I beg to move Amendment 25, in Clause 15, page 11, line 19, leave out lines 19 to 21.

The amendment and amendment 26 ensure that procedural provisions in respect of regulations made under new section 63CA of PACE 1984 operate as intended.

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:

Government Amendment 26.

Amendment 133, Clause 15, page 11, line 27, at end insert—

“63CB Diversion services for persons testing positive for controlled drugs

Where a person has tested positive for the presence of controlled drugs in a sample taken under section 63B, that person must be directed to an appropriate drug diversion service.”

This amendment would require the police to refer individuals who test positive for a controlled drug to a drug diversion service.

Clause stand part.

Government amendments 27 to 31.

Clauses 16 and 17 stand part.

Government amendments 45 and 46.

Government new clause 13—Testing of persons outside of police detention for presence of controlled drugs.

It is a great pleasure, as always, to serve under your chairmanship this morning, Mrs Latham.

This series of Government amendments and associated clauses expands the police powers to drug test on arrest to include locations outside of custody. That includes introducing a new police power into part 3 of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 to drug test persons on arrest at a location outside of the custody suite when certain conditions have been met. It also amends part 3 of the Drugs Act 2005 to provide the police with a power to require people who test positive to attend an initial assessment—and, when appropriate, a follow-up assessment—in respect of their drug misuse.

The Government are keen to get more people into treatment: something that we have funded with £300 million of extra cash over two or three years, with the aim of creating 54,500 extra drug treatment places. I am sure that we can all agree that the best thing is to get people off drug addiction, to prevent criminal behaviour.

The assessments that I have just referred to will enable those people to be referred into treatment or support services, whose funding has just been increased, as I mentioned. The new power will operate alongside the existing power, as expanded in the Bill, to drug test people on arrest or charge in police detention under section 63B of PACE.

During the evidence sessions it was made very clear, by both experts in the field and the police officers, that currently there is absolutely no possibility of this resource being available. Will the Minister please outline what resources the Home Office will put in place to ensure that the drug testing that he is rightly outlining will be able to take place?

I thank the hon. Lady for raising the point. It is important to have capacity to deliver the testing. As I mentioned a couple of moments ago, we are now in the second year of a three-year funding commitment, as part of the 10-year drug strategy, to fund 54,500 extra drug treatment places across the country, delivered in partnership with local public health bodies. Those places have been created. There are now also liaison and diversion officers, I think, in every—or almost every—custody setting and in many courts as well, to help identify people who have a drug addiction.

Just before Christmas, I visited the custody suite in Northampton, where I met liaison and diversion officers. They speak to people who have been brought into custody and, if there is a substance problem, get them referred as we are describing. I accept that there is a need for resources, but those investments are being made. The implementation is being tracked by a cross-Whitehall taskforce that meets on a regular basis and includes officials from lots of Departments.

I thank the Minister for that and am fully in favour of more drug support services. What I was asking was whether the police have the resources to undertake the drug testing that the Clause outlines. The police said no; this is not about whether somebody then gets referred on—the police, in the evidence session, said no. The Casey review into the Metropolitan police last year found that samples from rape cases were being kept next to packets of sandwiches in a police officer’s fridge. Yesterday, there was the story about the foetus in Rochdale. Also, if—

Order. This should be an Intervention, not a speech.

Okay. There are just not the clinical resources in police stations currently. Will the Minister outline how the testing will be funded?

I have talked about the liaison and diversion officers and the treatment capacity, but on police resources, which the hon. Lady was asking about, we have just completed a substantial police recruitment programme. We now have 20,951 more officers than we had four years ago and 3,500 more than we have ever had before. The training takes two to three years; as officers complete their training, more and more will be available for frontline deployment. In addition, we are also—

It is not officers—it’s forensics.

Well, the actual tests often get administered by police officers, and the hon. Lady asked about police officer capacity.

We are also removing some of the administrative burdens on policing by reforming the Home Office counting rules—that has already saved half a million hours of police time per year. Furthermore, the NHS are in the process of picking back up mental health cases where there is no criminality or threat to public safety. That is right; people in a mental health crisis need medical treatment, not the police. Once that is fully implemented, and we are in the middle of doing it now, it will free up more than a million hours of police time. In addition to record police numbers, we are removing some of the burdens keeping them from frontline activity, including what we are discussing.

