I beg to move amendment No. 21, in

clause 10, page 6, line 29, leave out '14' and insert '12'.

With this, it will be convenient to discuss the following amendments:

No. 66, in

clause 10, page 6, line 29, leave out '14' and insert '10'.

No. 94, in

clause 10, page 6, line 29, leave out '14' and insert '17'.

No. 95, in

clause 10, page 6, line 30, leave out paragraph (b).

No. 22, in

clause 10, page 6, line 31, leave out '17' and insert '18'.

No. 96, in

clause 10, page 6, line 38, leave out paragraph (c).

No. 97, in

clause 10, page 7, leave out lines 14 to 29.

No. 23, in

clause 10, page 7, line 16, leave out '17' and insert '18'.

No. 24, in

clause 10, page 7, line 17, after second 'or', insert 'if not available any close adult relation of his, or'.

No. 59, in

clause 10, page 7, line 24, leave out from 'available' to end of line 26 and insert 'a doctor or solicitor'.

We come now to an important clause, which deals with drug testing for under-18s. For reasons that are clear from the debate just past, I fully accept that drug taking is a serious problem, especially among under-18s, and the amendments in this group are designed to probe the reasoning behind the Government's approach. We have certain concerns about the way in which drug testing for under-18s will work in practice.

Amendment No. 21 would change the lower age for testing from 14 to 12. I have no fixed view on the issue, but the purpose behind the clause seems to be to ensure that, on arrest, an opportunity exists to test juveniles for drugs. There is ample evidence that drug misuse starts before the age of 14 and, in my experience, it is perfectly likely that children of 12 will be brought into police stations. Considering those circumstances, will the Minister explain why the age 14 has been chosen as the cut-off point rather than some other age? Equally, other amendments would provide for a higher cut-off age, and the Committee should consider those possibilities. It is important that the Committee should have an opportunity to discuss that.

The other issue that arises in clause 10 and this large group of amendments relates to amendment No. 96, which concerns appropriate adults and their presence. The presence of appropriate adults at police stations when young people are being dealt with is an important safeguard. Therefore, I am slightly puzzled as to why the age of 17 has been chosen as the cut-off point, rather than the age of 18 being applied in this particular circumstance.

There are wider concerns. As was made clear to me at a briefing that I received from the Children's Society and from the National Association for the Care and Resettlement of Offenders, there is anxiety about the,

frankly, invasive nature of the procedures that are involved. To put it bluntly, if a person is asked to provide a urine sample, someone will be standing around waiting for it to be provided. That is what goes on in police stations. To apply that procedure to juveniles requires certain safeguards to be put in place.

It might reassure the hon. Gentleman were I to say that there will be no question of providing a urine sample. The technology has moved on and, as I saw during a visit to Bridewell in Leeds, one of the pilot areas for drug testing for over-18s, a swab is placed under the tongue in the same way that a person's temperature would be taken.

That offers a measure of reassurance, although I think that I am right in saying that, at present, several other options remain available. Until those other options are closed, the possibilities presumably still exist that the old procedures will be applied. The Minister, however, may be able to reassure me that the pilot scheme marks the rapid and immediate disappearance of the old procedures.

A wider policy issue that the Children's Society and the National Association for the Care and Resettlement of Offenders rightly raised concerned where drug testing will lead. It is all very well to say that people will be tested for drugs, but for there to be any point in doing so—particularly if one is to consider the consequences of testing children and young people—a rapid, concrete result that will help them is necessary. Otherwise, to test them is just a pointless and further bureaucratic activity that is taking place at police stations. At present, I am not entirely persuaded that the Government have the resources—this has been discussed in statements in the House—to provide assistance to those young people who are found to be drug-positive, as well as constructive help to get them off their addictions.

I do not wish, Mr. Illsley, to widen the scope of the discussion so far that you will call me to order; I accept that I have moved into other areas. However, before we blithely decide that clause 10 is the solution to many of the nation's ills, it is worth considering the fact that the provision to help those of any age who show signs of addiction—this applies as much to juveniles as it does to adults—is woefully inadequate.

The Minister will be aware that my party's proposals envisaged the massive increase in the number of drug treatment places and the offer of alternatives for juveniles to prosecution and entering rehabilitation. That is extremely important, and something that I wish to see developed. However, I see no sign in the Bill that we shall achieve that.

How large was the massive increase in the number of places that the hon. Gentleman's party proposed?

The hon. Gentleman will recollect that the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, the hon. Member for Coventry, North-East (Mr. Ainsworth) said that 118,000 places were available, and that he wished to double that figure. We found that figure incredible. When we explored it more closely, it emerged that he meant 118,000 people in contact with drug treatment, which

is not the same. My party's estimate is that we would have to increase both the number of residential and non-residential placements eightfold to raise the level of drug-treatment places to such levels as those in Sweden, where the issue is taken extremely seriously.

I had the pleasure of going to Boston in the United States in late September and early October, where I spent four days visiting a drug rehabilitation project. In the US the problem is treated as a public health issue; it is taken extremely seriously, and a large number of excellent programmes are available. One has only to see the long-term nature and the cost of those programmes, as well as the necessary resources, to see how woefully inadequate provision is in this country. As the hon. Member for Bassetlaw will recollect, my hon. Friend the Member for Woodspring (Dr. Fox)—the shadow health spokesman—and my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Mr. Letwin) said that the necessary allocation of resources would be a priority for the Conservative party. We accepted that that provision would be in the region of half a billion pounds. We think that that would be money well spent.

I have read the Conservative party's document on the matter and am aware of the proposed eightfold increase. Is not that increase in the number of juvenile places only, which is an increase of fewer than 8,000 treatment places for the estimated 300,000 addicts in this country? We should clarify the context in which we are taking the—as he rightly said—important decision.

The hon. Gentleman makes a reasonable point. However, I repeat what I think is the flaw in the Government's proposals. In typical, new Labour, gimmickry style, they said that they would double the number of available drug treatment places, which has no relation whatever with reality. However, if all the Government are doing is doubling 118,000 people in contact with drug treatment, I tell the hon. Gentleman that it will not work. We prefer an approach that targets juvenile crime, for which there is an obvious limit on resources and which should be considered as an absolute priority. We came up with what we thought were a number of sensible, affordable schemes.

