§ 9.8 pm
§ Mr. Patrick Thompson (Norwich, North)I am grateful for this opportunity of the Adjournment debate to speak on the subject of drugs and alcohol problems in our schools. I am also grateful to my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary for being present to reply. Normally when we debate, we nearly always talk about problems of engineering, skill shortages and so on. However, this topic, which I am sure my hon. Friend would agree is in many ways just as important, will produce a slightly different debate from the ones that we are used to.
As someone who was a schoolmaster for 23 years and who ran a chess team, I was also interested in the previous debate and I was tempted to intervene, but thought better of it. However, I support the general theme that ran through it. I listened to the speeches of my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, North-West (Mr. Stern) and to the hon. Members for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell) and for Edinburgh, South (Mr. Griffiths). The hon. Member for Edinburgh, South referred to chess replacing other malevolent influences in schools. I do not know what he had in mind, but it certainly made me feel that this debate follows on naturally from the previous one. If drug abuse is not one of the malevolent influences that can creep into our schools, I do not know what is. There seems to be a link between trying to create good extra-curricular activities in good schools and considering the problems that our children can come up against in and out of school.
I have not come to this debate armed with statistics. However, there is no doubt about the social and physical harm that can, and is, done to young people by drug addiction, particularly if we consider the link between drug addiction and the AIDS virus, and the problems that that can bring to young lives. Therefore, we have a duty to protect our young people from becoming involved in any serious addiction.
It is perhaps appropriate that tomorrow the Bill that I have presented, the Amusement Machines (Protection of Children) Bill should, I hope, receive its Second Reading. That Bill deals with protecting young people from addiction. There is a link between the problems that exist in the amusement arcades and drug addiction. Therefore, it is appropriate that I should have the opportunity to mention that tonight in the Adjournment debate.
In Norwich, as in so many parts of the country, there are continuing drug problems. While we are talking about young people, I want to pay a particular tribute to organisations in Norwich which deal with the rehabilitation of young people who have become involved in drug addiction.
The Matthew project runs a helpline, and I have spoken about its good work in previous Adjournment debates. There is also the Life of the World Trust, which has now been established for some 20 years and has operated from centres in various parts of Britain to help in the rehabilitation of young people with drug problems. Its aim is to prepare those young people for a return to a normal lifestyle, free from their dependency on drugs. Over the past 20 years, the Life of the World Trust has been successful with hundreds of young people who have become involved in drug addiction. Hebron house has recently been established in Norwich, and it is doing continuing good work with ex-drug dependants.
449 Although drug abuse has not been so much in the news recently, the problem has not gone away from our schools or from among adults. All the evidence is that the problem remains serious, not only in Norwich, but throughout Britain. The only up-to-date figures that I have been able to obtain this week refer to drug seizures for 1988. Customs and Excise officers seized a record £185 million worth of illegal drugs during 1988—an increase of almost 60 per cent. by street value on the previous year. I accept that taking seizure figures may not be the best way to try to determine a trend. After all, that can depend on the size of the haul and the circumstances in which the Customs officers were able to achieve it.
My hon. Friend the Economic Secretary to the Treasury, who is responsible for Customs matters, said recently that that 60 per cent. increase in the value of drugs seized during the past year reflects the increasing effectiveness of Customs and Excise efforts and—this is important—the growing scale of the threat. Therefore, although the problem has not been publicised a great deal recently, it would be wrong for any hon. Member to think that it has gone away. The trend is still adverse and that is why it is appropriate that we are having this debate tonight.
I am aware that the Government and the Department of Education and Science have been contemplating further initiatives to deal with drug and alcohol abuse in schools. Everyone has a role to play—families, schools, Churches and other leading figures and organisations in society.
At this stage, it is important to say bluntly that, just as illness is a sign of some sort of weakness within the individual involved—that is in no way to lay blame on that individual—so drug abuse is a sign of weakness, or even, to use stronger language, of decadence in some sections of society. After all, we can link the problems of drug and alcohol abuse with the problems of boredom, psychological disturbance, and so on. Therefore, wider issues are raised when we debate this topic.