I am satisfied that both police resources and medical treatment resources are available. If anything, the challenge is actually that we are not using all the treatment places available. Some of the proposals in this legislation will help the police refer more people for that initial assessment, which we hope and expect will lead to treatment in the extra places that we funded.

I do not want to stray too far from the Clause, Mrs Latham. Following the community safety partnerships review and antisocial behaviour powers consultation, we are, as I mentioned, expanding drug testing on arrest to locations outside of custody so that the tests can be done quickly and easily and take up less time, to answer the point made by the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley. That expansion, in addition to the expansion of drug testing to class B and class C drugs, as the Bill already provides, will ensure that police have all the necessary powers to identify people with a drug problem and get them into treatment.

The Government amendments confer a power on the police to drug test when a person aged 18 or over has been arrested for an offence and the officer has requested that the person give a sample. The power is discretionary, to be used when the officer feels that it is an appropriate course of action. It is also worth being clear that when drug testing takes place outside of police detention—that is, not in a police station—only a non-intimate sample, such as a swab or saliva, may be taken, for obvious reasons.

As with the current powers to drug test in police detention, testing may take place only when a person has been arrested for a relevant trigger offence, or another offence where an officer of at least the rank of inspector has reasonable grounds to suspect that the misuse of a specified controlled drug has caused or contributed to the offence and expressly authorises the test. A refusal to provide a sample without good reason will be a criminal offence, as is currently the case with the existing regime for drug testing on arrest.

In many domestic abuse cases—the fatal ones, sadly—the fact that the perpetrator was on drugs is used as a mitigating factor to get, for example, a manslaughter charge rather than a murder charge; I could cite many cases, but I will not stretch the Chair’s patience. Will drug testing be done in cases of domestic abuse, and has the Minister thought about how that might help the perpetrator?

As I just set out, drug testing might be done, particularly if the inspector thinks that drug abuse might have contributed to the offending. If someone is on drugs that are causing them to commit domestic abuse, I am sure we would all want that identified so that action can be taken.

On the hon. Lady’s point about homicide versus manslaughter, that is not in the scope of this Bill—we are not making any changes in that area. I do, however, share her concern about the cases of people who murder their partners. We should not be somehow excusing their behaviour or seeking to diminish their culpability by saying, “Oh, they’re on drugs,” and getting the charge dropped from homicide to manslaughter. Although that is not the topic of this Bill—the Bill makes no changes as far as that is concerned—I share the hon. Lady’s concern. I hope that the legal community have heard the point that she has just made, with which I have enormous sympathy. I think it sounds reasonable.

The safeguards for the new power include that it can be used only by approved constables; that the statutory PACE codes of practice must include provision about how the new drug testing power is to be exercised; and that the sample may be taken only for the purpose of a drug test. That is to ensure that the power is used proportionately and only by those with appropriate experience.

The individual being tested must also be given a notice setting out why, when and where they were tested, and the result of the test. Following a positive test, a person can be required to attend an assessment with a drug-support worker, as is the case with the current drug testing regime. Non-attendance without good reason will itself be an offence. We will probably debate Opposition Amendment 133 later; that tries to go further on this issue.

The trigger offences and specified controlled drugs will be set out in secondary legislation. The Secretary of State will, in line with the regime for drug testing in police detention, have the power to specify in regulations those trigger offences within the scope of drug testing in locations outside of custody, and the controlled drugs to be tested for. Such regulations will be subject to the affirmative and negative procedures respectively. That will ensure appropriate parliamentary scrutiny and allow for the regime to be varied if circumstances require.

The amendments also make various—I hesitate to use this term after the comments from the Shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Nottingham North, last time—technical and consequential amendments; I think we should excise the word “technical” from our discussions in future to avoid triggering the shadow Minister. The amendments make various important and consequential changes to ensure that the drug testing regime outside of custody has the same legal effects as drug testing in police detention.

