It is a pleasure to follow the shadow Minister. I very much enjoyed her subtly constructive contribution to the debate. I am sure that the Committee will be great fun.
There were many good things about the Conservative manifesto on which Government Members were elected in May. The inclusion of a commitment to
“create a blanket ban on all new psychoactive substances”
was very welcome to my constituents in Winchester.
Like many Members who are here tonight, I have spoken about this subject many times since entering the House in 2010. There have been numerous debates in this Chamber and Westminster Hall, and it has been raised frequently in Home Office questions and Prime Minister’s questions. As a Back Bencher in the last Parliament and, in its final year, as Parliamentary Private Secretary to the excellent Minister who opened the debate from the Dispatch Box, this has been something of a mission for me. I must say at the outset that I will support the Bill tonight. I thank the Minister for the way in which he laid it out for us.
As I have said many times, new psychoactive substances, or legal highs as they are commonly known, are often not legal and do not always get people high. Why do I say that? Very often they land people under arrest because they are not legal and, in too many tragic cases, they do not get people high but cost them their lives.
NPSs are notoriously difficult to identify. Currently, they have to be regulated on a substance-by-substance or group-by-group basis because of their diversity and the speed with which they are developed to replace drugs that are controlled under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971. Many NPSs are legal because they have not yet been assessed for their harm and considered for control under the 1971 Act. That is not because they are inherently safe for human use—far from it.
That is the cruellest danger of the legal highs that I have seen. So often, they are sold as harmless fun at high-street head shops or at the festivals that I happily frequent every summer. As the Parliament of this country, we have a grave responsibility to protect our children from this menace. As things stand, we are simply not doing that.
Mephedrone is probably the best example of a legal high that was just that until people died and we acted. It appeared in 2008-09 and quickly gained a lot of media attention due to its tragic death toll. It became a class B drug in April 2010 and has declined significantly in popularity since.
Ketamine is another example of a “party drug” that, although originally a class C drug, has left lives ruined or worse in its wake. For those who are listening to this
debate, whether outside the House or inside it, I will be blunt. Ketamine is a powerful general anaesthetic that stops one feeling pain. It is used for operations on humans and animals. If you’re lucky, the effects do not last that long. Until those effects wear off, ketamine can cause a loss of feeling in the body, paralysis of the muscles, confusion, agitation, panic attacks, and impairment of the short and long-term memory. Frequent use is sometimes associated with the development of severe depression. Again we acted, and in June 2014 ketamine changed from a class C to a class B drug.
Sadly, that was not soon enough for 18-year-old Ellie Rowe, who collapsed at a festival in my constituency in August 2013 after taking the drug. Ellie was a dedicated Army cadet, and she obtained the Duke of Edinburgh gold award a few months before her death. She had everything to live for, but for £40 her life was gone. That paltry sum got her and her best friend two grams of the drug which, according to the inquest that followed, she inhaled after drinking several cans of larger and suffered a fatal cardiac arrest as a result.
Speaking after the verdict, her dad said:
“I always imagined if any harm came to Ellie it would be on a bungee jump or canoeing down a fierce river or in an accident on a mountain—but nothing like this. She was so sensible. It’s an absolute tragedy for our family. It was one act of stupidity that has destroyed a family.”
Ellie’s mum was at the festival in Winchester this summer and last summer—the summer after her daughter died there—warning young people about the dangers they face from these drugs. I spoke to Ellie’s mum, Wendy, this morning, and it was not an easy conversation. She gave me permission to use her daughter’s tragic case in today’s debate, for which I thank her. Her message was this: yes, ban these substances, especially if it reduces demand, but please do not think that the law is the start and the end of the matter—I suspect that other Members will raise that point tonight. Of course we do not think that, and as the Minister said in his opening remarks, we must be careful about criminalising young people for silly mistakes. A criminal record can also ruin lives, and education about the dangers of these drugs—legally as much as physically—must not stop if this Bill receives Royal Assent.
Wendy’s final point when we spoke this morning was telling. She said that we should help young people to broaden their horizons and expand their consciousness without the aid of mind-altering drugs. Perhaps our education system in this country is not making room for our young people to be creative enough—possibly that is too deep for this time on a Monday night, but my point remains.
