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Drugs Policy

I agree, and the issue of champions is developed in the strategy; I hope to discuss it shortly. Having visited the Burton addiction centre, I know that the approach of detox, rehabilitation, recovery and resettlement really takes people down that pathway. Equally, using the 12-step programme and then receiving ongoing support from other community and voluntary sector organisations can work in responding to and dealing with those challenges posed when people relapse. It is important to have the support in the community to support those people and deal with those situations. We will focus on establishing a whole-life approach to prevention and breaking intergenerational paths to dependence. Under this theme, we will focus on early years prevention, particularly for those families with multiple needs, to improve children's life outcomes. On that point, we are establishing the early intervention grant, to bring together funding for services for the most vulnerable children and young people. It will be worth around £2 billion by the end of the period that we are talking about, including funding for family support, Sure Start and targeted youth support. Further detail about how we expect that money to be spent will be made available shortly. I am sure that the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North will be looking out for that information in response to the questions that she posed in her contribution this afternoon. Alongside early prevention, good-quality drug and alcohol education and information will be provided to young people, families and parents, through schools, as part of their pastoral responsibilities, and through colleges, universities and the ““FRANK”” service. We will ensure that accurate information and advice is provided on the effects and harms of drugs. We are committed to giving schools greater freedom and flexibility, and we want them to be free to innovate. The Department for Education will conduct an internal review to determine how it can support schools to improve the quality of all personal health and social education teaching, including drug and alcohol education. Intensive support will be provided to vulnerable young people, such as those who are truanting or excluded from school, to stop them becoming involved in drug or alcohol misuse. Drug and alcohol services will be encouraged and supported to make the best use of early interventions, such as parenting and family support projects, to keep families together and aid the recovery of parents who are misusing drugs. On supply, we will reduce drug-related crime, drug trafficking and organised crime's involvement in the drugs trade. The new National Crime Agency will lead the fight and with the UK Border Agency it will deliver on the Government's determination to enhance the security of our borders. We will take action to stop drug traffickers profiting from the drugs trade, through cash seizures and asset forfeitures, money laundering prosecutions, and civil and criminal recovery prosecutions. We will also tackle the trade in drug precursors, which are compounds required to produce drugs, by working with producer countries, the legitimate trade in those compounds and international partners. We will strengthen international partnerships and make best use of the Government's capabilities overseas to disrupt drug traffickers at source or in transit countries. The introduction of police and crime commissioners will bring local democratic accountability to policing, ensuring that where drug-related crime is a problem for local people it is tackled as a priority. PCCs will be at the heart of an integrated community response to improve co-ordination between the police, community safety partnerships, communities, drug services and users, and the public. I look forward to the debate during the Committee stage of the Police and Social Responsibility Bill about PCCs, because we believe that they will be an important facet in driving change at the local level. We will also address the issue of so-called legal highs through the development of temporary banning orders, by improving the forensic analytical capability to detect new psychoactive substances and by establishing an effective forensic early warning system. On recovery, we will focus on building a recovery-led system to enable individuals to become free from dependence on drugs or alcohol and to contribute to society. Although recovery is something that is personal to each individual, the strategy sets out three key principles for recovery: well-being, citizenship, and freedom from dependency. The individual will be placed at the heart of the system, with personalised services providing appropriate support. We have touched on the issue of payment by results and the models that are being developed around that approach. The detailed information on those models will be provided in the early part of next year, as we are looking to develop those pilot projects. Perhaps I might give some indication of the sorts of outcomes that we are looking to achieve, because I think that it is those outcomes that will telegraph our desire, strategy and approach in this regard. They are very much focused on helping individuals to be free from clinical dependence but they will also look at offending, employment, health and well-being, and the outcomes in those areas. Taking that approach will help us to deliver and I think it will inform the pilot projects as they develop, including the treatment and recovery processes that are involved in the broader system. The recovery system will also be locally led and owned. Public Health England will be established from April 2012 and a ring-fenced public health budget will be allocated from April 2013. The commissioning and oversight of drug treatment and other recovery services will become a core part of the work of Public Health England. We will look to directors of public health, jointly appointed by Public Health England and local authorities, and located within local authorities, to work with a range of local partners and the health and well-being boards to design and jointly commission services that most meet local needs. Nationally, we will not prescribe the approach, but will develop and provide an evidence base of what works—the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North and others mentioned that theme. We will create a recovery system that focuses not on getting people into treatment and keeping them there, but getting them off drugs and alcohol for good. Substitute prescribing continues to have a role to play in the treatment of heroin addiction, in stabilising drug use and supporting detoxification. Medically assisted recovery can and does happen. However, for too many of the 150,000 people currently on a substitute prescription, what should be the first step on the journey to recovery is where their journey ends. That must change. We will ensure that all those on a substitute prescription engage in recovery activities and so build upon the 15,000 heroin and crack cocaine users who successfully leave treatment every year, having overcome their dependency. Recovery can be contagious. People tell us that they are most motivated to start on their individual recovery journey by seeing the progress made by their peers—a point made clearly by my hon. Friend the Member for Burton (Andrew Griffiths). Those already on the recovery journey are often best placed to help. Active promotion and support of local mutual aid networks will be key. We will also support communities to build networks of recovery champions to help such individuals at the start of their recovery journey. People's housing needs must be met to secure their recovery. We will work with local authorities and housing providers to share best practice and to examine the development of a payment-by-results approach to housing services. The strategy will ensure that the benefits system supports engagement with recovery services. It will offer claimants with a substance dependency a choice between rigorous enforcement of the normal conditions and sanctions if they are not engaged in structured recovery activity, or appropriately tailored conditionality for those who are. A key contributor to recovery is employment. The strategy sets out how we will equip people in recovery with the confidence and necessary skills to compete in the labour market, encouraging them into a range of employment opportunities through training, work trials and adult apprenticeships. We also plan to introduce a small number of pilots to explore how payment by results can incentivise providers to support recovery. We will work with the pilot areas to co-design the approach. The work on implementing a payment-by-results approach for drugs recovery will help set the future direction for all commissioning of drug services under Public Health England. Such work will complement that being undertaken within the criminal justice system to encourage drug and alcohol misusers into recovery-focused services, including: developing and evaluating options for providing alternative forms of treatment-based accommodation in the community; making liaison and diversion services available at police custody suites and courts by 2014; and diverting vulnerable young people away from the youth justice system where appropriate. As I have said, evidence is of crucial importance in the field of drugs. The most recent study of the outcomes of drug treatment, the largest area of spend for the strategy, found that drug treatment was cost beneficial. For every £1 spent on treatment, £2.50 was saved, and drug treatment was found to be cost beneficial in 80% of cases. In order to allow us to evaluate the strategy, an evaluation framework is under development. It will aid assessment of the evidence currently underpinning the themes of the drug strategy and identify where new evaluation is required to provide a better assessment of effectiveness and value for money. During the consultation process, which informed the development of the strategy, some respondents advocated liberalisation and decriminalisation as a way to deal with the problem of drugs, in many ways returning to some of themes we have been debating this afternoon. The Government do not believe that liberalisation and legalisation are the answer, for the many reasons I have highlighted. Such an approach addresses neither the risk factors that lead individuals to misuse drugs or alcohol, nor the misery, cost and lost opportunities that dependence causes individuals, their families and the wider community. By delivering on the national commitments set out in the new drug strategy and enabling local partners to take responsibility at a local level, we will ensure that individuals, families and communities will be stronger and healthier. I very much look forward to continuing the debate in the months ahead.