In talking through the amendments, I have explained the intent behind clauses 15 to 17. I will rest my remarks there and reply later to any further points raised in the debate.

As we have heard, clauses 15 to 17 expand police powers to test for drugs in suspects who have been arrested and are in police detention. Drug testing on arrest was originally introduced as a police power under the Criminal Justice and Court Services Act 2000, which inserted sections 63B and 63C into the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984. That legislation gave the police the power to drug test those arrested if aged 18 and over, or charged if aged 14 and over, for the presence of specified class A drugs if arrested or charged either for a trigger offence or where a police officer of at least the rank of inspector has reasonable grounds to suspect that specified class A drug use has caused or contributed to the offence and authorises the test. Trigger offences include theft, handling stolen goods, going equipped for stealing and possession of a controlled drug if committed in respect of a specified class A drug. We know that such offences have a significant link to substance misuse. Clause 15 expands police powers to test not just specified class A drugs but any specified controlled drug.

We were very keen on such measures 23 years ago in relation to class A drugs, and we support their expansion to include any specified controlled drug; my anxiety stems from the fact that, as my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley mentioned, we heard in the evidence session and we know from engagement with our local police forces that there is not likely to be the capacity to do this effectively.

The Minister said that there are record police numbers, but he knows that there are 10,000 fewer police in neighbourhood settings. His pushback to that in previous debates has been to classify response police as neighbourhood police, but they would certainly not be able to do this type of activity. The burden of proof is on the Minister and the Department to show where the capacity will come from. We have real doubts, although we hope the measure will work.

Does my hon. Friend agree that the measure seems to be in contradiction to the position that many police forces are in? Because they lack resource capacity, they are withdrawing from dealing with issues relating to mental health and are saying, “We don’t have the capacity to do it.” Does my hon. Friend agree that this measure will put more pressure on police forces at a time when they are having to withdraw from some operational interventions?

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. Routinely or in extremis, demand pressures can push officers to do just the basics—keeping people safe and putting people in detention—rather than dealing with the broader issues, as we want them to. That problem creates further issues, and that is a challenge for us all.

On that point, it is important to clarify the reason we are introducing the national partnership agreement, which applies Right Care, Right Person across the whole of England and, we hope, Wales too. Following a successful pilot in Humberside, it was found that in many of the mental health cases that the police were dealing with there was no criminality and no threat to public safety, so a police response was not right for the person suffering the mental health crisis. Not only was that taking up lots of police time that should have been spent doing other things, such as dealing with drug offences, but the person suffering a health episode was not being properly treated. It was found in Humberside that it is better for everyone, including the patient, to get a medical response in those circumstances. That is the motivation for the national partnership agreement, which the hon. Gentleman just referred to.

The evidence from Humberside was strong and gave us encouragement to expand the scheme nationally; the challenge will be whether we see the same level of thought in its implementation across the country as we saw in Humberside. As my hon. Friend the Member for Bootle said, the risk is that forces will apply the scheme by simply not responding or turning their phone off, and displacing the activity. Humberside is a really good example of something done thoughtfully and well, but we should not assume that we will see that nationwide.

On the point that the Minister made in his Intervention, does my hon. Friend agree that the issue is circuitous? The reason why the police were involved in mental health interventions in the past, although they are pulling away from them, was that there were such strains and stresses on the health service and local government that they had to fill the gap. Does my hon. Friend agree that this is getting to the farcical stage, with gaps in resources left, right and centre?

Sadly, it has been a defining feature of the past nearly 14 years that we have been left dealing with significant issues such as substance misuse at the latest and most expensive stage, and that is particularly pertinent in policing. We deal with mental health issues, to the degree that we do deal with them—certainly for children and adolescents, that is definitely not the case universally—at the point of crisis. We do not have earlier interventions.

My Amendment 133 seeks to add a little bit of that back in. It is a point of agreement across parties that, if individuals are in custody for crimes that they are alleged to have committed and they test positive for substances in their system, then that support is necessary—it is critical—to stop their drug use and hopefully change their life. My amendment refers to that, and I will get to that in a second. Currently, under the Drugs Act 2005, an individual who tests positive for a class A drug may be required to attend an individual assessment relating to their drug use and possibly a follow-up assessment. I think that we can go a little further than that, as my amendment does.

