ConservativeHome's ToryDiary

Cameron condemns Ed Balls' "crazy" attack on faith schools

Just interviewed by Adam Boulton for his Sunday Live programme, Tory leader David Cameron attacked Ed Balls' confrontation with faith schools as "crazy".  Some of the best schools in the country were faith schools, he said, and under the Conservatives they could expand if parents wished.

Mr Cameron also told Sky viewers that he supported tighter classification of cannabis.  He admitted that he was wrong to support the relaxation of classification when he was a member of the Home Affairs Select Committee.  The potency of cannabis as used today and its mental health side-effects had, he said, persuaded him to support a tougher approach.

Mr Cameron said he did not agree with Boris Johnson on an amnesty for illegal immigrants.  The danger, he said, was that one anmesty only encouraged more immigration and further amnesties.

He declined to pick a candidate for the US Presidential race but heaped praise on John McCain as an inspiring man who was on the right side of the free trade debate.

The Conservative leader said that he was encouraged by the latest opinion poll putting the Conservatives 11% ahead of Labour but that there was "not an ounce of complacency" within the Tory team about the outcome of the next General Election.  Voters were weary of a great new dawn after jumping into Blair's arms in 1997.  The Conservatives need to show that they had the right response to Britain's two great challenges: economic uncertainty and social breakdown.

PS Why on earth did Sky bother to ask the public for questions to put to Mr Cameron?  55 questions were left on the Boulton & Co blog but only one of those questions was asked by our reckoning.

Prospect of former spy as Chairman of Scottish Tories ends good week for Annabel Goldie

The Daily Telegraph is reporting that David Cameron and Annabel Goldie are considering a former top MI6 man, Andrew Fulton, as the new Chairman of the Scottish Conservatives.  This is what the article tells us about him:

1. Last posting was head of station in Washington.  He also served in East Berlin, Rome and Saigon.
2. He is now a visiting law professor at Glasgow University.
3. He is an advisor to Armor, a private security intelligence firm, that also employs Sir Malcolm Rifkind.
4. "More George Smiley than James Bond" according to The Telegraph.

The news come at the end of a notable week for Scotland's Conservatives.  Earlier this week the Scottish Tories won £114m of concessions from the SNP in return for supporting their budget.  Cameron Watt of the Centre for Social Justice was particiularly pleased that one consequence of this budget deal will be a re-balancing of drug treatment towards abstinence based programmes aimed at recovery rather than maintenance.

Iain Duncan Smith's report on the social problems of Glasgow also won widespread attention and produced considerable soul-searching within a Scottish welfare establishment that has persisted with welfare policies that have failed to reduce dependency

The Economist pays tribute to the Scottish Tories in this week's edition:

"The Tories' reappearance on stage after ten years in the wilderness is a sign of big shifts in Scottish politics. The once-dominant Labour Party is out of power. Its leader in the Scottish Parliament, Wendy Alexander, is mired in two investigations into party donations and unable to oppose the SNP effectively... Of the three main opposition parties, the Tories played the cleverest game. “I argued two years ago, to much derision, that we could achieve far more of our policies with a minority than a coalition government without compromising our principles,” says Annabel Goldie, the Scottish Tory leader.  Indeed, she reckons she has forced the SNP's hand on a number of important issues—money for another 500 policemen, restoring the original SNP pledge, cuts in local taxes for 150,000 small businesses to be made by 2009 rather than 2010 and a new strategy to combat drug addiction by concentrating on abstinence and recovery rather than on replacement therapies such as methadone."

Ambushed for YouTube

Radio 4's World This Weekend briefly mentioned this video.  Mitt Romney is left looking evasive and perhaps even rude after being asked if he'll arrest a wheelchair-bound man for using 'medical marijuana'.  Although the issue may be real it was clearly a set-up.  At the end of the interview the man videoing the encounter pursues the wheelchair guy's line of questioning.  We can only hope David Cameron is prepared for similar ambushes.  We guess someone, somewhere is planning something for Mr Brown.  This is the era we now live in.

