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Column Number: 833
Standing Committee B
Thursday 6 February 2003
(Morning)
[Mr. Eric Illsley in the Chair]
9.10 am
Clause 144 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 145
Pre-sentence drug testing
Mr. David Heath (Somerton and Frome): I beg to move amendment No. 652, in
clause 145, page 81, line 11, leave out '14' and insert '18'.
We move on to the extension of pre-sentence drug testing to people aged between 14 and 18. The clause opens up some serious questions about the Government's view of how young people are best treated for drug addiction or potential drug addiction. That extension goes beyond existing arrangements for intervention and appropriate treatment for youngsters in that age group. There is no obvious reason why it should be extended to what is effectively a criminal sanction, and it certainly will be a criminal sanction if 14 and 15-year-olds refuse to accept compulsory testing under such circumstances.
It is not clear that a treatment regime will be prescribed as a result, other than the sanctions imposed through sentencing. Many people feel that the right treatment at that stage cannot be given through a sentencing process, but that it can be achieved only through a health process. We need to ensure that if young people in that age group have a difficulty with substances, they are given effective treatment rather than having sanctions imposed on them.
It is not clear whether the rights of the child, as prescribed under the United Nations convention, are circumscribed in any way. We must ask whether the Government have a clear view of an age of majority in that area. I find it confusing that so many ages are prescribed in different parts of the Bill and in other legislation that have a level of responsibility commensurate with adulthood. I cannot see a coherent rationale behind the proposal, and the Government have adduced no arguments for it.
We believe that what is appropriate for a 14-year-old is not appropriate for an adult. Even with the accelerating growth in maturity of young people, and their increasing predilection in some circumstances to such addictions, there is still a difference between childhood and adulthood. I do not understand where the Government are coming from; the way in which they discriminate between children and adults shows muddled thinking.
By extending the drug testing provisions and creating another offence for which children can be punished, either by fine or by imprisonment, we risk adding yet another criminal sanction. I will be plain
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about it: that is not appropriate. The Minister must explain why he thinks that it is appropriate.
Finally, the provision provides scope for discrimination between the young person who has experimented once and is found to test positive and the young person who has a problem with the continuous addictive use of a banned substance. That discrimination should be dealt with.
I would be much happier if there were a proper programme of treatment for young people who were found to have a drugs problem that was one of the contributing factors to their involvement in other offences. I do not see that in the Government's proposals; I see simply a regime that may lay an additional level of criminality on a young person without the proper remedy to help them out of a life of addiction. The lack of therapeutic effect of what is proposed in subsection (1) and the simple assertion that it is a path worth following mean that I find it difficult to support the Government's proposals.
Mr. Graham Allen (Nottingham, North): Good morning, Mr. Illsley. What a joy it must be to be the Member of Parliament for Somerton and Frome. There, up to the age of 18 girls sport pigtails and boys go about in short trousers, school cap skew-whiff, carrying their catapult in their back pocket. Sadly, it is not quite like that in Nottingham, North, where some are hardened offenders by the age of 18. It will not surprise the hon. Gentleman nor the Minister that I do not consider the 18 of the amendment or the 14 of the clause to be appropriate—I will not detain the Committee by rehearsing the arguments. If someone is arrested and tried and is awaiting sentence, the age of 10 is appropriate for offenders who will be on class A drugs. This is not smoking behind the bike sheds in a ''Just William'' story; this is people whose life will be completely wrecked. We are talking about people who engage in criminality, probably for the rest of their life, to feed their habit. It will help those people to get hold of them at the earliest possible age. I fully appreciate the hon. Gentleman's sentiment, but he is not helping those young people by helping them to avoid proper drugs testing at the appropriate time.
The Minister very kindly said in an earlier debate that the Department was in touch with the Nottinghamshire police about the issue. At the time, I raised the possibility that since the Secretary of State has reserved powers in this matter, he might consider a pilot scheme somewhere in the United Kingdom. I know that the Nottinghamshire police force would be up for that pilot scheme. Perhaps in his reply the Minister will assure me that the issue is being pursued and that it will, once the Bill becomes law, be possible for the Secretary of State to set up one or two pilots in which youngsters from 10 onwards—not 14 onwards—are tested so that we can help them and help also to reduce drug-related crime in that age group dramatically.
Mr. Dominic Grieve (Beaconsfield): The hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath) highlighted an important issue, as did the hon. Member for Nottingham, North (Mr. Allen). I have no difficulty with the principle of pre-sentence drug testing for young offenders, but I am concerned about
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what it is intended to lead to. Either it will be part of a national programme to tackle drug addiction that is picked up in young offenders at the time of sentencing, or it will be a pointless bureaucratic overlay to the sentencing process, which, as the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome rightly pointed out, could criminalise people who do not comply. My difficulty with the clause is not its intention but the way in which it will work.
As the Minister will have seen, our amendments suggest taking the opposite direction from that advocated by the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome and widening the scope of the orders to include other drugs besides class A drugs. There are two poles to the way in which this issue can be viewed. At one is the attitude that there is no point in doing anything, because even if testing is carried out, it will lead nowhere. However, if that is the case I should prefer there to be no clause at all. If something constructive is to be done, I should go to the other pole and say that I can see no reason to confine the testing to class A drugs.
We have a serious problem in this country. From the evidence that I have seen in the past 12 months, it seems that there is a clear link between drug abuse and crime. Furthermore, the level of drug abuse in some areas of the country, particularly by young teenagers, is very high. One need only go to Camberwell to see the problems of young people who turn up at Kids Company to realise that cannabis addiction is starting at 11 or 12. Those running Kids Company take the view that it is often used for a sedative effect, which may actually reduce the crime level in the locality, although it is a symptom of serious social and personal problems for those who abuse it.
John Mann (Bassetlaw): Can the hon. Gentleman cite any evidence such as a research study or a medical trial from anywhere in the world that shows a link between a non-class A drug and acquisitive crimes?
Mr. Grieve: I simply say this: the hon. Gentleman might want to go to Kids Company and talk to the staff. The whole point of Kids Company is to keep young people off the streets and out of crime, and it is successful at doing it while they are attending. However, those who go there are often the ones who have been committing a large proportion of the street crime in the Camberwell area; I think that that view is supported by the Home Office's study of what happens there. Most of them are addicted to cannabis—leaving aside the question of any other substance abuse.
Whether there is a correlation between those youngsters' acquisitive crime and their cannabis use I am not prepared to say. The cheapness and ready availability of cannabis suggest that it may not be necessary to commit crime to obtain the money to pay for it. Buying cocaine or heroin is different in that respect. However, there is a clear correlation in my mind between the dysfunctionality of childhood that is giving rise to regular cannabis use by adolescents, and lifestyles so chaotic that those young people also commit crime. I go no further than that.
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John Mann: I repeat the question. Can the hon. Gentleman cite any evidence that the use of non-class A drugs such as cannabis—on which subject he will know I am not a liberal—has any correlation with acquisitive crime? In addition, can he cite any evidence to suggest that addiction in relation to cannabis is nicotine addiction? Pure nicotine addiction could be an addiction in the same way for an 11-year-old. I would regard that as equally serious. I wonder whether the hon. Gentleman does.
Mr. Grieve: I am sure that nicotine addiction can be a serious problem for the health of young people. From visits that I have made abroad, particularly to Boston in the United States, a picture unfolds of an entirely different public attitude to the problem of cannabis addiction in the young. There, it is seen as a serious public health problem. If a 15 or 16-year-old who has a cannabis addiction commits an offence, one option is for them to be treated in a residential rehabilitation centre, just as if they were a class A drug addict.
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