As my hon. Friends have said, there is a significant hole in the Government’s plan. Very little of the Health and Social Care Act 2012 remains; it was terrible legislation and the Government had to chuck it in the bin less than a decade after it was enacted. However, it transferred responsibility for drug treatment services—the ones that we are talking about in this context—to local authorities, and that is one thing that remains. I was once the health leader on my council—I know that there is a former council leader, as well as other councillors, among my colleagues—and I have a lot of time for local leadership of vital local services, but this has to be seen in the context of the subsequent destruction of local government finances, as a result of which the services that these clauses rely on have been under huge pressure.

The Minister talked about £300 million over three years. The reality is that, through the public health grant in 2013, we spent £828 million on addiction services, but last year we spent £608 million. Set against population changes and the growth in demand, that is a huge change. The Minister is in danger of borrowing a tenner from me, giving me a fiver back and then asking for a letter of thanks, which will not be forthcoming. That is the reality. As my colleagues have said, we are creating demand for policing services by failing to make earlier interventions, and we are costing ourselves more money. The Government are at risk of knowing the cost of everything but the value of nothing.

The cost in human terms is devastating. Again, this relates directly to what these clauses are supposed to do. We want drugs testing in custodial settings in order to reduce reoffending or help people not to offend at all, but we also do not want people to die; we do not want the logical furthest consequences of their drug use to be realised. However, drug deaths have doubled since 2021. That is twice as many people, and those are the very people that the Clause relates to. Many of those people will have entered custody because of theft or violence, and we would have known them to be drug-addicted. The lack of those services remains a huge problem.

Our amendment 133 would amend the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 by inserting a new section 63CB, which would state:

“Where a person has tested positive for the presence of controlled drugs in a sample taken under section 63B, that person must be directed to an appropriate drug diversion service.”

It is vital that the right interventions and support are in place to help people out of the terrible cycles of addiction and criminality that drug addiction can cause.

It is important that people get support, not just to deal with their addiction, but to deal with what might sit underneath it, whether that relates to trauma or to other things that have happened in their life. Amendment 133 would make sure that that is the case for all individuals who test positive for substances under the expanded powers that the Government are seeking in relation to specified controlled drugs. The amendment would go further than the Drugs Act 2005 by making it an obligation to refer.

I am conscious that, at some point, all of us, through our Constituency work, will deal with individuals— or with their families or neighbours—who, through their substance misuse, are exceptionally challenging. I understand that there are situations where that is really difficult, but I also think a lot about our experience during the pandemic, which was one of the most testing times for this country, certainly in my lifetime, and specifically about the work that we were able to do with people who were homeless and had substance abuse issues. Under the right conditions, those people made incredible progress, even though we were at one of our most difficult moments nationally.

Thoughtful interventions can work, and I believe that we have an obligation at least to try them. Getting even a single individual in a town to enter those services successfully can have a huge impact on theft and antisocial behaviour, because those individuals are often the most prolific offenders. That is the rationale for the amendment and I am interested in hearing the Minister’s views on it.

Turning to the Government amendments, I promise I will not labour any semantic arguments over technical or consequential language, but they are significant, and I hope that the Minister will at least accept that. I want particularly to look at Government amendments 25 and 26 and new clause 13.

The amendments delete subsection (4) of proposed new section 63CA of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 and insert a new subsection (5A)—I do not blame those at home if they are not following. According to the explanatory notes, subsection (4) originally existed to provide for regulations made by the Secretary of State to make clause 15 operative, via the negative procedure in the case of controlled drugs, and via the affirmative procedure in the case of varying trigger offences. The new explanatory note says the effect of the amendments is to ensure that new regulations “operate as intended”. Whether that is technical or substantial, it is tautological. Of course the impact is to make them operate as intended, but there is a lack of clarity, and I hope the Minister will provide an explanation. Previously, for controlled drugs, a variation to the list was to be done via the negative procedure, and variations to trigger offences were to be done via the affirmative procedure. Which way will those variations be done now, and what is the motivation for the change?

