Speeches and Statements

'Tackling Drugs - Reducing Crime'

Speech by Drugs Minister Vernon Coaker on tackling drugs, at the 'Tackling Drugs – Reducing Crime' European conference organised by the Nottinghamshire Police Authority, on Monday 7 April.

Good morning.

It is a double pleasure for me to be with you here in Nottingham today – as a local MP in Nottinghamshire and as the Home Office Minister responsible for drugs. I am delighted to see so many colleagues from other countries and, of course, some familiar faces from Nottinghamshire. Welcome to you all and thank you for inviting me to join you.

We all face significant challenges in dealing with illegal drugs and drug related crime. This event offers an invaluable opportunity for European partners to share best practice and by learning from each other. I am sure this will make us all more effective. You have an impressively comprehensive agenda that should make for a highly productive conference.

This Government is in no doubt that tackling drug misuse is a key priority. The costs to society are enormous. Not only because of the huge impact of drug-related crime that your Tackling Drugs Reducing Crime partnership has rightly focused upon; but also because of the damage drugs do to the health of individuals and the way they undermine society and family life.

We are determined as a Government to reduce those harms.

As some of you may know our previous 10-year drug strategy came to an end last month so we have been giving a lot of thought recently to what we have achieved and what more we need to do. I would like to mention just a few of the achievements of recent years.

Over the last decade we have seen overall drug use in England and Wales at its lowest level since 1996; Class A drug use amongst young people is stable whilst the frequent use of other illegal drugs has decreased; the number of people accessing drug treatment programmes has more than doubled and waiting times have been dramatically reduced. And we have halted the steep rises in rates of drug-related deaths that occurred throughout the 1990s.

In parallel we have taken tough action on drug misusing offenders, putting tough choices before them for the first time. As part of the Drug Interventions Programme we have introduced compulsory drug testing on arrest or charge and compulsory assessment and follow up assessment by a drugs worker. And there are sanctions – including a possible prison sentence - for those who do not comply.

For too long there was a debate about whether drug treatment should be accessed through the criminal justice system. Some argued that it was not ethical; that drug treatment should be seen purely as a health issue.

But we has shown that the criminal justice system can be used positively to provide a great opportunity to help drug misusing offenders: to get those offenders away from crime and to engage them in treatment and support. Five years ago, we introduced the Drug Interventions Programme and over 4,000 drug misusing offenders now enter treatment through that programme each month.

Recorded acquisitive crime – to which drug related crime makes a significant contribution - has fallen by around 20 per cent since the Drug Interventions Programme began.

Greater access to treatment and more effective treatment has not only delivered results for individuals, it has also benefited society and is helping to break the cycle between drug misuse and offending. And those offenders who enter drug treatment through the Criminal Justice System – through, yes, a degree of coercion – do as well as those who enter treatment completely voluntarily. So I hope we can now all accept that what matters is what happens when people get into treatment rather than how they get there.

The Government has also introduced a wide range of new powers to help the police and other partners improve enforcement. The results have been encouraging - over 1,000 crack houses closed since 2003; we are seizing significant quantities of drugs; and we are targeting illegal drug flows and seizing the assets of drug dealers.

I will say more about this in a moment, but I wanted to say how proud I think we should be of those achievements and the investment that has made them happen. They would not have happened without the commitment of front line staff such as police officers, drugs workers, probation and prison staff and many, many other agencies. I want to thank the many people in this room who have been part of that success both here in Nottinghamshire and also nationally.

As I am here in Nottingham, I can’t resist the temptation just to mention some of the excellent work going on locally to identify and target a small group of very active offenders who cause misery and harm to their local communities. The Sherwood Project is making a real difference to offending levels. It is helping to deliver the Government’s national Prolific and Other Priority Offenders Programme which is a key to reducing re-offending.

Now in its fourth year, Sherwood targets those offenders involved in a range of convictions including house burglaries, robbery and theft of motor vehicles, and who are responsible for a disproportionately high number of offences. It has had impressive results.

It is enormously encouraging to see a community based project, working effectively in a truly multi - agency way -with Police, Probation, Courts and the Drug Treatment Providers, all bringing together a range of skills and services to focus on those offenders with drugs and other substance misuse problems and critical to addressing their needs.

Projects like these are a further reminder of the commitment of local agencies and partners in helping to make communities safer. They provide a stream of intensive interventions and appropriate supervision - by working together to drive down offending behaviour and prevent offenders from re-offending. And by ensuring swift action for those who continue to offend.