I am reminded of the opening lines from that seminal track, “Loaded”, by Primal Scream—a band that I am sure you are very familiar with, Madam Deputy Speaker. It is taken from the classic 1960s film “The Wild Angels” starring Peter Fonda. The question posed at the start of the song is:
“Just what is it that you want to do?”
Heavenly Blues, played by Peter Fonda, replies:
“We wanna be free
We wanna be free to do what we wanna do
And we wanna get loaded
And we wanna have a good time”.
It is a great song.
That may be the first time that Primal Scream has been quoted in this House, but there is a serious point. The music industry and the popular culture industry have a responsibility, and we as a society must dig deep into why young people in our country today want to alter their state of mind and get so “loaded” or “wasted”—there are many other words—as part of what should be a fun night out.
In preparing my remarks for this debate, I acknowledge the contribution of Hampshire constabulary, Dr Ruth Milton, our director of public health in Hampshire, and Jack Briggs of drug and alcohol specialists Baseline Training, which is based my constituency. The picture they give of NPS prevalence in Hampshire is consistent and deeply worrying. An intelligence overview produced by Hampshire constabulary in March this year found that across Hampshire and the Isle of Wight there were at least 16 NPS retailers—head shops—with the number growing all the time. Analysis by the constabulary suggests that NPS use is more common in areas surrounding head shops, and that in turn leads to more shops opening to meet the demand.
Winchester has its store on Stockbridge Road, which is passed by hundreds of school and college students every day. It is even neatly placed right by the city railway station. I have been inundated with complaints about that shop from constituents, and I was pleased to give them our manifesto commitment—which we are debating today—in response.
An intelligence report to the Hampshire and Isle of Wight drug strategy group in April this year reported that NPSs remain in “prolific common use”, with vulnerable people such as those with alcohol addiction, mental health issues and homelessness being susceptible to targeting by NPS dealers.
The reference to homeless people in the city of Winchester and long-term drug users being targeted to move on to NPSs certainly struck a chord with me. Trinity Winchester is a charity in my constituency which addresses the effects of homelessness and vulnerability through specialist practical help and support. Sue and Michelle from Trinity confirmed to me, ahead of today’s debate, the stark increase they have seen in clients under the effect of NPS. Equally, Winchester’s night shelter sees the effects of NPSs on a daily basis in its work.
The harm NPSs are causing and the complexity they are adding to already stretched public services is of grave concern to me as a constituency MP. This is supported by anecdotal reports from Winchester’s mental health team, which reports considerable problems as a result of NPS use. They speak of some withdrawal symptoms which appear to mimic mental illness, settling down once the NPSs have left their system. The mental health team reports that NPSs have been noticed locally as having a significant impact on severity, longevity and intensity of psychosis. They also cause problems with finding the right treatment for a patient, hence the case complexity. As Sue from Trinity said to me just this morning:
“We exist to help people with work and housing problems. We cannot begin with them if they are presenting to us spaced out or worse.”
Before concluding, I want to touch on prisons. In the previous Parliament, I was fortunate enough to serve on the Justice Committee, which gave me a wide insight
into prisons and the challenges they increasingly face with NPSs. It is true that problems in the wider community sooner or later become problems in the secure estate. Whether we like to admit it or not, prisons are merely a reflection of our society. According to an excellent briefing sent to me by the Rehabilitation for Addicted Prisoners Trust, NPS use has quickly become widespread among prisoners. The 2015 annual report from the National Offender Management Service affirmed that increased NPS use among prisoners is generating high levels of debt, intimidation and violence between prisoners, and is likely to be the main catalyst for the recent rise in attacks on prison staff.
Reports given to me by HMP-YOI Winchester confirm the use of legal highs inside its walls is now widespread. Winchester now has trained drugs dogs, but there are a variety of compounds used in NPSs, so if the core compound is not the same as the dog has been trained for, it simply misses the substance. It seems the new currency inside our prisons is not tobacco or cannabis, but the NPS known as Spice. It is a lethal substance existing under the brand names Herbal Haze, Damnation and Space Cadet. The governor told me that on one day last month there were three ambulances in the prison yard, after three prisoners had taken Spice.