Clause 16 expands the scope from class A drugs to controlled drugs. We are happy with that approach, but it is significantly added to by Government amendments 27, 28 and 29, and particularly Government new clause 13, which introduces an entirely new concept. That is in no way technical, consequential or necessary to make small changes; it is a huge and significant change to the purpose of this part of the Bill.

Clause 15 explicitly mentions testing in police detention in its title. The introduction of a new concept of testing outside police detention late in the day deserves our scrutiny and perhaps some more explanation from the Minister. Under proposed new section 32A(1) of PACE, a constable will be allowed to take

“a single non-intimate sample from a person” provided that three rather basic conditions are met in relation to the nature of the arrest, the age of the person and some disclaimers relating to the nature of the request being made. The bars are very low and arguably would be cleared in virtually every type of arrest for someone over the age of 18 and definitely in every type of arrest for a public order or nuisance type offence.

I would have valued the opportunity to press witnesses on capacity and on what problem we are seeking to solve with the amendments, but I am afraid that the Minister must provide that clarity instead. Who has asked for the power? What problem is it in the service of solving? I do not think I am taking things to an extreme by saying that, as it stands, we could have constables being asked to take urine samples from individuals at football matches. That would clear the tests very easily. It could also happen in nightclubs; again, the desirability of that is questionable, but it would definitely clear the three tests. It could also happen in colleges or at universities, with 18-year-olds in those settings and arrests being made as a result of nuisance or disturbance.

That would happen in those rather public places, outside custodial settings—goodness knows where in the buildings; in the toilets, perhaps—and presumably it would be supervised so the nature of the urine sample could be trusted. What is so time-sensitive that it cannot wait for a return to a custody setting? I cannot help but feel that there is a risk of really broadly arranging the amount of urine being taken from the public and, frankly, I am not sure about the degree of public interest in that.

Again, this is particularly challenging, because not only has the new clause been added rather late in the process—we could not scrutinise the Home Secretary on Second Reading and we were unable to interrogate witnesses during oral evidence—but it relies on regulations. We have to jump into the dark and assume that a sensible regime will be established by the Home Secretary and then dealt with via an unamendable motion in a Committee Room. I do not think that is a particularly robust regime.

Finally, on clause 17, it seems wise to align current practice with the law. It is slightly concerning that the law has essentially been set aside by Home Office guidance, but, given that that seems to have been the case for a decade, we probably just are where we are, and tidying that up in law is probably wise.

In conclusion, we support the principle, which was introduced by the previous Labour Government, that it is important to establish the drug use of people who commit certain trigger offences, or may have committed offences as a result of their drug use in the eyes of the inspector. Expanding that beyond class A makes abundant sense, but quality treatment must follow as the default. If the Minister does not want to accept the language in my amendment 133, I hope to hear that he believes that that ought to be the default, unless there is a really good example, such as someone who is already in a treatment service. There are huge issues relating to capacity. I know the Government need to have a line on what they are doing on capacity, but I hope that is not their private view, because I do not think it matches up with reality, certainly in our communities. Again, the burden will be on the Government to demonstrate that.

Finally, new clause 13 is a really significant change. I have yet to hear from the Government what the real case for it is or what problem we are seeking to solve. That gives us pause. I will probably not press my amendment to a Division, but we may yet have to vote on new clause 13.

I am not offended by the fundamentals of the Clause—the idea that everybody is drug-tested. I can foresee possible abuses of the discretion that the Minister described, and I will not be surprised in a couple of years’ time if that discretion is used with black people more than it is with white people, for example, but time will tell. Let us have the triumph of hope over experience that this occasion will not be like every other one that came before.

But as somebody who deals with police forces and forensics and testing, I really do have to challenge the idea that the capacity currently exists to take even just a swab from someone. I do not understand this. What is the timeframe? How long will it take to get the results? I am currently working on a case that I started in May last year, and where are we now? Seven months in I am still waiting for lab results from my local police force. It is not some backwater, but the second largest force in the country.