It is not easy for any hon. Member to come up with a way to deal with these serious problems, but that does not mean that we have no responsibility—quite the reverse. We have a great responsibility, and the Department of Education and Science, with its responsibility for schools, also has a great responsibility. That is why I am looking forward to my hon. Friend's reply, bringing us up to date with the initiatives that the Department is preparing.
The effect of alcohol abuse among the young is also well known and serious. Longer-term health problems can arise as a result of alcohol abuse and behavioural problems are very much in the news at present. There are the lager lout phenomenon and the riot and crowd control problems. Without being too specific, many of the recent incidents in football stadiums and so forth are alcohol related. In addition, there is the problem of drink-driving and I want to pay tribute to the good work done by my right hon. and hon. Friends at the Department of Transport for their successful campaigns in tackling that problem.
I hope that my hon. Friend will be able to say more this evening about the initiatives that he has in mind, perhaps through the schools and the education system, for the prevention of alcohol, drug and solvent abuse. All those 450 forms of addiction are linked. They cannot be separated one from the other. In addition, as I said earlier, we must link all those with the problem of AIDS.
The Education Reform Act 1988 introduced the national curriculum, which says that it is our duty to promote the spiritual, moral, cultural, mental and physical developments of pupils at school and of society, and also to prepare pupils for opportunities, responsibilities and experiences in adult life. If that is the aim within our schools, it must be right to consider ways in which we can prevent drug abuse and help our young people to have a better spiritual, moral and cultural preparation for life.
I hope not just that my hon. Friend will recognise the ways in which the Department of Education and Science, through administrative initiatives, can deal with those problems—I am sure that we shall hear a lot about that when my hon. Friend replies—but that he will recognise and confirm that the tone and quality of schools is of great importance in dealing with such problems. That is not to say that, when dealing with individual human beings, there will not be difficulties in the best of schools, but my general point, is that the tone of the school, the leadership of the head teacher, the quality of the teachers and the general way in which the school is run, are relevant when we are considering the malevolent problems that come into schools and affect young people. The old-fashioned term "discipline" is relevant to the quality, tone and success of our schools, and the way in which young people leave them prepared for life in every possible way.
It is important to recognise that, in addition to any initiatives that we shall be debating tonight, the organisation of schools, which we shall not have time to debate tonight, and the morale of schools and teachers are relevant to this subject. An extra-curricular activity such as chess, which we debated earlier, can be linked with other sporting activities to show how important that aspect of school life is in preventing the type of problems to which I am drawing attention.
Let me take this opportunity to pay tribute to the good work done by so many teachers. In particular, I want to identify those in my constituency of Norwich, North and in Norwich and Norfolk generally. They are doing good work in social and health education, about which we are particularly thinking this evening, and they are doing a great deal generally to help to improve the quality of education in schools in Norwich and Norfolk at a time of rapid change. I welcome those changes and the speed with which the Government have addressed themselves to educational problems recently, and I pay tribute to the teachers in Norwich and Norfolk for the way in which they are responding to them.
A ministerial group has recently dealt with alcohol abuse and during the past few days I had a chance to see the circular that has resulted from that initiative. Again, through my hon. Friend the Minister, I want to pay tribute to Ministers for that work. The circular and the results flowing from it must be good news.
However, let me inject a cautionary note. When I finish reading a circular I find that I am not imbued with the kind of enthusiasm with which I would like to be imbued. Even after six years as a Member of Parliament I only have to read a Civil Service circular to find that all my enthusiasm and interest in a subject has somehow waned. That does not necessarily mean—in case my hon. Friend should misunderstand me—that the circular is wrong or that there is a better way of doing it. It means that the circular and 451 the administrative initiatives, excellent though I am sure they are, by the Department of Education and Science must be followed up with enthusiasm at local authority level, school level and so forth.