One of those is to ensure that every juvenile brought in with a drug problem can be provided with a proper treatment place, and not contact with a drug treatment centre, which is a completely different thing. We offered that as an alternative to prosecution for the offence for which the police have brought in that juvenile. I do not say that that will solve all the world's problems. It is a policy option that I recommend the Government look at further. I would be only too happy for the Minister to run with that option, implement it in this Parliament and take credit for it. The proposal is much better than that which the Government made on the subject.

Returning to the subject under discussion, I tell the hon. Member for Bassetlaw that the drug testing orders for under-18s are an intrusion, though I am not too troubled by that. However, the justification for the intrusion is that there is a satisfactory consequence. I am not now persuaded that the resources or will is

there to achieve that. That is a legitimate subject to discuss when considering the clause, because there is no point in implementing it unless a benefit flows from it, other than that a policeman may discover from the litmus test paper that the young person in front of him has a drug problem, which many young people will be found so to have.

I return to amendment No. 96. We are concerned about the power of the Secretary of State to vary the terms of the clause, as in the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984. I am not sure why, if he will be able to vary PACE in that way, the power of varying by order appears here. I should be grateful to hear the Minister's reasons. In amendment No. 23, we again seek to substitute the age of 18 for 17, the age up to which an appropriate adult is needed.

I look forward to hearing the Minister's comments and hope that we can have a sensible discussion about how the clause might be improved.

Sitting suspended.

On resuming—

May I say how pleased I am to serve under your watchful eye, Mr. Illsley?

We have some tricky decisions to take about whether to allow drug testing of people under the age of 18 and, if so, what should be the minimum age at which they will be subjected to such testing, albeit with their consent. However, a criminal offence will have been committed if they do not give their consent. We are discussing important stuff.

Stafford is one of the sites where there is a pilot for the drug testing of adults—the other pilots are in Hackney and Nottingham—and I may therefore be able to help the Committee by explaining what is going on. There is a combined site at two stations in Staffordshire, Stafford and Cannock. Adults may be tested if they have been charged with a trigger—an acquisitive—offence; they must give their consent but it is an offence if they do not do so. The test is a mouth swab, which can detect cocaine and opiates such as heroin. On one of my visits to see how the pilot was progressing I underwent that test; was not that courageous of me? I am pleased to say that my test for both of those substances was negative. Phew!

Until October last year, there were just over 1,000 tests in the Stafford and Cannock pilot and 45 per cent. proved positive. I do not know whether that confirms people's views of the proportion of those whose drug dependency drives them to commit crime, but it is an impressive figure, which should be taken into account. Home Office finding 176, from the pilots in all three areas up to February 2002, shows that the positive test figure for Hackney was 63 per cent., for Nottingham 58 per cent. and for Stafford and Cannock 47 per cent.

I have been back to the police station in Stafford two or three times to find out how the tests are progressing. The biggest problem is one to which the

hon. Member for Beaconsfield alluded earlier: the difficulty when people test positive. They are referred to an arrest referral worker and asked whether they want help to beat their drug dependency. They almost always say yes. The response from the referral worker is to give the person an appointment to see someone in three months' time who might be able to help them. That loses the urgency of the addict's plea for help. I saw that for myself when I told the Home Office officials running the pilot that this was a huge problem and that help was needed on the health side to ensure that treatment was available. I am afraid that those officials said that it was the Department of Health's problem, not theirs, which was unhelpful.

I then joined the board of my local integrated drugs and alcohol service to try to make my own contribution to reducing the waiting time, which has now halved to about six weeks. That is still far too long. As the hon. Member for Beaconsfield said, it is even more important in the case of juveniles to be able to respond much sooner.

On the issue of extending testing to under-18-year-olds, just before Christmas I gave the Minister a copy of the briefing from the Children's Society and DrugScope about their objections to the provision. I am not entirely convinced of the validity of some of their arguments. In the previous exchange, we debated the argument about the invasiveness of the tests, which we have shown is not necessarily the case. The test that I took was a swab under the tongue, which lasted for about a minute. The test by machine took a couple of minutes more. The whole exercise was over in three minutes flat, so the argument about invasiveness is not very strong.

The paper also argues that few juveniles have a dependency on class A drugs that drives them to commit crime. It asks why we risk the problems of human rights challenges on the grounds of consent, which I will return to in a moment. It also asks why we must interfere in people's lives in order to contact a small number of people. That point is factually wrong. The Home Office youth lifestyles survey on the association of drugs misuse and offending showed that serious or persistent offenders were much more likely to report using cannabis or heroin within the previous 12 months. The figures were 56 per cent. for cannabis and 13 per cent. for heroin. The all-party group for children—an excellent group of which I am a member—brought that report to my attention. A footnote tells us that the survey was conducted in 1998–99, but published by the Home Office in 2001 as Home Office research finding 152.

The situation is more serious than the Children's Society and DrugScope believe. Staffordshire police provided me with some statistical information about the attendance of juveniles at Stafford and Cannock police stations during the period of the drug testing of adults, when just over 1,000 were tested for drug dependency and slightly more than 2,000 juveniles passed through police stations. Some 850 were there for offences that would be regarded as trigger offences, which shows the scale of the numbers of juveniles

under discussion. Of the offences committed by juveniles that were drug related, 114 related to the possession of cannabis, and the youngest offender was 12.

There were six offences related to supplying or offering cannabis, and the youngest offender was 14. The youngest offender charged with the possession of amphetamines was 15. The youngest offender charged with the possession of heroin was 16. That is good, solid, local evidence to add to the national survey. Youngsters have a problem with drugs that is bringing them into contact with the criminal justice agencies. I hope that that demolishes the objections voiced by the Children's Society and DrugScope.

