On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. You will recall that yesterday I raised a point of order with you about words which were used by a Minister. The Official Report for that portion of yesterday's proceedings is not yet available to Members in the Vote Office. I wonder whether you will give me guidance as to when it may be possible to pursue this matter further.

I have not seen the Official Report either. I undertook yesterday to look at it. I should say that Monday would be the most appropriate moment.

I am glad that it has proved possible for us to find time for a debate on drug misuse so soon after the announcement of the interdepartmental working group of which I am chairman to develop our policies on this crucial subject. All of us who are interested in what is happening in our society today are bound to recognise that drug misuse is a continuing and growing problem. It is one to which the public and the House are rightly giving increased attention. I therefore welcome the opportunity to set out the Government's contribution to tackling drug misuse.

The first point that needs to be made is that what we can so easily describe in three short words as "the drugs problem" is, in fact, a complex matter. It involves the abuse of a wide range of substances, not just heroin. It involves a long chain of events leading from cultivation, processing or manufacturing, importation and/or distribution, culminating in sale and abuse.

If we are to achieve the breakthroughs that we all want, we cannot merely breast-beat or posture in general terms. Anyone can strike attitudes and declaim that something must be done. There may even be some of that later today. To achieve any success and to build on the success that we have already achieved, we must immerse ourselves in the detail of the problem and consider each link in this complex chain of circumstances to arrive at those interventions that will help and not hinder the management and control of this problem.

We start at a disadvantage because, despite the considerable amount of research into the reasons why people misuse drugs, no single cause or consistent pattern of multiple causes for drug misuse has been indentified. Whatever the cause, the consequences of harmful misuse are disastrous, not just for the misuser but for society as a whole. The undeniable rise in drug trafficking is making heavy demands on our Customs, police and criminal justice system as well as on the agencies whose task it is to care for the drug misusers. I welcome to the Front Bench my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Security because the involvement of the DHSS in these matters is, of course, crucial.

Desperate addicts are aware that drugs can be obtained from legitimate outlets by theft, forgery of prescriptions, and so on, and there is evidence that major criminals are turning to drug trafficking because of the easy profits to be made from the misery of addiction. No clear line can be drawn between crime in general and the promotion of drug distribution in particular. People are moving in and out of this business as seems to be appropriate to their needs and lust for money.

The increase in drug misuse over the past few years is an international phenomenon. Few countries have been immune from the increasing availability of hard drugs and the inevitable consequences of higher levels of drug addiction. I must give the House some disturbing and distressing figures. In the United Kingdom, the total number of addicts known to the Home Office during 1983 was 10,270, an increase of nearly 30 per cent. Within that total 4,200 new addicts were notified to the Department —a 50 per cent. increase compared with the previous year. According to recent research, those notifications probably represent only one fifth of those dependent on opioid drugs because many do not seek help from doctors. Therefore, all the indications are that there is a significant increase in drug misuse among teenagers. That is one of the matters that my new group will consider urgently.

What is particularly alarming is the growing popularity of heroin among young people, who inhale the fumes in the practice known as "chasing the dragon". There is a widespread misconception that, absorbed in that manner, heroin—or "skag", as it is popularly known—is far less harmful than injecting the drug. The reality is that that practice is just as addictive.

To deal effectively with the problem of heroin, all of which is imported, it is necessary to have particular regard to seizures. There has been a marked success in seizing large quantities of heroin before it can be sold and abused. In 1980, some 38 kilos were seized. By 1983 the figure had increased to 212 kilos. This year alone, after only six months, the level of seizure, at 193 kilos to date, has nearly surpassed the 1983 figure. In May and June alone, nearly half the amount seized in the whole of 1983 was seized by Customs investigators. I warmly acknowledge that that is a real tribute to the Customs and police in their efforts to seize increasing quantities of that drug. I know that the whole House will want to join me in congratulating them on their success. That in turn reflects the wisdom of our decision to double the number of specialist Customs investigators dealing with heroin smuggling, because only after careful investigation and collation of intelligence can those sophisticated conspiracies be broken up.

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I should like to finish my point. I may be about to make the point of which the hon. Gentleman wishes to remind me.

We must also acknowledge that the figures are also an indicator of the dramatic increase in the amount of stuff that people are trying to bring into the country. The fact that the purity of street-level heroin is high at about 40 per cent. to 50 per cent. and that prices have remained stable or even decreased in real terms makes it apparent that heroin is entering the country in alarming quantities. I want to face that fact squarely today. I shall give way now to the hon. Gentleman if I have not answered his point.

I am grateful to the Minister. I thank him for his candour in making his remarks. Will he confirm that between 1979 and his decision to increase the number of Customs officials there was a reduction by about 1,000 of people working in our ports of entry, for example, and that that is probably one of the reasons why such substantial amounts of heroin have been able to come so freely into the country?

I am not sure that the hon. Gentleman is right. With the amazing perception that I try to bring to these matters, I had anticipated that point. If the hon. Gentleman would contain himself for a few more minutes, I shall come to it, but I shall give way if I have not dealt with the matter appropriately.

It is important that the debate should not revolve merely around heroin. I see that my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton, West (Mr. Sackville) is in the Chamber. He has played a valuable role in presenting to the House the difficult problems involved in illicit amphetamine manufacture and subsequent abuse. We must also recognise that, alas, one of the more unfortunate habits imported increasingly from the United States is the misuse of cocaine. Last year the Customs seized more than 70 kilos, five times as much as in the previous year. Therefore, we face problems on many fronts.

In the face of those disturbing figures, it is time for all of us who are concerned with the problem to reassess the way in which we should deal with it. We need to do so not only to prevent the misery that addiction plainly brings to misusers, their families and neighbourhoods—although that is reason enough in itself; we must also get to grips with the evil involved in exploiting human weakness through illicit supply and trafficking, and break the links that are increasingly being developed between drugs and both petty and organised crime. Those objectives underlie the Government's strategy for tackling drug misuse. I recognise that the Government must develop policies and lines of action that have an impact upon particular aspects of the drug problem. That is what we have been seeking to do; we shall continue to do it with renewed vigour.

I am glad to see the House well filled for this important debate. [Interruption.] Hon. Members may laugh, but the House is well filled for the not very elevated standards of a Friday. I am one of those whose performances in this place are confined primarily to Fridays for reasons that are becoming increasingly apparent, and I welcome the fact that there are perhaps two dozen of us here for this important debate.

There is no room for any of us to be conceited about the role either of politicians or of Government. Government alone cannot resolve the problem. They can and must give a lead. They must fix the framework. However, by far the greatest impact comes from agencies and people outside central Government. If we are to tackle the problem effectively, many individuals and agencies will have their own part to play, whether as parents who provide a supportive family background where drug misuse will not be countenanced, as teachers who guide young people away from the dangers of drugs, as doctors willing to treat those in need of medical help, as police officers concerned to track down the pushers and guide misusers to the necessary support facilities, or as magistrates or judges providing exemplary sentences for those who deal in drugs. The list is endless. We must engage the enthusiasm of the whole community to tackle the problem, not just parts of it, if we are to have any chance of success, because this increasing menace is a threat to the whole community, not just sections of it.

The Minister is right about the groups in the community that must be involved. However, does he know of the remarks made by my local police commander in Southwark, who says that there is a link between drugs, crime and unemployment, and that if we do not deal with the unemployment problem many youngsters without jobs will more easily become victims of drugs and crime?

There are several causes of drug misuse. There is no evidence that unemployment is any more significant than many other factors, but I do not pretend that it is irrelevant. I hope that that question will not be a lead in—I am sure that the hon. Gentleman would not use it as such—to just another tiresome debate about whether any Government would control the problem of youth unemployment. If we are realistic, we are aware that that problem has been increasing over the past two decades.

Plainly the constructive use of leisure and giving people meaning and purpose in life is of the essence. Often a rebellion against the life that people lead and life in the community leads people into the problem. That is why engaging the sympathies of teachers, parents and those who work with young people, and better co-ordination, is so important, as the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs stated in its splendid report on prevention. I hope that the House will study it. It makes it clear where the way forward lies. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman agrees that politicians alone cannot tackle the problem. There must be an attempt to steer people into much more positive avenues than the negative attitude involved in drug abuse.

The media also have a role to play by ensuring that drug misuse is presented in a responsible manner but without the sensationalism and scaremongering that sometimes colour reports in broadcasts on the subject—although I commend the recent "Panorama" study of the drugs problem as being one of the more serious, valid and worthwhile programmes that I have seen on the subject. I say to some of those who, I fear, have exaggerated the problem that there is no need to exaggerate it. It is serious enough without recourse to exaggeration.

Care also has to be taken that, in giving space to the activities of some media personalities who take to drugs, the media are not unwittingly giving encouragement to young people to emulate those idols with feet of clay.

While it is misguided to look to the Government to provide all the necessary solutions, we have to provide the framework and the overall strategy in which the activities of the various agencies can be co-ordinated effectively and made to mesh one with another. My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary set out his strategy in a major speech delivered last December to the London Diplomatic Association. It may be convenient if I set out the major components of the strategy and identify the progress that has been made in carrying it forward.

The principal elements in our strategy comprise action to reduce the supply of illicit drugs from abroad, tighter controls on drugs produced and supplied in this country, more effective policing, enhancement of the deterrent effects of the law and finally, but by no means the least important, effective programmes to treat and rehabilitate addicts and to discourage young people from experimenting with drugs.

I take each theme in turn and describe briefly the action that we are taking. On the international elements of the problem, we all know that drug misuse transcends national boundaries. If it is to be tackled effectively, it demands a high level of international co-operation. For many years the United Kingdom has been a prominent member of the United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs which is the main international policy-making body concerned with drug abuse. We play an active part in the Council of Europe Pompidou Group, in Interpol and in the Customs Co-operation Council, all of which devote major efforts to combating drug abuse and trafficking on an international scale.

A vital part of the fight against drug abuse is to help those countries where drugs are produced, eradicate the crops, and crack down on the growers and traffickers. Much of the heroin which has reached our shores over the past two or three years has come from Pakistan. We have given every encouragement to the authorities there to curb that flow. But there are real problems in policing the areas where the drug is produced, especially on the north-west frontier border region.

We have been co-operating closely with the Pakistan authorities, and our own Customs and Excise officers are in regular contact with their opposite numbers in Pakistan. We have now stationed a senior Customs officer permanently in Karachi to assist with liaison and drugs intelligence. This posting has already more than proved its worth.

We are also providing the Pakistan authorities with practical and financial aid on a variety of fronts. Earlier this year, we provided £180,000 to buy vehicles and equipment for the drug enforcement authorities. In a few days, a British police officer will go to Pakistan to advise further on appropriate ways of combating drug trafficking at Karachi airport. We are also looking at ways of providing assistance to strengthen the training efforts of the Pakistan drugs law enforcement agencies.

The hon. Gentleman alluded to the fact that the Government had posted a Customs officer in Karachi and he said that this posting had already proved its worth. How?

It is not for me to give an account of all the intelligence — [Interruption.] The hon. Gentleman laughs. I hope that we see him today in one of his more serious moods and not one of his flip ones. It is not for me to go through the central drug intelligence computer and talk of all the reports fed into it. That would give satisfaction to a number of people outside the House, and I feel sure that, even at his most irresponsible, the hon. Gentleman would not want to give aid and comfort to them. The senior Customs officer posted out there is playing an important role in breaking down and providing intelligence about a major source of supply from Karachi to London. We await with interest what is to come from the hon. Member for Knowsley, North (Mr. Kilroy-Silk), but this is a serious enough subject to find him in his more serious mood rather than jeering from a sedentary position about a matter that, if ever he moved to the Government Front Bench, he would be no more able to give details about than I am.

One of the problems that the Governments of producer countries face is that the opium poppy is a valuable cash crop in areas where there is not very much to give people a living from the land. To replace it with alternative crops is a crucial part of our strategy, but it is also an expensive business. However, the United Kingdom has entered into a consortium with Italy and the United States to support a development plan for the poppy-growing areas in Pakistan, and we have pledged £1 million as a contribution to this important project.

The efforts of the Pakistan Government, supported by ourselves and others, are meeting with some success. There have been substantial reductions in the amount of opium produced there. But we cannot afford to be complacent. There is always a risk that some farmers, after being weaned off the crop, will revert to poppy production. It is also possible that as one source of the poppy closes another opens, and there are already worrying signs that heroin from the golden triangle area of south-east Asia is again competing for markets in Europe.

Illicit narcotics can be produced in many parts of the world and we cannot hope to match everywhere the action that we are taking to help the authorities in Pakistan. But we are very willing through our foreign aid programme to consider requests for assistance from other developing countries. This is an important part of our strategy.

I deal next with Customs and Excise and the matter raised by the hon. Member for Liverpool, Mossley Hill (Mr. Alton). I have paid tribute already to the efforts of the Customs in increasing dramatically the seizures of hard drugs in recent years. That is a reflection of the much greater emphasis placed on specialist investigation and on flexible checks rather than on the traditional static checks at ports and airports, significant though those remain. This has led to some controversy and to some rather overheated allegations by one of the unions involved—which, of course, has an interest in more bottoms on seats—about the impact that the reductions in the number of officers involved in static checks has had on the growth of the drugs problem.

The prevention of importation is one of the two priority areas that my working group will be looking at. All contentions, whether they are in line with current Government thinking or not, will be re-examined and carefully reassessed. But I know of no evidence to suggest that an increase in static checks at, say, London's airports or anywhere else would be of material assistance.

I invite hon. Members to consider the situation at Heathrow and Gatwick. Some 40 million passenger movements occur through those two airports. We could increase the number of static checks fivefold, tenfold or twentyfold. What is the optimum number that our critics want us to provide? But, bearing in mind the wide range of people used as couriers today, who are not hippies returning from India but have included in recent years international beauty queens and famous squash players, it would still be a needle in a haystack operation and still only a small proportion of those passing through our airports could be checked.

I suspect that many of those who clamour for more extensive searching of people and baggage would be among the first to protest at the considerable delays which would result. We have to be realistic about this. Delays already cause anger and frustration at ports and airports. We have all suffered in that way. To increase delays gratuitously without any real expectation of substantial results just so that we could say that we were doing more and that there were more chaps hard at it is to put sloganising above substance. Let others fall into that trap. This Government are into substance.

There is a good deal of validity in what my hon. Friend says, but does not he also believe that, in effect, the knowledge that there were occasional spot checks in the course of which everyone was searched would be a real deterrent to the villains who come through in large numbers?

Importation is a priority. I say that positively, not as a throwaway line. We shall be examining all schemes — those which fit our current thinking and those that do not—to try to establish better ways of moving forward, if better ways can be found.

Is it suggested that each of the 400 people coming off a jumbo jet should be subjected to searches once in a while? I should not care to be in the seat of hon. Members when the complaints flowed in. Delays already occur at airports. The trouble with static checks is that they are predictable. It is common practice among drug importers to prepare for static checks by, for example, putting quantities of heroin into a contraceptive sheath and swallowing it. Even the most assiduous Customs officer finds it difficult to locate drugs concealed in that way. That is why the emphasis must move to better intelligence and to more flexible checks so that the smuggler does not know when the check will take place.

Will the Minister give way before he leaves that matter?

I am not leaving it. Perhaps I might finish and then give way. If the hon. Member for Mossley Hill has a better point to make, I shall try to deal with it as best I can.

We must use Customs officers in a cost-effective way. Large-scale further deployment to yield, at best, a limited increase in arrests of couriers is not cost-effective on any view. We want checks and searches which are unpredictable and for which the smuggler has not made his careful preparation. Above all, we want good co-ordinated intelligence, leading to the smashing of conspiracies and to the arrest of the Mr. Bigs and not just the small fry, who are two a penny because of the level of bribes which are offered to people to bring the stuff through the airports.

I recognise that numbers of officers are important. That is why we have doubled the number of specialist investigators in heroin over the past four years, and why we are recruiting this year a further 60 uniformed officers, mainly to become involved in specialist work against drug smuggling.

Does the Under-Secretary accept that the balance of probability is in the mind of the would-be smuggler? If there is only a one in a hundred chance of his being intercepted at the port of entry, he may feel it worth the risk.

The hon. Gentleman stresses that the number of people dealing with drug smuggling at Customs posts has been increased. Does he dispute the figure given to my right hon. Friend the Member for Tweedale, Ettrick and Lauderdale (Mr. Steel) on 11 May this year when he was told that in 1979 a reduction of 1,597 staff in Customs and Excise took place? The reduction in 1980 was 412, in 1981 it was 605, in 1982 it was 554 and in 1983 it was 393. That means that 3,561 places have been lost to the service since 1979. Does the Minister believe that that has something to do with the 400 per cent. increase in heroin importation since 1979?

The hon. Member has just made his speech, and probably hopes to make it again later. Whether an intervention can be labelled a speech is a matter of opinion, and I have given my opinion.

The hon. Gentleman has dealt with only one aspect of the reallocation of Customs resources. The figures do not reveal net reductions. He has given me a trailer of the future attraction to come in his speech. I hope that he will tell us the level of check that he thinks will deter the drug smuggler. Is it five in 100, 10 in 100, 20 in 100 or 25 in 100? If a static check merely involves going through cases and deciding whether a person appears to be capable of smuggling, what about the person who has prepared himself carefully, as increasing numbers do, by secreting a substance in his body? A mere static check will not provide the answer.

If the hon. Gentleman thinks that we are talking about a mere Government policy imposed upon the Customs without its consent or otherwise, he is wrong. If he talks to senior Customs investigators, he will discover that the basic policy is to move away from static checks to more flexible and unexpected checks and to place more emphasis on better intelligence and the ability to penetrate conspiracies further up. That is in line with the thinking of senior investigators who much prefer to alert their men at the airport to an expectation that on a particular flight a certain number of people are expected to bring in drugs than to ask officers to conduct a needle in a haystack operation.

Opinions differ, but a serious point must be addressed. Any form of static check unrelated to good intelligence is like looking for a needle in a haystack. The benefit is small compared with the inconvenience caused to people who have to move across barriers and through airports and are tired and frustrated at the end of a long journey. Subjecting them to the painful process of delay and search to no particular benefit is posturing and not substance. I put that to the House with all candour. I assure the hon. Gentleman that if we had evidence that increasing static checks was a cost-effective way of using Customs officers we should not shrink from it. It is a question of finding the best way of tackling the problem. Throwing bodies at the problem is not the answer. The answer is to be found in finding out what is most effective.

In the Minister's vigorous defence of his policies, can he tell the House the views of the Society of Civil and Public Servants about the number of Customs officers required and how it believes that we can deal with the problem? Does the hon. Gentleman accept that if the importation of heroin cannot be reduced we shall end up by pursuing the victims of heroin abuse and drug dependency rather than the people who are making a lot of money out of it?

The hon. Member for Islington, North (Mr. Corbyn) must have been so keen to make his point that he did not listen to me. I have stated the union's policy. It wants more bottoms on seats. To obtain that, it has put out some extremely lurid press releases saying that the presence of 500 more officers would solve the drug importation problem. That does not begin to be a credible assertion. I have explained why. If the hon. Gentleman has any evidence to gainsay that, I hope that he will come forward with it.

The hon. Gentleman said that we were merely passing on the full brunt of investigation to the users. Everything that I have said today has indicated that that is not so. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman can lay down his partisanship for this one day of the week. Friday is our day of rest from partisanship.

We are addressing our minds, in the hope of achieving some success, to getting to the Mr. Bigs rather than confining ourselves to the Mr. Smalls who are running the drugs through airports.

The Government are not doing that.

The hon. Member for Knowsley, North is an expert on many matters, and I look forward to hearing how great an expert he is on this problem.

I shall now deal with the question of controlling drugs within the United Kingdom. I remind the House of our support for the principal international agreements on the production and supply of drugs. We have long been a party to the United Nations single convention on narcotic drugs. Last December my right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary announced our intention to ratify the United Nations convention on psychotropic substances which provides for the international control of a wide range of synthetic drugs which can cause dependence. We expect to introduce the necessary subordinate legislation next year, after completing our consultation with the trade and professions on the detailed measures needed for compliance.

My hon. Friend has told the House that the Government intend to ratify the convention, but we have been waiting for ratification for a long time. I understand that it will not take place until next year. For heaven's sake, why not?

The point is that the list of substances proscribed under those conventions are for the most part honoured by the United Kingdom, and most of the drugs listed under the various international conventions—of which this is one—are inserted from time to time into the Misuse of Drugs Act. Indeed, later I shall remind the House of the statutory instrument that passed through the House last month under which barbiturates were added to the list as well as a wide range of other substances. We are committed, of course, to that approach.

My hon. Friend's answer clears the air, but will he confirm that he is saying that, although we have not ratified the convention, we comply with the letter and spirit of it? Presumably, for legislative reasons here, we are not yet in a position to ratify. Is that the position?

Those substances that involve any prospect of abuse in this country are regularly listed under the Misuse of Drugs Act, and last month we took that a stage further. We want to strengthen our controls over drugs produced and prescribed in this country. There is no doubt that the inexperience or gullibility of some of the doctors who treat addicts has led to a leakage of pharmaceutical preparations on to the illicit market, and that the lack of satisfactory security arrangements in some pharmacies and warehouses makes them attractive targets for determined criminals.

Consultations have now been completed on the last report of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs on the security of controlled drugs, which was published last November. We are finally evaluating those comments, and my right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary will shortly make public the Government's response to that very important and significant report. Meanwhile, we have been tightening up domestic controls on the supply of drugs by doctors and chemists. On 1 April — this is relevant to the point just made by my hon. Friend the Member for Castle Point (Sir B. Braine)— legislation came into force restricting the prescribing of dipipanone to addicts to doctors specially licensed by the Home Office. It is perhaps not widely enough appreciated that, after heroin, dipapanone is the most common drug of addiction reported by doctors, and it is particularly dangerous. In 1982 it was identified as the cause of a larger number of overdose deaths than heroin.