Grassroots welcome IDS' recommendations with one notable exception...

Over the last four days 1,417 Tory members have given their opinions on twelve of the main recommendations of IDS' social justice report.  Ten of the twelve recommendations secured clear and supportive majorities.  The most popular recommendation - with 95% support - was action to eliminate unfairness to two-parent families within the benefits system.  The controversial proposal of higher taxation of alcohol was rejected by 59% of those surveyed.  The only other recommendation to fall short of a majority was the proposal to give the option of frontloading child benefit.  Although 49% agreed with the proposal, 30% disagreed.

ConservativeHome intends to poll members on the main recommendations of all of the policy groups.

Later today we will publish members' views on extending the married couples' tax allowance to gay couples.

IDS proposes 'treatment tax' on alcohol and reclassification of cannabis

Yesterday it was tackling education failure.  Friday was about tackling debt.  Today the focus of the social justice policy group turns to drug and alcohol addiction and the Sunday newspapers are full of the group's recommendations.

Grabbing most headlines is the Addictions Working Group's recommendation that extra taxes should be levied on beers, wines and spirits in order to pay for new treatments for people with addiction problems and to help fund the policing costs of binge drinking.  The Mail on Sunday suggests that the tax would amount to £1.4bn - equivalent to 7p on a pint.  Such a tax would fit in with Project Cameron's general inclination to shift the burden of taxation on to things that are bad - like pollution - and away from things that are good - like the family and enterprise.  The report says that a tax increase would only restore the real price of alcohol to the levels of the 1990s.  Gordon Brown kept down taxes on alcohol while he was Chancellor because of the alleged impact on the UK drinks industry of booze cruises and other alcohol 'smuggling' from lower tax jurisdictions.

The SJPG estimates that the cost of alcohol and drug addiction is nearly £40bn pa to the British economy and an increase in expenditure on treatment will save money in the long-run.

Iain Duncan Smith's group wants a switch away from 'harm reduction' approaches to drug treatment and much greater investment in 'harm avoidance' services.  There is a recommendation for a £30m programme of drug abstinence programmes for the nation's prisons.  The report notes:

"Spending on “harm reduction” measures – such as substitute prescribing, needle exchange, and harm minimisation advice – runs at ten times the level of spending on residential and community rehabilitation programmes designed to make people permanently drug-free."

As reported in The Observer, the SJPG also wants cannabis reclassified as a class B drug, "carrying much greater penalties for possession and trafficking."  The potency of cannabis has grown significantly over the years and is now associated with an increase in mental health problems.  Iain Duncan Smith suggests that the slogan 'war on drugs' should be binned: "[It] sends the wrong signals. It is not a war on drugs. It is about getting kids off drugs."

In today's Sunday Telegraph Iain Duncan Smith overviews his prescriptions to mend Britain's broken society.

12.30pm: Speaking about an hour ago on Sky News Iain Duncan Smith spotlighted the rise in juvenile alcoholism as a primary reason for his group's recommendation of higher taxes on alcohol.  He argued that young people's drinking levels were particularly sensitive to changes in price.

Boris Johnson now "illiberal" on cannabis because it has become stronger

Boris Johnson says he found cannabis "jolly nice" at university but doesn't want his own kids to take drugs.  He also reportedly tells GQ Magazine that he finds Cherie Blair quite attractive.  Sky News has the full story.

11am update: IAIN DALE HAS MUCH OF THE TEXT.

Mail on Sunday revisits Cameron and drugs questions

The Mail on Sunday's Simon Walters has another non-story tomorrow about David Cameron and his drugs past.  He rehashes an old story about an alleged attempt - during the 2005 Tory leadership contest - by rival camps to probe the extent of Mr Cameron's use of drugs.  I understand that what the MoS prints is partial and exaggerated.  My guess is that all of these stories about Cameron and cannabis during his early life are an attempt to inch towards a bigger story about Cameron and harder drugs in his later life but the newspapers have no evidence to support these attempts - despite huge efforts by Fleet Street's 'finest' raincoated investigators.  A Populus poll, taken last week, found that 81% were not concerned by drug use at school or university.  64%, however, thought that use of "more serious" drugs would matter and 71% thought drug use during working life was of concern.