Nevertheless, the paper states a second objection about consent that has more validity. I have said already that people are required to give their consent to the test, and that if they do not give it they have committed a criminal offence. We are therefore, in effect, forcing people to give that consent. With people under the age of 18, the question arises to what extent they, rather than their parents who have legal responsibility for them, should give their consent. That issue has arisen in the civil courts, with regard to consent to treatment when doctors prescribe contraceptive pills, for example. The Gillick case raised the issue of whether youngsters should be able to consent to such medical treatment without their parents' knowledge, let alone consent.

Guidelines from the Department of Health—the Fraser guidelines—state that youngsters under the age of 16 should not be given assistance and treatment for their drug dependency without the knowledge and involvement, and if possible consent, of their parents. I anticipate problems if police officers can accept the consent of a youngster without that youngster's parents being present, bearing in mind that the ''appropriate adult'' could be a social worker or any other reliable adult that the police could get hold of at the time. There could be subsequent challenges about whether that consent was properly given, and such challenges are more likely because the result of not giving consent is to commit a criminal offence.

My next point concerns the Children's Society briefing, and the point made by the hon. Member for Beaconsfield when discussing amendment No. 23. There is no need for an appropriate adult to be present in the case of 17-year-olds, because in our curious criminal justice system 17-year-olds are treated as adults. The briefing from the all-party group for children states that 17-year-olds should be treated in the same way as 16-year-olds, 15-year-olds or 14-year-olds.

In the pilot area in Stafford, even adults experience problems in getting treatment. It is vital that young people should get treatment quickly if they test positive for drug dependency drugs. Sergeant Russ Cartlidge from Stafford police station said to me yesterday that there were two good reasons for testing young people. The first is a moral reason: if someone who is young and vulnerable has a dependency that might destroy the rest of their life, we should intervene to try to help them. The second concerns crime prevention: if we know that such drug dependency

will drive a young person into increasing acquisitive crime, it would be helpful to intervene to try to wean them off the drugs, so that they are not driven to commit the offences. If those two arguments are compelling, it makes no sense, on either ground, to wait until young people are 18 before they can be tested at a police station and intervention can be made to help them.

As a result of my visit yesterday, I found out that the technology is moving on still further. Sergeant Cartlidge was able to show me the latest kit—costing £40,000—which can test for drug dependency from a swab of the hand, and so is even less invasive. He let me bring away one of the swabs to show the Committee. The hand is wiped with the swab, which is then put into a slot, and seconds later the machine comes up with the result. This test can be used not only for cocaine and opiates but for a wide range of other drugs. The technology is developing all the time, which makes the question of invasiveness even less worrying.

I believe, on balance, that it is a good idea to extend testing to juveniles. However, there is the problem of consent, especially for those younger than 16, and serious attention must be paid to that.

If the Minister would like to test out the new proposals under field conditions, Stafford police would be willing to extend their present pilot to include testing of juveniles, subject to extra funding to pay for the work and to sorting out the question of consent. Most importantly, such an extension should mean that any youngster who tests positive, and whom an arrest referral worker finds to be willing to undergo treatment, must be able to get such treatment immediately from the health service.

I hope that those comments are helpful to the whole of the Committee, but particularly to the Minister.

I welcome back my hon. Friend the Member for Somerton and Frome from the European Parliament (Representation) Bill Committee, which is clearly not as hardworking as we are. It probably will not last as long either. The amendments in this group that we have tabled are Nos. 94 to 97. They are all probing amendments. We do not intend to press them. They are really part of the exercise that was led by the hon. Member for Beaconsfield and to which the hon. Member for Stafford (Mr. Kidney) contributed. It concerns the balance between wanting to intervene early and treating children carefully and the important issues about where age limits should differentiate treatments in the criminal justice system and where consent is sought from parents or guardians as opposed to the child or young person.

Like other hon. Members, I have received briefings from organisations, and especially those with children's interests at heart. I start from the position that if the behaviour of people under the age of majority is being affected by drugs so that they come into contact with the law because of criminal activity, it is better that they know that, their parents or guardians know that, and there is the opportunity to treat the problem earlier rather than later. To that extent, I share the general view of the Conservative

party, although not some of its policy outcomes, when it sought to look at how one can intervene early enough to stop the slippage into serious drug use by so many people at such an early age. Interestingly, as the hon. Member for Stafford said, the figures do not show a huge incidence of serious drug use in that age range. Of those tested, 86 per cent. were not showing any sign of serious drug use.

Could the Minister answer the question that has been posed by all the children's organisations as to what we say about the United Nations convention on the rights of the child, which states that one should treat under-18s separately and regard them as children? We are all aware that the Government have not fully signed up to that convention, which is itself the subject of regular criticism.

In addition, there is the confusion that we have got into over gradated age changes in the criminal justice and other systems. School is compulsory up to 16 or the first opportunity after a person's 16th birthday. In general terms, people become responsible at 16 for work, taxes and the ability to join the services—although not necessarily to go off to fight for another year—but we delay other things, such as driving, until 17. That is different in Northern Ireland, I believe. The age of majority for voting purposes is 18. The criminal justice system has had 17 as the cut-off age and 14 as the lower age. The Home Office may say that it has really thought this through again, but it would be helpful to know whether the Government have thought coherently about those age divides. If not, we are at risk of choosing ages that to all intents and purposes are arbitrary.

Amendment No. 95 probes whether drug testing should be carried out only on those who are over 17, who are recognised as adults under the criminal justice system, or whether it could be brought down further, and if so whether it ought to be brought down only to 16. My first two questions are therefore what do we say about the international human rights obligations on us or on society in general about treating under-18s differently, and why do we not have consistent age ranges? Thirdly, what do we say about the consent of the adult? Whose consent should it be, and how should we be satisfied that it is appropriate?

My fourth point was made most clearly in a summary in the submissions that were put to us. If testing people for drug addiction is appropriate for adults, it is appropriate only if treatment follows. The presumption should be that there could be appropriate treatment. The Minister will know that the Audit Commission produced a report showing that the provision of treatment is still horribly patchy, not guaranteed, and inadequate. The great weakness of the system is that, although we can pass the orders and are likely to be able to do the testing quickly, easily and probably pretty accurately with the technology described by the hon. Member for Stafford, treatment to follow that up may not be available. If that is the case, we will be invading people's privacy and doing additional things that we have never done in the past, without a consequential benefit at the other end. Ministers must say how the system is likely to be supported by the services available.