My right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary is now making increasing use of his statutory powers for dealing with doctors who are found to have prescribed controlled drugs irresponsibly. Last year, directions were made against three doctors, while in the first half of this year action has been taken against a further three doctors for prescribing controlled drugs irresponsibly. As this has been the subject of considerable press comment, I should add that in urgent cases my right hon. and learned Friend is making use of his power to issue a temporary direction to put an immediate stop to such prescribing while the matter goes before the proper authorities.

Although heroin is the most widely misused drug, many addicts will use whatever drug they can obtain. In the past, barbiturates have been widely misused, and, as the House will know, we have recently made the necessary order to control barbiturates under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971. That order will come into force on 1 January next year.

Although legislation has an important part to play in our battle against drug misuse, its efficacy is, of course, dependent on efficient policing. The task of the police in relation to drug offenders is not easy, and I pay tribute to the skill and professionalism with which they carry it out. We were very pleased when the Association of Chief Police Officers agreed earlier this year to the posting of a senior police liaison officer to the Netherlands to improve the flow of intelligence about drugs targeted on the United Kingdom. Only this week Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Constabulary made clear the police's commitment to dealing with the drugs problem in the following words:

"The police will continue to give a high priority to drug abuse and in particular to dealing with those trafficking in drugs and will, in the context of their examination of resources, look for and adopt the most effective means of tackling drug offences."

My hon. Friend is, of course, quite right. I may be able to develop this point later, but in those circumstances why did he reject the recommendations of the police in respect of the Police and Criminal Evidence Bill?

Presumably my hon. Friend refers to the question of searches, but that point was fully ventilated in Committee, and the majority of opinion on both sides of the Committee was against my hon. Friend. We are talking about major structural changes in the role of the police which seem to transcend that matter, although I know that my hon. Friend will remain committed to his point of view —which he is, of course, entitled to do.

The illegal nature of drug misuse, the growing demand for drugs and their increasing availability mean that there is an enormous volume of profits available to those who take part in the illegal drugs economy. Lured by the prospect of those profits, the armed robbers and gang leaders of the past are increasingly turning their attention to drug trafficking. We have seen examples in recent years of criminal conspiracies triggered off by drug trafficking which have led to robbery, vice, violence and even murder. Only in the past few days we have seen the conclusion of a trial involving what the police have described as the biggest drug smuggling ring ever smashed by the British police. The scale of the operation was akin to that of a dynamic business enterprise, with a degree of resources and sophistication that included the acquisition of a fleet of boats and the excavation of an undergound chamber on a deserted beach. When a gang like that can conspire to land tons of cannabis, worth many millions of pounds, it is no surprise that we should find springing up between the major traffickers and the individual misusers a shadowy pyramid of dealers all eager for their share of the profits. They are particularly difficult to detect, because both suppliers and customers have an interest in perpetuating and keeping discreet their activities as middlemen.

Increasingly the police are concentrating the effort of their specialised drug squads and devoting a greater proportion of regional crime squads' time to tracking down the illicit manufacturers, the dealers and the pushers of hard drugs, whose ruthless amoral conduct leads to so much human misery and death. That is clearly right, and the steady stream of prosecutions bears witness to the effectiveness of that approach. At the same time, the police have to deal with the individual drug misuser. The laws on drug possession must continue to be enforced, and the user helped to abandon his or her potentially destructive habit. That dual task is one which may often be best carried out by beat officers with their detailed knowledge of the areas and the communities that they serve. In some areas, the police have adopted a policy of cautioning first-time offenders. Police officers have seized the opportunity to develop a more constructive approach to misusers, for instance, by putting them in touch with the helping agencies which may be able to wean them away from drugs. I am sure that we all regard that as important, and as a further enhancement of the police service's proud history as a caring profession.

Earlier this year I was pleased to attend the annual drugs conference of the ACPO. I was impressed by the willingness of the police to examine closely every aspect of their response to the drugs problem. Indeed, we have given them every encouragement to do so. Police forces throughout the country are reviewing the scale of their effort and considering whether they should be doing more to tackle the problem. They are reviewing their structures to ensure the closest and most effective liaison at all levels — within forces, between forces, with regional crime squads, with the central drugs intelligence unit, with Customs, with the health and voluntary services and with overseas law enforcement agencies. They are reviewing all their procedures in order to keep pace with the growth of this problem.

We are particularly encouraged by the decision of the ACPO earlier this year to set up a working party to examine urgently the case for a regional organisation within the police to combat drug trafficking which will mirror the regional serious crime squads. We wish to assist the police in their endeavours by strengthening the power of the courts where that can help to enhance the deterrent effect of the law against traffickers. Last December, my right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary mentioned the power of the courts to impose very heavy sentences on those convicted of trafficking, and his decision to restrict the granting of parole in the case of serious offences of drug trafficking. I believe that the public and the House will welcome that approach.

Since then, the Hodgson committee has published its report on forfeiture and compensation. Building upon the proposals contained in that report, we shall be introducing legislation during the present Parliament to deprive major criminals, including drug traffickers, of the proceeds of their crime. I noted the observations, as I am sure hon. Members did, of the trial judge in the recent case of a major drug smuggling ring that I mentioned earlier. He said that he would have liked to make an order depriving one of the principal organisers of more of his undoubted wealth, but could not effectively do so. We shall give the courts the powers that they need in that regard.

My hon. Friend skipped over the review that his group might be making of the powers of the courts. Will he make it part of the task of that group to ensure that courts have the necessary powers? Some people think that they do not.

We have been looking at tariffs, the length of sentences and the possibility of depriving people of the proceeds of their crime. If someone has stashed away millions of pounds, it might be worth running the risk of a sentence if he could live the rest of his life in luxury on those proceeds. That is why we gave the Hodgson committee every support and why we are committed to introducing legislation on the subject within the lifetime of this Parliament—and earlier rather than later.

I apologise to the House for taking so much time, but it seemed right for me to give as clear account as I could of what the Government are doing and to respond to interventions rather than wave them away. I must take a little time to deal with treatment. Although it comes at the end of the chain, it is vital.

There is an obvious relationship between the extent of the illicit drug market and the availability of treatment facilities. We are determined to succeed in our efforts to reduce the supply of black market drugs, and that will encourage some habitual misusers to seek treatment. Since the publication in December 1982 of the report on treatment and rehabilitation by the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, there has been considerable progress towards the improvement of services for drug misusers, including the announcement of £6 million of direct funding by the DHSS, specific details of which were given in a parliamentary answer last month.

It would be better for me to leave the details of this aspect to my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Security, who is to reply to the debate. However, I stress that the fact that I am not spending as much time on treatment and prevention as on other more direct Home Office responsibilities does not mean that we consider that aspect unimportant. It is most significant.

I particularly want to address my mind, with the working group, to whether we can educate people who are vulnerable to drugs away from even experimenting with them in the first place. I hope that hon. Members will address the crucial question whether advertising or other campaigns to alert people to the dangers of drug abuse could lead to increased effectiveness on keeping people off drugs or, as some, including our advisory council, fear, could enhance the attraction of drugs to people who take them as an act of rebellion against what others tell them they must do with their lives.

That is a serious problem. I know that a number of hon. Members have great experience of the caring agencies and the problems of drug abuse—I think particularly of my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham (Mr. Irving)—and I hope that they will deal with that issue. We are particularly keen to reach a considered and sensible view. Taking action could be counter-productive, which is why we need to be careful.

One of the advisory council's major recommendations was that a single Minister should assume specific responsibility for the co-ordination of prevention policy at national level, and that it should he the Home Secretary. It will be apparent from all that I have said that a number of Government Departments are engaged in developing various aspects of drugs strategy. My right hon. and learned Friend agrees with the advisory council that it is essential to bring together the various strands to ensure that action on each is consitent with action on others. That is why he announced to the House on 28 June his intention to set up an interdepartmental group with the task of developing the Government's strategy for combating the misuse of drugs of addiction and overseeing its implementation.

The group will have particular regard to the development of proposals for the more effective implementation of that strategy, to the priorities for the allocation and deployment of resources in the various preventive, treatment and other services that play a part in countering drug misuse, and to arrangements within and outside Government for the co-ordination, development and enforcement of policy on drug misuse.

We wanted the debate to take place as early as possible so that we could take on board, as I shall with great care, the views of the House. I shall ensure that suggestions made in the debate or followed up in the other ways open to hon. Members are carefully considered. It seemed crucial for me to emphasise why successive Governments have taken the views that they have and to provide evidence to support views that have come under challenge —as with static checks. No one will reflect and respond to the magnitude of the problem by being dogmatic. We do not say, "Because we have always done it this way, we must continue to do so."

The central purpose of the establishment of the ministerial group on drug abuse was to re-evaluate our policy, point by point, to take on board the suggestions of hon. Members and experienced people outside and to say, quickly if necessary, where it is important to upgrade or change the emphasis of our efforts. It is in that spirit that we have asked the House to consider the issue. We intend that the group should provide a new mechanism to consolidate existing arrangements and take policy forward. It will also ensure that the Government's strategy is continually monitored and kept up to date.

I regret that, because the debate clashes with the 100th meeting of the Central Council of Magistrates Courts Committees, which I am committed to attend, I shall not be able to stay for the whole debate. That will not be because I am not interested in what hon. Members have to say. It is difficult at short notice to let down groups that are holding special meetings.

I assure the House that I shall give the most careful consideration to what hon. Members say. We could easily have left the debate off the Order Paper. We brought it forward because we want the views of the House. We shall go through our policies piece by piece, assisted by the House, and rigorously analyse them. Stimulated by the advisory committee's report, we shall begin with prevention and will give early consideration to importation.

It is a long chain of events that leads from the poppy fields on the north-west frontier to misery and death on the streets of London. [Interruption.] I am sorry that the hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras laughs at a point being made about the effect of heroin abuse——

For the second time.

If the hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras manages to get through his speech, which I imagine will be as ill-prepared as most of his efforts, without repeating himself at least twice, it will be an achievement which he has not managed previously in his 10 years as an hon. Member.

My heart sank when I saw that the Opposition had entrusted the hon. Members for Holborn and St. Pancras and for Knowsley, North with the task of replying to the debate.

On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. This is a very serious subject. Will the Minister stop indulging in self-aggrandisement and get on with the business? People outside are listening to what is being said in the House.

That is not a matter for me.

The hon. Member for Liverpool, Broadgreen (Mr. Fields) has made my point with great clarity. It is because this is such a serious matter that the antics of the hon. Members for Holborn and St. Pancras and for Knowsley, North, which are more appropriate to a Little and Large television show, are so inappropriate.

No one should be under any illusion about the difficulty involved in breaking the links in the drug abuses chain. We are applying ourselves to the task with determination, because the threat that widespread drug misuse poses to our society must never be underestimated.

I congratulate the Government on initiating a debate on an extremely important subject which is causing considerable anxiety and distress to many thousands of parents throughout the country.

However, I am disappointed that the Under-Secretary spent 53 minutes cataloguing a series of measures that have already been announced and did not deal with the issue in the sensible, objective, statesmanlike manner which he pretends to effect, but instead acted irresponsibly and was full of pomposity and sarcasm in dealing with interventions from hon. Members on both sides of the House.

As the hon. Gentleman said in one of his more sensible moments, this is not a debate only about heroin. The problem is that of multi-drug abuse, not least alcohol abuse, which the Under-Secretary did not mention, but which we may be able to debate one day. Alcohol affects more people and is responsible for more distress and illness and for more deaths. Perhaps when we debate the Government's policy on alcohol abuse, we can also debate the as yet unpublished report on alcohol abuse from the policy services group.

Because the Government have initiated the debate, we expected them to come forward with a programme of new measures and initiatives. All we had was a catalogue of already announced measures, all of which—although individually welcome—are too little and too late, and will not deal with the essential problem. The Minister has offered little hope or assistance to the thousands of extremely anxious parents who are looking to the Government to take a new initiative to stem the flow of heroin into Britain and to help deal with those addicted to it.

There can be no doubt about the scale of the problem. We are confronted with a massive, increasing and widespread problem of drug abuse. As delegates to the recent British Medical Association conference said, it is no longer an epidemic: we are confronting a plague. The scale and extent of the plague is shown by the fact that the seizures of heroin increased fivefold in 1982 over 1980. The amount seized rose from 40-plus kg in 1979 to more than 200 kg in 1983. The number of addicts notified to the Home Office increased by 70 per cent. between 1980 and 1982. Some 4,200 new notifications were made in 1983, and a staggering 4,300 new notifications have been made to 20 June this year. Reliable official estimates show that there are 60,000 drug abusers, with at least 50 per cent. of them regularly using narcotics. It is estimated that there will he about 100,000 potential drug abusers in Britain within the next five years.

There is an enormous problem of detection, treatment and social control. That is shown by the number of offences when people are sentenced merely for unlawful possession or supply, which increased from 11,064 in 1978 to 16,337 in 1982. The police say that their regional crime squad now spends 50 to 60 per cent. of its time on drug-related matters such as crimes that are committed by those either addicted to or in pursuit of drugs.

The number of deaths attributable to drug dependence increased from 71 in 1977 to 132 in 1982. It is just the tip of the iceberg of the official statistics—every one of which shows a staggering and massive increase in recent years, especially during the past two years. That is compounded by the number of people now finding their way into penal establishments for drugs offences—up from 600 in 1982 to 800 in 1983.

There is considerable evidence — to which the Minister did not address himself—of severe and serious problems of drug abuse in prisons. The Prison Officers Association, in its submission to the Minister through the control review committee, said that it was a serious problem to the extent that they believed that the riots in Albany were largely caused by drug abuse or by drug peddlers within the prison system inciting other prisoners to take part in the riots as a way to pay off their debts to the drug pushers. When the Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Security replies to the debate, can he say something—as the Home Office Minister said nothing—about the scale of drug abuse in prisons? What has been the response of the Home Office, and what will be the Government's response, to the submission from the Prison Officers Association?

I thank the hon. Gentleman for raising this point. Perhaps he could give the House facts and figures to support his remarks.

I do not have facts and figures. The only evidence I have, which I know is also in the possession of the Home Office Minister, is a written submission from the Prison Officers Association to the committee considering the control and discipline of long-term prisoners. I understand that a report will be published next Thursday. It is not my evidence; it is the evidence of the Prison Officers Association. The prison officers are the people on the ground, at the sharp end, who have experience on an everyday basis. The Minister must judge their evidence for himself, but they say that there is an increase in drug abuse in prisons and that that is causing problems of control.

If that is true, we must take account of it and we must also know the scale of the problem. We want to know what action the Government intend to take to deal with the problem.

My hon. Friend will be aware that all prisons have boards of visitors, and that they are required to send annual reports to the Home Office. I believe that those reports show the deep concern of the boards of visitors about the drug problem. I am sure that it strengthens the points being made by my hon. Friend.

My hon. Friend has a deep and long-established interest in and knowledge of these matters. He represents a constituency that contains one of our more important prisons, and he has made an important point.

The Minister asked me about evidence. Apart from the evidence submitted by the Prison Officers Association, there is evidence in numerous reports not only from the boards of visitors mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Tooting (Mr. Cox) but in the annual reports on the work of the prison department. The Minister should not have to ask me for evidence.

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way again, and I promise not to interrupt him again. Is he saying that he would favour very much stronger and deeper restrictions on visits to and association between prisoners and visitors? That would be the most effective immediate way to bring about the changes that he desires. However, that would run rather against his usual line on these matters.

The Minister is being silly. He should not be led on by his hon. Friend the Home Office Minister in his whispered interventions. The hon. Gentleman should not attempt to catch me out in such an obvious and silly way. The Home Office is responsible for the discipline and control of prisoners. It has been given evidence of widespread drug abuse within the prison system and the breakdown of discipline and control. I want to know what has been the response of the Home Office to the report—[Interruption.]

rose——

Does the Minister want to intervene?

Yes I do.

Oh, so the hon. Gentleman wants to intervene now. He spent 53 minutes abusing the Opposition. I shall not take anywhere like that time, unless the hon. Gentleman continues to heckle before departing for other pastures. The problem is one for theHome Office. The Prison Officers Association has supplied the evidence and has asked for action. I am asking for the response of the Home Office to that submission. We will then decide our attitude on the basis of the Home Office response.

The hon. Gentleman is trying to be tendentious and provocative. He knows that there are ways of stopping any substance getting into prisons, but that would have consequences for freedom of association, freedom of visits and for what the hon. Gentleman would call the civil rights of prisoners involved in constant searches. If that is what he is asking us to do, let him say so.

Come on.

It is no good the hon. Gentleman saying, "Come on," in a pained way. He aspires to be on the Government's side of the House. He cannot only ask questions—he must give answers.

The Minister is being more simpleminded than usual. One must weigh it in the balance. If there is evidence of widespread drug abuse and if the stuff is getting in through visitors and other channels—let us be clear that not just visitors are to blame; I am sure that other hon. Members have had the sort of evidence that has been presented to me—we must consider whether there should be further restrictions on the movement of visitors, staff or anyone else. Nobody has ever denied that. As I say, a balance must be struck, and we should be sensitive to the need to balance the liberties of those who visit prisoners with the need to control the alleged import of drugs into prisons.

In considering the scale of the problem, the bald facts do not give the real picture; the anecdotal evidence of doctors, police, journalists and parents is even worse. That evidence paints a picture of all parts of the country, all social classes and all ages now using drugs as a part of their normal lives, with harrowing accounts of under-resourced doctors and social and welfare services and seemingly inefficient police.

That particularly applies on Merseyside, which is said to be one of the fastest growing areas for drug abuse. A BBC Merseyside programme broadcast last April said that about 50 per cent. of people between 14 and 25 were regular drug users, and nobody has dissented from that assertion. Indeed, there is a great deal of evidence to suggest that the position is much worse.

The Merseyside drugs council, for example, reported a 600 per cent. increase in referrals in 1983. It reported that 107 were aged under 18, that 80 were between 16 and 18, that 37 were under 16 and that 11 were only 12. One 10-year-old was referred to the council last year. The council reports that about 1,600 teenagers in the Wirral and 1,000 teenagers in Liverpool are addicted to heroin. Those figures have been confirmed by Dr. Spencer Madden, who runs a clinic in Chester. The chief constable there in his annual report, published recently, referred to

"heroin remaining a severe problem"

and if one examines some of the police activity on Merseyside one sees, for example, that the number of stops under the Misuse of Drugs Act increased from 260 in 1981 to 1,857 last year. The number of arrests for drug misuse went up from 57 in 1981 to 579 last year, and the number of addicts increased from 140 in 1982 to 207 in 1983. This, by any standards, is a terrifying problem and it is clear that it exists on a frightening scale.

Perhaps the best indication of the scale of the problem is provided not by the figures but by a few notes that have been sent to me about a meeting of an organisation called the Sefton advisory committee on drug and solvent abuse held in Liverpool on 3 April 1984. The minutes of that meeting report that a Police Constable Povey spoke of a meeting held at Lydiate on 27 March attended by 95 parents. Lydiate used to be a part of my old constituency of Ormskirk, so I know it well. It is a well-contained, tree-lined area of semi-detached houses which traditionally has been Conservative, with a stable and hard-working community. One anxious parent contacted the Sefton advisory committee and asked what he could do about his daughter, who had a problem with drugs. That call led to a public meeting which, as I say, was attended by 95 parents. The minutes report:

"It was a long discussion and we made three attempts to end the meeting… we did not succeed in ending it until 11.35 pm."

There are not many hon. Members who could call a public meeting on a wet April night and get 95 people to come along. There, however, 95 concerned parents in an area of no social deprivation, decay, poverty or distress — though, it must be said, with an increasing level of unemployment—were sufficiently concerned about the scale of the problem and its effect on their children that they came to look for assistance.

The trouble is that, the problem having been identified in that way, with the children and parents seeking assistance, there is little medical, social and welfare help available for them. There is little medical treatment available in most areas. While my hon. Friend the Member for Holborn and St. Pancras (Mr. Dobson) will deal with this aspect when he winds up for the Opposition, it is pertinent for me to point out at this stage that there are only 100 NHS clinics, with a small number of beds, and the majority of those are commandeered by people with alcohol problems. Large areas of the country have no medical treatment facilities whatever. That applies to Cumbria, the whole of the north midlands, parts of the home counties and two boroughs of cental London. The clinics which exist are under considerable pressure.

The Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, in its 1982 report entitled "Treatment and Rehabilitation", pointed to the fact that one clinic had 60 patients receiving treatment, that it had another 150 on the waiting list and that there were 12 new referrals each week. We have a clinic on Merseyside which has 80 people waiting for treatment in the six beds available for the purpose.

The hon. Member for Castle Point (Sir B. Braine) has been kind enough to make available to me a letter written by a doctor from University College hospital to one of the hon. Gentleman's constituents. Dated 25 May 1984, the letter said:

"this clinic has had a 600 per cent. increase in workload in terms of new patients over the last five years and virtually no increase in staff. We have a lengthening waiting list, which means that we can never respond immediately to people asking us for help, and I believe it is very important to be able to respond promptly at that moment when a patient has taken the decision to seek help, rather than to callously fob them off with a waiting list."

The same type of evidence comes to us from every area — of clinics under-resourced, under-staffed and considerably over-pressured as a result of the number of people on their waiting lists and new referrals. That is happening on such a scale that many people are now not seeking medical and other assistance.

The same paucity of resources applies to the hospitals, which still have only about 250 beds in 14 rehabilitative hostels throughout the country. There are many areas of the nation with no hostel provision whatever; for example, there is not one hostel place throughout Scotland. The same inadequacy of resources applies to day care centres and the advisory and counselling services. Day care centres are available in only five major cities.

What has been the Government's response to all this? There have been some measures, most of which were reiterated by the Minister this morning. We welcome those initiatives, but each one of them—indeed, the whole lot catalogued together— has been too little and too late. We accept that the Government cannot do everything. They do not have responsibility for the way in which families are organised and people deal with their children. However, they are responsible for stopping drugs coming in. It is their job to deter and catch the pushers and peddlers and to provide for the prevention and treatment of addiction.

