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Drug Classification

Yes, indeed. The hon. Gentleman brings me to the case of the hon. Member for Henley (Mr. Johnson), a constituency neighbour of mine, whom I greatly admire. However, I see in the Oxford Mail the headline, ““Boris: I took cocaine and cannabis””. The article says:"““Top Tory MP Boris Johnson has admitted to smoking cannabis and snorting cocaine, but few of his Oxfordshire colleagues shared his candour when approached last night.””" None of the Oxfordshire MPs, other than myself, was prepared to discuss their past, and if the Conservative party wants to take an enforcement-based approach, it should call for the hon. Gentleman’s prosecution. I must say that I would rush to his defence, but it seems that with his confession, he is bang to rights. Unless Conservative policy is for a statute of limitations, it would not seem sensible that people who have possessed and used class A drugs should be exempt 10 or 20 years on because they took them only at university. I do not understand the rationale behind that idea. Why should a politician—let us not be too specific—want to condemn potentially tens or hundreds of thousands of young people to a criminal record, but then say that they are entitled to privacy themselves? A defendant cannot say, ““It is a private matter. Before I became a bricklayer, I was at college, and I am entitled to keep private my life before I became a bricklayer”” or, indeed, ““I am entitled to keep private my life before I became unemployed.”” Why should the suggestion that one is entitled to a private life before one becomes an MP be used as a defence by a party that wants to prosecute without any exceptions? I think I have made my point. I applaud the Science and Technology Committee, the other members—not myself—of the Committee, the staff and the Chairman. No greater honour may be given to the Chairman, the Committee members and the staff than that which Lord Cobbold gave in the House of Lords in January, when he said:"““I am of course aware of the excellent report of the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee, Drug Classification: Making a hash of it?””—[Official Report, House of Lords, 16 January 2007; Vol. 688, c. 563.]" The report’s title stated that current drug classification policy was not fit for purpose, and the Government face an enormous challenge to change its direction. I accept that it will not happen overnight, but I hope that, at the very least, the Government will identify which parts of their policies are evidence-based and which are politics-based, because they are entitled to do so. I hope also that they will agree not to attack other parties for having evidence-based policies, which scientists, scientific advisers and the published medical literature support, when they themselves do not have policies that stand up to the same scrutiny.