What jumped out at me in the joint briefing that I imagine we all received from the Children's Society and DrugScope was that they urged the Government to reconsider the proposals on the basis that they were

''unnecessary, potentially counter-productive and not rooted in evidence.''

The Minister needs to say something about the evidence base that justifies the proposals and whether, even if only very small numbers will be involved, there is sufficient justification. Is that the Government's argument?

If we go down the road of drug testing, what guarantees are there to ensure that we use it only where appropriate, that it generally carries the consent and compliance of the young person as well as the adult, and that it enhances the sense of the criminal justice system existing to be helpful and not invasive, aggressive or imposing? Teenagers are, by their very nature, not particularly co-operative with their parents, guardians, the law or society. They are often likely to be resistant. It often takes them quite a long time to come to terms with the fact that they may need assistance, and they are less likely to be sympathetic to that idea if it comes from the police rather than the health service. We must think carefully about the best way to maximise the benefit where there is acceptance and about intervening at the right age.

Those are big questions and have been put in a fairly specific and clinical way. I hope that the Minister will elaborate on the Government's justification for the proposals and provide reassurances. In particular, I hope that he will deal with the international and national obligations to treat children in a special and careful way and to give them certain rights in the criminal justice system.

In amendment No. 66, I would support the Government's move to lower the age from 18 to 14, but go further and lower it from 18 to 10. That is appropriate for reasons that relate to early intervention, on which a couple of hon. Members have touched. If we are serious about tackling many of the problems in society, we must get involved earlier. At the moment, we are picking up the pieces, rather than getting involved at the first opportunity to prevent problems from developing.

I do not propose random testing. I am talking about individuals who have been arrested and charged with an acquisitive offence, such as mugging, theft, car crime or burglary—individuals who are already with the police. The amendment is not about the random testing of any 10-year-old, which is the extreme way in which it might be painted.

A key reason to consider that age group is to help those individuals and to ensure that, if a young person between the ages of 10 and 13 has started on the road of heavy drug use, we can get to them at that age, rather than leaving it until they are 14 to 18 or after 18. We may be talking about only a small number of individuals, but part of the reason for tabling the amendment is to discover how many that is. Before the pilots that my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford

mentioned, we did not have a good idea about the percentage of offenders in the over-18 age group who are on drugs. Only now can we cite statistics for Nottinghamshire, as my hon. Friend did so expertly in relation to Stafford. We now know that about 60 per cent. of acquisitive crime in the over-18 age group is perpetrated by people on hard drugs; we need to know about the 14 to 18 age group and, I believe, the 10 to 14 age group, too.

There are only vague statistical bases at the moment. Our local paper in Nottingham, in discussions with the youth offending team, undertook a survey of 16 to 18-year-olds and found that 18 per cent. had substance misuse problems, although they were not hard drugs problems. A study in 1996 of 80 young male offenders revealed that 20 per cent. had had heroin or crack cocaine intake. In the county of Nottinghamshire as a whole, for the first six months of last year, 26 young people between the ages of 11 and 15 have accessed drug treatment services. Again, those are relatively small numbers, but those are the people who are coming forward for drug treatment. There were also 128 youngsters in the 16 to 17 age group. Home Office figures have pointed to a downward shift in the age of drug users, which every parent must view with great trepidation.

The hon. Gentleman is making important and interesting comments. Do the figures for youngsters in Nottinghamshire who have accessed drug treatment include only those who have been charged with offences or those who go to drug agencies for treatment voluntarily through school, education, welfare or social services routes as well?

I suspect that it is the latter, but the honest answer is that I do not know, although I will make a point of finding out.

I draw strength from our successful drug abuse resistance education programme in Nottinghamshire—DARE—which had its antecedents in California where Mrs. Reagan started it many years ago. The programme seeks to get young people to say no to drugs, drink and cigarettes, and builds them up in terms of their attitudes towards their peer group. It is not a panacea, but it has the effect of inoculating the young people who can be persuaded that drugs are not a good idea. It is a programme for which I have great respect, and I take seriously the fact that the DARE organisation supports reducing the age cut-off point.

I want to make it clear that I take the work of the Children's Society extremely seriously too. I think that it is mistaken in some of its views on the issue, but its work in my constituency with the Stars project, which helps the children of drug addicts get a decent start in life, is exemplary. I hope that one day a Home Office or Department of Health Minister will come up to see it. However, although the Children's Society says that it thinks that only 1 per cent. of youngsters in the younger age group are using crack cocaine, 1 per cent. is a high figure in real numbers and not to be underestimated. It is those youngsters whom we need to address through amendment No. 98. There is a lack of information, which itself is a good reason to test for drugs.

I want to back up the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford about the nature of the test. I had not realised until he showed us how easy it was to carry out by taking a swab from the hand. The normal method in Nottinghamshire, one of the pilot areas, is to take a swab from the mouth. It is not invasive and does not require urine or other specimens to be taken.

Hon. Members on both sides of the Committee made an extremely important point about resources, and it is imperative that we take that matter seriously. It is a classic case of investing early saving a lot of money; investing relatively few pounds to get to young people, especially those in the 10 to 14 age group, will save immense sums and the time of police, courts and magistrates, enabling young people to fulfil their potential rather than spending their lives as drug addicts stealing money.

Nottinghamshire constabulary told me that, in the over-18 age group, there are about 960 cocaine addicts who require £20,000 annually to feed their habit. To do so, each one needs to commit £86,000-worth of acquisitive crime. In a county the size of Nottinghamshire, it is a multi-million-pound problem even when a relatively small group is involved. Joined-up thinking is very important; it is vital that Health Ministers talk to Home Office Ministers and to social services departments in local authorities. Joined-up resources are important, too, so that each department helps the others.