The Government report that they have increased to 60 the number of specialist Customs and Excise officers dealing with the gathering of intelligence on the importation of drugs. We welcome that, but we must set alongside it the decrease of 900 in the number of uniformed officers in the last year. As the Society of Civil and Public Servants rightly points out, if we are serious in wanting to stop the increasing volume of heroin —reckoned to be coming in at the rate of £600 million-worth a week through Dover and Heathrow alone, at a cheaper price and of a higher purity — we must have more uniformed officers at the points of entry. It is not suggested —it was absurd for the Minister to suggest it—that that would solve the problem. However, we believe, as the union asserts, that it would help to stem some of the tide that is currently washing over our shores. The Government have acted irresponsibly in reducing the number of officers in that area, given the scale of the problem, which they acknowledge and which we all know confronts us.

I do not necessarily go along with the hon. Gentleman's support of the Civil and Public Servants Association's proposals, for the reasons given by my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State. The hon. Gentleman knows that stopping drug trafficking requires intelligence, and a great deal of intelligence arises from the activities of the Special Branch. That being so, why is he in favour of reducing the activities of the Special Branch?

I do not know that I have ever been on record as advocating a reduction in the activities of the Special Branch. However, the Opposition want the Special Branch to be more accountable and subject to more democratic control. That is not incompatible with also wanting increased intelligence, as we do. We do not derogate from the responsibility to catch and punish criminals, especially those who are trafficking in drugs. The hon. Gentleman is misleading himself, the House and the country if he suggests otherwise.

The Under-Secretary of State became prickly when I asked him what the Customs officer was achieving in Karachi and what the police officer was achieving in Amsterdam. Is it not a significant measure of the Government's response, when £600 million-worth of heroin a week is coming through Dover and Heathrow, to have a man in Karachi and another in Amsterdam? The United States has officers in all the countries that are producing drugs and through which they pass. Those officers suggest that the Goverment's response does not achieve the so-called important results to which the Minister alluded.

Such results are not achieved, either, by doubling the derisory £50,000 a year grant to the United Nations fund for drug abuse control, by the increase of £180,000 to strengthen law enforcement in Pakistan, or by the provision of £1 million over five years for development programmes in the opium and poppy-growing areas. None of that funding will reduce substantially the volume of opium that is grown or the amount that comes into Britain.

rose——

If the Minister wishes to intervene, I shall give way, but I must say to him and the House——

Order. The hon. Gentleman seems to be encouraging interventions. Many hon. Members are seeking to catch my eye and time is passing quickly.

Precisely, Mr. Deputy Speaker. That is the point that I wish to make. The Minister, who will not be present for the whole of the debate, spoke for 53 minutes. He and his hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Security have already intervened three times in my speech. I shall not refuse a Minister's intervention but, to reinforce what you have said, Mr. Deputy Speaker, he is only extending the length of my speech and taking time from my hon. Friends and his hon. Friends. If he still wishes me to give way to allow him to intervene, I shall do so, but I hope that he has a substantial point. He has not had one so far this morning.

The hon. Gentleman is being needlessly provocative and when he says something particularly grotesque he must expect someone to intervene to correct him. Where does he get his figure of £60 million-worth of heroin a week? I hope that it was a slip of the tongue. the hon. Gentleman said £60 million on one occasion and £600 million on another. Let us have the right figure. Secondly, if it is the right figure, I should like to know its source.

I intended to say £6 million a week. If I did not say that, the Minister was right to correct me. I know what I intended to say, which was £6 million a week. That figure comes from the Institute for the Study of Drug Dependency. It is an official and published figure.

What is the Government's attitude towards police enforcement? We support the Home Secretary's proposals to take measures to get at the profits of crime that are made by those who are engaged in and convicted of drug trafficking. We support, too, with reservations, his changes in the parole scheme for those who have been convicted of serious offences of drug trafficking. Those measures may help to deter those who are pushing and trafficking in drugs.

What is the police role? It seems that there is little evidence that they are effective in dealing with drug abuse and drug pushers. There are still two police forces that do not have drug squads. The police tell us that the squads that do exist are under-manned and under-resourced and do not have the proper facilities to catch suppliers. In many areas the activities of the police are still too heavily concentrated on the abuse of cannabis. I welcome the response of the Merseyside police force and the South Yorkshire force, which have initiated a policy of not prosecuting those who are found in possession of small amounts of cannabis. They have decided to caution those offenders, and that is the right way to deal with the problem. If more police forces were to adopt that policy and concentrate their resources on those involved in hard drugs, they might be more effective and society might be better protected.

The Government's failure lies in their treatment of drug addicts as well as in enforcement, and this is something for which the Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Security will have to answer when he replies. We can have little confidence in the Government's response to the new report on prevention, given their response to the report on treatment and rehabilitation from the advisory council that was published in December 1982. A proper response to that report came only in February 1984. Although the Secretary of State for Social Services says that the treatment of drug addicts is a high priority, he is still asking local health authorities for their plans, their actions and their activities 18 months after the publication of a report calling for more rehabilitative treatment. They want to know about the Government's policies, and so do we. I ask the Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Security to tell us when the multi-disciplinary drug problem teams are to be established. The teams were supposed to be established in each of the 14 regional health authorities 18 months ago. The Government were supposed to attach high priority to their establishment, but my evidence is that only two of the 14 authorities have these teams.

Perhaps the Minister will tell us when the district drug advisory committees, which are to monitor drug abuse, are to be established. I am told that only a third of the 193 districts have such teams. Only now is the body being established that is to determine good medical practice. Only recently has it been decided to provide £6 million over three years as the advisory council suggested, although the council said that the funding should continue over five years. We welcome the £6 million that the Government have made available for the priming of projects, but anyone who is aware of the depth and extent of drug abuse will not accept that that sum is sufficient. Over two thirds of the £6 million was allocated in the first year and the entire amount was spoken for in bids that came in the first few months. That demonstrates clearly the scale of need throughout the country for more treatment facilities and the paucity and inadequacy of the Government's response.

There are serious drawbacks and failings in the way in which the money is allocated by the Government. The £6 million has to be bid for by statutory bodies and statutory organisations, which are required to be sponsors if voluntary organisations are requesting money. That means that, if there are no drug services and no voluntary organisations in an area, there will be no bid and no future money. That is one of the drawbacks of the Government's policy and of the much-vaunted and applauded £6 million which the Government have made available. It is clear that new money will follow old money. The areas which have drug facilities, inadequate though they may be, will get the new money and the new facilities and the areas that are without medical treatment or voluntary organisations will continue to be bereft of any means of dealing and coping with the problem of drug addiction.

The minimal, derisory amount of £6 million, which the Government are making available to deal with this "plague"—that is their word as well as everyone else's —of drug abuse which they say has a high priority must be set in the context of the fact that the rate capping of local authorities and the abolition of the metropolitan councils will mean that less money is available to voluntary organisations to deal with drug abuse than has been made available in the past. On top of that——

(by private notice) asked the Minister for Information Technology whether he will make a statement on the takeover of the Mirror Group by Mr. Robert Maxwell's Pergamon company.

It is reported today that Reed International plc. has agreed in principle to sell Mirror Group Newspapers Ltd. to Pergamon Press Ltd. On the basis of the information available to me, this sale does not involve a transfer of a newspaper to a newspaper proprietor. It would accordingly not require the consent of the Secretary of State under section 58 of the Fair Trading Act 1973. It will, however, fall for consideration under the general merger provisions of the Act.

I am grateful to the Minister for his statement. Did he consult the Director General of Fair Trading about this important takeover? What advice did he receive from the Director General? Does not the hon. Gentleman agree that, in the case of newspapers, whose editorial independence and wide spectrum of opinion are very much in the national interest, it is undesirable that proprietors should be able to obtain total command without enforceable guarantees and restraints of major newspapers?

In the light of the recent experience of Rupert Murdoch's dismissal of the editor of The Times, Mr. Tiny Rowland's intimidation of The Observer, and now the change of ownership of the Mirror Group, does the hon. Gentleman not think that the time has come for a major review and strengthening of the legislation?

My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry has yet to receive the advice of the Director General of Fair Trading on the question of the merger policy, and any decision will be made in the light of that advice. We have examined the responsibilities of the Secretary of State with regard to sections 57 and 58 of the Fair Trading Act, and I have set that out clearly in my statement. We expect to receive the advice of the Director General on the matter of general policy and competition policy. Because no consent is required on newspaper grounds, conditions of consent do not arise in this matter, as I believe the right hon. Gentleman, who has had responsibility in these matters, knows.

I have noticed that this morning Mr. Maxwell said that he gave certain undertakings to the Reed International Group about the future editorial policy of that group and the matter of employment. I heard him on radio this morning talking about his plans for expansion.

Does the Minister agree that the crucial question for the House is the concentration of newspaper power in the hands of one proprietor and that many people believe that it was wrong to allow Mr. Rupert Murdoch to acquire such a large concentration of power? I am not criticising the takeover of the Mirror Group, but I believe that it would be most objectionable if Mr. Maxwell were able to extend his empire by increasing his share of the Express newspapers. Will the Government assure the House that if the Mirror Group takeover is accepted they will not allow the same concentration of power to accrue to Mr. Maxwell as has been allowed to accrue to Mr. Murdoch?

The right hon. Gentleman is on a fair and good point — that the Government do not concern themselves with the ownership of newspapers. other than with the concentration of power. According to the advice that I and my officials have received about this merger, that matter does not arise at this stage. Should it arise in future, and should Mr. Maxwell increase his interests in various other newspaper groups, especially above the 25 per cent. level, it would certainly come under sections 57 and 58 of the Act.

Does my right hon. Friend agree that it is ludicrous for the House of Commons to be totally involved in every newspaper transfer and that what is needed, if it were possible, is not a reference to the Office of Fair Trading about newspaper ownership, but an underlying change in newspaper production techniques, restrictive practices and overmanning so that there are more profitable newspapers and more people come into the industry, thereby breaking down the implicit monopolies of small numbers of people holding large numbers of newspapers?

My hon. Friend is correct. The problems of Fleet street will be solved or mitigated not by transfers of ownership but only by addressing the major problems in the operation of Fleet street. [Interruption.] There are many workers' problems in Fleet street. It is just as well that the rest of the printing industry does not operate on the same basis as Fleet street.

Is the Minister aware that since the Mirror Group owns popular Scottish newspapers such as the Daily Record and the Sunday Mail there will be great trepidation at the prospect of Mr. Maxwell obtaining control of those newspapers? Will the hon. Gentleman urge the Chancellor of the Exchequer to use the new fraud investigation group to have a hard look at the financing of this empire, because I understand that the group has headquarters in Liechtenstein, a tax haven, which may be worth investigating? Will the hon. Gentleman consider setting up a Royal Commission on the way in which newspapers are owned and controlled, because there is great worry among the public as a whole at the fact that people such as Mr. Maxwell can get their hands on important media factors? Will the hon. Gentleman urgently consider that matter?

I believe that that is the first time that the hon. Gentleman has asked for a Royal Commission, and I welcome his conversion. I am surprised that the hon. Gentleman has been so hard about his former parliamentary colleague, whom my hon. Friend the Member for Oxford, West and Abingdon (Mr. Patten) assures me is still a member of the Oxford Labour party. Mr. Maxwell has given certain undertakings about editorial freedom. He has said that the existing political stance of the Mirror Group will be maintained.

I note what my hon. Friend has just said about editorial freedom and what he said earlier. Is it not the case that Mr. Maxwell need not have given any assurance on editorial policy, but the fact that he has done so and the way in which he has spoken mean that he seems to be prepared to enter into negotiations on editorial policy with his employees in the Mirror Group?

Mr. Maxwell has been frank about his interests in that group and the way in which he intends to operate it. That statement was widely reported today in the newspapers and on television and radio. Mr. Maxwell has not only given undertakings about the maintenance of the editorial stance, but has spoken this morning of opening a new London evening newspaper.

Is the Minister aware of the widespread dismay at Mr. Maxwell's takeover of the Mirror Group and the increasing concentration of newspaper ownership in the hands of private individuals? Bearing in mind what has happened recently with Mr. Murdoch, Mr. Rowland and now Mr. Maxwell, is it not clear that the state of the British press is sick and that some form of inquiry is necessary? It is intolerable that more and more newspapers are being opened by private individuals with massive wealth and political ambitions.

If Fleet street is sick, it is not due to individual newspaper proprietors. They come along for a variety of reasons and acquire interests in newspapers and keep them going, when that is often against normal commercial judgment. The sickness of Fleet street is quite profound. In my view, and the view of many people, it relates very much to working practices and activities that have been perpetrated in Fleet street for a long time.

Although one is, of course, concerned about the amount of power that one man will have, will the Minister welcome the self-made man rather than a second or third-generation newspaper tycoon? Does he accept that Mr. Maxwell has had more success in his dealings with the unions than the Prime Minister?

I do not think that the Government have a view on first or second-generation tycoons, but certainly Mr. Maxwell has assembled a very large group, he has operated successfully, and he has made known his interest in the acquisition of a newspaper. As it stands at the moment, that is not a concentration of newspaper power, and that is the concern of the Government.

Does my right hon. Friend agree that it is most welcome that someone with Mr. Maxwell's proven entrepreneurial ability is coming into newspaper proprietorship in Fleet street? Will my right hon. Friend further agree that the real reason why Labour Members may be opposed to the acquisition is that they fear that good management will start to expose even more clearly the appalling restrictive practices in Fleet street? There is no need to suppose, from Mr. Maxwell's record, that he will interfere with editorial policy.

I am a little puzzled at the attitude of the Labour party, because the alternative to Mr. Maxwell's group acquiring the newspaper would be for the company to go to the London capital markets—to the dreaded, horrid City—to raise money for the future development of the group. Indeed, the independence or survival of the Mirror Group may be better secured by being within a framework of larger resources than by having to go back to shareholders when times get difficult.

Is the Minister aware that there is great concern as to the power that Mr. Maxwell will now have? Is it the Minister's intention to seek an early meeting with Mr. Maxwell to try to find out exactly what his policy will be? Other people heard Mr. Maxwell's comments on the radio, and I am sure that the Minister must be aware that there is great doubt as to what Mr. Maxwell intends to do.

I do not particularly want to meet Mr. Maxwell—that is not a personal comment—beause it is not part of Government policy to try to determine and impose conditions in situations of this sort, where a concentration of ownership is not involved. Conditions of consent arise only where there is a concentration of ownership, and that is not the concern in this case.

Is not the real problem that there will be concentration in one individual of ownership of a major group of newspapers, with no enforceable guarantee of editorial independence? Will the Minister agree that one must be concerned when newspapers are to be owned by an individual who gives unenforceable guarantees of independence, and who was reported in the Sunday Times a few weeks ago as saying that, had he been in charge of The Observer when the story about the Prime Minister's son was published, he would have sacked the editor? Therefore, what credibility can be given to Mr. Maxwell's guarantees?

I shall not be drawn into discussion of the editorial policy of The Observer. Certain undertakings have been given by Mr. Maxwell. His clear intention, expressed over several months if not years, has been to own a newspaper broadly supportive of the views of the Labour party. He has remained a supporter of the Labour party, and I am very surprised at the concern felt by hon. Gentlemen.

Is the Minister concerned that so much of Fleet street should now be owned by small clutch of millionaires intent on satisfying a "Citizen Kane" fantasy? Does he agree that there should be much wider diversification of ownership? Will he consider introducing legislation to prevent any individual from owning more than 20 per cent. of any national newspaper?

There are limitations, under existing legislation, on the concentration of ownership. The ownership of Fleet street newspapers has always been diverse, varied and interesting in its pattern. It has changed over the generations and over the decades, and it will ever be so. There is a strange motivation among people to own newspapers. I think that many people in the rest of the business world are rather surprised that people should actually want to own newspapers.

The Minister has referred to Mr. Maxwell's guarantees and, of course, we expect them to be maintained. Is the Minister content — this is the policy point—with a 1973 Act under which a major newspaper can pass into the hands of a single person without any need for guarantees to be given? Secondly, even where guarantees are given, as in the cases of The Times and The Observer, they can apparently be flouted without any consequences for those who do it.

The right hon. Gentleman asked whether general Government policy over the years, irrespective of which party was in power, has been appropriate. I should think that we have the balance about right. It would be very wrong for Governments to intervene in the ownership of newspapers and control them. That is a slippery path and Governments would be led further and further down it. It would lead eventually to editorial influence and control by Governments. I do not want to go down that path. I believe that the legitimate concern of the House arises when there is a concentration of ownership. In this case, I have 'said that we do not believe that there is such concentration.

Before Mr. Maxwell intervened, I was drawing attention to the Government's allocation of £6 million over three years for pump-priming projects dealing with drug addiction. I said that, although the Opposition welcome that allocation, we feel that it is too late and too little. I drew attention to some of the defects in the administration of that money, one of them being that it is allocated to very specific projects. More important, however, is the fact that, if we are to attach the kind of priority that the Government say they attach to dealing with the treatment of those who misuse drugs, there needs to be a system of central Government funding, tied to the delivery of specific facilities and projects. That is the only way to ensure that there is a national and comprehensive system of treatment and after-care for drug addicts. The ad hoc pump-priming mechanisms in which the Government are involving themselves will in no way deal with the long-term problem with which we are confronted.

We now have the Government's response to the advisory council's report on prevention. We welcome the re-establishment of the interdepartmental committee. We should like to know a little more about it than the Home Secretary gave in his written answer of 28 June and a little more than the Under-Secretary of State told us today.

Has the committee met? It is well over a fortnight since it was re-established. That may not seem long but, given the song and dance that the Government have made about the importance and priority they attach to the subject, one would have expected Ministers from the Department to have met by now and determined their initial response to the strategy.

Will Ministers from each Department concerned be represented at each meeting of the committee — not officials or officers but Ministers — and will the Minister, when he replies, assure the House that the committee will meet at least every three months to review progress? Pehaps it will meet and is intended to meet much more frequently, but we should like the assurance that it will meet at least every three months.

Is the Committee to have a permanent staff? How will its recommendations be enforced? The constitution and functions of the interdepartmental committee replicate, or are extremely similar to, the constitution and functions of the advisory council. So how will the committee relate to the council and its recommendations? To what extent will the committee consult the advisory council?

It is important to deal properly with the problem of drug misuse. There is agreement in all parts of the House on the scale and importance of the problem and, to a certain extent, on the way in which we should deal with it. The consequences of failure are too horrendous to contemplate in terms of more and younger addicts, more deaths and illness, greater strain on social, welfare and medical services and greater demands on the police, the courts and the prisons. Evidence from Edinburgh suggests that 30 per cent. of housebreaking in that area is attributable to addicts in search of funds to support their drug habit. We must deal with the import of drugs, with the pushers and traffickers and with the unfortunate addicts.

It must be recognised that many of these people are not ill. Drug abuse is not necessarily an illness or a disease. It is very much a social problem. We must shy away from criminalising many addicts. They need help, sympathy, support and management. They may have been foolish and feckless, but they are not criminals except to the extent that their addiction leads them into criminal acts and propensities. We must deal with their problems sympathetically, but we must also accept that they are a function of the society in which they live and which has bred them and their problems. That is the view of Dr. Griffith Edwards, head of the addiction research unit of the Institute of Psychiatry. In the General Practitioner of 29 June he is reported as follows:

"In no country that I know of is drug use not related to culture and economics, to the state of the nation. If we don't get society right heroin is going to be rife in the ghettos of our cities. It's going to explode. I'm amazed it hasn't happened already."

One must acknowledge that Dr. Edward's comments relate also to the growing and intractable problem of unemployment. I do not suggest that unemployment is the sole or even the main cause of addiction or drug abuse, but it is a theme which runs through virtually every personal account in national and local papers recently and through all the parents' letters and all the confessions of young people on Merseyside, all of whom seem to have suffered deprivation, poverty and alienation from the community.

The Government cannot escape their responsibilities. They must ensure that there are more customs officers to deal with the import of drugs. They must ensure that the police are effective in catching drug traffickers rather than wasting time stopping people going through Dartford tunnel. The Government are responsible for the paucity of treatment facilities. Above all, the Government stand convicted of the crime of creating the social and economic conditions in which drug abuse can flourish.

rose——

Order. Unless there is restraint in the length of speeches, a number of hon. Members will be disappointed. As 15 or 16 hon. Members wish to catch my eye, I suggest that hon. Members set themselves a target of 10 minutes maximum. We may then get everyone in.

I shall be as brief as possible, Mr. Deputy Speaker.

There is an old saying that opportunity makes the thief, and I believe that opportunity is one of the key factors in the increasing prevalance of drug abuse. It is an oversimplification, but I believe that youngsters are always tempted to do things that they should not. If drugs are available, they are likely to experiment and, sadly, some will become major users and addicts. A key aspect of containing the problem must thus be to reduce the opportunities for obtaining drugs by every possible means, including a major effort to prevent the import of drugs.

I welcome the Government's action in that direction, but it is by no means sufficient. The hon. Member for Knowsley, North (Mr. Kilroy-Silk) was right to say that putting one man in Amsterdam and one in Karachi was tinkering with the problem. We are dealing with big business of the worst kind, with greed at its most revolting, and the scale of resources harnessed to deal with the problem must be commensurate with that. Therefore, I look to the Government for a far greater effort than my hon. Friend suggested earlier.

There is force in the argument that increasing the number of uniformed officers at the ports may not be the most effective way to deal with the problem, but if that is so we expect a considerable increase in the number of people in the special intelligence-gathering sector. I listened carefully to my hon. Friend the Minister, but I did not hear nearly enough about that. I hope that there will be a very large increase in the numbers. We do not expect precise details of the way in which they operate—that would play into the hands of the traffickers—but an idea of the number of people involved and the scope of the operation would be most welcome. Now that the interdepartmental group has been set up under the auspices of my right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary, I hope that we shall shortly be told of a major step-up of activities in that direction.

I hope, too, that we shall really crack down on people caught trafficking in drugs. My late father, in most respects a most gentle and kindly man, felt that no punishment was too severe for those engaged in drug trafficking, which he described as peddling death. I believe that it is a crime as serious as murder. In many cases it is more serious, because far more people may die as a result. Therefore, contrary to my usual views about the wisdom of short prison sentences or, preferably, alternatives to imprisonment, I believe that in the absence of capital punishment these people must be kept locked up in great security for a very long time indeed. Above all, neither they nor their families should be able to profit from their grisly achievements in obtaining money through trafficking in drugs. I hope that there will be very early action on the lines described by my hon. Friend the Minister to ensure that such people cannot profit from these the most ill-gotten gains of all.

