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289WH<br />
Drugs<br />
6 JUNE 2013<br />
Drugs<br />
290WH<br />
Panama. Home Office Ministers have met the Interior<br />
Ministers of Colombia and Brazil and the Foreign<br />
Ministers of Bolivia and the Dominican Republic. But I<br />
hope that I do not sound immodest when I say that I<br />
suspect that, probably more than anyone else in government,<br />
I have an insight into the countries that we have talked<br />
about. Since this Government formed, I have been to<br />
Colombia on three occasions and Peru on two occasions.<br />
I have been to Bolivia; I have been to Ecuador; I have<br />
been to Panama on two occasions and so on.<br />
In the countries that I am talking about, the issue is<br />
cocaine, and t<strong>here</strong> is indeed a severe impact on those<br />
countries. We recognise our responsibilities to them as a<br />
consuming country. We work closely with the Governments<br />
of all those countries to varying degrees and certainly<br />
with the President and Government of Colombia, to<br />
whom many in this debate have already paid tribute.<br />
Recovery is an area w<strong>here</strong> t<strong>here</strong> is quite a lot of<br />
innovative public policy making. We have the world’s<br />
first payment-by-results programme to try to incentivise<br />
recovery outcomes. It is being piloted in eight areas, and<br />
I have attended an extensive meeting with people from<br />
the eight areas in the Department of Health to talk to<br />
them about the progress that they are making in Bracknell<br />
Forest, Enfield, Kent, Lincolnshire, Oxfordshire, Stockport,<br />
Wakefield and Wigan. We are optimistic that they will<br />
make good progress, but they will not all make identical<br />
progress. Part of what will be interesting about the pilot<br />
studies is how local providers, tailoring their services to<br />
their local problem, will produce outcomes that we<br />
hope will reduce harm and drug taking and enable<br />
people to recover in their areas.<br />
T<strong>here</strong> is an interesting debate, which I think my hon.<br />
Friend the Member for Cambridge touched on, about<br />
how one measures recovery. We have had that debate in<br />
Government. I accept, as I think most people do, that it<br />
represents progress when we take someone whose life is<br />
chaotic, who is a drug taker and who is unable to work<br />
or to take responsibility for themselves in quite elementary<br />
ways and we stabilise their life—perhaps through some<br />
programme of replacement drug treatment—so that<br />
that they can perhaps address some of their underlying<br />
social problems and, in time, find a job. I would not<br />
want the Government to fail to recognise that, because<br />
a lot of people, including in the voluntary sector, work<br />
to try to bring about that progress, which leads to<br />
improved outcomes for the people affected and, in<br />
many cases, for their spouses, their children and others<br />
around them.<br />
The only caveat that I would enter is that the Government<br />
are cautious about regarding that as a desirable end<br />
point. Although some people may struggle to get beyond<br />
that point, most people—if they were talking about<br />
their own children, for example—would regard it as a<br />
desirable interim point. Ideally, however, they would<br />
like the end point to be that the person was free from<br />
addiction to whatever substance has made their lives so<br />
blighted and difficult in the first place.<br />
T<strong>here</strong> is an interesting, worthwhile and entirely valid<br />
debate about the point at which progress starts to put<br />
down roots and just becomes the new normal. If someone<br />
has been moved from a chaotic life on drugs to an<br />
ordered and managed life on drugs, that is definitely<br />
progress. If, 10 or 15 years later, they are living an<br />
ordered and managed life on drugs, one could argue<br />
that it is time for a bit more progress, and we might try<br />
to get them through to an end point w<strong>here</strong> they are no<br />
longer on drugs at all.<br />
What we do not want to do is to institutionalise the<br />
interim measure; we want to make interim progress,<br />
because that is better than making no progress at all,<br />
but we have to be careful about progress freezing before<br />
it has reached its most desirable destination. That is an<br />
insight into the conversations that we are having. Of<br />
course, if we are looking at payment by results, we then<br />
have to think about how we incentivise people not only<br />
to make progress but to complete the journey, rather<br />
than to leave it half completed.<br />
The Ministry of Justice is doing lots of extra and<br />
innovative work on rehabilitation and on how to help<br />
offenders. The Government were not minded to accept<br />
the Committee’s recommendation on drug testing in<br />
and out of prison because we remain of the view that<br />
random testing is superior and that people who know<br />
when they will be tested may take measures to avoid<br />
showing up as positive. Other people may have different<br />
views, but we had good motives for objecting to that<br />
recommendation.<br />
A lot of work is going on in the Ministry of Justice,<br />
rather than directly in my Department, on how we can<br />
help people who leave prison with a modest amount of<br />
money—£46, I think—and few other support structures<br />
to get back on their feet and rebuild a meaningful life,<br />
with housing and employment, rather than lapsing back<br />
into criminality. T<strong>here</strong> are two interesting pilot studies<br />
on payment by results and on trying to incentivise<br />
prison providers to help people with rehabilitation once<br />
they have left prison.<br />
Keith Vaz: But the point is this: is it not wrong that so<br />
many of the people we send to prison get the drugs<br />
habit t<strong>here</strong>? Does that not show that something is<br />
wrong with the prison regime? If people are tested,<br />
helped and rehabilitated when they are in prison, things<br />
will be much better for everybody when they come out.<br />
Mr Browne: My short answer to the right hon.<br />
Gentleman’s question is yes, it is wrong. It is a source of<br />
great regret and sadness that someone might go to<br />
prison, not as a drug taker or drug addict, and become<br />
one while they are t<strong>here</strong>. I recognise t<strong>here</strong> are practical<br />
difficulties with trying to restrict drugs in prisons, and<br />
people find ingenious ways to smuggle drugs into prisons,<br />
just as they find ingenious ways to smuggle them into<br />
other places, but the Government are doing work, as we<br />
should be, to try to reduce that threat.<br />
What I am saying is that we could just as well do<br />
random testing throughout the period people are in<br />
prison. I have been told that if we tell somebody they<br />
will be tested on a set day, they may take steps to make<br />
it less likely that drugs will be detected in their body on<br />
that day. We are not, t<strong>here</strong>fore, against the idea of<br />
testing prisoners, and we are strongly in favour of trying<br />
to ensure that people do not take drugs in prison, while<br />
those who might be minded to take drugs are dissuaded<br />
or prevented from doing so, but the proposed testing<br />
regime would not necessarily automatically have the<br />
most successful outcome.<br />
On the Government’s approach to reducing demand,<br />
it is worth putting on the record that drug use remains<br />
at around the lowest level since measurement began in