The three pilots, of which Nottinghamshire is one, have been referred to in the debate. I hope that my hon. Friend will consider including the 10 to 14 age group in one of the pilots. I can tell the hon. Member for Beaconsfield that the Secretary of State has a power to vary the order, which could be used to include that age group in one pilot scheme in order to get a sense of the significance of the problem. That power is important, and should remain in the Bill.

I hope that my hon. Friend considers the existing pilots with an open mind, that he will reduce the age to 14 at least and that he will take the earliest opportunity to introduce a pilot scheme for the 10 to 14 age group. It is not just a matter of crime prevention, but of getting to those very young people early enough for them to break the habit and become productive citizens.

It is a pleasure to follow hon. Members' constructive contributions to the debate. I repeat the request of my hon. Friend the Member for Beaconsfield for more details of the rationale behind the clause.

I support the comments made by the hon. Members for Nottingham, North and for Stafford. The hon. Member for Nottingham, North was right, especially when he said that those who would be subject to the regime are in serious trouble by the time they are likely to be susceptible to the proposal. They will have been charged with an offence and, being the age they are, it is likely that before the circumstances that led to that charge, they will have been given warnings. They are therefore in a serious position.

The hon. Member for Stafford was right to draw the Committee's attention to the need for treatment to follow promptly after a positive test result. At this stage, we can only guess how many youngsters will test positive, but it is important that every one who does so should receive treatment as soon as possible. That point was an important part of the submission to the Committee by the Children's Society, to which I hope that the Minister will be able to respond. I hope that he will respond, too, to hon. Members' points about the availability of treatment for those who test positive, and that he will give us an assurance that they will receive prompt treatment that is also appropriate for children and their special needs.

I hope that the Minister will respond as constructively as he did to the earlier points made by the Children's Society about the nature of the testing. I look forward to the Minister's response. It is an important issue and the Children's Society is right to highlight it.

I strongly support the clause. There is an important point about resources; there is no point in having powers that nothing can be done with. The problem is not the availability of resources but how they are used. It is crucial that people are treated immediately. A major debate is taking place—not particularly openly—about what constitutes treatment for drug abuse and what constitutes success. I have been asking for people's evidence base of what they mean by treatment and what they mean by success. I enjoyed and appreciated the useful and informative contribution of my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford.

However, on one point I disagreed with his information; the question of whether it is a problem for the health service to provide the treatment. The role of the criminal justice system and probation officers is critical. I hope that the Minister will take time to consider the amendments tabled by me and by others who have looked at the probation sector definition of treatment versus the health sector definition. That is fundamental because the treatment service for drugs in this country is probation-led and not health-led.

The easiest way to illustrate that point is through the lack of reference to GPs in later clauses. The hon. Member for North Southwark and Bermondsey raised an interesting point—although I disagree with it—about whether young people would rather be put into ''treatment'' by the health service or by the police. I claim no evidence base other than that from the questions I have asked and the people I have talked to in my area, but I do not think it differs in this context from any other area. My evidence is that the young people about whom we are talking do not have a relationship with the health service. They may be registered with a GP, but one of the reasons why the probation sector has been so dominant in running the treatment services is that the young person comes in via the criminal justice system and treatment is so vaguely defined that it becomes a probation sector responsibility to find an answer.

What the hon. Gentleman says rings bells for me from my visit to the United States. The

point made to me there is that the fact that they do not have a primary health care service—and, therefore, no GPs on whom to rely—has shifted the onus on drug addiction to public health issues. In this country, our GPs are everything and nothing. We rely on them to provide the service but they are not in a position to provide it, either from their resources or from their expertise. That is one of the major problems in this country. It is a public health issue that needs to be addressed.

I accept the hon. Gentleman's evidence, but not his conclusion. We need a much greater role for GPs, away from the more vague drugs treatment, whatever that may be. One of the big successes of the past few months in my area is the regular meeting of GPs to discuss the problem. They are adopting a direct role and taking up their training opportunities, which is one of the most positive developments in the NHS with respect to drugs. The fundamental problem remains. It may be a generalisation, but a reasonable and accurate one, to speak of a probation-led mentality towards drugs treatment.

The issues are different in urban areas from rural areas. In my experience, the sort of place where youngsters go most willingly because they trust those who work there is the Brook advisory centre in my borough; a health centre specifically aimed at young people, who are often nervous about attending institutional surgeries, clinics or hospitals. It makes a difference if an institution is centred on young people. I realise that the same range of choice is not available in rural villages as in urban centres but, wherever possible, such a centre offers the best of all options.

A while ago I spent four years as a counsellor in Railton road on the Brixton front line, so my knowledge is not based solely on my experience in coalfield communities. My experience with young people in my constituency suggests that they are not accessing any of the available health services other than the occasional accident and emergency unit; perhaps having been dragged in by a friend because of the fear of overdose.

I follow the hon. Gentleman's argument, but he may be overlooking practical constraints. First, the shortage of GPs across the country is getting worse and, secondly, the average time spent with patients is about eight minutes per consultation. With all the pressures on GPs in the UK these days, are they in a position to undertake to deal with cases of such complexity in so short a period? I appreciate the hon. Gentleman's sincerity, but is his idea practicable?

Well, my local GPs do. It is not for me to decide, but we do not really have enough time to engage in that debate now. I will not do so and the hon. Gentleman will agree. However, the issue should be debated at some time, as it does impact on some of the provisions.

For the sake of completeness, we are debating juveniles and the agencies that provide help, so would my hon. Friend acknowledge the role of youth offending teams? I mention them because in Stafford they engage a counsellor to help deal with the problem.

I know my own youth offending team very well and I am aware that 95 per cent. of its clients are addicted to heroin. That shows the scale of the heroin problem at the extreme end in areas such as the former coalfield communities. The drug has really taken hold there. The problem is not unique, but different from Nottingham, for example—only 30 miles away—because there is little crack cocaine in my area. The youth offending team plays an excellent role, but it poses the fundamental question; what is treatment? Considerable resources are sloshing around, but throwing more money at the problem will not necessarily improve it. Effective use of available resources is the key, which means immediacy of treatment. That is critical, as several hon. Members have argued in Committee and in the House.