The hon. Member for Knowsley, North, rightly in my view, referred to the increasing problem within prisons. I can confirm, from meetings with the Prison Officers Association, what he said about the anxiety felt by prison officers about the increase in the use of drugs and their feeling of being unable to deal with the problems caused within prisons as a result of the entry of drugs. More interestingly, they told me that one of their anxieties was the failure by the Home Office to recognise the problem publicly and openly. That may well be because, once the problem is openly admitted, there then comes the question of how to deal with it. That is a tricky problem. It is plain that the most effective way to deal with it, in one sense, is to prevent the open visiting of prisoners by friends and families that we have come to expect and to applaud. When the problem is as serious as this one, one needs to think again, even if selectively. By that I mean that, if there appears to be a major problem of drug misuse in a prison at a set time one might consider the withdrawal of certain of the open visiting privileges—where people can communicate by touch.

The Prison Officers Association suggested that it was easy, for example, to hand over a small amount of drugs when a small child or a baby is passed between the prisoner and his wife. I believe that in such circumstances, for a time at least, one might withdraw the privileges. At the very least, the Home Office must come to terms with the problem and consider whether that is a viable option for dealing with it.

My hon. Friend the Minister positively invited us to comment on what one might call the educational side of the matter — whether one should engage in a high-powered advertising, high-profile approach or, alternatively, a low-profile approach to warn young people of the dangers. I am inclined to the view that there are dangers in making the kind of powerful emotional appeal that would be necessary to make people notice the campaign. Many years ago, I was a teacher, and it was always clear that children loved to do what they were forbidden to do. There is a possibility that one might draw their attention to drug taking through such campaigns if they are highly emotional. That does not mean that I do not believe that education is important. It needs to be set in the context of general health and hygiene education —not in the highly emotional terms of the advertising media, television and the like — in the schools were people can be in direct contact with the teachers.

It follows from that that one must have well-educated teachers who know what they are talking about and can put over the case. It can be done effectively. There are hon. Members who have been severely rebuked by their young for engaging in cigarette smoking. The young have been taught effectively about the dangers in schools. They do not like to see their elders, and hopefully their betters, engaging in a damaging practice. There is real scope for education.

There must be much more education of people about the general side effects of drugs. We have that easy feeling that one can swallow medicinal drugs without any side effects. Most doctors nowadays will agree that any medicinal drug powerful enough to effect an improvement is also powerful enough to have side effects. That point must be put over much more widely. I hope that people will not feel that this is irrelevant. It is a matter of changing the climate of opinion about drugs in general. The most powerful drugs are at the extreme end of the scale.

There is an alarming tendency on the part of doctors to prescribe drugs for all manner of what I would call social rather than medicinal ills, to soothe people when they have family problems or are unemployed. I would include among those the drugs which have a tranquilising effect.

I recently paid a visit to a private treatment centre for what it calls chemical dependency. It is just outside my constituency, although still within the city of Plymouth. It is a charitable organisation and I was told that it had considerable difficulties in weaning people off tranquilisers when they have been on them for too long. It was one of the most terrifying pieces of information that I have picked up for a long time. Furthermore, I was told that the withdrawal symptoms are far more difficult to cope with than those of hard drugs such as heroin. I found that difficult to take in, but I was assured that it was the case.

If that is so, it spells out several important implications for public policy with regard to the prescription of drugs for apparently medical purposes by the medical profession. I hope that we will study this matter closely in any future consideration of the use of drugs, whether they be for kicks or for medical use.

I hope that we shall study more closely the methods of treatment. That clinic felt that the Americans had better treatment methods than we had, probably because they have had longer experience of drug addiction. It would be well worth the Department of Health and Social Security and/or the Home Office studying methods of treatment employed in countries such as the United States. We might learn some useful lessons for setting up our own treatment centres.

The Government's major role is to try to prevent drugs from being brought into the country and easily circulated. Treatment must come as a slightly less important part of the programme.

Bearing in mind your strictures about the shortage of time, Mr. Deputy Speaker, I shall dispense with the other points that I was hoping to make. I hope that we can look to the Government for a far more vigourous approach than we have seen to date.

The Minister said that it was misguided to look only to the Government for a solution to the problem. I believe that it would be misguided to look to the Government, given the evidence presented by, and the performance of, the Minister and his inability to understand what needs to be done. He was more intent — that has provoked my intervention—on his pomposity, self-justification and verbiage. He was engaging in sixth-form debating techniques, when there are hundreds and thousands of people — parents, addicts, community workers, police and everyone else—studying the problem. To reduce the matter to a kind of farce is an insult to those people.

We need more than exclamations of horror from the Government Front Bench; we need action. We must look at the cold hard facts of the problem facing us and understand why heroin has become such a problem. We must study the effect of heroin abuse in our society.

When one listens to the Government and considers their track record, one must understand that they are accustomed to the decline in social conditions of working people. The Government express things merely in cash terms. They say that they are unable to provide resources because of the lack of finance.

Not so many months ago. my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Mr. Wareing) tried to introduce his Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons (Amendment) Bill. The Government flooded their Benches to ensure that it did not go through, purely because of the financial implications, although the chronically sick and disabled in our society are crying out for treatment.

The priorities can be matched to class needs. The miners' strike shows that the Government are prepared callously to destroy communities and to provide resources to ensure that miners are beaten into submission. When workers and their families try to defend themselves, although they have no money for other things, the Tory Government will spend billions of pounds to keep working people in their place.

I have read the Home Office report on the prevention and misuse of drugs, and it gives no factual analysis of the problem. It does not even scratch the surface and has no connection with reality. It is all right for Tory Members to stand up and talk about the problem in an academic way. We are living with the problem in places such as Merseyside and Liverpool. Daily, we see the crimes committed against ordinary people, which are allowed to go on because of the inactivity of the agencies set up allegedly to deal with the problem. The Minister's speech showed that the Government are not tackling it with any seriousness.

In the report, no attempt has been made to quantify the amount of resources that are needed. Why? Because the people do not know what is needed. There is no insight into the numbers currently involved in drugs, drug taking and abuse, so they cannot begin to deal with the problem. It is low on the list of Government priorities.

Some three quarters of drug addicts are involved in the heroin trade, which means that it is a problem for all of us to face—it is a community problem. One might ask what the Government have been doing. We have heard today and previously that the source of 80 per cent. of Britain's heroin is Pakistan. One guy was sent out there. I am sure that in his own field he is an expert, but to send one man to Pakistan is an absolute disgrace. One policeman has been sent to Holland, which is the centre of European distribution.

Customs officers have seized about 201 kilos of heroin, compared with the estimated 3,500 kilos that entered the country in 1983. That shows that with the lack of resources at the ports of entry, a hopeless task faces Customs and Excise people, good trade unionists attempting to carry out their job on behalf of the population. They are banging their heads against the wall. As has been said, Customs manpower is inadequate. On 9 July, the Minister of State, Treasury said that the number of staff in the Customs and Excise Department had fallen from 28,870 in April 1979 to 25,309 in April 1984. The Government's response was to bring in 60 so-called "experts" in the field. It is an insult to people in the Customs and Excise. The Government have a vested interest; all that they are interested in is putting more bottoms on seats. The Customs and Excise people are doing sterling work and are concerned at the inadequate services.

Much of the heroin enters the country through Heathrow airport. The Society of Civil and Public Servants report claimed that between 1971 and 1983 there was an 80 per cent. increase in passenger traffic at the same time as a 25 per cent. decrease in customs staff. During meal breaks, there is only one officer in the green channel while over 1,000 passengers go through. At Dover, one officer might have to clear 200 to 300 cars or 40 to 50 passenger coaches. The Under-Secretary of State for Scotland said on 11 April:

"I do not think that one can look to the Customs and Excise for a reason for the increase." — [Official Report, 11 April 1984; Vol. 58, c. 367.]

In the customs, only one in 100 people is tackled. That source of heroin supply is being disregarded. Ministers bemoan the fact that people will be delayed going through customs if there are more searches. I would rather have delays caused by the presence of 10, 20 or 30 people at the customs carrying out checks if that would save the life of one kid in the Merseyside area. That is where my priorities lie.

On 9 February, the Government responded by saying that they would give £6 million over three years. Less than £200,000 has been allocated to the Mersey area. It will not even scratch the surface. The Government talk about priming the pump, but they are wasting their time throwing that sort of money at us. It is a bit like the rate support grant and the other fiddling that the Government did on the Liverpool city council budget. They will need to find money in time, because the problem will not go away. Unless they tackle it, there will be a major problem.

The police allege that they give high priority to drugs and drug trafficking. They are talking about updating the computer back-up to the Central Drugs Intelligence Unit in Scotland Yard through which nationwide enforcement activities are co-ordinated. I hope that the Government will pay the same attention to that computer as to the computer on miners, strikers and Labour activists, so that we get a good deal out of the money spent on it.

We consider that the resources for the Merseyside police are inadequate. At present, we have one detective chief inspector, one detective inspector, five detective sergeants and five detective constables—a total of 12 drug officers in an area with more than 5,000 addicts, and with pushers, dealers and so on. In Merseyside, in the three and a half years until June 1983, 224 arrests were made for drug trafficking. In three and a half months, the police have locked up over 4,000 miners—one miner every 20 minutes. That shows where the Government's priorities lie.

The Secretary of State for Social Services said that it was a cop-out to blame unemployment for the drug problem. On 15 April, the editorial of The Sunday Times stated:

"The fact remains that drugs are an especially beckoning temptation if at 16 or 17 you have nothing to do."

Paragraph 2.8 in the Home Office report states:

"The continuing inequality in our society places entire groups of the population at a grave disadvantage. To live in a deprived area, to be poor, to be a member of a minority group subject to discrimination, to struggle against the demoralising effects of long term unemployment, all these situations are seen as a severe test of the ability to survive for long periods without chronic physical, psychological and social disability…it should also be noted that social and economic deprivation is likely to aggravate some of the deleterious effects of drug misuse…We think it essential to recognise the relevance of policies which are directed towards the general wellbeing of society, eg measures for redistributing wealth, for varying the level of provision in areas such as health, education or housing, for reducing unemployment or for providing leisure facilities for the community at large."

In other words, the report calls for the exact opposite of the policies that the Government have pursued since 1979. Instead of it being a cop-out to blame unemployment, the facts are that in areas of deprivation and high unemployment, bad housing and so on — places that Opposition Members represent, such as Merseyside and Liverpool — the incidence of drug abuse is on the increase.

At the same time, there is a lack of facilities in the Merseyside area. On 16 November 1983, the Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Security said in reply to a parliamentary question that there were 28 hospital beds in the Mersey regional health authority not only for drug addiction but for alcoholism. On 6 July, we still have 28 beds, although in that period the local police and people in the Labour movement have highlighted in the press a catalogue of increased heroin addiction in the area. Nothing has been done. The Liverpool Echo is carrying out an investigation. The evidence from the inquiry is that the dogs in the street know what is going on, yet no one else, certainly the Government, knows anything about it.

One man quoted in the paper said:

"I don't think there's anywhere in Liverpool where you could possibly he more than five minutes away from buying heroin. It's that bad."

Another man said:

"It is as easy to buy heroin on the Ford Estate"

in Birkenhead

"as it is to buy a loaf if you have the money."

A father whose sons are both addicts said:

"Every friend they have is either an addict or takes drugs. It's so rife in Moreton now we just can't understand why the police don't do something to clean it up."

The inactivity of the police in those areas unfortunately has provoked the setting up of vigilante groups of parents, copying the example of some of the housing estates in Dublin. They themselves have gone into the estates and cleared out the pushers and traffickers. We expect the agencies set up to deal with this problem, including the police, to carry out that role. But it needs beef, and we will join those' people to rid our estates of these dealers in this vile traffic.

Mothers, fathers and children in Merseyside are affected. At one of the first meetings that I called to discuss the drugs problem, a father stood up to me and threatened me. He said that if we did not continue our campaign against drugs he would come looking for me. In tears, the man informed the audience of parents, teachers and working-class organisations on Merseyside that his own son had died in his arms from the effects of drug abuse. In the face of the threat from that man, I feel committed to carry on, especially when I read that in Liverpool a 13-year-old girl gave her 11-year-old sister heroin to pass the time because they had nothing else to do.

We have heard about the need to learn the lessons of what is happening abroad. Apparently, we have sent someone over to Holland. However, we read that babies born in Amsterdam are already heroin addicts before they crawl out of the womb. Last month 200 women in Amsterdam gave birth to babies already addicted. We are breeding a generation of addicts. Every addict is a potential pusher, and the children in our schools are not safe from these people.

There are no treatment centres on Merseyside. There are counselling centres, but counselling is not enough. The majority of people involved in drugs will not go near any form of counselling. They will not go near the probation service, the police or any other form of officialdom because, having read reports in the press of their actions and their own personal experiences on the streets, they are deeply suspicious.

We are told by certain doctors—we were told again in a certain BBC television programme by a member of the Tory party—that it is a self-inflicted injury. "Cure yourself," seems to be the prevailing view. But we do not go down that road. We have more concern and compassion for people.

Some of my constituents and I know the names of pushers and of public houses and clubs where heroin has been freely used and distributed. It is possible to go into some places and be provided with the tinfoil and accoutrements with which to "chase the dragon". But no action is taken. It is almost like a Hollywood B movie. The police say that they are waiting to catch Mr. Big, a shadowy figure wearing a camel hair coat and a trilby and driving a big limousine. The police are allegedly chasing these people. Their success in tracking them down appears to be very poor. At the same time, our kids and families in such places as Liverpool suffer because of police inactivity.

We have got up and are doing something about it. If the Minister will accept it, I shall be pleased to give him a copy of a report that we have submitted to the Merseyside county council. Under the auspices of the Labour movement, we have meetings on estates where drugs activity is prevalent. The Merseyside trade union, community and unemployed resource centre has compiled a report on what we would like to see done.

The hon. Member for Plymouth, Drake (Miss Fookes) mentioned experience in America. We have ex-drug addicts in Liverpool within our circle of friends and associates. They have been down that road. They have been involved in education in America, and they are trying, as we are trying, to get into these voluntary agencies. We know that we are amateurs. We know that we have not the so-called expertise in counselling. But we have the experience of everyday life and of living with these people. We know the pushers. We point them out to the police, but nothing is done and we see the effect on our kids. We have a concern over and above any normal involvement.

We need a whole range of training, with residential rehabilitation. These "crash pads" that we hear about are just a source for drug addiction, where the pushers are involved as well. They are a complete waste of time. I will give the Minister this document. I hope that he will have it published as part of the discussion which is going on about the problem.

We have been told that we should be non-partisan and non-political in our approach. That is a mask for the inadequacies of the Government and those whom they represent. However, we shall still seek to go along with the Government in trying to resolve the problem.

By chance, I picked up in the Tea Room recently a cutting from an Edinburgh newspaper. The chairman of the Scottish Police Federation, an inspector, said:

"Wealthy business people with impeccable backgrounds, who are apparently pillars of society, are making fortunes from the illicit trade in hard drugs such as heroin."

The police know who they are. We know what is going on. We know who the Mr. Bigs are in our communities. We could finger them. Nothing is done about them. Thais is an absolute crime, and attention must be given to it.

I take a different line from that of the Government. Certainly we need action, we need cash, we need more Customs and Excise officers at the ports of entry, and we need the police to listen to the community about what is going on and act on that advice. We need education and not only of those involved in drug taking because we need to be doing it in our schools. The hon. Member for Drake spoke about a powerful and emotional appeal. The kids on the streets of Liverpool could buy and sell you when it comes to information about drugs.

Order. I hope that the kids in Liverpool would not try to buy and sell me.

I apologise, Mr. Deputy Speaker.

We need to set up peripatetic communities with long-stay treatment for people, and we need them under the democratic control of the community. For far too long an elitist group of people with a few letters after their names have thought that they have all the experience. But they are not street-wise. They do not understand what is going on. We demand involvement in the decision making about the treatment of our people. I hope that the document that I pass to the Minister will be read by him and circulated. Opposition Members are fed up with the lack of action. We demand action now. If the Government do not take it, we will take it ourselves on our estates.

I must say that I felt a great deal of sympathy for the hon. Member for Liverpool, Broadgreen (Mr. Fields) and I agreed with his very natural reaction to the state of affairs on Merseyside. I do not think that it will be of any comfort to him to know that the situation that he described of distraught parents asking for help and not getting it is unfortunately repeated elsewhere in the country.

When on 13 April I drew the attention of the House to the appalling escalation of the drug problem it was fair to say that up to then very little had been done about it. I said then that my purpose in raising the matter was to shock Parliament and the public into an awareness of what was happening beneath their noses and to obtain from the Government a clear statement on how they viewed the problem and what precisely they were doing about it.

The reality was that while the Advisory Committee on the Misuse of Drugs made over 40 recommendations as long ago as December 1982, nothing was done, although it had been clear to those of us who take an interest in these matters that for some years what was once an inner London problem had now spread to every city and town and a good many of our villages from John o'Groats to Land's End.

The hon. Minister for Broadgreen was not exaggerating a situation which many communities up and down the land and even near to my constituency have been experiencing.

Why has there been this escalation? There are a number of reasons. First, heroin and cocaine have become cheaper and therefore more accessible and easier to obtain; second, it has been discovered that the effect of heoin could be obtained in a way other than by injecting it, a method which carries with it enormous health risks and can lead to the amputation of limbs, hepatitis and premature death. Heroin can now be smoked. Many youngsters say openly and believe that that makes it safer. Third, as the number of addicts has increased—this needs to be said—the profits of this evil trade have grown and distribution has become better organised by criminal elements.

Against that background we should not be surprised that the age at which young people become addicted is dropping and that an increasing number of teenagers and schoolchildren are now affected. I do not know about other hon. Members, but for weeks now I have not been able to pick up my local paper without reading about the problem, about the police being baffled, about youngsters being hauled before the courts, about addicts' committing suicide. I am sure that this is occurring throughout the country.

After I raised the matter here in April I received letters from worried parents all over the country saying that it was impossible to find information about where help could be obtained, let alone to secure treatment. I had poignant letters from doctors. One was from a consultant who said that a member of his family had become an addict and could not get help. There is something drastically wrong about such a situation.

It is true that by the end of April the Government had announced approval for 78 projects for the improvement of existing services. As the hon. Member for Knowsley, North (Mr. Kilroy-Silk) said, many parts of the country have no such services. One cannot improve what does not exist. An immediate result of the debate on 13 April was the setting up of an all-party committee on drug misuse, covering both Houses. My hon. Friend the Under-Secretary referred to attendance in the House today. Every officer of our committee sitting in the House of Commons is present today. Other officers, of course, sit in the House of Lords. All present here today hope to take part in the debate.

On 6 June my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Social Services issued a circular asking health authorities to take urgent action to improve services. It stated:

"The problem of drug misuse is growing fast and urgent action is required. Ministers now regard the improvement of services for drug misusers as of the highest priority".

That was a direction to health authorities which until then had not been prepared to take much notice of the problem, although there were exceptions. The circular was a year late—but better late than never.

There can be no excuse for regional health authorities continuing with the attitude that the problem has a low priority, that it is a nuisance and a means of diverting scarce resources from other and more pressing areas of health care.

On 28 June, my right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary published the report by the advisory committee which was concerned primarily with ways of preventing misuse through the provision of information and education. He also announced the setting up of an interdepartmental committee of Ministers and officials presided over by my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State, with the task of developing an overall strategy for combating drug misuse and for deciding on priorities and the allocation and deployment of resources. That was a year late—but again, better late than never.

Yet the fact remains that the surveillance of ports of entry has been endangered by reductions in the number of customs officers, although that is now being reversed. The fact remains too that some police forces still do not have drug squads, I presume because they cannot obtain the resources to set them up.

Another recent development is the realisation by the medical profession that it must adopt a new and radical approach to the problem. That too is a bit late in the day. One of the most frequent complaints made to me earlier this year was that many doctors did not want to know about the problem. I shall not go into details here, but suffice it to say that there is a division in the medical profession about treatment itself. A fierce debate continues inside the medical profession on that subject which really must be resolved.

One of the saddest features of my correspondence with doctors is that they are baffled by the attitude taken by many of their colleagues in the regions. Perhaps this is changing. The recent British Medical Association conference in Manchester was told:

"Heroin addiction in Britain is more like a plague than an epidemic…the fabric of society is at risk."

One doctor from Rotherham, presumably speaking about the area that he knows, told his colleagues that one third of secondary schools pupils had experimented with drugs at school.

Dr. Akhter, a distinguished psychiatrist who was well known to me when I was chairman of the National Council on Alcololism, and who runs the Birmingham regional drug treatment centre, said:

"For the first time in this country there is no such place as a drug-free environment. The greatest problem in treating addicts is that heroin is now so much cheaper and so easy to obtain…We could double the facilities we have available and still not be able to cope."

That, then, is the extent of the problem. Important gaps remain in the arrangements to deal with this appalling crisis in our society. Moreover, we must recognise that it is not much good stepping up treatment facilities if we cannot stop the inflow of heroin and other drugs.

On 14 November last year, the Home Secretary made a robust speech in which he talked about clamping down on the drug traffickers, by international action. Yet we have still not ratified the international convention. Although we were given an answer about that this morning, I wish to study what was said, so I shall not comment on it now.

I want to see this matter dealt with urgently. We must be told what responses the DHSS expects to receive from the regional health authorities. I ask that because of the recent BBC "Panorama" programme, in which I was privileged to take part. Describing the preparation for the programme, an article in The Guardian of 25 June said:

"70 per cent. of the health authorities replied to Panorama's inquiries…from their response it would seem that many of them will have to get their skates on to meet Mr. Fowler's requirements. The message from a large number of these authorities was the same: yes, there was a growing problem, no, they didn't know how big it was, no, they did not have adequate facilities, and no, they had no plans and no money to provide those facilities. Not surprisingly, regions where the problem was "most acute tended to contain major cities: the London region, the Northern, the North West and the West Midlands."

