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Anti-Drug Awareness

As part of Nottingham's early intervention initiative, our city is leading the way on an anti-drug and alcohol education programme with a £750,000 programme, Drug Aware, that will reach every young person in our city. For about the cost of a year's intensive treatment for a handful of addicts, we will effectively provide inoculation against drug and alcohol abuse for every child in Nottingham. My challenge to the Minister is that it makes no sense to wait until kids turn into offenders and then use massive amounts of taxpayers' money to fuel expensive and largely ineffective rehabilitation programmes. Late intervention does not work. We should pursue a policy of early intervention, filtering out much earlier those who might drift into abuse so that specialist rehab services can focus on a much smaller hard core. It would be remiss of me not to congratulate my hon. Friend the Minister on his recent promotion. I am delighted that he has deferred it for a day to answer this debate. I know that the issue is close to his heart. He has been extremely helpful on both the ministerial and the personal level to the initiative that I wish to discuss. History will judge harshly a Government who, after a decade, do not have a nationwide system of drug education in place as the first strong line of defence to protect the nation's children. We are all aware of the effects that illicit drugs and alcohol can have on individuals, families and communities, and none of us is more so than the Minister, who helped Nottingham start its drug education journey when he was a humble junior Minister. On health, alcohol-related deaths have doubled since 1979, and last year in Nottingham there were 4,000 alcohol- related attendances at accident and emergency departments. On crime, the Home Office states that up to three quarters of crack and heroin users claim that they commit crime to feed their habit. There are about 3,000 problem users in my city, and the city council estimates that drug-related crime costs the city more than £300 million a year. On the economy, the Prime Minister's strategy unit estimates the annual cost of harms associated with alcohol misuse alone to be more than £15 billion, and the treatment charity Addaction found in a recently produced briefing report that the social and economic costs of drug misuse to the nation total more than £28 billion annually. Such deep-rooted problems are not amenable to one-off campaigns, however well-meaning. They require decades of education to bring about cultural change. That is why it is everyone's problem and every party's issue. As I hope is shown in my recent publication, ““Early Intervention””, co-authored with the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr. Duncan Smith), social and political consensus is vital. I welcome the Conservative and Liberal representatives as well as those of the Government to this debate. Alcohol misuse and drug misuse have a particular impact on young people, as they are directly and indirectly associated with youth offending, higher levels of school exclusion and teenage pregnancies. In Nottingham, our definition of early intervention is intervention that helps break the intergenerational cycle. A drug and alcohol awareness programme classically meets that test. Children of problem drug users and drinkers experience more behavioural and emotional problems and are more likely to develop problems with drugs and alcohol themselves. Let us break that intergenerational cycle. For that reason, Nottingham, particularly its local strategic partnership One Nottingham, which I have the privilege to chair, sees a comprehensive drug and alcohol filter as an early intervention priority. Our lead partnership is the crime and drugs partnership, but as the Minister has seen at first hand, all the other partnerships, especially the children's partnership, have made it their problem too. The crime and drugs partnership, or CDP, has been highly successful in reducing crime in the city. Between 2003 and 2008, it exceeded Government targets—and, more importantly, our expectations—in reducing crime by 26 per cent. I pay tribute to Derek Stewart, the CDP's chair, its chief executive Alan Given and their team for their superb work. They know more than anyone that our priority must be to move a step up towards education and early intervention if such figures are to continue being pressed down and not to plateau. Although common sense tells us that prevention is better than cure, the idea often seems to baffle those at the national level. Saving 100 kids from going wrong is harder to measure and express in box ticks than putting one person into rehab. One chief constable in Nottinghamshire told me that when he defended a drug education programme, he was asked by the Home Office, ““How many burglars does it catch?”” There are those who have enormous and vocal vested interests in late intervention, with millions of pounds and lots of personnel to defend. They have populated local policy-making machines and those in Whitehall to such an extent that to break their stranglehold will require a Minister—perhaps a Minister of State—with unique determination, a quality that my hon. Friend possesses in abundance. Drug treatment strategy and funding seem to be predicated on an unwavering supply of new entrants to the drug treatment system. Some 2,173 people underwent drug treatment last year in Nottingham. Perversely, we are congratulated on having more people in rehab. Surely the objective of a comprehensive and rounded policy should be ““Fewer abusers, better treated””. The total cost to the Government of those in treatment in Nottingham is about £7 million a year. According to the Department of Health, treatment alone costs the UK £597 million a year nationally, yet the BBC reported last week that only 3 per cent. of addicts finish treatment drug-free. The strategy is to have fleets of gold-plated