Addicted Britain

Iain Duncan Smith has just left a comment on the previous Tory Diary thread criticising ill-informed comment and pointing to the Addicted Britain report of last December for background information on drugs policy:

"Too much of the comment over the last few days has been ill informed. Too many of your bloggers have rehearsed political positions without a real understanding of the nature of the problem we face from the growing level of drug and alcohol abuse.

In December the Social Justice Policy Group published a study of drug and alcohol addiction as part of the Breakdown Britain report. I summarised it in my Chairman's report as the D and A report is some 50000 words. It is the most comprehensive study of what has gone wrong and the enormous damage drugs and alcohol are doing to our communities.

This is not a subject to be bandied around in the context of a 'moderniser' versus 'traditional' battle. People in parts of Britain wake up every day to the news that another child of theirs died of heroin or was admitted into care suffering serious mental illness.

If the Conservative Party wants to be taken seriously it should leave the metropolitan beltway and the games they play there and understand that we in the UK have a crisis on our hands. It is not liberal v illiberal for far too many, it's life or death. DC is right to condemn drugs."

The report shows why it is so important to look beyond the metropolitan beltway with this issue:

"The impact of the epidemic of heavy drinking and drugtaking is particularly severe for the least well off - those who have the fewest resources to cope with addiction or to recover from it - hitting both inner-city and outlying estates the hardest. Young, predominantly single, undereducated and unemployed boys and young men are amongst the most badly affected and the most at risk."

Go to PovertyDebate.com for regular updates on social problems and thinking on how to tackle them.

Deputy Editor

Cannabis non-story produces real progress in Tory drugs policy

The fact that David Cameron used cannabis when he was a pupil at Eton was always a bit of a non-story but it looks as though it has led to a very welcome hardening of David Cameron's public policy on soft drugs.  Today's Daily Mail reports a strong warning from the Conservative leader for young people not to follow his example:

"I would advise strongly against it. It's against the law, it's wrong. I have seen what's happened to contemporaries and constituents who have gone badly off the rails with drugs.  Doing drugs is a bad idea, and there is a real epidemic in our country and we need to do things about that.  I have been very clear about this. When they are young, lots of people do things they shouldn't and I was one of them.  I regret those things but people should judge me now based on the policies I put forward."

And the policies he is putting forward on drugs are increasingly robust as today's Telegraph notes.  Political Editor George Jones notes that "Mr Cameron believes cannabis should be reclassified as a Class B drug – reversing Labour's decision to downgrade it to Class C three years ago."  The Tory leader is in Sweden to visit the new centre right government of Fredrik Reinfeldt.  Sweden has a zero tolerance approach to drugs and makes no distinction between cannabis and so-called harder drugs.  Mr Cameron praised that approach yesterday.

Cameron and cannabis

When the news of David Cameron smoking cannabis at Eton broke yesterday evening I decided it was not much of a story and only mentioned it within another thread (about today's Sunday Times opinion poll).  I questioned my judgment this morning as I scanned the front pages at my local newsagent.  The Mail on Sunday, Independent on Sunday, Observer and Sunday Times all lead with the story.  My guess, however, is that the majority of voters will shrug their shoulders and treat the 'revelation' as seriously as Tory members treated similar stories during the 2005 leadership contest.

My only concern in this business is that society does not conclude that drug use does not matter.  My concern started to grow last night when one ConservativeHome visitor suggested that we somehow celebrate the news:

"This is FANTASTIC news! Gordon Brown admitted that he never took drugs - Cameron did! Great news for those of us trying to win over our generation (18-30)  I mean who the hell apart from a few odd balls (Brown and Widdecombe) has never smoked dope, taken an ecstasy tablet or (God forbid) snorted a line of coke?  BREAKING NEWS: David Cameron is officially a member of the Human Race!"