The article concluded:

"The overall picture was one of uncertainty, ignorance and inability to cope— which, from health authorities generally reluctant to admit deficiencies in their service, can only be in itself an underestimate of the crisis."

What sort of response will the Government get from these authorities? Are they aware, even now, of the gravity of the crisis? I am beginning to doubt it.

The Government must not hesitate to take the necessary steps to ensure compliance with their directive before the situation gets even further out of control. I should also like to know how determined the Government are in their attitude towards those who distribute drugs in this country. So far, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bury St. Edmunds (Mr. Griffiths) will no doubt seek to remind the House, Ministers have resisted the idea of giving suspects body searches. Drugs are brought into the country in many different ways. Some are sent through the post, others are smuggled in people's bodies. In a recent debate in the other place Baroness Masham provided details, which hon. Members should study.

How much weight should we attach to the protests of some members of the medical profession about body searches? The country and Parliament should know that the police have made it clear that, as drafted, the Police and Criminal Evidence Bill has been described as a drug pushers' charter. I shall not pursue that point now, as no doubt my hon. Friend the Member for Bury St. Edmunds will make the case in his own way, but the argument has been put with great clarity and force by Baroness Masham and by the noble Lords Plant and Halsbury in the other place, and the Government must really think again. Even if no other part of my message is heard, that must be. Ministers must think seriously about the methods used in this evil traffic.

My hon. Friend the Minister spoke about overseas sources of supply, but he did not say—and it has not so far been said in this debate—that all these are to be found in relatively poor and under-developed countries in the Third world. It is high time that western leaders understood that we are now having to pay the price of an inadequate response to the need for development aid in such countries. For peasant families, mainly in Asia but also elsewhere in the world, who live in remote frontier areas usually beyond the control of their Governments, opium cultivation provides an income that is double or treble that which they would obtain from growing ordinary cash crops. Indeed, that is not even allowing for the enormous profits made by the middlemen who purchase and process the drugs.

Given the West's refusal to provide real economic incentives to Third world farmers to change their agricultural systems, and the high and increasing international demand for opium and its derivatives, there is no reason to believe that production will decline in the foreseeable future. The United States, western Europe and this country must recognise that fact. That said, we must make it increasingly painful for all those who push drugs within our society. Traffickers must know that they will go to prison for very long stretches. I know that the law already provides for a 14-year maximum sentence, but I am not at all sure that that is enough. The bigger fish should go to prison for life.

I share the view expressed in the splendid speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Drake (Miss Fookes). I agree with every word that she said, and believe that those who make vast sums out of murdering young people—that is what they are doing—and corrupting our society, should be stripped of all their ill-gotten gains when they are caught. If it rested with me, I would hang them. The crime that they are committing is worse than that of individual murder.

We should step up extradition proceedings and stop this silly pussy-footing over protecting criminals and refusing exchanges of such people, at least with democratic countries. For the life of me I cannot understand why the Government have not agreed to the Spanish offer to extradite suspected British criminals in return for suspected criminals hiding in this country. In this case, we are dealing not with a dictatorship but with a democratic country. Of course I accept that there should be political sanctuary here. It is our proud claim that for years Britain has given shelter to those who have been driven out of their own countries for their opinions. I hope that that splendid tradition will always continue, but what the blazes are we doing sheltering criminals here? On this issue, the Government must not only be tough; but they must be seen to be tough.

I should like to give a warning now, because, if I do not, the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, North-East (Mrs. Short), who is vice-chairman of the all-party committee, will do so. That committee will watch every move that the Government make from now on. Ministers will be questioned repeatedly, both in this House and in the other place. This debate gives the House the opportunity to demonstrate both its concern and its determination to see that appropriate action is taken. However, that action should be taken by others as well as by Ministers.

I know where the heart of my hon. Friend the Minister who is to conclude the debate lies. I trust him implicitly and know of his sincerity and his intention to do the maximum within his power. Alas, the matter does not entirely rest with him. I expect action with the health authorities, and that means that I expect them to be given the resources to deal with the problem. I expect the Customs to be given the personnel to deal with the problem of surveillance. I expect the view of the police to be listened to. I expect the medical profession to redouble its efforts to find a sensible way of dealing with this dreadful problem, and to co-operate with the authorities to the maximum.

We have, Mr. Speaker, left it very late in the day.

In this debate it would be a mistake for any hon. Member, particularly on this side of the House, to think that we had a monopoly of social conscience. From what the hon. Member for Castle Point (Sir B. Braine) has said, it is obvious that his heart is in the right place. He has made it clear that it is no good Ministers suggesting that they have plenty of sympathy, because it is action that is needed. If ever there was need for actions to speak louder than words, it should be demonstrated in our attitude towards solving the problem of drug abuse.

The hon. Member for Liverpool, Broadgreen (Mr. Fields) made a point about his city. I should like to give some statistics about mine. I shall refer to the words of the consultant psychiatrist in charge of the drug clinic in Portsmouth. A drug clinic has been operating there since 1967, and the problem of drug misuse has involved much long drawn out agony for people in that city. At present we have about 515 people with a major drug problem. The consultant states that that represents one in five of the number of those really involved with hard drugs. Thus, the problem is so enormous that we cannot just cite Liverpool, London and Manchester. As has been said, it is a countrywide problem that affects every major city, and small village and town.

It is interesting to recall—although it now seems a long time ago—that when the Minister introduced the debate he spoke about the way in which doctors had in some ways acted irresponsibly. In some instances, I believe that doctors have acted with criminal intent because of the way in which they have allowed prescriptions to be given out to addicts, willy-nilly, when they call on them. I shall quote some comments that were contained in a recent article in a local Hampshire newspaper. The words are not mine but those of a leading police officer in charge of a regional drugs squad. He said:

"There are doctors who are at best indiscriminate in the way they prescribe opiates and at worst criminal. There are a number of people in constant possession of such things as methadon and heroin on private prescriptions. They would prefer to kick the habit — that's the very reason in many instances for them going to the doctors in the first place — and yet they get prescriptions that are still being easily dispensed."

In Hampshire today, it is as easy to get a fix of heroin as it is to buy a pint of beer. That is a crime against humanity and we have a responsibility to do something about it. The debate gives us the opportunity to insist that the Government eradicate the problem.

Today's drug user does not conform to most people's idea of a junkie. It is not the long-haired hippy of the heady days of the 1960s. It is the middle-aged woman who cannot stop taking tranquillisers prescribed by her family doctor; it is the person who has got into the habit of taking pain killers; it is the person who has got hooked on cough medicine which can be bought from chemists; it is the adolescent who experimented with drugs and got into difficulty. It is the young person who, for any of a number of reasons — perhaps unemployment or lack of opportunity—has turned to drugs.

All parts of society have been caught in the web of evil that has descended over this country. The drug user could be the neighbour, wife, son or daughter of any of us. We have to get to grips with the enormity of the problem.

For eight years, I worked on behalf of a community that had progressed from being funded by local authorities to becoming a charity for the rehabilitation of the users of hard drugs. It is called the Alpha House Community and, after being founded in Portsmouth, it is now based in rural Hampshire. The community struggled for year after year to get funds to continue its work. It staggered, hand to mouth, from one source to another trying to get resources to carry on its work. It is now probably the leading centre for drug rehabilitation in this country and its expertise has been drawn on even by people in America.

Former addicts who have been through the long and demanding treatment at Alpha House—stretching over years—are working in drug centres all over the world and doing marvellous work in bringing home to people the folly of taking drugs.

I became involved with Alpha House after seeing what happened to my closest friend with whom I grew up and went to school. He was a shining example of what our education system can provide for a person who was bright and who had a clear future ahead. He had a glowing school and university career. During a sad time in my friend's life, when his family suffered a tragic loss, he dabbled in drugs. He started to take soft drugs, was picked up by the police, convicted and sent to prison. He went to prison as a user of soft drugs but came out four months later on hard drugs. Six months later he was a heroin addict. Nine months after he came out of prison I found him dead on the floor of a seedy room in Portsmouth. What happened to him was a sad indictment of society.

That experience proved to me that the problem had to be dealt with at all levels of statutory responsibility. I saw a life that was wasted, a person who was not given an opportunity. He tried to get help, but failed miserably. The only solution in those days was to send him to prison, which returned him to society as an addict to hard drugs. That is a sad reflection on us all. That is why I got involved with Alpha House and why I am speaking in the debate.

There should be a concerted effort to provide up-to-date information and counselling for school pupils about the dangers of the misuse of drugs. The campaign needs to be pitched carefully. It must not be over-dramatic, because that might excite youngsters, and it needs to include factual material on the problems that can follow the misuse of drugs.

The best way to get the message across to young people is to ensure that it is delivered by youngsters who have been addicts and have seen their families torn apart by what has happened to them. Thousands of ex-addicts could benefit from being given that job and they would give immeasurable support to the police, school teachers and social workers who are trying to get the message across. No one is more aware than a former addict of the follies of drug abuse. The Under-Secretary said that he would take on board the suggestions made by hon. Members, and I hope that he will pursue that suggestion with enthusiasm and vigour.

I get the impression that the efforts of schools to try to get the message across vary dramatically. Some go into great detail and try desperately to spell out the dangers. Other schools do little or nothing to combat the evil of drug abuse. But, whatever schools do, teachers have not been educated about the misuse of drugs.

There also needs to be a greater awareness of the problems among the health professions and others working with young people. I do not believe that doctors are necessarily the best people to counsel drug abusers or to tell us how money should be spent. Of course more money should be given to health authorities, but doctors are not necessarily the best people to tell us how and where that money should be spent. Many doctors have many questions to answer about the way in which they have treated addicts. Doctors are often misinformed or ill-informed about how people should be treated, and their views are sometimes distorted because of their prejudices about the way in which to handle the problem.

Hon. Members have repeatedly spelt out the need to give the customs authorities the manpower to deal with the problem. On a visit to Morocco last year, I was offered any amounts of any type of drug—as, I imagine, were the majority of people on that holiday. When I returned to Gatwick from Morocco, which is renowned for its problems of drug abuse and its ability to export drugs, there was not one Customs officer at the barrier. Drugs can almost literally be picked up in the street in Morocco and I understand from frequent visitors to that country that the absence of Customs officers at Gatwick is not uncommon. Presumably the same could be true when people return from Pakistan or Amsterdam.

The cases are too numerous for us to ignore. The Government should not be complacent about the problem and suggest that body searches are the only way to deal with it. The possibility of being stopped must be a deterrent. If carriers see that no one is standing at the Customs barrier time after time, it lends credence to the belief that they will never be caught. It is not good enough to suggest that increasing the numbers of staff would not solve the problem—it would go some way towards it.

We have to provide more staff for the police and their regional drugs squads. I was horrified to read not only in my local newspapers but in other newspapers that police forces and their drug squads are being reduced, which means that their effectiveness is being reduced. It is nonsense for hon. Members to say that the police should take more action while we restrict their ability to do what we want them to do by reducing their staff, or by forcing them to take on other responsibilities that do not allow them to work effectively against drug abuse.

There is also a role for drug dependency clinics. I have spoken about Alpha House, which is an after-care organisation dealing with those who have been in hospital. There is a need to bring clinics into the community. We do not want the community to be hostile. Such clinics must be located sensibly and they must have sympathy with what is happening in the community. Many people in the community who do not have daily contact with drug abuse are worried, if not scared, by the thought of a drug dependency clinic in their community. They are justifiably afraid, and those fears need to be allayed if the clinics are to be placed in the communities. The clinics must not set one community against another.

We must consider the problem, deal with it and come up with action that spells out what we want. The hon. Member for Castle Point spoke about the debate in another place. During a similar debate, the Bishop of Protsmouth made a telling contribution. He said that there was a need for improved treatment within the Health Service, but that it was surely not a matter for the Health Service alone. To put it crudely, the problem of drug abuse is fundamentally a people problem. No matter how much we learn about substances and the pattern of abusage, in the end it is the person who uses it and abuses it. The evil person involved in organised crime pushing this is an evil person. The thoughtless person canvassing the advantages of this or that tranquilliser and writing it up in the newspaper is a person. The pop star or film star experimenting with drugs and treated as a hero in the newspaper once again is a person.

The problem is about people. This place, above all others, should reflect the needs of people. There is a growing demand that this House should react to the problem of drug abuse. It is no good our expressing sympathy but leaving it on our coat sleeves so that, when our jackets are removed, the sympathy goes. We need action.

I implore both the Ministries concerned with the problem to act positively and quickly, and to take on board, as the Minister promised when he opened the debate, all the points made by hon. Members about this vexed issue of drug abuse.

Although I intend to be brief, I want to protest about the over-long speeches from the Government and Opposition Front Bench spokesmen at the beginning of the debate, and especially about the speech of my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Office, who spoke for almost an hour. We are constantly being sensibly advised by the Chair—and, indeed, by our party managers—to keep contributions brief and to play the game so that we have better debates in which more people can participate. The whole spirit of that goes when Front Bench spokesmen make such long contributions. It means that hon. Members have to truncate their remarks, and that prevents the interflow and exchange between the two sides of the House. The time is coming when something must be done about over-long Front Bench speeches. Only the most important speeches need take more than half an hour.

It is not original to say that without pushers and suppliers there would be no drug problem. However, it is the key to the whole quesion, and it needs to be said time and time again. I was a little disappointed in the latest publication from the Home Office Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs called "Prevention", which was published not long ago. The starkness and menace of the position did not come through to me when I read it. The Minister gave the official figures of drug addicts, but even he will agree that they are on the low side. We are well aware that the numbers are much higher and it is obvious that many addicts are not detected. Apart from that, I am worried by the supposition, as it were, in that report that, apart from the hard drugs of which we are aware, there are other addictive commodities and that the problem involves, for example, alcohol, tobacco and even the wrong foods. That is not the case.

I regret that the Home Office report refers to medicines and the advertising of medicines. There is rigorous supervision of that advertising. As many hon. Members will be aware, I have an interest to declare. Apart from a spell of four years in government, I have been associated with the pharmaceutical industry for the past 18 years. Today we are not discussing that industry.

Unfortunately, there is sometimes confusion over the use of the word "drug". The pharmaceutical industry produces life-saving medicines. The word "drug" should be restricted to the hard narcotics of the type that we are discussing. If there is an abuse involving ordinary medicines, the fault lies with the doctors who do the prescribing and with a lack of security by wholesalers and retail pharmacists, particularly if criminals break in and get hold of these substances.

Medicines are well regulated in Britain by the Medicines Commission. They include over-the-counter medicines, some of which are mentioned in the Home Office report. Banned narcotics, however, are in a league of their own. We are talking about heroin, cocaine, cannabis and opium. We are not, in considering the totality of the problem, talking even about valium and sleeping tablets, which are a separate problem but which, if prescribed properly are valuable medicines for many people. It is a matter of the right prescribing habits of doctors.

We must adopt a more realistic and abrasive approach to the whole problem of drug abuse. Although the Home Office report, and even this debate, are concerned with the misuse of drugs, the subject is not as anodyne as that. We are, in fact, talking about the menace of narcotics which, as my hon. Friend the Member for Castle Point (Sir B. Braine) pointed out, is threatening society.

Before the debate, I noted four measures which I intended to impress on the Minister. Having listened to the debate, I still feel that I should draw them to his attention. First, there should be exemplary punishment for the guilty —the hard-line pushers and suppliers—because they are beyond the pale, even in the criminal context. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Castle Point that the more serious of them should receive life sentences. They are even move guilty than the ordinary, straightforward murderer. Legislation must be introduced for the confiscation of ill-gotten gains. The Minister spoke about legislation being introduced during the lifetime of this Parliament. That should be a front-runner Bill, and I hope that it will be introduced in the next Session.

Secondly, world action should be taken against countries which tolerate the cultivation of the plants from which the drugs about which we are speaking are derived, and against countries which are inefficient in suppressing the illegal cultivation of those plants.

The United Nations has an enormous role to play and it is one that should be played. I am not confident that the right measures are being taken internationally. I welcome what my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State said about the action that is being taken in Pakistan but, as the others have said, it is a drop in the ocean. It is a token gesture and we must get far more people involved if we are to get to grips with the problem and eventually conquer it.

We need to do a great deal more in educating young people on the dangers of drugs. I do not favour the softly-softly approach that some hon. Members have mentioned. Great emphasis must be placed on the devastating effect on the individual if he or she becomes a hard drug taker. The consequences must be spelt out strongly. My hon. Friend used the phrase "the misery of addiction". There is no doubt that hard drugs cause the greatest misery of all the addictive substances in the world.

The Government cannot do everything and there is enormous responsibility on parents, but all too often that responsibility is neglected. The sloppy, uncaring attitude of recent decades does not enable children to distinguish between right and wrong. If ever there was a need to know that difference, it is in connection with hard drugs.

A controversial issue is whether travellers at ports of entry should be stopped more frequently. I have in mind Dover and Heathrow and other airports and ports. We could make a significant impact on the problem if lightning searches were carried out from time to time in which everyone was searched. There would be complaints and a certain amount of chaos, but the price would be worth paying. It would be far clearer to those entering the country with drugs that they might be caught. Those of us who do a great deal of travelling have experience of being stopped by a Customs officer once every six months or a year. He usually takes a cursory look to see whether an extra bottle of spirit or wine is being carried, but underneath the other items there could be tucked away half a pound of heroin.

I know that the men and women of the Customs service are experts. They act on tips and they have a shrewd idea who the villains might be. But they are not always right. Thousands of people are passing through our ports of entry every day, sometimes from places where it is known that drugs are easily available. They pass through the various channels and sometimes there is no one on duty to stop anyone. The Home Office must take this issue on board. The problem of the importation of hard drugs is growing at airports and at docks through which travellers pass either on foot or by car from the Continent. The problem will continue to grow unless positive action is taken. It could become as great a problem as the diseases that we have conquered in the past. Society itself could be undermined.

This is a debate in which many of us, irrespective of the side of the House on which we sit, can find agreement. We are discussing what has sadly become an ever-increasing problem. It extends throughout the country and is not confined to our large cities.

I think that we all agree that those who traffic in or supply drugs in any form should expect no leniency from the courts when they are found guilty. The Minister has told us that in the near future the Government will introduce legislation to give the courts the power to confiscate the fortunes that have been made by those who deal in drugs. We should take note of what a judge said at Swansea this week when sentencing certain people.

Many of us will wish the Minister well, but he must involve himself in the closest scrutiny. Money is moved from country to country in this highly organised trade. We know that there are enormous fortunes to be made. Fines of £150,000 of the sort imposed this week at Swansea will not affect the fortune that an individual has made over the years from drug trafficking. About 18 months ago an Australian was sent to prison for drug trafficking. He proudly claimed that he was a millionaire, but he was one because of the money that he had made from drug trafficking. We can send drug traffickers to prison, but they will not be there very long. When they come out they will still have the fortunes that they made from people of all ages, who have suffered the tragic consequences. The problem is that those trafficking in drugs can get away with it.

Many hon. Members have touched on the terrible effects that young people experience from taking drugs. Not so long ago we in this country held up our hands in horror when we read about what was occurring in large cities in the United States. As youngsters were going into school, pushers were outside selling drugs. That is now happening in this country. Last week, a report appeared in the Wandsworth Borough News of a meeting at a school in my constituency. The meeting was called because of the growing worry of parents and teachers, not so much of drugs in the school as in the locality. The school's head said:

"Heroin is being sold in the road right by the school. There was a drugs raid not far from the school recently. It is all around us and we don't want the problem at this school."

I believe that we all applaud the action of that head of staff and the response by parents. I am deeply worried about the lack of help given to schools by education authorities or Government Departments to make not only youngsters but their parents aware of the problem.

One leaflet handed out by the school—it is the type that local organisations hand-produce—asked:

"Would you know if your child was using DRUGS?"

That is a problem, because, without a doubt, many parents are unaware of the first signs that their youngsters have started to take drugs. The Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Security is in the Chamber, and the debate was opened by the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, but I believe that the Department of Education and Science should be involved in this discussion as well. I hope that that Department will take note of the comments made in the debate. There is a clear sign that insufficient information is available to schools wishing to tackle the problem.

I reassure the hon. Gentleman that the Department of Education and Science will be represented on the interdepartmental working group chaired by my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Education and Science——

By a Minister.

—by a Minister—my hon. Friend the Member for Dartford (Mr. Dunn). He will consider all the points made by the hon. Gentleman.

I note and welcome the Minister's comment. I refer again to the press report. It refers to what was said by the lady who chaired the parent-teacher meeting a week ago, and says that

"when she first became worried about drugs, she had been disgusted by the lack of education in schools on drugs and the lack of facilities for teenage drug addicts. She added that it had been very difficult to get hold of any education material".

Unfortunately, there is little support for the efforts being made by schools in London. I am sure that the Inner London Education Authority would want to try to resolve that problem.

The problem does not exist only in London. Other hon. Members have referred to the same problem in their own areas. I do not want to bring politics into the debate but Labour Members have constantly warned that the problem of drug abuse will be adversely affected by the rate-capping legislation. In London, many schools are faced with reductions in staff. Teachers should be involved in projects related to drug abuse. If teaching staffs are reduced, together with funding of education, how can we possibly expect schools to tackle the problem effectively?

Ministers may say, "We know what the problem is and we are doing all that we can about it." We do not believe that the Government are doing all that they can about it. From what has been said by hon. Members in the debate, it is clear that there is agreement that much more action must be taken by the Government specifically with regard to the education of young children within the schools, and also with regard to the education of parents.

Several hon. Members have referred to the growth of drug abuse in prisons. I wonder whether the Home Office has any idea of the extent of drug trafficking that now takes place in prisons. When my hon. Friend the Member for Knowsley, North (Mr. Kilroy-Silk) referred to the problem, the Home Office Minister asked, "Where is the evidence?" If the Home Office will enter into consultation with the Prison Officers Association it will be left in no doubt about the problem. I suggested in an intervention that the Home Office should study the annual reports of the boards of prison visitors, which show clearly the extent of the growth in drug trafficking in prisons. The tobacco barons in our prisons are becoming a thing of the past. The drug barons are now all-powerful in prisons. Debts are now being paid in drugs and not, as in the past, in tobacco.

