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Home Affairs and Communities

Yes, I do. One reason why the decision to reclassify was ill founded was that the Government did not take into account some of the evidence on psychosis that the current chairman of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs says he knew at the time. The risks of psychosis from cannabis use are serious, which is the basis of the argument. Although it grieves me to do it, I will pay a compliment to the Home Secretary who is at least reviewing the decision, but it was ludicrous in the first place. The new Labour Government have failed to deal with the causes of violent crime—drink and drugs—and are failing to deal with criminals. A proper criminal justice system punishes the criminals and reduces crime. It does that by taking criminals out of circulation—typically, by putting them in prison—and by deterring them from committing crime, generally by the threat of prison. It does so also by rehabilitation, again usually in prison. However, the Government do not intend to create enough prison places to cope with the expected 100,000 prisoners by the end of the decade. Instead, they will use community service and fines to punish criminals. Clearly such punishments do not take criminals out of circulation. Equally clearly, they do not deter, even with the prospect of the Minister of State’s orange suits. Nor do they rehabilitate. The hardest group of offenders to deal with are drug addicts, yet the Government’s flagship drug treatment and testing orders have had a dreadful outcome. Two thirds of those concerned have failed to complete the course and 90 per cent. have been reconvicted. We need to offer kids ladders out of drug dependency. At the general election, we set out a proposal to increase tenfold the number of residential rehab places. A Conservative Government would have done that. Our approach would have offered an escape from the cycle of misery that afflicts too many youngsters today. Conservative proposals would have offered a positive and constructive solution to this most terrible of problems. At least the Government are recognising the need for action on violent crime by promoting the Bill on this matter, but they are failing miserably to deal with the root cause of that crime. As a result of that failed strategy, recorded crime is up by 750,000 in the past eight years, with violent crime up by more than 80 per cent. Even where crime rates are falling, it is the result of factors beyond the Government’s control. What the Government can control is the number of police out on the beat, yet as we saw last week from the Police Federation, more and more officers are spending more and more of their time inside police stations, not on the beat catching criminals. The Government are tying up our police forces in red tape and targets, and, as a direct result, cutting their effectiveness. The Government can also control the effectiveness of sentences, yet they are failing to enforce effective sentences and are instead wasting money on expensive gimmicks that do nothing to lead criminals away from the temptation to commit crime. Those are the practical things that the Queen’s Speech could have addressed, which we could have been debating today but which will clearly have to wait for another time and another Government.