Oral Answers to Questions — Home Department – in the House of Commons at 2:30 pm on 9 June 2008.
If she will review the list of offences which trigger tests for cocaine and opiates for those in police custody.
Offences that lead to a drug test of offenders in police custody are those which have been shown to have the clearest link with class A drug misuse. These are kept under regular review. In 2007-08, under the drug interventions programme, there were some 224,000 tests for specified class A drugs, heroin and cocaine, and 38 per cent. were positive—indicating that the right people are being targeted by the programme. Since the start of the DIP, acquisitive crime has fallen by 22 per cent.
As a Greater Manchester MP, may I also express my deep condolences to the family and colleagues of the officer who died this morning?
The Minister said that 38 per cent. of those who are tested for class A drugs when in custody prove positive. Do not the huge increase in the numbers of those found to be taking those drugs and the high percentage of people who are tested show that it is time to look again at the trigger offences? We have already heard about the number of alcohol-influenced offences on our streets; does not this show that an alarming number of cases are affected by drugs, too? Surely we need to know more about how many people, and which people, are committing such crimes.
The hon. Gentleman knows about these things, and he knows that the trigger offences have been designated according to the likelihood that they are linked to drugs misuse. He will also know that although we have a list of trigger offences that automatically mean that offenders are tested for drug misuse when arrested, it is up to an inspector—or anyone above that rank in the police force—to test those people if they believe that the offence has been contributed to by drug misuse. The offences mentioned by the hon. Gentleman, such as alcohol-related offences—or, indeed, public order and violence offences—are not trigger offences, but an inspector in the custody suite can choose to test for drugs if he thinks it appropriate.
Could we have a little cross-party support on this issue? Mr. Brady is right. Would my hon. Friend the Minister support the views of the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Sir Ian Blair, on celebrity cocaine users and deplore the rather odd jobsworth response of the Director of Public Prosecutions, who said that it is very difficult to deal with those celebrities? The plain fact is that our young people should see celebrity drug users—the Kate Mosses, Amy Winehouses and Notting Hill millionaires at their dinner parties—as an example not to be followed. Internationally, if we want to reduce supply we have to reduce demand. The Metropolitan Police Commissioner is right and the DPP is wrong.
Of course, people who act as role models for young people and others have to accept the responsibility that they have. One would hope that that applied to the people to whom the Metropolitan Police Commissioner referred. On cocaine in general, class A drug use has remained stable overall. The problem that we have had is the use not of crack cocaine but of powder cocaine, which is the drug that the commissioner was referring to.
One way we are trying to tackle the problem is a campaign that I recently launched with the Colombian President, which I know that my right hon. Friend knows about. It is a shared responsibility campaign so that those who take powder cocaine, believing that their doing so has no effect on anybody else, can reflect on the effect that it has not only on crime in their areas but on Colombia. It wrecks that country and prevents it from moving forward in the way the Government would wish. Perhaps those who take cocaine should reflect on the impact on Colombia as well as on their communities.
Equally worrying is the presence of drugs in prison. Will the Minister work with the Justice Secretary to see what steps can be taken to prevent the entry of drugs into prisons? I did a murder case some four years ago and the defendant was high on heroin throughout the proceedings, which was an extraordinary state of affairs since he was in custody.
Of course it is important that the Home Office works with the Secretary of State for Justice to deal with the issues caused by drugs in prison. The right hon. and learned Gentleman makes an important point. There have been a number of policy developments, the amount of money has increased, and so on. The right hon. and learned Gentleman will agree that one aspect of dealing with the matter is that we should ensure not only that we deal with the needs of people with a substance misuse problem while they are in prison, but that they have a proper care plan in place when they are released.