Another issue relates directly to the clause. It may be the by-product and not the direct intention, but it is the most positive issue. The drug treatment and testing orders and the interventions made through the criminal justice system are being aimed at the more experienced, rather than older, offender because of the restrictions in placing a drug treatment and testing order on someone. By definition, they are not for the new, young offender, but for the old hand who has offended repeatedly for some time.

I contend that treatment is most effective at the earliest point, so we must give less consideration to the repeat offenders than to the others, reverse the whole mentality and intervene at the earliest possible stage. Drugs courts would give people the straightforward choice of treatment or prison, but I will return to that subject later as there is not enough time to discuss it now.

Early intervention is critical for 14 to 18-year-olds, but is not being carried out. Over the past five years, the average entry point into heroin use in my constituency has gone down from 20 to 22 years of age to under 16 to 18. I do not know why that has happened, and no one can tell me. There is no substantive explanation, but the average age has gone down by four years. That means that identifying a drug problem at an early stage—an early stage of what will almost certainly be a criminal career—means that the treatment will be far more effective. Early identification is essential in dealing with the problem, and I urge hon. Members to support the amendment fully.

I have little to add, but it is clear from the quality of the contributions since the sitting resumed that hon. Members share profound concern about the issue and about the obvious virtues of early intervention. If that is the purpose of the measure, the earlier the intervention is made, the better. I ask the Minister a different, slightly academic question. What is the status of the sample taken from the young

person? Will it be used as evidence, if necessary, in a criminal case? One can envisage an obvious scenario where an individual denies a charge of possessing or dealing in heroin but his sample shows that he has heroin in his system at the time. In that case, the sample might be directly probative.

Someone may have gone shoplifting and say that it was an accident. Could a sample taken from that person showing that they had heroin in their system have evidential significance? Would we try to use the sample to say that although the person may have no previous convictions and has said that it was an accident, the fact that he has drugs on him suggests that he may have a motive for committing the offence? If the sample has evidential significance, the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford about consent becomes very important in the case of a young person, whose consent is inadequate. They would be consenting under pain of a criminal offence if they refused, which in itself would be self-incriminating evidence.

I raise those issues out of curiosity and the anxiety that if the measure is to be passed in order to introduce the early intervention that we all want, it should be absolutely fireproof and not susceptible to any challenge on the grounds of human rights. All the loopholes should be blocked.

As the Minister is aware, one of my amendments discussed before the break sought to widen the scope of appropriate adults who could be present during the procedures. That may be dealt with in new subsection 10(c), but it raised questions, because these procedures will clearly have to be carried out quickly. It is desirable for the reasons we have already discussed. If it is a family member, the procedures clearly will have to be carried out quickly, which would be helpful from the young person's point of view. I am grateful for the opportunity to mention that point before the Minister responds and before I respond to his remarks.

I concur with my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Redcar about the quality of the debate we have just listened to. In essence it has made the argument for the clause. I will do my best to respond to all the points raised. The hon. Member for Beaconsfield wondered out loud whether the provision was the solution to the nation's ills. I think we all recognise that that is not what it is intended to do, but it is intended to be a sensible step to address this fundamental problem that affects hon. Members in their constituencies and their constituents in different ways, including the most extreme examples given by my hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw. I found the statistics that he gave shocking, but they show the extent of the problem, which the clause is intended to assist us in addressing.

I welcome the support for the proposals from my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford and his overt bid for his constituency to be a pilot area. Both he and the hon. Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey raised the issue of consent. Under existing legislation it is an offence not to give a sample if requested. In the case of a young person, the role of the appropriate adult would be to assist and advice the young person

being detained. In the event that the appropriate adult were to advise the detainee not to consent to provide a sample, the young person clearly would still be the person committing the offence of failing to provide. There are consequences under the clause for not providing a sample. If the young person were deemed not competent—mentally, for example—parental consent would be sought. If parental consent could not be obtained, no test could be carried out.

The hon. Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey asked about the convention and about age. Extending drug treatment to persons aged 14 and over is consistent with existing legislation and we think that the framework is right. The Children and Young Persons Act 1933 as amended by schedule 8 to the Criminal Justice Act 1991 defines a child as a person under the age of 14 and a young person as a person who has attained the age of 14 and is under the age of 18. Those cut-off points provided by the existing system are consistent with the proposed ages for testing provided by this clause.

There is not a great deal about the extent of the problem that can be added to the experience pooled in our debate. But information from youth offending teams suggests that an increasing percentage of the young people they deal with are assessed as having a substance misuse problem. There are no plans to test young people under the age of 18 for substance misuse unless it is part of a drug treatment and testing order. We all recognise—this point was made by my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford—that it is important to be able to identify drug misuse offenders at an early stage in life. We signalled our intention to do this in publishing the White Paper in the summer.

We all need to recognise that young people have different needs, in some cases, from those of adults. That is why we recently published the updated drugs strategy to ensure that universal programmes in education information are made available to give young people and their families the information skills they need to protect themselves. I accept the points that have been made about the need for a follow-up to the information that would be derived from a positive test.

We intend to pilot the provisions of the clause on a limited basis initially, in order to be able to answer some of the questions that have been raised in the debate about whether the provisions will work, what results they will generate and how we can ensure that effective treatment is available.

The most telling argument for not testing below the age of 14 is the result of the lifestyle survey, referred to earlier. The school lifestyle surveys of 11 to 15-year-olds carried out by both the Department of Health and the Youth Justice Board found that cannabis was the most widely used drug, and that class A drug use was very rare. Those results indicate that testing for class A drugs in those under the age of 14 would not be an effective use of resources. That is the argument for the age cut-off proposed in the clause.