I congratulate the Department of Education and Science on the work it has been doing in this area and I look forward to hearing more about recent initiatives very shortly. We have the booklet on drug misuse and the young, which I know has had very wide circulation in my constituency and throughout the country. We have had the initiatives on teaching materials to help with problems of drug abuse and so on. More recently, we have had the largest education support grant ever, which includes sums of money particularly targeted on dealing with the misuse of drugs. I gather that in my own county, Norfolk, over £21,800 will be put to that particular use in the coming year. This must all be good news, because it will help local authorities to develop a strategy for dealing with drug abuse through the mechanisms which they have available.
All this is part of the Government's imaginative and vigorous approach to education and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Minister on his part in that. I look forward very much to his reply and in particular to what he has to say about up-to-date initiatives to help with the very serious problems of drug and alcohol abuse in our schools.
§ The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education and Science (Mr. John Butcher)First, I wish to thank my hon. Friend for bringing forward this topic tonight. As I hope to demonstrate, I shall respond very clearly to his invitation to indicate the major programme to be mounted in our schools.
First, I join him in the tribute that he has paid to the Matthew project and to the Life of the World Trust. I know that he takes a great interest in these matters and I am sure that, just as the people of Norwich are well served by him, so young people who may have a problem are served by those two bodies.
The scale of the problems of alcohol and drug misuse among young people has been highlighted by work done by Mr. John Balding at Exeter university. Surveys involving over 18,000 pupils in 1987 revealed that over 74 per cent. of fifth-year boys and 65 per cent. of fifth-year girls had consumed alcohol in the past week, with over 10 per cent. of the boys consuming the equivalent of more than 10 pints of beer. The same surveys revealed that up to 12 per cent. of fifth-year boys and 14 per cent. of girls had been offered cannabis or other more harmful drugs at some time during their teens. Those are chilling figures and reinforce our determination to help young people to avoid alcohol and drug abuse.
For the past six months I have been undertaking a review of all the policy issues which must come together in the formation of a plan to be applied in our schools to deal with the problems of alcohol and drug abuse. During that period I have chaired working meetings with drugs education co-ordinators and together we have assembled a great deal of information and know-how, and the co-ordinators have responded magnificently to my invitation to play their full part in the policy formation process.
I should explain that the DECs are in post in all English local education authorities, funded through education support grants and charged with the task of co-ordinating 452 education programmes for schools and colleges that disseminate the best practice in methods of reducing the risk of drug abuse by the young. I have also spoken to organisations such as TACADE, Kaleidoscope, the City roads rehabilitation centre and life education centres.
During those discussions and research activities it became very clear that through education we should increase the effort devoted to reduction of the demand for drugs; that we should create a generation of school children and young people who will turn their backs on dealers and pushers. It has also become clear that drug abuse, alcohol abuse and AIDS are related issues that can be tackled in a co-ordinated health education programme and that our future policy for school programmes should reflect this.
I said earlier that my hon. Friend's Adjournment debate was timely. It is so because I am now in a position to announce to the House the broad objectives and measures of our policy of demand reduction, which has benefited from the information-gathering stage I mentioned earlier. I can announce tonight a £7 million programme for the year 1990–91. Of this, £4 million will be used to support a new, broadened remit for drugs education co-ordinators, who will now be responsible for the provision of information and advice to schools on alcoholism and AIDS, in addition to their existing work on drugs. Funding for the co-ordinators—now to be called health education co-ordinators—has been guaranteed for at least three years in recognition of the fact that those programmes cannot be short-term programmes but will require a long and intensive effort by local education authorities and schools.
A further £3 million will be provided under the local education authority training grants scheme to fund in-service training of teachers covering the same key areas of health education.
I can also announce tonight a 10-point plan. I will deal with the salient points.
The first is the provision of information for parents, to be distributed via the schools, subject to the approval of school governors. The precise messages for parents will have to be agreed with local conditions in mind and will involve the co-operation of a variety of organisations, whose views will be sought.