In recent years there have been many changes improving the day-to-day life of prisoners, and I welcome them. The last thing I would want to see is any restriction placed on closed visits, but we have to be realistic and admit that it is possible that a certain quantity of drugs may go into prisons because of such visits. What kinds of checks are made? Wandsworth prison is in my constituency, and I sit on the board of Wormwood Scrubs prison, so I have some idea of the problem. What kinds of checks are made on visitors to men in prison?

There is abundant evidence that drugs are carried into prisons, including those mentioned by the hon. Gentleman, in the bodies of visitors. In the past, the police could, on proper suspicion, conduct searches. Legislation now going through the House wall, for the first time, prevent that. We are not getting on top of the problem. We are making it worse.

The hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds (Mr. Griffiths) has made that point several times today. No doubt if he catches your eye, Mr. Deputy Speaker, he will make it again. I should like to know what kind of checks take place, not outside, but inside the prisons. The hon. Gentleman should appreciate that there is a difference. How many women prison officers are available to carry out checks inside the prisons? The fines imposed by local magistrates on people caught taking drugs into prisons are pathetic. Magistrates should be made aware of the seriousness of what these people are trying to do. Drugs are now a flourishing trade. They form the prison currency. Everything possible must be done to stamp this traffic out.

I favour a liberal regime in the prisons, but there must be rules. If it becomes known to the authorities that drugs are circulating in a particular prison, there should be no complaints if strict controls and searches are instituted. But are there enough officers to carry out this very specialised work? As I have said, the Government must consult the people who really know how the system works and co-operate with them to eradicate the problem because the last thing that I want is restrictions on visits, although that would undoubtedly stamp out the problem.

I believe that there is general agreement that something must be done and that time is not on our side. We know that the problem is growing fast. Drugs can be found virtually anywhere in south London. Members from other parts of the country have described a similar situation. The problem already exists. The question is whether we can contain it or whether it will get out of hand. The test will be the Government's action. The Government can no longer claim that drug abuse is a small, isolated problem in one city or another. Tragically, it has spread throughout the country.

In the next few months, the Government must make it clear that they appreciate the gravity of the situation and that sufficient funds will be made available to tackle it through searches at airports, increased numbers of customs officials, improved facilities for treatment of addicts and assistance for schools and parents seeking to tackle the problem at that level. The real responsibility for action rests with the Government. They cannot deny the extent and seriousness of the problem. The test is for them and many Members of Parliament will be watching to see how they respond.

I shall not recite yet again the horrors of the problem; they have been illustrated often, and not least by the newest Member of the House, the hon. Member for Portsmouth, South (Mr. Hancock) when he recounted the story of his friend.

The media have done their job. On Wednesday evening, TVS ran a review of the drug problem in Hampshire and Sussex on its "Coast-to-Coast" programme, and a further dramatic illustrationration of the problem was brought to the notice of even more people.

Thank goodness the Government are among the people who seem to be more aware of the hideous problem. They have expressed their anxiety by several positive actions. I genuinely welcome—I do not believe that one hon. Member has mentioned this—the establishment of the ministerial group. For the first time, one Minister will be responsible for the panoply of activities to try to solve the problem. Hon. Members on both sides of the House will be watching to see what happens, because something must happen. I should like to ask questions about three aspects of Government activity. The Secretary of State for Health and Social Security has given special encouragement and has promised special help to district health authorities in their efforts to tackle the problem, but I look forward to a more detailed description of what has been achieved. If my hon. Friend the Minister does not have the facts this afternoon, perhaps we could have another opportunity to hear them.

My second question relates to the special activities of the Association of Chief Police Officers. At the moment that organisation is examining the feasibility and the operation of a regional organisation to investigate drug traffickers. I wonder when that report will be ready and what it will contain, because we want to know what is happening.

The third question relates to the Customs. This matter was mentioned by various hon. Members. Unlike some other hon. Members, I believe that there must be a discipline, although with minimal personal and commercial disruption. From visiting the Customs operations in Sussex and in my constituency, I have found that spot checks would have no credibility if they were done only now and again against the passengers of this ship or that aeroplane. Customs officers must be more visible.

I therefore welcome the greater use of the mobile force which is radio linked and co-operates with the police and other agencies. Even with better co-operation, I wonder whether we should draw together the various disparate services, including the Special Branch, to create one all-embracing service to deal with and keep an eye on people moving to and from this country.

Are we spending sufficient on investment in modern technological machinery and people in the Customs, bearing in mind the European Commission guideline that 10 per cent. of Customs revenue, excluding excise taxes and VAT should be spent in such a way?

Even with a new group, will there be sufficient coordination and communication between Departments and agencies to provide enough of the interwoven and cohesive information which is so crucial to the success of monitoring and battling against the wave of new crimes associated with the upsurge of drug misuse? Linked with that, is there a sufficient framework for international cooperation through the United Nations, the Council of Europe, the Customs Co-operation Council, Interpol, and so on? The British Government have a special ability to influence beneficially such co-operation from their own standpoint and as a member of the Commonwealth.

I welcome the recent report of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs. There is much to be digested in it. Actions must be planned and considered for the future, but I believe that many can be taken quickly. Before I comment on some aspects of the report, I should like to ask the Minister one general question: when will he require comments on the report to be made to him? I emphasise that because it has a special importance. It is crucial that action should be taken to strengthen the Medicines Acts. It is unlikely to be put in hand before the Government have finished considering comments submitted to them. I hope that that process will start speedily and be completed soon. I hope that the Minister can give us information on that matter when he replies.

One general comment on the report has not yet featured strongly in the debate. Much drug abuse starts with and continues to grow through prescribed drugs. Therefore, as a necessary part of any prevention there must be a campaign to encourage healthier living habits. Much more needs to be done to reduce the general level of drug prescribing. That is less dependent on prescribing safeguards, although I welcome the Government's actions on that, than on more sensible prescribing generally. It must be asked whether the subject of prescribing is sufficiently covered in teaching of doctors during their years of medical education. They should be better prepared to meet the problems when they become practitioners.

Most certainly, more needs to be done to help young people who have experimented with drugs. The awful truth is that these days that may mean most young people. They experiment usually on the instigation of one of their friends. We must encourage them away from the threat of continuing to use drugs regularly thereafter.

The report makes a special point on that matter. It identifies correctly the need for more nationally produced drug education material to support and enhance local education with specialised efforts. My hon. Friend the Member for Castle Point (Sir B. Braine) referred to that. It could and should be put in hand immediately because, from what I have been able to find out, the present material is insufficient and of too low quality.

The report also advocates better informed and more responsible media coverage of drug matters. Much done by the media to heighten awareness and to help to detect those capitalising on this horrible trade and on other people's tragic weakness is immensely valuable. However, I wonder whether it is a service to the community to have on almost any television programme on drugs detailed descriptions of how best to take heroin. I should mention that that was not a feature in the TVS programme to which I referred. Such detailed attention on how to use drugs seems to be tipping the balance in a way that is directly against the interests of the community, away from the freedom of the media to report what they see to reporting that becomes irresponsible because of its effect on the public. I wonder whether the Government could be a catalyst for a series of seminars with representatives of the media to discuss such a proposition, and perhaps also the pharmaceutical companies themselves should sponsor such an educational campaign. My hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington (Sir D. Smith) would be an ideal person to encourage that being put in hand.

When speaking of educational campaigns, perhaps the most important of all is one directed to parents, who all too often, because of a lack of knowledge and awareness, unwittingly contribute to their children's problems and then find themselves unprepared to help their children tackle them. Parents do not receive sufficient mention or emphasis in this report, and that is its major deficiency.

Such campaigns of information material should be planned and executed in two ways: first, through such channels as citizens advice bureaux and community health councils, which are particularly important as patients' watchdogs, to illustrate and explain the threat of drug misuse; secondly, through district health authorities for every library, every doctor's surgery and every point of medical resource to inform concerned parents and young people alike about what services are available and where to help treat anyone with a drug problem.

As for education and information for young people through schools, a subject touched upon by my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Drake (Miss Fookes), I wonder whether the report has it right when it leaves to local education authorities and schools the decision whether to include drug education in the curricula and, if so, how to include it. Surely whether they should include it should not be open to question—only how they go about including it. There is a crying need and, if that is not already apparent to all, it must be made apparent very quickly. It might be made all the more apparent if the Department of Education and Science instructed the schools inspectorate to police drug education activities so that the best methods might be identified. Since its reports are now to be published, those best methods would be promulgated.

I make just one comment on treatment. As facilities for treatment improve and increase, I wonder whether the law is really well drawn now to make the best use of these facilities. Under the influence of drugs, individuals are often not aware of the full extent of their own problem. I wonder whether we do not need to reassess the law and see whether we should not have legal powers to retain for treatment in acute treatment facilities. I hope that the Home Office Minister's group will consider that carefully at the earliest opportunity.

There are a multitude of other areas of action identified and advocated in the report on prevention, but I shall not take any more of the time of the House now. It is certain that each of them requires speedy consideration with effective, vigorous action planned as quickly as possible. As other hon. Members have pointed out, the problem is no longer a narrow one. It is widespread and spreading wider. No longer is it confined to the artistic world, to people in their late teens and early twenties, or to deprived youth in deteriorating city centres. It is everywhere. Even in my home county of Sussex arrests for drug misuse or abuse have doubled year by year for the past three years. There are no quick and easy solutions. I hope that the Government work quickly and vigorously to meet this problem right now.

rose——

:. Order. Perhaps it would help the House if I said that the Opposition Front Bench spokesman hopes to catch my eye at 2 o'clock.

The Home Office Minister said that the problem was not just one of heroin and heroin addiction. He was absolutely right. There is the additional major problem in areas such as the one that I represent of solvent abuse, and the line of progression from glue-sniffing to heroin-taking is all too common amongst many people in my constituency and other parts of inner London.

I shall confine my remarks to the heroin problem because it has a major impact and its use has been increasing explosively in our inner cities in the past few years. The reasons for the explosive increase are numerous. The underlying problems of unemployment and the lack of alternative activity or recreation for young people is one reason. Heroin is widely available on council estates in such places as Islington. We must regret what is happening. The presence of pushers on estates is one reason why heroin is now available to working people and their children in my constituency.

The ease of sniffing heroin rather than injecting it is another reason, along with the lack of fear of doing that. Price also plays its part. Its price is no longer beyond the reach of many people who can now obtain initial small quantities of heroin. Heroin is widely available on council estates in working class areas of inner London. The use and abuse of heroin, and the horrible consequences are becoming extremely widespread.

A few weeks ago a mother from one of the council estates in my constituency broke down and wept in my weekly advice surgery because of what had happened to her teenage daughter. She told me of what has also happened to the teenage daughters and sons of, not a handful, but of 20 or even 40 parents of her acquaintance. They were suffering from the same distress and were equally distraught about what had happened to their children. When that happens the House must start to try to do something. I hope that the Government will begin to take action.

The Under-Secretary is mistaken about one reason why so many young people in so many areas are turning to heroin. He said that they were rebelling against society. I do not believe that. Young people want to escape from society and the impact that society has on them. There is a crucial difference between those reasons in relation to the psychology and pressures which lead people to heroin. Heroin does not cause people anger or to become active. It gives people a pleasant feeling of listlessness which leads them to enjoy heroin in the current environment.

I am glad that the Government are beginning to realise the urgency of the problem, although I do not think that they realise it strongly enough. We need a co-ordinated approach across a series of Departments at both Government and local level. It is not a question of the number of customs officers, although that is important. In addition, we must examine the way in which the police operate, the attention that they appear to give to soft drugs compared with their lack of attention to the pushing of hard drugs, and the priority that they should have in relation to their performance.

We must also look at the education service. Indeed, I wholeheartedly endorse the comments of the hon. Member for Portsmouth, South (Mr. Hancock) when he said that young people should be educated about drugs, not by teachers, who are part of the normal society that they may find rather frightening and oppressive, but by those who have been through the experience of drug use and rehabilitation, and who know what it is like to become dependent on drugs and to struggle out of that experience. Those are the people who should be doing the educating and who should be telling our young people about the dangers of heroin and hard drug addiction.

We must also look at what the Health Service is doing. The facilities that are provided are totally inadequate both in nature and number. As has been said, we must consider the whole way in which drugs are prescribed by doctors and hospitals, and the ease with which a drug or potion becomes the answer to a particular illness. In that connection, we must also consider the activities of drug companies, and the way in which they push and encourage doctors to prescribe more and newer drugs. All of those parts of the governmental machine are involved, and they must be co-ordinated in their approach to the problem.

There is also the role that local authorities and, in particular, voluntary organisations can play. I shall turn shortly to an agency which is based in my constituency. I have already spoken—unfortunately rather briefly—to my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, North-East (Mrs. Short), who chairs the Select Committee on Social Services, about the need to co-ordinate the activities of Government. I hope that the Select Committee will take up the whole issue of drug misuse and will consider the way in which our health and social services should respond, the facilities that should be made available and the way in which the Government are approaching the problem. I hope that the Select Committee will be able to take that up as an issue for detailed discussion and consideration, and that it will put some concrete proposals before the House.

The problems of co-ordination can be clearly identified in the case of a rehabilitation agency called City Roads. It is based in my constituency and is in the front line when it comes to tackling the drug problem. It deals with those who are on drugs, but who have not yet had the courage to approach any official agency. They have not gone into hospital or gone to the health services seeking help. They are still addicted to drugs, but they realise that as a result they are suffering pain and face problems. They go voluntarily to City Roads for the beginnings of rehabilitation. That agency's work is quite invaluable. It services many people from all over London and it also, of course, helps people from my constituency. Official agencies can be extremely frightening and remote to addicts who have come to regard the apparatus of society as something that they have nothing to do with, and City Roads demonstrates how a voluntary agency that is not part of officialdom can have contact with addicts and can provide some sort of supportive help that official agencies often cannot do. The work of such voluntary agencies is crucial if we are to begin to tackle the problem and to help those who have become addicts.

That agency is funded largely by the NHS—and all credit to the health authorities—but also by the GLC. It is desperately worried about what will happen to its funding and its work, not only because of the proposals for the abolition of the GLC, but because of the rate-capping measures that are likely to be announced to the House in the next two weeks. The Secretary of State for the Environment will probably rate-cap the GLC, the Inner London education authority and the London borough of Islington, all of which are involved with the drugs problem.

The Government must look at what is happening in the voluntary sector and at its reliance on local authority funds. I hope that, while appreciating the horror of the problem and the fact that it has grown, the Government will give us not only sympathetic words, but concrete action. The most important action required is the devotion of sufficient resources to the NHS and to local authorities for the funding of voluntary agencies such as City Roads, so that they may tackle the problem effectively.

Words are not enough. The Government must put some cash where their mouth is. The Prime Minister always tells us that we cannot solve problems by throwing money at them, but the Government must realise that we cannot solve problems by withdrawing resources. They must have a co-ordinated approach to the problem and it is important that the necessary resources are available. That is vital for those outside in the real world who are suffering enormous pain and anxiety and the tragic loss of far too much in their lives.

I welcome the debate, which appears to presage a belated awareness by the Government that we face a crisis of drug addiction.

I was encouraged by the speech of my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary, because it convinced me that he understands the problem and what needs to be done. He must now make sure that he obtains the resources from the Treasury to do what needs to be done. I shall be active in reminding him of that need.

Reference has been made to the work of Customs officers. I visited the Customs at Heathrow and at Manchester airport, which is near my constituency. I was armed with details given to me by the Society of Civil and Public Servants and I came away believing that the union had seriously overstated the case in its document "Heroin" and had failed to realise that it is an increase in intelligence activities which is needed.

The union's document also fails to take account of the effectiveness of mobile squads. It is not true to say that there is never a mass rummage of planes, even jumbo jets, at Heathrow. That has happened, but the Customs is selective about where the planes come from and they act on intelligence. An element of surprise is needed if they are to be effective.

Apparently, people are becoming aware that the Customs at Heathrow is particularly effective and as one route is closed, drugs will come in by different methods, including such abstruse routings as couriers flying to Madrid and linking up with the homeward half of a package tour from Tenerife, so that they arrive at Luton and pretend that they are not typical drugs carriers. We must never underestimate the skill and the deviousness of those involved in the trade.

I pay tribute to the activities of the Customs officers who have to carry out some pretty unpleasant tasks, including sitting in a cell, day after day, with someone suspected of swallowing drugs and carrying them internally. Those officers are not always paid in accordance with the nature of their work. During the past few years their salary scales have slipped behind those of other people involved in law enforcement. I hope that the Government will take on board the need to boost the morale and motivation of Customs officers.

I agree with what was said earlier about forfeiture of the rewards of crime, especially in relation to drug crimes. It is extremely important, and I hope that it will be introduced in the near future. The Home Office may regret not having introduced body searches on suspicion of people carrying drugs. I fear that that will provide a loophole in the law that will be used frequently by those involved——

The power of the police to search already exists; the Police and Criminal Evidence Bill will remove it.

I was not aware of that. I think that the Home Office will regret removing that power.

The problem of prescribing has already been mentioned. Why has only dipipanone been banned from prescriptions? Surely other drugs such as palfium will continue to be prescribed by doctors to addicts. We must think carefully about restricting the drugs that the doctors can prescribe to methadone linctus. Why are doctors prescribing injectable methadone? I realise that some doctors will take it amiss if their skills are criticised, but I believe that there is a certain amount of ignorance and mental laziness among doctors. We may have to think seriously about which drugs can be prescribed.

Public awareness of the problem is extremely low. I became aware of it when I lived in New York in the early 1970s. Even then, in some parts of the city 20 per cent. of the adult male population were addicted to drugs—notably in the south Bronx area. The problem was especially serious among the ethnic and linguistic minorities. Everyone, both in the city and outside it, was aware that the enormous number of muggings and other crimes in New York City were drug-related. That awareness of the connection between crime and drugs has not hit the British public. Until it does, chief constables cannot divert the resources needed to deal with the problem. Essentially, they react to what the public demand of them.

There has been a large increase in the number of policemen since the Government took office. We must be aware of the need to divert more resources to the drug problem. I understand that in 1978 there were 500 officers in drug squads, and that currently there are about 550—a 10 per cent. increase which, I am afraid, is almost certainly insufficient.

The Home Office should not hide behind the fact that there are no official statistics on drug abuse in prisons. It is evident that a large number of drug-dependent people enter prison and that drugs have become a currency in prisons. No doubt some prisons are worse than others, but the Home Office should urgently consider what should be done to stop drugs coming into prisons. If it is a question of restricting visits, so be it, but I am convinced that prison officers will lose control of the situation unless something is done in the near future.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton, West (Mr. Sackville) for acting this morning as a part-time ad hoc Parliamentary Private Secretary, and I congratulate him on the way in which he has made the switch from that role to that of a constructive critic of the Government.

Does he agree — following my visit to Bolton on Wednesday and my visit to the Bolton general infirmary —that the members of the National Health Service often come in right at the end and have to deal with the aftereffects of drug cases, such as that of the young man I saw at the Bolton infirmary suffering from the after-effects of respiratory failure? Does he agree that those who work in the NHS on such cases deserve praise?

I agree with my hon. Friend. The case of that young man should have been detected much sooner. There are no drug treatment facilities in Bolton, so there was no centre where he could have gone. That was a particularly tragic case.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary on taking the role of chairman of the working group, a brave move on his part and a tremendous task. To avoid himself fighting a losing battle, he should, for example, read "Prevention", the report by the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, and check that he is acting on its recommendations. The previous report, "Treatment and Rehabilitation", sat on the shelf for about 18 months while little was done. I am glad that there is apparently Government awareness of the problem.

I also recommend the Under-Secretary to keep in mind the fact that drug treatment facilities in the voluntary sector are extremely important. He should visit as many drug treatment and advice centres as possible, including the one which I visited yesterday, the Hungerford project, which is only a few hundred yards from this place. He should listen to what the people there have to say about their role and the difficulties that are faced by those who are trying to be of assistance. There is no point controlling the supply of drugs unless, for those who want to come off them, treatment facilities are available.

During the debate we have been given a catalogue of chilling statistics, figures which have been matched only by the reports given by hon. Members of the dearth of facilities available for treating drug abusers, particularly heroin addicts. It is clear from what hon. Members have said in this four and a half hour debate that heroin abuse is one of the chief maladies of our time.

I welcome the report that the House is debating. I agree with many of its conclusions, but I am concerned because, in the light of the escalation of drug abuse, on an unprecedented scale, a more urgent official response might have been expected. In its opening paragraphs, the advisory council confirms that the misuse of drugs is no longer simply a capital city problem. It says that it is a problem which knows no class barriers and is now as common in the ordinary towns as it is in the great cities of Britain.

Research conducted by the DHSS confirms that the number of people addicted has been growing at an alarming rate. The number of addicts has risen from 3,000 in the so-called drug-crazed 1960s to probably 100,000 in the heroin-hooked 1980s.

Heroin constitutes a powerful pressure for crime. It represents a deadly peril for the young who use it. It is a wrecker of families, friendships and communities. It leaves worried parents devastated as they watch helplessly the drifting wreckage and the flotsam and jetsam of their children's lives. For as little as £5, two young people can buy sufficient heroin for a night. It is cheaper than watching a film at the cinema or spending a night at the local pub. But the price that the user can pay is often the ultimate one.

I shall divide my remarks into two parts. First, I shall outline the scale and the origins of the problem, and comment briefly on the remedies that are set out in the report.