However, the probing amendments that we considered suggested that the age limit should be both reduced—in the amendment proposed by my

hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, North—and increased. The clause gives the Secretary of State the ability—by order, through a statutory instrument, using the affirmative resolution procedure—to amend the age limit. That is sensible, because in the light of the experience that we hope to obtain during the operation of the clause and the piloting of its provisions, we will be able to take into account the results of the pilot evaluations and other evidence and then to respond to the conflicting arguments that have been made by members of the Committee.

Is the Minister implying that the Government have an entirely open mind as to whether they might revise the age limit upwards or downwards? Will he clarify whether they will have that flexibility based on the evidence and the pilots?

We think that testing 14-year-olds and above is a sensible place to start. However, in evaluating the findings of the pilots we will need to consider the evidence produced and return to the debate later. We want to undertake testing that is sensible, in order to address the problem that hon. Members have identified.

Some important points have been raised, not least by the hon. Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey, about the legality of testing children from the ages of 10 to 14, as referred to in my amendment. Will the Minister write to me to clarify whether those legal problems would prove insurmountable if the Secretary of State chose to run a pilot involving the 10 to 14 years age group?

I am happy to reflect on the point that my hon. Friend has raised, and I shall respond to him in writing.

The Minister may have seen the same evidence from specialists in drug rehabilitation that I have seen; it demonstrates that the greatest statistical indicator as to whether a 25-year-old will be addicted to heroin in later life is whether they smoke cigarettes and are truant from school when they are 15. Has he given any thought to expanding the sorts of drugs for which testing might be available?

No; that is the honest answer to my hon. Friend's question. The correlation to which he drew attention between cigarette smoking and the use of harder drugs at a later age is an interesting one. I should be interested to see the research to which he referred.

Responding further to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, North, those aged between 10 and 13 who commit one of the range of trigger offences will be referred to a youth offending team, either through the final warning scheme or on a charge. At that point they will be screened by the youth offending team for substance misuse and referred for appropriate intervention. That is the current position. I do not want hon. Members to think that because we propose to set the age limit at 14, the younger age group will not be covered.

I agree with the point made by the hon. Member for Beaconsfield, who asked where this was leading. It will be sensible to run pilot schemes only in places where appropriate intervention support and treatment is available. We intend to provide that, in the form of advice, information and counselling, and clinical interventions including prescribing and detoxification. That, in part, is what the additional resources that we announced recently under the updated drugs strategy are intended to achieve.

I remind members of the Committee that the total resources available for expenditure on the drugs strategy will rise from just over £1 billion—£1,026,000,000—in the current financial year to £1.5 billion in the year beginning April 2005. We recognise that we need to invest more; an increase of 44 per cent. means that we are moving in the right direction.

The Minister said that pilots will be introduced where it can be shown that the treatment services are in place. Who will decide whether they are in place in a particular locality? How will that be determined and defined? One problem is the wide geographical scale of drugs action teams. The evidence base that they are working in a particular area is somewhat shaky. It is easy to skew statistics to produce the desired result. In the past, that has led to treatment services and pilots tending to be in cities because there appears to be more immediacy in respect of access to support services. Who will make the necessary judgment?

My hon. Friend makes an important point. In the end, the Home Office would decide with advice from the National Treatment Agency, working with the drugs action teams. It is in all our interests that the pilot schemes test the efficacy of doing the testing and determine how many positive results there are. Something positive must flow from the pilots because it would not make sense to start the testing process if we could not follow it through.

One problem is that the treatment provided by GPs in my constituency is not regarded as effective by the drugs treatment service, which has a different philosophy. There is a growing demand for treatment by GPs who have been trained to provide what some would say is effective drugs treatment. However, the drugs treatment service, which is answerable via the drugs action team to the National Treatment Agency, does not regard what the doctors are doing as treatment. The service has a different, holistic view of treatment—it is the distinction between a probation-based and a health-based view. That may be biased, but who makes the determination is fundamental to the matter. If the Minister relies purely on the determination by drugs action teams and the National Treatment Agency we will be back to where we are now, when people like me ask what is the treatment and what is the evidence base for deciding what works. I ask him to reflect seriously on that point because it is one of the flaws in the policy of successive Governments on this matter.

My hon. Friend anticipates my next point. In an earlier intervention, he mentioned the importance of ensuring that the different parts of organisations that have a responsibility and an interest in doing something about the problem work together in an effective way. I confess that I did not follow his argument about a probation model and I would be happy to continue the conservation with him on that issue later. He is undoubtedly right that we must ensure that all the organisations that have an interest in doing something about the problem work together effectively, and having identified someone as having a drug problem, provide support and treatment that maximises that person's chances. If a person wants to change how they live their life they must have the opportunity to do so and the necessary support. That, in essence, is what the clause is all about.

The clause as drafted provides for the presence at a drug test of an appropriate adult for those who have not reached the age of 17. That is consistent with other legislation under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act because the provisions applicable under that Act require that any person who seems to be under the age of 17 be treated as a juvenile. The provisions of this clause are consistent with the PACE definitions.

As a consequence, the PACE code of practice C for the detention, treatment and questioning of persons by police officers provides that an appropriate adult be contacted and asked to be present at the police station to see the detained juvenile; thereafter the appropriate adult should continue to be involved in the process. The attendance of an appropriate adult at police stations should be consistent with the requirement that has been placed on the police. That is why raising the age to include 17-year-olds could lead to confusion, because it would be asking the appropriate adult to act for a different age group just for this requirement, and that would be inconsistent with the rest of PACE. It would necessitate the presence of an appropriate adult for those aged between 17 and 18 solely to witness the testing process.

That is not the only thing that will happen to the young person. It is more sensible to have an age cut-off that is consistent with the PACE provisions and to provide for an appropriate adult who will work through all the issues that will affect the young person, including testing. This will avoid confusing the issue. The clause as drafted is consistent with the PACE provisions in defining an appropriate adult.

Finally, I turn to the issue of close family relatives, which was raised by the hon. Member for Beaconsfield. There is a three-stage test under PACE to provide the young person with appropriate protection, but which enables the police to identify an appropriate adult if a parent, guardian or social worker is not available.