In reality, I do not believe that this will happen for every person who comes into a custody suite. Let us say it takes a week for the results to come back. The Minister should feel free to intervene to say that the system will work like in an airport, where a bag can be tested to see if it has cocaine in it—not that I have any personal experience! He should feel free to say that every police force will get new machines to enable a result within the time that somebody is kept in custody, and that an Intervention will be put in place sensitively. I would be delighted to hear that the world is completely not as I recognise it from being in custody suites just over this past year—not over many years, but just this year. This situation just does not stack up in reality.

The lag in getting a result could be a week—again, let us go for the triumph of hope over experience—but we are much more likely to be talking months. Will that slow down charging? I want to understand exactly how this is going to work in an already overstretched system. In the case from May that I talked about, a victim of multiple rapes, forced marriage and 10 years of abuse has waited seven months for anything. We just get, “Sorry, we’re waiting on forensics.”

The hon. Lady’s points are well made and important, but, at the end of the day, does she fundamentally agree with the principle behind the measures? Is it just the process that she is worried about?

I believe in so many principles that I know in reality cannot be realised. I believe in the principle that when someone is in crisis with suicide, there should be a telephone line that I can call that means that they get what we used to call—because it used to exist—a safe and well check. I have done that many times myself. I believe in principle that that should happen. If a Minister were to stand in front of me and tell me that that was the policy, it would be like them telling me that the sky is green. It may very well be the policy, but the reality is completely different. In the evidence sessions, all the experts in the field backed me up.

I want to know how this will actually work. I absolutely want it to work, but, to the hon. Gentleman’s point, I am very concerned about some of the safeguards. One of the things that people who work in the criminal justice system notice is the trends in how wrong ’uns, essentially, start to get away with things—there is always some new defence coming down the line. In the days when we did not believe victims of domestic abuse and they could just be ignored—see yesterday’s report on Rochdale—people did not need a response. The current favourite of a domestic abuse perpetrator on a summary or more serious offence is a counterclaim against the victim—“Well, she’s abusing me”—and my God, does it work! The amount of women who are victims of domestic abuse currently being accused by police forces across the country of being perpetrators, not victims, of domestic abuse is plentiful.

We also know that if we look at our female prison population, or at the roll of women in any substance misuse service, we would go a long way before we found one who had not been a victim of domestic abuse or sexual violence—in childhood and adulthood—and exploitation. There is a reason why women end up substance-dependent. Incidentally, there is a reason why men do too, but the main reason why women end up substance-dependent is abuses they have suffered. It is very likely that a counterclaim that brings a woman into a custody suite will find that she smoked a few spliffs the day before. That will go against her not just in the criminal court, where she is much more likely to be convicted of those crimes than her partner, if we look at all the data on female convictions, but in the family court, where she will lose her children as a result of that evidence.

If a woman is distressed because she has just been attacked or has lived with fear and she is behaving erratically—who wouldn’t?—and somebody says, “I think she might be on drugs,” it will be used against her. On the defences I talked about, if a person commits domestic abuse and is on drugs, that will be considered a mitigating factor. I have seen it lots of times; in the most serious cases, it is the difference between manslaughter and murder. Let us flip it around: if a person murders or harms someone who is themselves on drugs, it is seen as an aggravation on their part, and they get manslaughter again. If a person kills a woman who is behaving erratically because she is on drugs, jackpot—manslaughter! If a woman takes drugs and is killed, it is a reason to give a man manslaughter. If a man takes drugs and kills someone, it is a reason to give him manslaughter. Frankly, the cards are stacked against us.

I agree with the principle of the Clause, but what happens if there is a counterclaim and the woman is drug-tested and found to be on drugs and the man is not, or the other way round? Either way, there is a possibility—well, it is not a possibility, because every other law we have tried to change has been used by perpetrators; they are better than us in this regard and know their way around the system, as do their lawyers—that he will get a lighter sentence.

I wish the police were trained well enough, but only 50% are trained on coercive control, for example. We have to make sure that there is guidance so that, in cases of domestic abuse, where the woman has a potential counterclaim, these things are not taken into account; otherwise, they will be used to take her children off her—they will be used against her. I can already see it in my future. I ask that that is given some really serious thought, because I am a bit frightened about how this is going to play out.

