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Drug Classification

I welcome you to the Chair, Mr. Bercow. I also welcome other hon. Members who have contributed to the debate. This is an extremely important debate. I congratulate the hon. Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Mr. Willis), the Chairman of the Committee, on the tone of his remarks. It augurs well for progress when a debate can be held in which passionate views are expressed and there are serious disagreements between people. Let it never be said, however, that there is any disagreement about the policy outcome that every hon. Member wants. There is real credibility among hon. Members who have turned up this afternoon, when there are many other things happening, to discuss one of the most important social policy issues that confronts our country and many of our communities. The contribution of the hon. Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough and the Committee is rightly to the Government and the ACMD to justify their policies. That means that there will sometimes be passionate disagreement, but the important point—I know that the hon. Gentleman will agree—is that it is not a clash of personality, but a clash of opinion, out of which comes better public policy and a better outcome. I know how passionately my hon. Friend the Member for Newport, West (Paul Flynn) feels about these issues. He has been one of the most passionate advocates of a particular way of addressing the problem and he knows that there are disagreements with him in his own party and within the Government. However, that in no way detracts from the integrity with which my hon. Friend put his points across. He has made an important contribution, as has my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton, South-East (Dr. Iddon), the hon. Member for Oxford, West and Abingdon (Dr. Harris) and the hon. and learned Member for Harborough (Mr. Garnier). It important to state that at the beginning—and it is not a patronising remark to the Committee. It might be helpful to the hon. Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough if I go through some of the differences that the report has already made to the way in which the Government conduct their business in this area and to some of our policy objectives, before I go on to other matters; as he will know, we disagree with one of the Committee’s major recommendations. I want to show that my remarks about the difference that Select Committee reports make to public policy is not an empty, vacuous, rhetorical statement made in Westminster Hall at 5.17 pm on a Thursday afternoon, but a real statement of the influence that he and his Committee have had. I hope that hon. Members will not mind, but I think that it is important to proceed point by point, rather than making great, rhetorical flourishes that may sound good, but sometimes do not mean an awful lot. The Committee asked us to ensure greater transparency about the various factors that influence classification decisions. I hope that hon. Members realised that when we reclassified methamphetamine—crystal meth—to a class A drug on 18 January 2007, we set out in clear terms the reasons for the reclassification in Parliament and in the Home Office circular. We tried to take on board the point that the hon. Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough made about that. The Committee called for the rationalisation of differential classification depending on the route of administration. For example, amphetamines are a class B drug, but they are class A when in a form prepared for injection to be applied to other drugs. We have asked the ACMD to provide advice on whether other drugs should be reclassified depending on the route of administration. That work is likely to be carried out in the ACMD’s systematic review, to which I will refer in a moment. The Committee asked for greater openness and transparency for the ACMD. I say to the hon. Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough that, irrespective of what is on the ACMD’s website, which he mentioned, it will publish the minutes of its council meetings on the Home Office website. That will commence—I shall ask why it is not on the website already—with the most recent ACMD meeting held in May. I expect that to appear on the website in the very near future. Another aspect of the Committee’s call for ACMD openness and transparency was the suggestion that it should hold open meetings. I can tell the hon. Gentleman that those will commence in the autumn. Parts of those meetings might be closed, but the general presumption will be that wherever possible the meetings will be open. Members of the public will be invited to observe proceedings, as indeed any Member of Parliament will be able to do, and have the opportunity to ask questions of the council. Alongside that, the ACMD is developing a publication strategy in order to inform the public in more detail about how it is trying to improve openness. The Committee called for greater involvement from the Home Office scientific adviser. Already, the secretariat of the ACMD has moved under the management of Professor Wiles, the Home Office chief scientific adviser. He will oversee the expertise required on the council in any forthcoming recruitment round—another move that the Committee was anxious to see. Furthermore, under the chief scientific officer, the council will strengthen its links with research councils. As the hon. Gentleman knows, Professor Wiles holds regular meetings with the chief executives of all the relevant research councils, and as I said, we expect him to continue his meetings with the chief scientific advisers of other Departments. The Committee recommended in particular that the ACMD conduct a systematic review of individual drugs. It is looking into doing that. Furthermore—this point was raised by the hon. Member for Oxford, West and Abingdon—as part of that systematic review of individual drugs and their classifications, it will undertake a review of ecstasy. I can tell my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton, South-East that it will look also at magic mushrooms, which he mentioned. The important point to make about the systematic review of individual drugs, as appropriate and determined by the ACMD, is that it will consider both classification and harm reduction.