ambulances at the bottom of the cliff instead of a simple wooden fence at the top. I challenge the Minister to join me in rejecting that strategic approach. There are clear benefits, including massive financial savings, to filtering out most potential abuse early by providing volume education and prevention programmes, identifying young people at risk of problem drug use and targeting effective prevention work at them. Evidence shows that balanced, accurate drug education can be a factor in countering peer group pressure or delaying the onset of casual drug use. Moralistic or scare approaches are likely to be ineffective, and the threat of criminal sanctions and jail simply does not prevent large numbers of young people from misusing drugs. However, most drug education in UK schools is patchy, confused and inconsistent. It comes under personal health and social education provision, which is neither a statutory subject nor a specialist area in initial teacher education. It may not matter in leafy suburbs, but in poorly parented areas such as my constituency, learning effective life skills at school, including anti-drug awareness, is an essential foundation for many who, sadly, do not get such education at home. We seem to have a command economy for rehab but a laissez-faire approach to prevention. Whatever we do in Nottingham, only national Government can make it happen on the scale necessary to cut off the supply of those abusing drugs. It is crucial to provide good-quality drug education whose purpose is clearly understood and whose quality is measured locally and nationally through independent inspection. Accurate and effective information and guidance for young people are key to ensuring that they never try drugs in the first place. Higher Government standards relating to the quality and coverage of drug education are therefore also required. Crucially, the importance of drug education must be part of a wider educational framework. It is impossible to inoculate young people against drug misuse with just a few hours of drug education. Drug education programmes can no more stand alone than can teenage pregnancy programmes, aspiration programmes to improve educational attainment or behavioural programmes. They must be one part of broader life skills education to raise social and emotional literacy, particularly among 11 to 16-year-olds, and to build on the excellent social and emotional aspects of learning programme—SEAL—in primary schools. That will require a Minister to take responsibility for much better joining up between the Home Office and the Department for Children, Schools and Families. One Nottingham's mission is about early intervention. With our partnerships in health, children's services and crime and drugs, we are implementing universal and targeted drug and alcohol education. That includes health promotion campaigns targeted at parents of young people to enable them to develop parental responsibility for their children's drinking and drug abuse, early intervention to prevent the onset of youth drug misuse, and the healthy schools initiative. The majority of Nottingham schools have achieved full ““healthy school”” status and 76 per cent. have met the programme's drugs and alcohol standard, which includes having drug education programmes embedded in the curriculum. Schools are also required to refer pupils requiring early intervention to the appropriate services. Last year 15 pupils were referred to treatment, and many more are now receiving targeted support. The Drug Aware award will take our efforts to the next level, and in July One Nottingham agreed and awarded funding of £256,000 for each of the next three years. I believe that Drug Aware is the first of its kind in the UK, and is based on a theoretical model in the recent Government research programme, Blueprint, which looked at 23 secondary schools in the north-west and east midlands. Furthermore, the Government's new 10-year drug strategy, ““Drugs: Protecting Families and Communities””, sets the framework in which we will implement Drug Aware. Drug Aware is also a multi-component drug and alcohol initiative and sets a standard of excellence for universal drug education for all pupils, and for targeted early intervention for pupils identified as ““at risk””. Drug Aware will ensure that every pupil in our city receives a comprehensive programme of universal drug education from the age of five to 16 that is appropriate to the age level; provide a brand that everybody in our city, including parents and the media, can identify with; ensure effective screening of drug abuse and risks of drug misuse among young people; provide targeted intervention for ““at risk”” pupils, including improved referral to specialist services and interventions within the school by trained staff; engage parents much more fully in both policy making and drugs education, and develop closer partnership working with communities and among the police, police community support officers, wardens and local alcohol retailers. By extending the parameters of drugs education outside the school setting, Drug Aware will facilitate a more cohesive early intervention response embedded within families and communities, which should help maximise its impact. Drug Aware goes further than Blueprint by providing earlier identification of vulnerable young people and better targeted interventions for vulnerable and ““at risk”” groups. Once a school has met all the required standards, it will receive the Drug Aware award. That standard has to be sustained by the school and its community on a long-term basis and be subject to ongoing assessment and review by the healthy schools team. The ambition in my city is that Drug Aware, across all schools, will result in every pupil in the city receiving a comprehensive universal drug education programme from the age of five to 16, and effective targeted early intervention for those in need. That is some ambition, but we will realise it over the next three years.