As somebody with decades-long experience of living side by side with a heroin, crack and cocaine addict, who I am pleased to say is well now and has dedicated his life to the service of other people in that situation, I have to say that the idea that a person “has to” go to one session—it is about the compulsion—means that they are just going to go and tick a box. My mum sent my brother halfway round the world to have different interventions. They did not work. Thousands of pounds were spent trying to get somebody off drugs.

I hear what the Minister says about more money being put into this, and my brother was and continues to be part of Dame Carol Black’s review. However, there is this idea that just one interview will do the job. In reality, it is a tick-box exercise, and it will not work unless people’s initial trauma is dealt with. You would have to go a long way to see somebody with problematic substance misuse who has not suffered some form of trauma. Loads of people take drugs recreationally, and it does not harm them; they are not allergic to it and do not become problematic addicts. The reason why that happens to some people and they go on to commit crimes is that something else is wrong. One meeting will not a problem solve. If one meeting had been what it took, my mother would have died in a happier position than she did.

This proposal is not a panacea, unless we work with things such as the 12-step programme—I declare that I am on the all-party parliamentary group for 12 step recovery. The programme is completely free, so commissioners do not understand it; they do not know how to behave when no one is asking them for any money. I cannot stress enough that if this proposal is just to make a nice headline—“We are going to drug-test everybody”—rather than something that will work in reality, it is a massive waste of police time; it is pointless. I will leave my comments there.

I will try to respond to some of the points made on this group of amendments and clauses. On mental health, as the national partnership agreement is rolled out, we are asking the NHS to do more to treat people when it is just a medical condition, and that is what the NHS should do, because a medical crisis requires a medical response.

To respond to the point about resources, the NHS is this year receiving an extra £3.3 billion above and beyond what was planned. A lot of extra money is going into mental health specifically, and things such as mental health ambulances and mental health places of safety are being invested in to create the capacity required for the NHS and the ambulance service to take on people who have, in the last few years, wrongly been picked up by the police.

On making sure that the roll-out is done as thoughtfully elsewhere in the country as it has been in Humberside, we are not taking a “big bang” approach; we have not just flicked a switch and said that it is going to happen nationally from tomorrow. Implementation is happening on a force-by-force basis. In each area, the police are working with the local hospital trust, the mental health trust and the ambulance trust to make sure that the capacity is in place before things get switched over.

The roll-out has already happened in some areas. In London, I think it went live on 1 October or 1 November, but it may not be implemented until the end of this year in other areas, because they are going through the process of making sure that the NHS side of the equation has the capacity and is ready. Things are being done in a thoughtful and measured way around the country to replicate the success in Humberside, to which the Shadow Minister referred.

I will try to address one or two of the other questions.

I did not intend to intervene in this debate, but will the Minister address one issue before he moves on? In my area, the mental health trust is under considerable stress, and there have been various patient deaths and things like that. The mental health services tell me that they are struggling to get professionals to join them so that they can provide what is needed. How can the Minister be confident in what he is saying if we do not have professionals joining the service and are more likely to see them leaving?

We are getting a little way off topic. Briefly, since the Shadow Minister has raised the question, the roll-out is happening in a thoughtful way, rather than immediately, to make sure that such issues are addressed. As I said a moment ago, extra money is being put in. The NHS workforce plan, which is now in place, is designed to make sure that the people needed are there to meet the challenges, not just in mental health, but across the whole NHS spectrum.

Fundamentally, we all want to see people who have a mental health condition treated medically. Where there is no criminality and no threat to public safety, it is completely inappropriate to get a police response, which has been happening in recent years. Those people need to be treated, not put in a police custody cell, for example. That is the right thing to do, not just for the police, whose capacity is freed up to protect us and our constituents and to catch criminals, but for patients, who need and deserve a medical response. We are now working to ensure that that happens across the country, building on the successful trailblazer in Humberside, which shows that this can work.

On the question from the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Nottingham North, about using the negative versus the affirmative procedure in Government amendments 25 and 26, no substantive change is being made. Essentially, changing the list of specified controlled drugs is subject to the negative procedure, the trigger offences are subject to the affirmative procedure and, if the changes are some mix of the two, that is subject to the affirmative procedure. That does not substantively change the current position.