For the second time this weekend I feel the need to highlight an article by Peter Oborne (the first time was here).  In a piece for the Mail on Sunday (not online) he highlights some of the dangers of society taking a relaxed view of cannabis.  Cannabis is very different today from that which David Cameron smoked nearly two decades ago.  Its potency is anything from five to ten times greater because of various forms of genetic engineering.  Peter Oborne refers to sons of friends who have become apathetic, morose and uninterested in life as they have become cannabis users.  More deadly is the link between cannabis use and mental health problems.  Leading mental health charities have rightly attacked the Labour Government for downgrading the legal status of cannabis five years ago.  Mr Oborne's conclusion:

"It is essential that the Tory leader must say that he is ashamed of what he did.  He must stress that there were many lives destroyed by cannabis even when he was a boy.  But above all he must repeat the little-understood fact that cannabis has changed so much that it is effectively a different drug today.  He should also state that - whatever he did as a young man - his Party believes that the pro-drug lobby is mistaken.  Finally, he must pledge that an incoming Tory government will reverse Blunkett's mistake - and reclassify cannabis as a very dangerous drug indeed."

So long as David Davis is Shadow Home Secretary the party is unlikely to relax its position on drugs.  As part of his December 2005 deal to stay in post, Mr Cameron agreed to shelve any idea of downgrading the legal status of ecstasy.

10.30am update from PA: "Tory leader David Cameron today admitted he had done things in his past he "should not have done and regretted" over allegations he smoked cannabis as a schoolboy at Eton.  He refused to confirm the allegations, published in a new autobiography, that he was disciplined for smoking the drug at the prestigious private school.  Speaking from his constituency home in Dean, Oxfordshire, he said: "I do believe that politicians are entitled to a past that is private and remains private."

Cameron "relaxed" about medical use of cannabis if scientists make the case

The Sunday Mirror has reported that David Cameron is "relaxed" about licensing cannabis for medical purposes if the scientific evidence is there to justify such a move.  The report is based on an answer Mr Cameron gave to a question to his WebCameron site.  The Conservative leader rejected a wider decriminalisation of cannabis - saying that it would only increase availability still further and that it was already difficult enough for parents to keep their children away from drugs.  A recent report from the party's social justice policy group pointed to the strong link between cannabis use and destructive behaviour.  He repeated his belief that drugs policy should be based on more education - particularly delivered by victims of drug use - and rehabilitation.  On a previous occasion Mr Cameron has refused to rule out shooting galleries.

Also in the latest set of answers to the 'AskDavid section of WebCameron', Mr Cameron said that, although he voted against the smoking ban, it was now a settled issue and he did not favour overturning it.  He also spoke out against proportional representation.  Our current system of first-past-the-post elections ensured a direct link between the electorate and their member of parliament, he said, and enabled decisive changes of government - of the kind seen in 1997.

'Red light zones would cause prostitution to rocket'

When Robert McIlveen proposed the legalisation of prostitution on ConservativeHome's 100policies.com, the idea was rejected - but only narrowly.  The topic is, of course, back in the news following the series of Ipswich killings.  Two of Britain's leading conservative female columnists tackle the issue today - Melanie Phillips and Janet Daley.

Referring to an article in favour of red light zones (in yesterday's Observer by Katherine Raymond), Melanie Phillips rejects the idea:

"[The proposal] was binned because it was rightly thought that, rather than reduce the harm done by prostitution, such ‘zones of tolerance’ would increase it by becoming magnets for sex tourism and trafficking.  Countries that have gone down this route, such as the Netherlands, Denmark or Germany, have seen a vast increase in prostitution — and worse still, child prostitution — which has helped fuel the stupendous rise in global people trafficking.  It is also hard to see how this policy would prevent such murders from occurring. Even Glasgow’s ‘tolerance zone’ did not prevent a murder from taking place there."

Phillips rejects the idea of legalisation of prostitution or drugs: "The idea that legalising drugs would get rid of crime is simply risible.  Legal drugs would always be undercut — both by lower prices and higher strengths — by a black market. The only way to eradicate such an illegal trade would be to supply unlimited quantities of all drugs totally free of charge."  She favours the Swedish model: "[Sweden] has criminalised both drug-takers and those who use prostitutes.  The result is that Swedish drug use is a fraction of our own, while in Stockholm street prostitutes have been reduced by two-thirds and the number of men using them has dropped by some 80%."

