My Lords, my Amendment 54 in this group ranges more widely than that of my noble friend, and might indeed be regarded as somewhat clunky. However, it is intended to be illustrative of the range of issues that I think ought to be covered in a proper annual review or annual report issued by the Home Office.
I have looked at the three annual reviews issued since 2013. The February 2015 review of the progress of the Drug Strategy 2010 consists of all of 28 pages of text. It covers some of the issues indicated in my amendment which I think ought to be covered in an annual review, but far from all of them. I am afraid to say that it seems to me a thin and superficial document which is simply not commensurate with the importance and complexity of the issue and the major social challenge that drug abuse presents. It is also an inadequate form of accountability to Parliament, being as flimsy
as it is. It contrasts with the European Drug Report, which is produced annually by the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction, which is a much more substantial document, containing tables, graphs, citations and footnotes—an altogether more serious and substantial report. We do not find that kind of material in the Home Office’s annual review.
The Minister said in her foreword to the latest annual review, “We are not complacent”. That is good. However, on page 10, she spoke about:
“Promotion of good practice in demand reduction in NPS at EU and international level, led by the UK”.
That is a fine assertion but, as I said in the previous debate, not to me a convincing one. Regrettably, the annual review does not go on to tell us what this promotion has meant or what the good practice in demand reduction should be.
The expert panel’s report said on page 53 that adequate monitoring of whatever the policy proves to be,
“needs to be in place”.
I think that it was looking for a substantial annual review. It also seems to me that the implication of the letter from Professor Iversen to the Home Secretary of 2 July is that a whole range of issues need to be kept under solid and informative review.
The expert panel report contains a very important section on pages 35 to 36, in which it sets out the key opportunities and the key risks of the policy that the Government have embarked upon in this legislation. Among the key risks are those of supply, demand, enforcement, harms, forensic science, legal issues and communications. Among the opportunities are, again, supply, demand, enforcement, harms, forensic science, legal issues, communications and costs, so, according to the expert panel, there are both opportunities and risks entailed in the Government’s policy. I suggest that certainly the Government’s initial report, which they have promised to issue within 30 months, but also the annual review issued by the Home Office, ought to deal in very substantial measure with all those opportunities and risks that have been found.
The section of the European Monitoring Centre report on prevention tells us that the use of NPSs by young adults ranged from a high of 9.7% in Ireland to a low of 0.2% in Portugal. It also tells us that Sweden, which practises a draconian prohibitionist policy, has the second-highest drug-induced mortality among 15 to 64 year-olds. These are among the sorts of pieces of information that ought also to appear in the Home Office’s annual review.
Page 15 of the last edition of the annual review, in the section discussing restricting supply, referred briefly to liaison with Pakistan, Afghanistan and West Africa, but had nothing whatever to say about liaison with China and India, which are the key countries in terms of NPSs. On page 19, we are told that the UK,
“chaired a G7+ country Expert Meeting … in Berlin in November 2014”,
which led to agreement on a “set of actions”, but we are not told what the actions were. On page 23, we are told that there is a strategy of:
“Transferring the responsibility for developing locally led, integrated, recovery orientated treatment systems to local authorities”,
but there is no discussion of the funding situation for local authorities—the very large cuts there have already been, followed, of course, by the cuts just announced to the funding for Public Health England.
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On page 7 of the annual review, we are told that a final evaluation will be made of the 2010 strategy, but it is a hesitant commitment to a cost-benefit analysis. We are told that:
“Where there is sufficient data the evaluation will also provide cost-benefit estimates”.
A cost-benefit analysis is one of the requirements in my amendment. On page 6, the review tells us with apparent confidence that,
“we have taken a comprehensive and evidence-based approach”.
But later on, we are told that we will get this cost-benefit analysis:
“Where there is sufficient data”.
On page 8, it says there will be a section in the evaluation,
“clearly setting out the barriers to undertaking a full cost-benefit analysis”.
We need to know what the barriers in the way of the cost-benefit analysis may be. It is Parliament’s classic function—not of this House but the other place—to vote resources to make possible the realisation of government policy. I submit that Parliament needs to have the information on the effectiveness of policies before it votes a further instalment of funding. Is the barrier in the way of a full cost-benefit analysis going to be that there are simply insufficient resources, or a failure of co-ordination across Whitehall; or will it be due in part to the past difficulties in co-operation between the Home Office and the ACMD?
The section on prisons, which was the subject of considerable debate in your Lordships’ House earlier today, is utterly perfunctory. In the light of yesterday’s report from Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons, the ombudsman’s report, the interview with a prison governor on the “Today” programme this morning, and the speech made by my noble friend Lord Harris of Haringey, in which he said that, according to one prison governor, the use of NPS in prisons was rife, we need a much more candid and fuller account in the annual review of the difficulties that there clearly are within the prison system.
Welcome as it is, as far as it goes, the annual review does not go nearly far enough. It is an inadequate report and it should include responses from across the range of government, including in particular the Department for Education, which, as I suggested earlier, I do not believe is pulling its weight to support the Home Office in addressing some of the gravest social problems that this country faces.
We will have a report, as promised, from the Government within 30 months of certain clauses coming into effect, and that will feed usefully into post-legislative scrutiny. But as my noble friend Lord Rosser said, we will need in addition regular annual reports that are adequate in range and depth.