A guardian may include a close family relative if the guardian has in effect care and responsibility for the child. A close family relative, however, may not always be the appropriate adult to be called on, depending on how well or otherwise family members get on together. It is my understanding that if the young person says that there is someone whom they wish to call in, the police will accede to their wishes. However, it would

not be sensible to define it in precisely that way; the definition of ''guardian'' could be sensibly interpreted to meet the hon. Gentleman's objective. We see no case for restricting the alternative appropriate adult to a doctor or solicitor.

The Minister has not, with all respect, dealt with the points that I raised about the status of the sample. Can he give me any further information?

It is not intended that the test results will be used as additional evidence in support of offences with which the detainee has been charged or for the purposes of other investigations or as an aggravating factor when sentencing. The testing is a screening tool; it is intended to identify those who have misused specified class A drugs and who may need treatment and to encourage them to get treatment for their drug misuse. It might be helpful if I remind the Committee that the legislation sets out the purpose for which the information obtained through drug testing after charge may be disclosed. It provides for appropriate disclosure under the criminal justice system in order to inform decisions on bail and sentencing, and decisions on the supervision of the person concerned throughout the criminal justice process, and to ensure that appropriate advice and treatment are made available to the person concerned.

The legislation also ensures that the sensitive nature of the information is respected and that the individual's rights are preserved. Those are the provisions that apply to the testing of adults in the pilot areas; they would be replicated when operating the clause.

I am grateful to the Minister for his full response to a very interesting debate. I count myself privileged to have triggered it by some probing amendments, as I have found it very useful. He will not be surprised that I will not be pressing any of the amendments to a Division. It was never my intention to do so. I wanted to provide an opportunity for these issues to be discussed.

Some interesting points are raised here, to which the Minister is very much alive. We are seeking to use the criminal justice system for what might in the past have been regarded as almost welfare purposes. We need to be careful about that as we work our way forward. It produces a number of tensions. Previously, the court and criminal justice systems were there to punish offenders, admittedly to rehabilitate them after punishment. We seem to be moving gently towards something much more flexible and hybrid, which may be to the advantage of the person concerned, but we must also be careful about not infringing their liberties. That said, the Minister's proposals do not move so far in a direction that makes me feel uncomfortable and unwilling to accept them.

The only point to which I would return is whether these proposals could lead to something productive and useful for the young person concerned. Two interesting points emerged from the debate. The first concerned the age of testing. We are talking here about class A drugs. Interestingly, we have shied away from a reference to cannabis during the debate and yet there is a lot of evidence, rather more than anecdotal as the

Minister rather confirmed, that there is an increasing use of cannabis by young people and children over the age of 10.

If children and young people are using cannabis when they are also attending school, their chances of emerging from the schooling process with the skills that they will need in life are extremely limited. The point about the number of young children attending has been made to me on several visits to projects in inner cities. Kids' Company in Camberwell, for example, works with regular cannabis users aged 10, 11 and 12. One area that the Minister may wish to consider in due course is whether we should extend this to class B drugs and lower the age.

Picking up on the interesting point made by the hon. Member for Bassetlaw, I would be only too happy if I thought that the GP system could deliver the form of help to drug users that he envisages. GPs may be able to play a better part than they do at present. One thing that I learned from my trip to the United States was that getting oneself out of an addiction is a serious and difficult business. We sometimes underestimate it. We come up with all sorts of offers of attendance at courses to those who are addicted, whereas it is only by sustained and often difficult intervention that a successful cure is achieved. I sometimes worry that we underestimate the challenge. Residential courses in the US last a long time. They get results proportionate to the amount of effort that they are prepared to put into it as part of their public health policy.

With those thoughts to the Minister, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

I beg to move amendment No. 98, in

clause 10, page 7, line 4, at end add—

'(ca) in subsection (7) at the end there is inserted—

''(e) such information could be disclosed within a police force for policing purposes in support of the prevention and detection of crime.''.'.

The amendment would mean that the police could use the fact of the positive test for heroin or cocaine in both prevention and detection initiatives, focusing on prolific offenders who are shown as a result of the test to be current drug users. The rationale for that clarification is that surveys show that crack cocaine and heroin users sustain their habits with significant amounts of criminality. The law currently is unclear on this question and there are different practices. I understand that the Department is in contact with the Nottinghamshire police on this matter. Rather than detaining the Committee, if the Minister can reassure me that that correspondence is continuing, I would be pleased to withdraw the amendment.

Is the hon. Gentleman moving the amendment, or withdrawing it?

Currently moving it, then withdrawing it.

In anticipation of the amendment's imminent withdrawal, may I assure my hon. Friend that the general framework is as I set out to my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Redcar a moment ago? I can indeed confirm that my officials are in touch with the Nottinghamshire police about the matter, and I will gladly write to my hon. Friend about the outcome.

I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

I beg to move amendment No. 49, in

clause 10, page 7, line 11, after 'area', insert 'as a whole, or for the particular police station,'.

With this we may take Government amendments Nos. 50 and 51.

As I have already explained, we intend to pilot the provisions on a limited basis in the first instance. We therefore propose to allow the Secretary of State to have the option of bringing the drug testing provisions into effect by reference to specific police stations as well as specific police areas. That will facilitate the piloting in a few selected sites, alongside the continuing drug testing of those aged 18 and over, and will provide for effective targeting with a view to future extension in other police areas. To achieve that end, we need to stipulate that notification that appropriate arrangements are in place with reference to specific police stations should be done by the chief officer of police in the requisite police area.

Amendment agreed to.

Amendments made: No. 50, in

clause 10, page 7, line 27, after 'means', insert '(a)'.

No. 51, in

clause 10, page 7, line 29, at end insert 'or

(b) in relation to a police station, the chief officer of police of the police force for the police area in which the police station is situated.'.—[Hilary Benn.]

The Chairman, being of the opinion that the principle of the clause and any matters arising thereon had been adequately discussed in the course of the debate on the amendments proposed thereto, forthwith put the Question, pursuant to Standing Orders Nos. 68 and 89, That the clause, as amended, stand part of the Bill.

Question agreed to.

Clause 10, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.