For Janet Daley, writing in The Telegraph, the Victorians provide a model for us:

"They formed temperance associations to combat the destructive power of drink. They went out into the streets on voluntary missions to rescue young girls, and they formed community self-help organisations and co-operatives to keep families out of desperate hardship so that they might not lose their daughters to vice. The churches ran relief programmes, and wealthy benefactors set up educational schemes whose object was self-improvement. And none of this was inconsistent with that notorious Victorian "moralising". It was all of a piece. The moral strictures that they preached were the principles from which their charity (in every sense of the word) sprang. What they wanted for everyone – including those unfortunate women – was a chance to lead a decent and wholesome life."

Labour minister: Sports stars shouldn't be banned for social drug use

Tory sports spokesman Hugh Robertson has called on Tessa Jowell to disown remarks made by Labour sports minister Richard Caborn.  According to BBC Online Mr Caborn said that sports people should not be banned for using "social" drugs.

Mr Robertson:

“Richard Caborn's comments are wrong and appear directly to contradict UK sport's very clear stance on drug taking by elite athletes. The performance of an elite athlete in any sport will be affected by taking recreational drugs and top sportsmen and women act as role models for many young people. I hope that Tessa Jowell will disown these illogical and damaging comments.”

Tory report questions downgrading of cannabis

A report from the Conservative Party's Social Justice Policy Group lists no fewer than four hundred different scientific studies that point to the links between cannabis and various forms of mental illness and destructive behaviour.  According to a report in The Daily Mail the report highlights the fact that "heavy cannabis users make up the vast majority of new patients with a serious mental illness... Eight out of ten of those experiencing the first episode of psychiatric disorder, schizophrenia or similar mental breakdowns are habitual users of the drug."

Drugs is one of five main themes of the Tory social justice review.  Other themes include family structure, employment, education and debt.  The review aims to find ways of helping vulnerable people succeed in each of these five areas of life.  This behavioural approach to poverty-fighting is inspired by William Galston's famous observation that only 8% of Americans who finish high school, marry before having a child, and marry after the age of 20 are poor. In contrast, 79% of those who fail to do these things are poor.

Added to the five themes is David Cameron's commitment to build the nation of the second chance:

"But we all know that however much we do to help people forge paths out of poverty, some will be left behind.  We must never say to those people - "You've had your chance and you must live with the wrong choices you made".  I want to build a nation that never writes any one off. A nation that says that it's never ever too late to start again. Never too late to realise those dreams you once had."

Building 'the nation of the second chance' is the subject of a policy subgroup chaired by former Tory candidate Orlando Fraser.  The group is examining how to strengthen the voluntary sector's innovative and independent character.

Tobias Ellwood calls for legalisation of Afghanistan's opium farming

David Cameron and Liam Fox flew into Afghanistan this morning in a visit billed as showing support for Britain's troops and for the work they are doing.  The Tory leadership is keen to be seen to be both on the side of the armed forces in the region whilst criticising the Government's confused oversight of under-resourced operations.  Last week Dr Fox also attacked the BBC for failing to report on the good work being done by UK troops.  This comes from Saturday's Independent:

"Liam Fox, the shadow Defence Secretary, has accused the BBC of pumping out "unrelentingly negative" reports about Iraq without giving adequate coverage to more positive developments.  He received complaints from British servicemen on a visit to Basra and promised to raise their "frustration and irritation" with BBC chiefs. One soldier said: "The BBC will report if we get shot at or killed, but not if we reconnect electricity, repair sewers or rebuild a bridge."

The Cameron trip could be overshadowed, however, by a call from Tobias Ellwood MP, Tory whip, for Afghanistan's opium trade to be legalised.  This is what Mr Ellwood told Guardian Unlimited:

"The poppy crops are the elephant in the room of the Afghan problem. We're in complete denial of the power that the crops have on the nation as a whole, and the tactics of eradication are simply not working... Last year we spent £600m on eradication and all that resulted was the biggest-ever export of opium from the country."