I draw the Minister's attention to a programme which was broadcast on BBC Radio Merseyside in April. It was claimed in that programme that the scale of heroin abuse on Merseyside had reached epidemic proportions, with 50 per cent. of young people aged between 14 and 25 years regularly using the drug. I telephoned the radio station yesterday and I was told that the producers of the programme stood by that staggering claim. Although the claim seems unbelievable, the producers say that it has been confirmed by the Merseyside drugs council. If the claim is true— and I have no reason to doubt it—it means that every other young person on Merseyside has embarked on a course which entails degeneration and disintegration of the body, mind and spirit. It means that every other young person on Merseyside will all too easily slip into a life of crime and prostitution to pay for his or her addiction. It means also that every other young person on Merseyside faces enslavement by the pushers and the prospect of a squalid and premature death. In the face of all this, the Government have been more concerned by the intimidatory tactics of a few unrepresentative councils than with a social catastrophe.

The problem is not confined to a few large and faceless housing estates in the Wirral or in rundown inner city areas. In an interview entitled "Smack City" which appeared in The Observer two weeks ago, one young Merseysider commented:

"Smack's everywhere; it's easier to get than bubblegum."

A young girl said:

"it's hard to come off it, really hard. There's nothing else to do. Everone else I know is on it."

These are not representatives of a small group of deviant characters, for very ordinary young people are involved. From being a backwater, Merseyside is awash with hard drugs.

In a letter which I sent to the Prime Minister, which still remains unanswered, I spelt out the seriousness of the scale of drug abuse. I mentioned that last year Customs and Excise officials seized over 200 kilos of heroin throughout the United Kingdom and that that was estimated to be only 15 per cent. of the amount that is smuggled into the country.

This has led to unprecedented levels of addiction. The BMA claims that one in three of secondary school pupils has experimented either with drugs or glue sniffing. The scale of the problem is increasing daily. In 1982, 238 young people died as a result of drug misuse.

In answer to one of my questions two years ago the Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Security admitted that on the latest figures that were available—perhaps he will consider making more up-to-date figures available to Parliament more frequently — there were 425 and 880 registered drug addicts at the Royal Liverpool hospital and the Sefton general hospital respectively, which are both in my constituency. Those figures have soared in the intervening period. I hope that the Government will consider making available recent figures at regular intervals.

The report makes it clear—this is confirmed by all the evidence—that there is

"a substantial and continuing increase in the number of individuals using drugs"

The report cannot be so clear in identifying the causes and origins and it gives a host of reasons for heroin addiction. The advisory committee wisely says that there is no single cause. However, it offers some useful pointers. In page 9 of the report, the committee states:

"The continuing inequality in our society places entire groups of the population at a grave disadvantage."

It adds that drug abuse may be a way of trying to cope with the stresses and strains experienced in grappling with the complex demands of modern Britain. To assert, as the Prime Minister so often does, that there is no relationship between the futility, rejection, isolation and hopelessness of so many young people and the growing menace of drug abuse and rising crime is to eschew reality and to indulge in an act of monstrous self-deception. When Prince Charles recently recognised that link, the Prime Minister described his remarks as anodyne. His perception, sensitivity, compassion and genuine concern contrast starkly with the right hon. Lady's callous indifference and lofty condescension. The evidence and reality of life on the ground is clearly against her.

Recently, Doctor Martin Plant, one of Britain's leading authorities on drug addiction, said that the new breed of heroin users are young and often unemployed. He said:

"I feel very pessimistic. Until recently the UK was a drug backwater. I used to think that it would continue to be so while we had low unemployment. Now that there is no indication that unemployment is falling there is little hope of solving the drug problem."

If the Prime Minister has little use for academics, perhaps she will at least bear in mind the common sense of the old adage that the devil will always find mischief for idle hands. In areas of mass unemployment, the devil has clearly been having a field day.

There is a relationship between mass unemployment and drug abuses and increasing crime, although it would be simplistic to attribute the entire origins of drug abuse to high unemployment. Hon Members who have dismissed the connection as fatuous should consider the position on Merseyside. One in five of the population are unemployed, and half of the local dole queue is under 30. In answer to questions 1 put last week, the Under-Secretary of State for Employment confirmed that more than 8,500 people — many young—registered at two of my local employment offices, many of whom have been out of work for four or five years. In fact, 2,000 have been out of work for more than five years.

In Liverpool there is a whole hopeless generation who face a lifetime on the dole, and they desperately need the help and stability that employment can bring. As the Liverpool dole queue has soared, the Merseyside chief constable reports a corresponding increase in crime. Last year, 31,000 homes were broken into. That is an average of one every 20 minutes. Burglaries on Merseyside increased by 15 per cent. last year, 16 per cent. in 1982, 17 per cent. in 1981, and 18 per cent. in 1980. Ever since the Government were elected on a platform of law and order, burglaries, break-ins and muggings have increased by unprecedented numbers—and the Conservative party has the neck to call itself a party of law and order.

Against that background, it is no coincidence that heroin abuse and drug addiction are increasing. Crime and addiction feed one another. It costs £200 a week for some addicts to stay on heroin, and they obtain that money by theft and petty fraud or by becoming dealers. The Sunday Times said that, within a half-mile radius of the Old Kent road, 40 dealers operate. Most of those, like the pushers on Merseyside, probably began as drug addicts.

Drug abuse can originate in communities where boredom and frustration have replaced the work ethic and personal opportunities. It can be connected also with curiosity, bravado and a desire to follow the herd. It used to be the fag behind the bicycle sheds; these days it is more likely to be a fix.

That is a description of the scale and the origins of the problem. I should like to comment on the remedies in the advisory council's report. On page 12 the council argues that tighter controls are not in themselves the complete answer. That may well be true. Heroin smuggling has increased by 400 per cent. since 1979, yet cuts in the Civil Service during the same period have decimated the Customs Service. As a direct result of Government policies, 3,561 officials have been shed. On average, Customs officials stop only one out of every 100 passengers arriving in the United Kingdom. It is true that more Customs officials will not detect all abuse, but the massive scale of importation could be reduced.

Two months ago, Liverpool Customs officials discovered 14 kilos of heroin on board one ship from Pakistan. Inevitably that begs the question: how much more escapes detection? Closer port scrutiny is vital if drug imports are to be reduced. Similarly, the hard-pressed drugs squads should be strengthened as a matter of urgency. On Merseyside, a highly effective but hopelessly overstretched team of people is fighting the drug war. The police must not be distracted on to the side issue of marijuana. The House should urgently consider whether cannabis should be decriminalised. In 1968 the advisory council said:

"the association of cannabis with opiates such as heroin in legislation is entirely inappropriate."

Many people in the field believe that the illegality of cannabis is one of the most important factors in drug escalation. Purchasers have to deal with pushers and hard-pressed dealers to get it, and the purchasers will often pressurise people to try harder and more profitable drugs. In looking at the problem in the United States, a Congress select committee reported that

"repressive and punitive laws cannot be defended as a solution to the marijuana problem … A major need in relation to marijuana is to make the penalties in relation to violations rational".

The real fight in which our police should be involved is in pursuing the Mafia-style figures who organise the import of heroin, and not in dealing with the softer drugs.

In Liverpool, there is a new and sinister development in the underworld, with clear indications that hot drugs money is being laundered in various ways through club ownership, night spots and other such enterprises. Some controllers are laundering their squalid profits by investing the proceeds in residential and other properties. Even in Liverpool's deepest depression, there is a growth industry in those outlets. Similarly, some incidents of internecine gang warfare between rival factions have led to violent scenes. The increasing use of firearms on Merseyside, which is becoming far too prevalent, cannot be divorced from the drug scene. Those are the issues to which Merseysiders will be expecting their police, who serve our community well, to turn their attention.

I welcome the news that regional squads are to be established to co-ordinate the fight against hard drug abuse, and I welcome what the Minister said earlier about attempts to co-ordinate Government activities. But clearly additional resources and manpower will have to he made available for that important work.

Apart from the need for tighter controls, the report argues that a wide variety of potential preventive measures could also be taken. One that is mentioned is the greater control of irresponsible prescribing of controlled drugs. In that context I refer the Minister to the annual report of the Chief Inspector of Constabulary, Sir Lawrence Byford, published this week. He told the Home Secretary that in many cases it was all too easy for abusers to approach some doctors who, he claimed, are prepared, with the minimum of inquiry or suspicion, to prescribe drugs in such quantities that the surpluses could be sold on the illicit market.

The advisory council rightly recognises the dangers of encouraging what it calls the acceptance of drug taking as a normal way of life. Although doctors must reserve the right to prescribe drugs where appropriate, we must move away from an over-dependence on drug taking. The British Medical Association should carry out more research into the problem, and the pharmaceutical companies might well help to bear the cost.

The report also calls for a variety of approaches through education, which I welcome. It calls for a more responsible attitude to be adopted by the media, and I welcome that, too. It also calls for a more realistic approach from the regional and the district health authorities.

In 1982, the drugs advisory council recommended that all 14 regional health authorities should set up drug problem teams to co-ordinate their response. Only two have done that so far, and Merseyside is not one of them. The council also recommended that district health authorities should set up drug advisory committees. Only one third of the 193 districts have done that so far, and again Liverpool is not one of them. The council's latest report reiterates the need to take those initiatives. The Minister should say in his reply why we have waited for so long.

The voluntary organisations have an important role to play, and I refer briefly to the work of the Merseyside drugs council. At the moment it has insufficient resources. It must be said that it and groups like it all over the country must be looked at more sympathetically, and additional funds must be provided.

I welcome the limited proposals contained in the report, but the House should be looking for a more concerted and determined attempt to combat the growing menace of heroin. Liberals will be looking to tougher sentencing against the wicked, evil men who organise the drug rings. They will be looking for a sensitive and compassionate response to those who become addicted. They will be looking for policies for our youth which will strengthen their self-esteem and self-respect, and enhance their prospects.

We shall expect far more pressure to be exerted on producer countries. We shall look for a restoration of personnel to customs posts and an increase in the number of police in drug squads. We shall be watching to see whether the Government, in the face of a major crisis, will simply allow this useful report to collect so much dust.

The police service has been mentioned frequently. With its help, I have assembled a great deal of factual material that I imagine that the House would nave liked to consider. Due to the way in which the debate has moved, however, I regret very much that it will not be possible for those judgments by the police service to be made known to the House. I shall do my best to allow the Front Bench winding-up speeches to begin shortly after 2 pm, although when earlier Front Bench speeches are too long the only way in which Back Benchers can protect their rights is by refusing to accept the arrangements made through the usual channels.

With the possible exception of political and industrial violence, drug pushing is now the most virulent and rapidly growing threat to the rule of law. It is the source of appalling human suffering and degradation, but it is also the centre of a labyrinth of corruption and crime with which the police have to deal on an ever-increasing scale. The police experience is that drugs are the cause of tens of thousands of violent assaults— first, to get at the money to buy drugs and, secondly, under their influence. Drugs are also the source of thousands of burglaries, especially of chemist shops and wholesale warehouses. A very large number of those burglaries are carried out by armed criminals. That is one of the reasons why the police have had to respond with arms in such cases. Carrying drugs into Britain is also one of the ways in which terrorists finance their activities here. Unfortunately, I have not sufficient time to go into the abundant evidence to support that contention. Drugs, too, are the cause of a great deal of prostitution. Those crimes, too, make things difficult for the police.

I welcome what my right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary is doing and I wish my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State well with his new committee. As the House knows, I have an interest in the Police Federation. If there is anything that we can do to help, we shall be glad to do so. I should point out in very broad terms, however, that it is not enough to will the end. We must also provide the means. Those means are not necessarily resources. Often, they are determination and the necessary powers.

I have not time to go into the factual material supplied to me save to mention a couple of incidents to illustrate the general problem.

Mr. Hisiyoshi Matsuyama, secretary of the High Commission for Scouting in Karachi and a much travelled man, was arrested at Schiphol airport last year carrying 17 kg of heroin in his hand baggage. Between 1 January and 25 May last year he made several runs into Britain, bringing in 31 kg of heroin with a street value of £2.5 million and taking the cash back to his contact in Lahore. I am glad that Scotland Yard succeeded in breaking that case.

In recent years, drugs have been found not just on holidaymakers coming home through Heathrow and Gatwick but in gutted car batteries, hollowed-out fruit and even tucked behind an elaborate hair-do. In one of the most celebrated cases, a suspicious looking suitcase was sent for chemical analysis and turned out to be of heroin-coated fibre.

Two matters concern me in the context of airports. The first is the import of drugs to finance terror. Customs officials will retain the power to carry out intimate searches. Unfortunately, however, the Police and Criminal Evidence Bill will, for the first time, deprive the police of that power. In practice, this will mean that if the Royal Ulster Constabulary advises London that two men coming through London airport are suspected of carrying drugs for the purpose of financing terror and the telex arrives in time for customs officials to stop and search the men, so much the better, but, if the telex is delayed and the men have gone through the green channel the police will have no power to conduct an intimate search. It is a step backwards. It is a case of the Government willing the end but denying the means to the police.

The House is worried about the use by diplomats of diplomatic baggage to bring drugs into this country. I have no time to set out the evidence. I wish that I had. There is overwhelming reason to believe that diplomatic baggage —not the small bags carrying the cipher, but the crates —is used to bring into this country heroin, cocaine and other drugs which are sold by members of the diplomatic staff for large sums of money. It is imperative that the Government take action on that matter.

It is worth considering a number of the things that the police would like to see from the Government. First, the police must have the power to stop and search in the street those who are suspected of carrying drugs. Under an amendment passed in another place, they will be able to do that only if they are in uniform, but one tenth of the force is in the plain clothes. They are detectives. The absurd position arises that if a police officer is going off duty, having taken off his uniform, and he sees a person in the street suspected of carrying drugs, but he does not have firm evidence, he will have to stop that man and say, "Do you mind if I go back to the police station and put on my uniform so that I can carry out a legitimate stop and search?" That is manifestly absurd.

The police will no longer be able, in the street, to search under a hat for drugs. The Bill has been organised so that if the drug pusher puts the drugs under his hat, the police cannot search him in the street: they can only arrest him and take him to the police station. Worst of all, however, is the complete ending of intimate search where people are suspected of taking drugs into prisons. The evidence is all there. Drugs are carried into prisons with the terrifying results described by the hon. Member for Portsmouth, South (Mr. Hancock). We must not deny the police those powers.

I welcome the debate. I regret the lack of time to present to the House the factual material that the police service would have liked it to have before arriving at any conclusions. Ministers are often not aware of the detailed information that is available to the police. They try to obtain it, but they do not always succeed.

I welcome what the Home Secretary is doing. His commitment is beyond all doubt. I hope to assist in any way possible with what my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary is doing. The problem is a rot in our society. It generates crime. It will not go away. The debate has made a useful start in energising the Government into further action.

I shall confine my remarks to matters that I think might be described as the health side of the drug problem. I welcome back the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department who, during his long and pompous speech, suggested that my speech might be ill-prepared. That I freely acknowledge, but the Government have been rather more ill-prepared in dealing with the massive increase in heroin addiction.

The Government's commitment to doing something about the problem of addiction and semi-addiction and the horrors that go with them, will not be measured by the speeches or press releases which have poured from Departments over the past year or so; they will be measured by the adequacy of the resources made available to do something about the problem at all levels and by all Departments.

I shall not go on at length about the damage to our society and our young people that the present drug epidemic or plague causes, because other hon. Members have eloquently described the problems. But I will take no lessons from the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, and neither will any other hon. Member, about whether we take this matter seriously. I am familiar with young people in the area where I live and which I represent. Cheery little eight-year-olds whom I remember at primary school are now heroin addicts of 15 and 16. I do not need any lessons from anybody about the seriousness of the problem.

The basis of my approach to dealing with the problem is that it is a false idea that a well-heeled man in a white mac sidles up to children and says, "Here, sonny boy, try some of this." That is not the way in which people get into drug use and addiction. Fellow users involve other young people in taking drugs.

The Home Office must put great emphasis on preventing drugs from getting into the country. Equally, if we are to make any progress in stopping the spread, the thing to do is to reduce the number of existing users. The more we do that, the more there will be a reduction in the outlets that lead to the increase in users and the spread of drug abuse.

Frankly, the response on the Health Service side is inadequate. There are 50,000 to 60,000 addicts or serious users, by a conservative estimate. The figures showing the latest big increase among young people have not even appeared yet. They are not even in the poor statistics that we have. The figures will become much worse. To face that level of 50,000 or 60,000, NHS outpatient capacity for drug treatment in the whole country totals 2,000. Even the clinics that provide that service are characterised by staff shortages, the freezing of vacancies and lack of continuity. That means that only from 1,000 to as few as 600 people can make use of those 2,000 notional places. The Government's idea that that can be dealt with by Government funding that is pump-priming and for a limited period is absurd, because that makes it extremely difficult for the units to organise themselves most efficiently.

rose——

I am sorry, but I do not have time to give way. I shall try to do so at the end.

The NHS inpatient capacity to cope with the problem is at the princely total of about 110 beds, and many of them are used for those suffering from alcohol addiction. Therefore, we are not doing very well. There are 450 places in what is described as the non-statutory sector. In response, what are the Government doing? In the London area they provide £273,000 a year. Over the past weeks I have talked to some of the people in London who are expert in this matter. They are concerned and bothered, and have tried to do someting about it. They estimate that the four London health regions alone need £8 million a year to cope with the problem and believe that other health regions may need over £1 million each to be able to start to cope with the increasing problems they face.

Therefore, when the Minister announces his latest new initiative, let us measure it against the need. Let us not put up with government by press release. If the money is anywhere short of £20 million a year, it will be totally inadequate in the eyes of those involved, who think that massive increases are necessary.

Other hon. Members who represent my area have taken part in the debate. It is estimated that in Camden and Islington there are 2,000 addicts and probably 2,000 occasional users of heroin. There is no NHS residential provision in the whole region. One of the most important units there is the University College hospital drug dependence clinic. Between 1977 and 1983, that outpatient unit has seen an increase in demand, expressed by people coming to the door, of 600 per cent. Now there is a six-week wait. If any of us in the chamber were addicts and went to that clinic to see those sympathetic people, they would have to say, "I am sorry. Come back in six weeks."

One of the most crucial factors in getting anyone off drugs is establishing his commitment even to start the process. Despite all the sympathetic efforts of the people at that unit, a person who has plucked up courage and finally started to do something about the problem goes to the unit only to be told to come back in six weeks. That is more damaging than if that person had never gone at all. The Government are doing little about it.

The unit proposed to its district management in the spring of 1983 that it should have a 40-place day programme, extend its outpatient care and have a new clinic in Soho where, surprisingly, there is none. All this would have cost £360,000, which is chickenfeed compared with the problem that it faces. To be fair, the Government have supplied £100,000 towards aspects of that scheme. The proposal put forward in the spring of 1983, which was inadequate to meet the task required of it, was not proceeded with, and the unit is now putting forward a revised proposal for less.

Far more resources are needed. The idea that health authorities already crippled by the shortage of funds will respond positively to this belated circular asking them what is going on and what they propose is quite absurd. If we are to beat this catastrophic plague facing the country, the Government must act centrally. We cannot rely on the regional or district health authorities to do the job properly because they will not gear their priorities to meet these needs.

We need more doctors involved and more training of doctors. We need more nurses involved and more training of nurses in matters to do with drugs. We need to involve vast numbers of teachers, social workers, community workers and others in more expertise in dealing with the drug problems of young people. We need more premises; for example, we need bail hostels. If we got all those, we might start making some progress. At the moment we are running backwards fast.

The problem is that the areas most affected by the drugs plague are those health regions which are losing most resources. The towns and cities most affected by the plague are those most likely to be rate capped, as the Minister will have to admit. If rate capping goes through, it will be mere frippery for the Government to suggest that they are doing anything about the drugs problem, because at the same time they will be taking away resources from education and social services in the areas most in need of additional resources.

I cite as an example the GLC. The Government's spiteful campaign against the council continues apace, even in the House of Lords. The GLC, which is not providing enough money to try to deal with the drugs problem, is providing about half as much as the Government themselves in the Greater London area by their vaunted £2 million a year programme. The Government are simply not taking the problem seriously.

I invite hon. Members to look at what happened in the past; then they will be able to measure how far behind the problem resources have fallen. In 1968 there were about 2,800 addicts or heavy users of drugs. That was regarded as an epidemic, and the Government provided £2.8 million. Today, we have between 60,000 and 80,000 people in the same category and, until the Minister announces his increases in a moment or two, the Government have proposed coping with that by providing £2 million a year. We have fallen back dramatically in matching resources to the problem, and it is a major problem.

Other hon. Members have reminded us already that the Prime Minister says constantly that problems cannot be resolved by throwing money at them. No one suggests doing that. But, as the hon. Member for Plymouth, Drake (Miss Fookes) pointed out, the drug abuse industry is a multi-million pound international outfit. We shall only fight it by setting up a multi-million pound campaign. The Government are not proposing to do that. We have to match official resources for good against the unofficial resources that the evil people in the drug trade are deploying.

One of the ways of getting people off drugs is to place them somewhere they feel secure; where they will not be bothered and will not lapse into the circumstances which led to their addiction. Hostels are very important. The DHSS, with its social security hat on, operates a system which makes it difficult for people to receive sufficient social security benefits to be cared for in a drug hostel.

In Oldham, for example, the supplementary benefit rate for somebody on drugs entering a hostel is £63 a week. A person going into a hostel or nursing home for any other health reason receives £100. In Middleton, Manchester, the drug addict would receive a basic rate of £50, but £110 if they suffered from anything else. In Kensington, which is more expensive, the benefit is £90 for the drug addict and £175 for a person suffering from anything else. The Government are letting the country down in all sorts of ways. This problem was raised as long ago as last November with the Minister for Social Security, but nothing has been done. The problem has been wrapped up in long social security reviews which seem to go on for ever.

We want action now. The Government's response to the increasing problem has not been satisfactory. Millions of our young people are at risk. I say that millions are involved because millions are affected by the whole rotten, stinking drug scene, by the violence, the profiteering and the undermining of decent values that go with it. All our children are at risk. Our whole society is at risk. The Government's response has been inadequate, as all hon. Members have said today, with the exception of the Under-Secretary of State.

When the Minister announces an initiative today—as he is almost bound to do since it has been so trumpeted abroad—let us measure it against this: those involved directly in trying to fight the increase in drug addiction say that anything less than £20 million extra per year will be inadequate.

