I want to raise one issue of concern, but I do not necessarily expect the Minister to give a detailed response now. I note that the drugs service, in its interrelationship with the criminal justice service, is increasingly using the term ''dual diagnosis''. Last week, I visited health and criminal justice professionals in the Netherlands and asked how many cases of dual diagnosis they had encountered. The answer was very few. It is suggested in my locality that the incidence of dual diagnosis is very high, because the term could be used to refer to somebody who is deemed to be a drug addict but who also has a mental health problem. A problem with that is that it allows a psychologist, rather than a medical professional, to make an assessment. The issue is more complex when we consider crack cocaine. No evidence has been published anywhere in the world of a specific medical treatment for a so-called addiction to crack cocaine. The only evidence that exists concerns psychotherapy, and there is dispute about whether that works.

My reason for homing in on that detail is that some in this country suggest that dual diagnosis is being used as an excuse for excluding the medical profession from making a diagnosis in relation to drug treatment for an offender—most drug addicts are offenders and are likely to fall within our remit at some stage. There is a danger that the probation service will make decisions on treatment within the drug service and might use its doing so for pre-sentence report as a justification for doing so throughout the system. That is one of the fundamental problems in the drugs service—I have described it previously as a probation-led service.

Will the Minister reflect on whether dual diagnosis could lead to the medical profession's being automatically excluded, when what might be required is a medical prognosis of what is needed in order for the Government's worthy objectives in terms of community service through drugs treatment to achieve any success?