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Drug Classification

The short answer to the hon. Gentleman’s last question is that I simply do not know. I do not have enough evidence to be able to reach a sensible conclusion on the best thing to do with such people or on whether the remedy that he suggests would be the right one. All that I do know is that what is happening in prisons at present is not working. It is not working for the prison system because huge numbers of short-term prisoners go in and out of, for example, our big London prisons, and the health staff inside those prisons can do very little for them. The prisoners are not there long enough to go on a rehabilitation course and be brought off drugs. They are kept alive, literally, because the health system in the prisons is able to provide them with a replacement—for example, methadone—for the short period that they are in prison. If people are in prison for only one, two, three or four months and are then released back on to the streets of London, it is hardly surprising that they resort to the class A drug habit that may have put them in prison in the first place. I stress that that is not a criticism of the people who work in the prison service. They have an impossible job. We need to think more intelligently about what we do with people who are affected by drug abuse and whether it is more appropriate to provide places for such people to be looked after somewhere other than Pentonville, Holloway, Wormwood Scrubs, Brixton or Wandsworth. We would then receive better value for money. There would also be better outcomes and a real reduction in crime. That is not something that the present Government or a future Conservative Government could do overnight, but we should try, in a collaborative spirit, to adopt such an approach because our constituents are paying £50,000 a year in taxes to house every individual offender in prison—the cost for every young offender is about £75,000 or £80,000 a year—and the rate of reoffending within two years of their leaving prison is just over 65 per cent.. The percentage figure for young offenders is actually a little higher, in the high 70s. We are wasting money and fooling ourselves if we think that we are increasing public protection. In fact, we are clogging up a prison system that needs to look after, reform and incarcerate dangerous, violent and deeply antisocial and damaging offenders who, despite their nasty habits and criminal conduct, do not receive the necessary programmes or education to make them better citizens. The proportion of prisoners who never come out of prison at all is very small—probably less than 2 per cent. or perhaps even less than 1 per cent. of the 81,000 people in adult prisons will never come out again. I am not suggesting that the Government should rush into sorting out the problems but, collaboratively, we need to take a different approach to how we deal with drug abusers inside prison and those who are inside because of their drug abuse. I am acutely conscious that I have an awful lot to say about this subject and about the comments of the hon. Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough, the Committee’s report and the wider policy issues that affect the classification of drugs. I should also have liked to discuss what we should do within the criminal justice system, with which my shadow department and the Minister’s real Department have to deal. However, I am concerned about leaving time for the Chairman, the hon. Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough, to reply, particularly to what the Minister has to say. The Minister knows perfectly well what my views on the matter are—he probably knows better than many members of the Committee. If I bring my remarks to a close now, I hope to engage the sympathy of hon. Members. My speech has suffered from two 15-minute suspensions, and that has thrown the flow of the debate out of kilter. Let me take advantage of that by stopping. However, in doing so, I hope that others will not misunderstand what I personally and as a representative of my party intend and mean on this issue. I hope that there will be other occasions when we can discuss the subject more fully. In conclusion, I repeat my thanks and congratulations to the Chairman of the Committee and his colleagues for their work. In addition, I hope that my somewhat critical remarks about the manner of some of the recommendations and comments in the report are taken in the spirit in which they were intended. Despite the differences of opinion among Government Back Benchers and others in this Chamber—I notice that the hon. Member for Oxford, West and Abingdon has not brought any of his party’s Back Benchers with him—I ask the Government to think carefully about how to make progress on this aspect of public policy. The issue should be dealt with in a way that benefits the public, the taxpayer and those who are wracked by drug abuse and addiction—not just individual drug users, but their families and the communities in which they live.