence to keep him there until the new year so that I could then get him into the Lee clinic in Oxfordshire, which provided one of the best treatment programmes for alcoholics.

However, the court and I had miscalculated the remission period. The result was that I suddenly got a desperate letter from Mr. Healey, saying that he would be released on Christmas eve. We had nowhere to put him and no treatment facilities. He had had no treatment for alcohol abuse during his three months in prison. At that time, the best that a prisoner could get was an offer of a place on the alcohol abuse programme.

I went to see the prison governor, who rightly pointed out that he could not keep Mr. Healey in prison until the new year. The only way to get round the problem, as the governor suggested, was for Mr. Healey to commit a minor offence in prison, so that the governor could give him an extra seven days and keep him in until the new year. Mr. Healey wanted to be kept in so that he could take advantage of the Lee clinic programme.

That was a deeply unsatisfactory solution, so we trawled through Mr. Healey's many previous convictions, among which was an unpaid fine. I went back to the court and asked the magistrate to give seven days in lieu of that unpaid fine. The magistrate did so and we kept John Healey in prison until 2 January.

Such situations still occur. I am not asking for a grand scheme to keep people in prison beyond the court's sentence, but if the appropriate treatment facilities were available in prison, we would be able to spot the problem long before it arose, not a week or two before the discharge date.

There is no coherent overall strategy on drug or alcohol treatment in prison, but drugs and alcohol are two of the major causes—if not the major causes—of crime in Britain. For the Minister to say that we already have enough programmes in place is unadulterated nonsense. Those programmes are not there. People are being discharged without any treatment.

Drug abuse and alcohol abuse are notoriously difficult to treat in or out of prison. It is no good just saying that we know that a particular offender has a drug or alcohol problem, so we should encourage them to join Alcoholics Anonymous or another programme. The problem needs to be worked on over a long period, perhaps over several prison sentences.

The Minister ought to recognise that new clause 13 offers an opportunity to rethink the way in which we address problems concerning addiction in our prisons—indeed, the way in which we address an abuse of a substance, be it alcohol or drugs, which leads to repeated patterns of offending. We ought to consider the matter again, so that we can direct a person to an appropriate treatment regime in prison.

Until we reach the stage where, after the sentencing procedure and after a person has been sentenced to imprisonment, we are able to try one type of regime for one person and recognise that we might have to try a number of different treatment programmes or patterns for a particular individual—instead of relying on one and giving up if it fails—nobody, but nobody, can say that we are taking the problem seriously.

The Government are yet again about pretending that they are doing something about crime while literally ignoring all its causes. As long as they go on doing that, they will continue to preside over a disastrous increase in crime—

It being Ten o'clock, the debate stood adjourned.

Debate to be resumed tomorrow.