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Drugs: Crime Prevention

Volume 487: debated on Thursday 29 January 2009

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what proportion of the budget for her Department's drug control programme was spent on (a) enforcement and (b) treatment in each year since 2004. (251465)

Drug treatment is the responsibility of the Department for Health, and the Home Office does not therefore commit any of the Department’s budget to drug treatment.

Figures published in the Updated Drug Strategy 2002 show estimates of the labelled and non-labelled total expenditure on drugs, and on strands of the strategy, calculated on the basis of its four thematic aims. Elements of enforcement fall within two of these four aims—supply reduction and protecting communities—although these aims will also include expenditure on items which do not relate to enforcement of the law. As it is not possible to disaggregate these figures, those which have been given for expenditure on enforcement from 2003-04 to 2005-06 will therefore exceed the real level of expenditure.

Figures for 2006-07, while not published, have been calculated on the same basis as those for 2003-04 to 2005-06. Figures for 2007-08 and 2008-09 are labelled expenditure only, as published in the drug strategy Drugs: protecting families and communities. These figures have been calculated on a departmental basis and, while expenditure on enforcement activity will fall broadly within the departmental expenditure of the Home Office, the figure will exceed the real level of expenditure on enforcement activity only. Similarly, the Department of Health will fund activity which would not fall within a rigid definition of treatment, nor is all expenditure on treatment—particularly that for young people—covered by the Department of Health budget. These figures should therefore be treated as indicative.