Let me turn to the questions that arose on drug testing outside of a custodial setting. To be clear, we are conferring a discretionary power on the police. We are not compelling them to test; we are leaving it up to the police officer. There may be occasions when, for operational reasons and to test more people, they find it more operationally appropriate to test on the spot outside of a custodial setting. It may be that they do not plan to take the person back to a custodial setting. That will save police time. This is a discretionary power, not an obligation; the police can use it where they judge it to be helpful.

The shadow Minister also asked about time. These tests are not sent away to the laboratory. I accept that we need laboratory tests to be a lot faster, as the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley highlighted in her remarks. However, these are on-the-spot tests, similar to those that might be seen in an airport—by the way, I think those are testing for explosives.

I didn’t have those either.

I am relieved, but not surprised, to hear that. The result of these on-the-spot tests takes between 13 and 35 minutes to come back, so it is pretty quick.

I said these were so-called non-intrusive tests, and the Shadow Minister asked, “What about urine samples?” To be clear, non-intrusive tests are defined in section 65 of the PACE code. That does not include urine samples but does include hair—excluding pubic hair—saliva and a swab taken from a non-intimate place, such as under the armpit. We are talking about pretty non-intrusive stuff.

On the concerns about how this information might be used, it is important to say, given the point made by the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley, that these drug tests are done on the spot, as I have just described, so they do not meet the threshold required for use as evidence in criminal prosecutions. They are used when making decisions about a referral into treatment, about granting bail or about a diversionary caution. However, because they are done on the spot, not in a laboratory, they do not meet the evidentiary threshold to be used for prosecutions.

Amendment 133 would introduce a duty on the police to refer individuals who test positive to a drug diversion service. We agree with the principle that it is important that referrals are made where someone would benefit. The hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley said that an assessment alone does not solve the problem, and she is obviously right to say that. However, the assessment is supposed to be a starting point; it is a necessary first step. It is not sufficient or the end of the process, and it is not in itself going to cure someone, if I can use that phrase, but it is a starting point and a necessary first step. It is difficult to mandate anything further until the assessment has happened, because we do not know what the individual’s needs might be. In legislation it is quite hard to mandate, or to give the police a power to mandate, anything beyond the assessment.

In terms of why we have constructed the Clause in the way we have, there are clearly circumstances where even the initial assessment is not appropriate—a person might, for example, already be in treatment. Therefore, we have constructed the clause so that there is a power for the police rather than an obligation. Legislating to compel the police to do something in all circumstances is quite difficult. We in this Committee cannot foresee all the circumstances police officers may encounter operationally.

However, I absolutely agree with the shadow Minister’s policy intent, and we would expect these powers to be used widely. I would like more people to be referred into assessment and then into treatment than is currently happening. As I mentioned, the Government have invested in a lot of extra treatment capacity, spending hundreds of millions of pounds extra over a three-year period and creating 55,000 extra places.

I assure the shadow Minister that I am continually pressing the police to do more in this area—to test more, refer more and encourage more pre-sentence reports to be compiled where someone going before the court has a suspected drug addiction, so that the magistrate or judge can hand down a treatment order when passing sentence. Not enough drug or alcohol treatment requirement orders and mental health treatment requirement orders are being made. I have expressly engaged with the National Police Chiefs’ Council lead on this area, Chief Constable Richard Lewis of Dyfed-Powys, to make exactly those points. He has an operational plan to make sure that drug testing on arrest, referral to treatment, engagement with liaison diversion and more pre-sentence reports are all implemented operationally.

In summary, I agree with the shadow Minister’s intent, but the way we have set out the legislation is probably as far as we can go in statute. On that basis, I ask the Committee to support the Government amendments and clauses 15 to 17 stand part.

Amendment 25 agreed to.

Amendment made: 26, in clause 15, page 11, line 25, at end insert—

“(5A) Any other statutory instrument containing regulations under this section is subject to annulment in pursuance of a resolution of either House of Parliament

See the statement for amendment 25.

Clause 15, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.