The second point is to examine the effectiveness of existing health education and if necessary apply the lessons learned and modify the messages to young people.
The third is to integrate health education messages into the national curriculum in ways which are compatible with the foundation subjects and with existing programmes of personal and social education.
The fourth is the gathering together of examples of best international practice, with particular reference to the reasons for success or failure in other countries.
The fifth is the greater involvement of the private sector in the sponsorship of programmes on drugs and alcohol. An excellent example of this approach came from the Scotch Whisky Association, which supported a research project and an excellent conference on alcohol and young people.
The sixth is wider incorporation of health education issues in initial teacher training courses.
The seventh is development of further curriculum materials for teachers to build on the excellent work of TACADE, for example, with its drug-wise teaching pack.
453 The eighth is to secure better information on the health-related behaviour of young people. The ninth is to define in conjunction with the Department of Health specific and clear messages for different categories of young people—general messages for all young people at school, messages to those who are experimenting, messages to those who are indulging in regular or casual use, and messages to users with an addiction problem.
I am advised that concentrating on a particular substance or giving a high profile to a particular drug can be counter-productive. The best approach is for young people to be taught about the importance of a healthy lifestyle and a healthy body. They need to be given the skills to know how to resist pressures to misuse drugs and alcohol for health, lifestyle and social reasons. In a nutshell, our message to young people must be: "Stay healthy. Stay in control." Therefore, our tenth initiative is to give wider publicity to the stay healthy, stay in control message.
Those who follow this sad and unhappy issue will know that the drug pusher may not be obviously identifiable as a furtive, evil-looking character on a street corner. To those who may be susceptible, the pusher may currently be a friend. He may pose as a friend at a time when the potential victim has drunk too much and is offered a substance. We must ensure that people who find themselves in such situations recognise that moment and say no. If they do not say no, they may be on the first rung of the ladder to oblivion.
My hon. Friend is right to say that drink, drugs and AIDS are related. Someone who has drunk too much at a party may say yes to the substance that is offered to them. They may move on to harder drugs. They may eventually inject, share needles, and then face an increasing risk of contracting the virus that leads to AIDS.
I have said very little about alcohol, yet it is a wider problem than drugs. It affects young and old. Dr. Anthony Thorley estimates that 25 per cent. of acute hospital beds 454 for males are occupied by patients suffering from alcohol-related problems. A small but still too large proportion of young people seem to think that they can have a good time only through getting drunk. That phenomenon in itself raises a large number of questions. They merit a debate in their own right, and I shall not discuss them this evening. Nevertheless, we know that providing information on the effects of alcohol on health may not be enough. We must point out the bad effect of alcohol abuse on personal relationships, loss of respect from friends, and loss of appeal to the opposite sex. In other words, those messages are all relevant to the social preoccupations and self-esteem of teenagers and of young people.
I am particularly impressed by the campaign along those lines pursued through local radio commercials and advertisements in young people's magazines in New South Wales. The messages are strong and clear. Teenage boys, for example, are told:
If you don't want to look like a jerk, don't get drunk.That is the clear message, in the clear, Australian style. The campaign's messages imply also that a boy is likely to lose a girl friend if he insults her or talks gibberish while under the influence of drink. It is those very personal, very apt and very relevant messages that must supplement the informative process in health education programmes.I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for raising tonight's topic. I hope that the House agrees that the programme I announced, which will cost £7 million, is a significant initiative. We shall monitor and manage that 10-point plan. I assure my hon. Friend that on such a serious issue, the initiative's management plan will be checked and assessed at regular intervals to see whether it hits its targets. It is on-going and will continue for three years. From that point on, if we find that we are winning, we may change the programme. I hope that that will be the case because, for the sake of our nation's children, we have to win.
Question put and agreed to.
Adjourned accordingly at twenty-seven minutes to Ten o'clock.