And so to the future. As part of our new strategy we carried out our largest ever public consultation on drugs issues. That told us the drugs remain a big concern for communities and we know we cannot be complacent. Our new ten year Strategy “Drugs: Protecting Families and Communities”, backed up by a programme of three year action plans, will build on the progress we have already made: strong enforcement will be backed up by helping and educating young people and their families, and supporting drug users in getting them off drugs and re-integrated into their communities.

And as we go forward with the strategy we want to ensure that we remain focused on outcomes, that we base what we do on evidence, and that we deliver it through partnership working.

We also know that drug treatment alone will not overcome drug misuse or offending behaviour. Reduction in offending and improvements in health achieved by completing drug treatment in the community or prison, will be lost if ongoing social support is not provided to drug users and their families.

That is why we are introducing measures to help families at risk and to provide prompt access to treatment for supporting parents with drug problems. And we will be using the benefits system to support and incentivise moves towards treatment, training and employment.

But all those measures need to be complemented by strong support for the police and enforcement agencies in tackling the supply of drugs and the organised criminals and individuals who profit from that trade.

In 2006 we set up the Serious and Organised Crime Agency – SOCA - in 2006. Organised crime behaves in very sophisticated ways. It was clear that we needed new thinking to stay ahead of the criminals. So SOCA is a new kind of law enforcement agency: one that works proactively rather than reactively; one that sticks to the criminals through and after their imprisonment to deny them the chances to return to crime; one that uses its resources strategically to reduce the harm to the structure of society that organized crime brings.

Already, increasing quantities of drugs are being seized and organised crime groups and dealers disrupted. Over 74 tonnes of Class A drugs were seized in 2006/07 which, if sold in the UK for the market price, would have raised in excess of £3 billion and generated considerable associated crime.

Asset recovery is a key weapon to tackle organised criminals. Our police forces have some of the toughest asset seizure powers in the world and we want to go further.

We have already seized £125 million of criminal assets in the last five years and are committed to recovering £250 million per year in 2009/2010.

In addition, the threshold for seizing suspect sums of cash under the Proceeds of Crime Act has been reduced from £5,000 to £1,000. This lets the police tackle those at the lower end of organised crime – the dealers in the community who carrying smaller amounts of cash below the previous seizure threshold. We will introduce further powers to allow police officers to seize cash before criminals have an opportunity to disperse it – and to re-invest part of those proceeds into the community.

Listening to and learning from local communities is vitally important to the new strategy. The strategy belongs to them, and is for them. So it is vital that they are listened to; that their concerns are acted upon; and that their role in providing solutions, rather than simply being interested bystanders, is recognized. Harnessing local participation provides quality intelligence and a better understanding of local concerns; and, just as importantly, it can provide a hostile environment for drug dealers and other criminals. And if that results in some more appropriate role models for our young people, then we will truly have made progress.

This is why we have put communities at the centre of local policing initiatives, such as Safer Neighbourhood Teams, which embed action to tackle drugs within an overall Neighbourhood Policing approach.

We will continue to support local solutions whenever an opportunity is identified: in local solutions lie real hope for our communities.

Finally I’d like to say a few words about the conclusions of the project that has given rise to this conference. It recognises that we need to pursue a balanced approach: that we need to understand drug markets if we are to disrupt them successfully; and that we need too to be able to manage drug-using offenders successfully.

Clearly, when it comes to tackling drugs, all of the achievements I have spoken of today are real measures of progress. But we do not under-estimate the enormity of the challenge ahead. Of overriding importance are the individuals, families and communities behind the figures and how they are benefiting from the progress I have outlined for you today.

We are in no doubt that good quality partnership-working - be it local, national or international - is the key to our successes. We need to continue to encourage the development of local solutions for locally identified problems.

But the problems presented by substance misuse are complex and cannot be tackled by local communities in isolation. They need to learn from one another. Joined-up working is the only way to tackle the complex problems presented by substance misuse.

That is why I am delighted to see the approach you have taken in the Tackling Drugs Reducing Crime Partnership. The effects of the criminal trade in drugs are felt across the globe. If we are to respond effectively to it we need to work together, not least through the EU, to undermine that trade.

I hope that this conference will demonstrate the effective ways of co-operating together and sharing approaches to tackling the policing of drugs. We should complement and build upon the success of existing partnerships to develop a comprehensive approach to our long-term anti-drugs objectives and those of our international partners.

Thank you.