New Clause 1 — New Psychoactive Substances – Prevention and Education

Part of Psychoactive Substances Bill [Lords] – in the House of Commons at 3:30 pm on 20 January 2016.

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Photo of Andrew Gwynne Andrew Gwynne Shadow Minister (Health) 3:30, 20 January 2016

I support the Bill and its aims. Indeed, I wound up the Second Reading debate in the Chamber because Labour felt it was important to view it not just as a Home Office Bill—although that is where it is placed—but in terms of its public health aspects. As Labour’s shadow public health Minister, therefore, I have been keen to promote some of the public health issues. I also commend the work of my hon. Friend Lyn Brown, who led the Opposition in Committee and in the House today in an exemplary fashion.

I support the Bill and want to make it as good as it can be. There are several areas where it is not as strong as it ought to be, and that is why I am proud to support my hon. Friend in tabling several amendments. In particular, I want to talk about new clause 1, on PSHE, and amendment 5, on poppers, because both have an important public health aspect to them.

On new clause 1, I mentioned in an intervention that Simon Stevens, in his Five Year Forward View for the NHS, had identified £5 billion of savings that could be reinvested into the NHS as a consequence of prevention. The Government were unwise to cut £200 million from the public health budget, because that is the very kind of prevention that will not now bear fruit in year five of the Five Year Forward View, but they could redeem themselves by adopting the new clause. I have always viewed it as a weakness that we do not have statutory PSHE in this country. Many schools do it, but it is a “something else” added on to the curriculum; it is not given the focus it ought to be given.

If we are serious about tackling the whole range of health inequalities, we could start providing statutory PSHE for children from a very young age. If we are to talk about the dangers of tobacco, alcohol and drugs, and about sex and relationships, we must do it in the context of a statutory framework in all our schools. There are huge public health benefits to doing so. When the Minister comes to consider the views expressed today, he could do nothing better than read in Hansard—I know he was listening—the contribution from my hon. Friend Diana Johnson, because she got it spot on. The real benefits of having statutory PSHE in schools are clear. It would really strengthen the Bill’s aims and ambitions.

Our amendment 5 relates to poppers. In the short time I have been Labour’s shadow public health Minister, I have met lots of charities and organisations in the public health world, and many of them, including drug abuse charities, have raised many issues with me. Not one has raised poppers as an issue.

I will tell the Minister who has raised the issue of poppers with me, and that is a large number of LGBT charities and organisations. There is a public health role here. Mike Freer made some very important points, not just on the health and wellbeing of gay and lesbian people, but on some of the mental health and relationship issues surrounding what we are discussing today.

There is a wider public health issue. Many of the organisations I have met—the National AIDS Trust is one example—have told me that there is a balance of risks. Yes, some small risks are involved with alkyl nitrates, and Mr Burrowes mentioned anecdotal evidence that suggests they could cause some damage to eyesight. My advice to the Minister would be to balance the risks of that—they are very small—with the risks of contracting a sexually transmitted infection.

It has been put to me—I think there is some credence in this argument—that there are two scenarios. One is that two gay men will have protected sex with poppers, which make anal sex easier, or alternatively they will use other substances if poppers are not available. We could be talking about class A or class B drugs or alcohol, and the problem is that any of those substances, unlike poppers, runs the risk of potentially leading to unsafe sex. That, in turn, increases the risk of the contraction of HIV, Hepatitis C and a string of other sexually transmitted infections. The other point is that what we are considering is potentially discriminatory against a group of people who are doing no harm and just want to enjoy themselves in a sexual relationship.

I therefore urge the Minister to think carefully about whether the Bill’s intention is to do something in the way he wants it to be done or in the way we want it to be done. This Minister is known for common sense, and I give credit to him for that. He is straight talking and has a modicum of sense that some of his colleagues do not often display. I am being kind to the Minister, for whom I have a great deal of respect.

I simply do not understand the logic of banning poppers, then looking at the evidence and subsequently perhaps unbanning them. That would send out mixed messages. If the review comes forward with enough evidence to warrant the banning of poppers, I will support the Minister all the way. However, I am not in the job of banning things for banning’s sake only to unban them later. The Minister should apply some common sense and back our amendment 5, because that is the right approach.