I have been much encouraged by the high level of interest expressed in the debate about the rapidly escalating problem of drug misuse. The problem is of great concern to the Government, to individuals, to families and to society as a whole.

I hope that I might be forgiven for speaking so rapidly, but in the short time available I have to make one confession and one announcment. During both my confession and my announcement I shall refer mostly to my DHSS responsibilities, not least because my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department has already given an excellent exposition of this very detailed and complex problem. Hon. Members would have been the first to criticise him if, in the first debate of its kind for some time, he had not gone through the problem in close detail. That was much appreciated by hon. Members.

I shall make one departure from that self-denying ordinance t6 assure the House that the Secretaries of State for Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales have also taken steps to ascertain the current extent of the drug misuse problems in their countries. Where necessary they will encourage the improvement of services to respond to the problem. That concern is demonstrated today by the presence on the Treasury Bench of the Under-Secretary of State for Scotland, my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, South (Mr. Ancram).

First, I shall make my confession. In the five years that I have observed the hon. Member for Knowsley, North (Mr. Kilroy-Silk) in the House, I have admired the way that he has taken up unpopular and difficult issues and dealt with them in great detail. I mean that.

That may not have been much appreciated by Conservative Members or, necessarily, always by Opposition Members, but he has dealt with them. I appreciate the way in which he said, during his long and interesting speech, that he was prepared to accept and welcome some of the recommendations put forward by my right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary. I was interested to hear him say that he recognised that we needed a balanced approach to, for example, greater policing by the Prison Officers Association of prison visits, where necessary, in order to prevent drugs from getting into prisons. Indeed, that was mentioned in great detail by my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton, West (Mr. Sackville) in his excellent and penetrating speech.

I also welcome the support of the hon. Member for Knowsley, North—understandably qualified as it was—for some of the measures that my right hon. and learned Friend has announced about parole for those convicted of drug offences. He asked me a substantial number of questions about the NHS, and some of them were repeated by the hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras (Mr. Dobson). In the time available, I shall try to answer as many as I can, but I shall write to both hon. Members as soon as possible about those that I cannot answer now.

I turn first to the questions that were asked about health authorities and the circular that we have issued to them. As has been said, we issued in June, in order to take early action in conjunction with local authorities, voluntary bodies, the police and the probation service, asking the health authorities to assess the prevalence of drug misuse in their areas. When the hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras reads what he said in Hansard—if he does, with the vanity that we all, from time to time, suffer from—I hope that he will reflect on his comments about the fact that the problem should be treated nationally and that local health authorities were not up to the job of dealing with it.

Health authorities up and down the land are supplied and staffed by a substantial number of members of the Labour party, who do a very good job. They know very well what the parameters of the problem are locally. We have asked for these reports by the end of the year. My hon. Friend the Member for Castle Point (Sir B. Braine) asked me, in his most powerful and pentrating speech, to pledge that we would chase up district health authorities for the answers to the questions that we have asked. We shall certainly do that by the end of the year.

rose——

I shall, of course, give way, as the hon. Gentleman did not have a chance to speak in the debate.

The hon. Gentleman may care to reflect on the rather unfortunate connotations of what he has just said. The health authority in the area covered by the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Holborn and St. Pancras (Mr. Dobson) and my own has a very active drugs unit and works hard on it, yet there are 2,000 people in Camden and Islington who are heavy users of heroin and there is a three-month waiting list merely to obtain an appointment of a consultation about drug dependency, never mind admission to hospital.

We look forward to receiving the report from that district health authority, and from the other 191 around the country as soon as possible, so that we can learn from them. I welcome what the hon. Gentleman had to say about the vigour with which his own district health authority—on which I am sure that some of his political friends serve with distinction — is dealing with such problems.

The circulation of the request to health authorities to get on with the job of reporting back to the DHSS about the size of the problem in their areas parallels exactly what chief officers of police are doing in looking at the way in which the police can deal with the problem as reported to the House by my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary. We certainly expect that information in December.

I was asked about the ministerial working group on drugs. It has not yet met, but it is to meet on 23 July. There will be Ministers from the Home Office, the DHSS and the Department of Education and Science—as I said in my intervention in the speech of the hon. Member for Tooting (Mr. Cox)—and from other territorial Departments, as necessary, at each of the meetings. In addition, that inter-ministerial working group will be properly serviced by additional staff who are being made available in the Home Office drugs branch.

In the short time available, I cannot pay anything like due attention to the many points raised by, for example, my hon. Friends the Members for Plymouth, Drake (Miss Fookes) for Castle Point and for Warwick and Leamington (Sir D. Smith). My hon. Friend the Member for Lewes (Mr. Rathbone) suggested that my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary for the Home Department and I should convene a meeting with representatives of the media to see how the drugs issue can be treated responsibly and reasonably. That was a positive suggestion which my hon. Friend and I will consider. I understand the anxiety of my hon. Friend the Member for Bury St. Edmunds (Mr. Griffiths) and I note what he said about how the police can help by providing information.

The hon. Member for Islington, South and Finsbury (Mr. Smith) made an interesting speech—I am sorry that he is not present to receive my plaudits—and said that the NHS did not have enough resources to deal with the drugs problem. That view was echoed by the hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras.

There has been a considerable increase in the resources provided for the NHS by the Government—not just a doubling of expenditure since 1979 and an 18 per cent. increase in resources. This year alone, we have given an extra £85 million to help authorities in England. The authorities are adding £100 million from cost improvement programmes and we have so far made £6 million available, over three years, in an initiative to improve services for drug misusers.

We received more valuable and worthwhile applications under that initiative than we were originally able to cover, so I am pleased to report to the House that my ministerial colleagues and I have decided to make at least a further £100 million available. I am sorry; that should be an extra £1 million. I like to test my civil servants, to see whether they are awake. They often give the appearance of sleeping through my speeches.

My ministerial colleagues and I decided to make up to £1 million extra available, with at least £750,000 being spent in the current year. That increases the sum available over the three years to £7 million.

I am pleased to have been able to announce the additional money which is being made available for additional improvements to services for drug misusers. [HON. MEMBERS: "Derisory."] I am sorry that Labour Members say that that sum is derisory. The evidence demonstrates that, five years after treatment in clinics, fewer than one third of drug misusers are still abstaining from the use of drugs. The solution does not necessarily involve treatment in expensive clinics. The way to deal with the problem is within the structure of society as a whole, with a range of small advice centres and with offices that people can telephone for advice.

The Mail on Sunday got it right last week when it said:

"The fact is this: it is no good demanding that the Government should spend money on clinics and the like if we in the community are not prepared to shoulder our own responsibilities in an attempt to rid this country of the terrible curse of drug addiction."

I agree wholeheartedly with those words. Drug misusers can be the cause of misery, not just to themselves, but to friends, relatives and others affected. The community as a whole suffers if drug misuse leads to an increase in crime. Any response by just some sectors of society to the problem of drug abuse will inevitably be limited in its effectiveness, whether those efforts are made by groups of professional workers, parents or the Government. The effective approach to drug misuse and drug misusers depends on all sections of society working together to coordinate their efforts to increase their awareness of the complex problem and to tackle it comprehensively. The Government are encouraging a comprehensive approach in co-operation with the National Health Service and police forces throughout the land, which we believe to be the best way forward.

On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Can you advise me of the methods that can be used to ensure that Ministers' introductory speeches are shorter so that hon. Members from all parts of the country who represent areas with serious problems of solvent abuse and drug dependency can tell the House and the country about the problems and the methods taken to eradicate them?

As the hon. Gentleman knows, a number of means are available to hon. Members to express their views about the length of speeches. It is not a matter for me. I remind the House that any time taken on points of order is deducted from the Adjournment debate.

The urban aid programme was established in 1969 by the then Labour Government to support, with Government finance, community projects in areas of greatest social need. In Scotland, that meant mainly, although not exclusively, Glasgow. The programme is founded on the proposition that 75 per cent. Government grant should be given to projects and that 25 per cent. should be provided by local authorities working with voluntary bodies. It is generally agreed that the system has worked well, although modestly, for the past 15 years.

In 1983–84, the Government provision for that sphere of activity was £35 million. Yet a short time ago a sudden and unexpected decision was taken to cut that sum to £26· million in 1984–85—a reduction of 25 per cent. The immediate reaction of local authorities, voluntary organisations and everyone concerned with these matters was one of anger, frustration and disbelief. The Government have been ceaseless in their encouragement of voluntary organisations—laudable in itself, provided that those fine words are matched by adequate financial assistance.

In the light of what the Government have repeatedly said, the voluntary bodies had a right to expect that the financing of the programme by central Government would be sustained and, indeed, protected from inflation. At a meeting on 30 April organised by the voluntary bodies, it was said—and I do not think that the Minister will deny this—that in May 1983 the Scottish Office indicated that the urban aid cash limit for 1984–85 would be maintained in real terms. Therefore, many local authorities planned on the basis that the Government provision for 1984–85 would be about £37 million, in line with inflation.

The Scotsman newspaper said on 8 June:

"The urban programme is needed to mitigate the effects of unemployment and poverty; it should be expanded rather than truncated."

The cut in the Scottish programme is in marked contrast with the position in England and Wales. I have checked the official figures, which show that the provision for 1984–85 for England and Wales is £348 million —precisely the same figure as for 1983–84. Indeed, during the past few days it has been reported that Liverpool is to receive an additional £2·5, million under the recent agreement between that authority and the Secretary of State for the Environment. If Liverpool suffers from deprivation, so does Glasgow.

In a report issued by the Scottish Office, "Public Expenditure 1986–87—A commentary on the Scotland programme", the Government provide an interesting table on page 52 showing that provision in the urban programme leaped from £24 million in 1982–83 to £35 million in election year. Cynics might say that that was part of election bribery. Now that the election is safely out of the way, the programme for 1984–85 has been cut, as I say, to under £27 million.

On page 56, the Government use the excuse for the reduction that in 1982–83 local authorities underspent by £8 million out of a total provision of £24 million, due partly, claim the Government, to the increasing reluctance of local authorities to embark on urban programmes in view of the resultant long-term revenue consequences.

The provision of £35 million in 1983–84, say the Government, will also be substantially underspent—all this from a Government who are constantly accusing local authorities of being wasteful and irresponsible spenders. Yet they use as an excuse for cutting the urban programme the allegation that local authorities have not been coming forward with programmes for urban aid. Local authorities are criticised by the Government when they allegedly underspend and are penalised when they overspend. They cannot win. Either way they are on the receiving end of the Government's miserliness.

Why did local authorities underspend in the last two years? It was not, in my view, or in theirs, solely because of fear of the revenue consequences, though that was an important factor. It was partly because, whatever the reasons, the Scottish Office takes so long to process applications for aid.

I gave the Minister prior notice of certain questions that I would be asking him. For example, what is the average time taken to process an application for urban aid, and what are the reasons for delays in processing? Are the delays due to a shortage of staff, incompetence, indifference, or a combination of all three?

The Scottish Council of Social Service points out that the Scottish Office has this year rejected all the 248 applications for new projects. At the meeting in April to which I referred, several speakers highlighted the dismay and frustration felt by voluntary groups which had had their applications rejected after months of careful and painstaking planning.

I am sure that the Minister has information about "Pathway", a projecct by an organisation called the Edinburgh university settlement. That project was designed to provide five to seven places for single homeless young women aged 16 to 21 for a stay of up to two years. That was a carefully researched and well documented programme constructed over two years, not by nitwits, halfwits or people who did not know what they were about. That project will be axed unless the Government change their view on these matters.

On 3 May the Kirkcaldy district council wrote to the Scottish Development Department expressing concern about the cuts. It received a reply dated 15 June, more than six weeks later. It told it nothing. Bearing in mind the content of the reply, the Minister could have replied the day after receiving the council's letter. That is a further sign of the languid incompetence of the Scottish Office in dealing with these matters. The Minister said that he had agreed to talk to the voluntary bodies and added:

"a significant proportion of the most insubstantial £26·5 million committed for this year will be used to support voluntary initiatives."

He commented that the local authorities had been provided with £25 million in 1983–84 and had underspent by £5 million, and that the resources available for 1984–85 reflected that trend. The Minister was saying that local authorities and voluntary bodies had no one to blame but themselves because they did not even spend the limited resources that the Government had already provided. If the local authorities and voluntary bodies decided to spend well over the £26.5 million, will the Minister say, "Because of the overspend we shall arrange for a supplementary Estimate to take care of the increased demand?" The magnitude and seriousness of the social and economic deprivation in all urban areas vastly exceeds the deprivation which existed in 1969 when the urban programme was born. However, in real terms the amount spent on it has been reduced since 1980–81 in real terms. At present, more than 1,100 urban programme projects are in operation in Scotland with several hundreds more in their planning and application stage. These projects cannot be turned on and off like a tap. They are often months if not years in preparation and when the projects are cut at short notice many complications arise.

I shall give a few examples of the projects that are affected. They include the provision of day centres for the elderly, schemes to help children who are in trouble, local information centres and the establishment of community gardens in places such as Dundee. The Fife regional council in my constituency is in the process of submitting an application for urban aid to provide additional accommodation at the Woodlands nursery school at Methil to create a family centre that will offer a range of facilities for the parents of pre-school children, including creches, holiday play facilities, a toy library and a meeting place for young parents. That scheme will probably have to be scrapped if the money from the Government is not forthcoming.

People in deprived areas are getting a bad deal and the cuts that will result from the Government's proposals will confirm the feeling of hopelessness and anger that they rightly feel. Deprivation in Glasgow and other urban areas in Scotland is at least as great as that in any other part of the United Kingdom and the urban programme should reflect that brutal fact.

I can anticipate what the Minister will say—I hope that I am not being unduly pessimistic—and, without apology, I shall be controversial in the final two or three minutes of my speech. When I compare the urban aid programme in Scotland with provision for the police, for example, as shown on page 40 of the Scottish Office's comments on the public expenditure programme up to 1985–86, the conclusions to be drawn are an adequate commentary on the Government's priorities. In the past few years, the urban programme has been cut in real terms. Current and capital expenditure on the police in 1980–81 was £186 million, and in 1984–85 it is £285 million—an increse of more than 50 per cent. in real terms.

When discussing provisions for housing, education, health and urban aid, the claim is always made—I am sure that the Under-Secretary of State for Scotland will say this—that there is a limit to what one can do with public money. I shall continue to repeat that, according to the Government's figures, projected defence expenditure in the Falklands Islands fortress folly has been as follows: 1983–84, £624 million; 1984–85, £684 million; and 1985–86, £552 million. That is at least £2,000 million in round terms to defend 1,200 folks 8,000 miles away—fewer than the numbers who live in hundreds of villages in Scotland. That is a measure of the Government's indefensible and obsene set of priorities.

We live in a deeply and bitterly divided society in which the gap between the rich and the poor — the Under-Secretary of State need not laugh at these comments, because they are accurate — has been deliberately and progressively widened in the past few years. We live in a society in which private affluence and public squalor are becoming more apparent daily.

The urban programme represents a brave attempt to give a little help to the disadvantaged, the poor, the unemployed, the old, the under-privileged and the other minority groups with no political clout such as homeless young people. The appeals made to the Government not only by me but by others outside are not widely extravagant. As the Government say that cuts have been made because of an underspend of existing provisions, I ask the Under-Secretary of State to give an undertaking that, if he finds that there is overwhelming evidence of a vast increase in the demand for urban aid programmes, the Secretary of State for Scotland will go the Treasury and ask for supplementary provision. That is not an extravagant proposition, and I hope that the Under-Secretary will give a sysmpathetic reply.

I start—perhaps to the surprise of the hon. Member for Fife, Central (Mr. Hamilton) — by thanking him for raising an important subject. On listening to the early part of his speech, I thought that he was constructive and perceptive, but, as is so often the case, he ruined his speech at the end by dropping into his normal pattern of comparing like with unlike and drawing conclusions from comparisons that cannot be made. I do not want to fall into the trap of following him down the road of those miscomparisons, because the debate gives me the opportunity to make the Government's present position clear and to emphasise the extent of our commitment to the programme in recent years.

It might be helpful if I start by outlining briefly the current position on the urban programme in Scotland and how that has evolved. The concept of an urban programme to assist local authorities to tackle the problems of urban deprivation developed over the 1970s. In 1980, a review of the urban development programme was instituted in Scotland to consider its effectiveness in channelling resources into multiple-deprived areas in a co-ordinated and coherent way. In February 1981, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland announced that he had decided to continue the programme and to set criteria and priorities within which it was to operate.

The resources made available were to be concentrated on complementing —I underline that word—the local authority effort in the most severely deprived areas, and emphasis was put on the need to develop projects which formed part of comprehensive rehabilitation plans. The aim was to mobilise voluntary efforts and private sector resources as far as possible to assist local authorities in their tasks. Minor adjustments were made to the programme in 1982 but the focus of it remains broadly as it was set. I shall explain shortly how successful it has been.

In recognition of the importance of the problem, additional resources were provided over a number of years. As the hon. Member has said, for 1980–81 the resources made available, at £22·6 million, were double the provision in the previous year. In 1981–82 the provision was increased to over £26 million, and for 1982–83 to almost £33 million. Last year, as the hon. Member rightly said, there was a further increase to £35 million. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman would privately admit— even if he would not do so publicly—that in relation to total public expenditure in Scotland those are very substantial sums.

Until very recently, however, the response from local authorities has been disappointing, despite the flexible approach adopted in administering the programme. Many extremely worthwhile projects have undoubtedly been supported. Some authorities, I fully recognise, have put commendable effort into developing defined policies and sponsoring well thought out and well targeted schemes.

Across the board, however, local authorities have not, historically, taken up the resources made available to them. There have been underspends against provision, and underspends of considerable magnitude, as the hon. Gentleman said—almost £4 million in both 1980–81 and 1981–82, over £8 million in 1982–83, and, from provisional returns for last year, well over £6 million in 1983–84. Clearly, that level of under-use could not be continued. My right hon. Friend and I would rightly have been criticised by hon. Members—and not least by the hon. Member — if resources made available to Parliament were not being used to the best effect, given the other legitimate public expenditure demands in Scotland.

It was in the face of that historic pattern of underspend that we took decisions last autumn about provisions for 1984–85. There was a limited response from local authorities, a history of underspend, uncertainty about whether the resources provided for 1983–84 would be fully taken up, and pressures elsewhere. They all had to be taken into account. Having taken them into account, provision was accordingly set at £26·5 million, still a very substantial amount of money, supporting almost 900 individual urban programme projects in this financial year. Many of our current critics, including the hon. Gentleman, seem conveniently to overlook that very important fact.

Since provision for 1984–85 was set, it has emerged that local authorities have failed to spend more than £3 million of capital programmed for expenditure in 1983–84, the bulk of which will now have to be carried into this financial year. At the beginning of this calendar year, the number of applications received by the Department rose sharply. The upsurge of interest should be welcomed and I am fully aware of the effort put, particularly by voluntary and community groups, into developing projects over many months. The slippage of more than £3 million, which was not notified to my officials in time for any sensible remedial action to be taken, and previously approved new projects have, however, absorbed the bulk of the resources which would have been available for additional approvals in 1984–85. It was for that reason that consideration of new projects was suspended, although extensions to existing projects and supplementary capital allocations are still being approved whenever possible.

The hon. Gentleman made comparisons with England and Wales, but I do not think that such comparisons are particularly meaningful or helpful. As I am sure he appreciates, the urban programme in Scotland is run entirely independently and is focused on the particular needs of Scotland. The direction and procedures of the programme, especially in view of the related contribution to urban renewal by the Scottish Development Agency, are different from those in England, which makes it an arid comparison.

Against this background, I am taking stock of the urban programme in Scotland. I am not yet in a position to say whether there will be scope for additional new project approvals in 1984–85. The Department is still awaiting further information from local authorities about their projected capital spends when we shall be better able to judge the level of commitments. I hope to be in a position to make an announcement about this shortly. Nor can I yet give any commitment about resources for 1985–86. The needs of the urban programme will be considered along with other programmes when my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State makes decisions about public expenditure generally later this year.

I am, however, taking the opportunity to assess the relevance of the criteria and priorities of the programme in relation to the problems that they are designed to tackle. I have noted the points made by the hon. Member and I am grateful to him and for the comments and suggestions that have been made to me. I have met and shall be having further meetings with a number of individual local authorities and the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities. I have invited the Scottish Council of Social Services to organise a small deputation to discuss the interests of the voluntary sector in the urban programme.

In view of the time, I should at this stage answer the specific question that the hon. Gentleman asked and of which he gave me notice. We do not have statistics to show the average time taken to process applications but it is the aim of the urban renewal unit to give the local authority a decision within two months of receipt of the application if the proposal is well thought out, meets the urban programme criteria and is well presented in terms of information required. Some applications take less time, but a longer time is inevitable if an application requires further discussion or correspondence to clarify or justify the project or if it is unusually complex or original and thus requires especially careful appraisal. The time required locally, before a project is submitted to the Department for consideration is not a matter for me, but clearly it will vary widely according to the experience of the sponsors, the support and guidance needed by voluntary or community groups, the time needed to generate appropriate supporting material and the local authority's own internal appraisal procedures and committee cycles. Processing time will clearly vary according to the type of application, but I repeat that we aim to complete consideration and processing within two months of receipt.

I know that the effect of the current suspension on voluntary groups is a matter of concern for a number of groups and hon. Members, and I have been pleased at the increasing number of projects from voluntary and community groups to the extent that 30 per cent. of the funds allocated in 1983–84 — a total of £9 million—relate to local initiatives. While this is encouraging, it is worth noting that the bulk of the effort has come from local groups, whereas I might have expected greater involvement of the larger national voluntary bodies in stimulating initiatives. This is a point which I shall raise with the SCSS when I see it next month because there is clearly still scope in many areas for authorities to make greater efforts to maximise local community input and indeed private sector input to initiatives to tackle urban deprivation.

I hope that in the time left to me to reply to the debate I have made it clear that in the light of the historic underspend, which was a great waste of resources at a time when it was especially important that they be properly spent, it was right for the Government to take that decision and for consideration of applications to be suspended.