Drug Trafficking (Hansard, 4 July 1996)

4. Mr. William O'Brien
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what additional resources he will provide to combat drug trafficking in city and urban areas; and if he will make a statement. [34520]

§ Mr. Sackville
The Government are currently spending more than half a billion pounds a year directly on the fight against drugs.

Mr. O'Brien
Is the Minister aware of the launch of the West Yorkshire police community forum, in which a number of very busy people in West Yorkshire are coming together to try to combat crime, drug and alcohol abuse and the causes of crime? The survey of the regions carried out by the Government revealed that West Yorkshire has real social problems. The launch of the police community trust has been spearheaded by the chief constable of West Yorkshire, Keith Hellawell, who is calling for local business people to provide £1 million to help to resource the forum. Will the Minister press the Home Secretary to make a contribution to that £1 million, or even to fund pound for pound the sum that is being subscribed by local people? We need help with the forum.

§ Mr. Sackville
Drugs are a huge and dire problem everywhere in this country, but in West Yorkshire people have the advantage that the head of the Association of Chief Police Officers drug committee, Chief Constable Keith Hellawell, is providing a model for what should happen elsewhere. As for funding, I remind the hon. Gentleman that West Yorkshire police will receive an extra £11 million in available spending this year. How that money is deployed must remain a decision principally for the chief constable and the authority. None the less, I commend the drug forum and Chief Constable Hellawell for what they are doing. It is exactly what is required to back up enforcement with proper drug prevention. In the end, that is the only way in which we shall beat drugs.

§ Mr. Elletson
Is my hon. Friend aware of the significant reductions in drug trafficking in the urban council housing estates that are run by the tenants under the Government's right-to-manage scheme? Will he take the opportunity to condemn Labour-controlled local authorities such as Blackpool borough council whichcontinue, by the most underhand means, to deny their tenants the right to manage?

§ Mr. Sackville
I accept what my hon. Friend says, because I am very aware that the best way to ruin a council estate, or any other estate, is to allow drug dealers to operate within it. Tenants can take decisions; they know who the drug dealers are and they can bring pressure to bear. That is the best way to protect children on those estates.

§ Mr. Flynn
The Home Secretary has just described the situation in our gaols, after 17 years of Conservative Government, as "disgraceful". In the two gaols that serve my area, Cardiff and Swansea, it has been discovered that 50 per cent.—that is, half the prisoners—are on drugs. Drug use is endemic in every prison in Britain, and if we cannot keep drugs out of our prisons, how on earth do we expect to keep them out of schools, clubs, pubs and raves?

§ Mr. Sackville
It is a matter of great distress to everyone connected with prisons that many people take up drugs as a result of being in prison. I agree that that is entirely unacceptable. But thanks to my hon. Friend the Minister of State who is responsible for prisons, considerable progress has been made in the past two years. If the hon. Gentleman goes to see some of the prisons with drug-free wings and drug programmes, he will find people who are coming off drugs in prison who would not have had the chance to do that outside. That should be applauded, and the more encouragement that can be given to the Prison Service to allocate resources for more drug-free wings, the better.