Mr Cameron might be positive towards Mr Ellwood's proposal for opium farming to be licensed to plug a suggested shortage of opiate-based medicines.  The Tory leader has demonstrated a repeated openness to a more liberal approach to drugs (see here and here).

Drug shooting galleries "not ruled out"

One of the main concerns that dogged David Cameron's leadership bid was his liberal approach to drugs, frequently highlighted in relation to his alleged drug use at university. His views, as expressed on the Home Affairs Select Committee, include:

• The UN should consider legalising drugs
• Hard-core addicts should be provided with places to practice their habit
• The state should prescribe heroin to addicts
• Ecstasy should be downgraded from Class A
• Radical options on Cannabis law should be considered

Visiting a drug users' drop-in centre in London run by Turning Point, Cameron today left the option open of providing legal "drug consumption rooms" - such as those in Switzerland:

"I certainly wouldn't rule them out because anything that helps get users off the streets and in touch with agencies that can provide treatment is worth looking at"

This coincides today with the publication of a report funded by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation which concluded that "well-designed and well-implemented drug consumption rooms would have an impact on some of the serious drug-related problems experienced in the UK".

What that impact would be in the long-term is open to debate - "harm-reduction" policies do often help alleviate extreme "individual harm" but have a habit of spreading "general harm" across more people.

Deputy Editor

Cameron has promised Davis not to downgrade ecstasy

When Rosie Boycott was its editor the Independent on Sunday ran a high profile campaign for the decriminalisation of cannabis.  It is ironic that it is the IoS that, this morning, should break the news that Tony Blair plans to upgrade the status of cannabis from C to B following new evidence that there is a "definitive link between use of the drug and mental illness":

"A Danish study published in the British Journal of Psychiatry found that almost half of patients treated for a cannabis-related mental disorder went on to develop a schizophrenic illness. People who had used the drug developed schizophrenia earlier than those with the illness who had not smoked marijuana."

Mr Cameron's views on drugs were one of the controversies of his leadership campaign but Ned Temko, in today's Observer, reports the outcome of a meeting between Davids Davis and Cameron from last Monday:

"The two men met privately in Cameron's office. Not only was Davis assured he could keep his job as shadow home secretary, Cameron even agreed to his rival's request to shelve plans to downgrade the classification of the drug ecstasy."

In agreeing with Mr Davis on this issue Mr Cameron has avoided a potentially very disruptive row.  He is also starting to fulfil his hustings promise to decide drugs policy by collective shadow cabinet agreement.  Mr Davis was a strong opponent of Mr Blunkett's 2003 decision to downgrade cannabis and he will pressurise Mr Cameron to support Tony Blair's upgrading of the drug.  Without that support the Tories will face the kind of attacks that The Sun aimed at the LibDems during the last election.  Soft on drugs and soft on terror could otherwise become a major weapon in Labour's currently uncertain attempts to curtail the Cameron honeymoon.

The Beast of Bolsover accuses Osborne of snorting cocaine

BBCi:

"Labour MP Dennis Skinner has been banned from the Commons for the rest of Thursday for accusing shadow chancellor George Osborne of snorting cocaine.  The claim came as Mr Osborne took on ministers at Treasury questions.  Referring to the 1980s, Mr Skinner said: "The only thing that was growing then was the lines of coke in front of Boy George and the rest of the Tories."

Daily Mail:

"Dennis Skinner's Commons outburst against the new Tory team is by no means the first time the MP dubbed the Beast of Bolsover has fallen foul of such rules of Parliamentary behaviour.  In 1992, the plain-speaking scourge of sensitive Speakers - was ejected for calling the, then, Agriculture Minister John Gummer a "little squirt of a minister" and a "wart".  He was also removed for the day by former Speaker Betty Boothroyd in 1995 for accusing ministers of engaging in a "crooked deal" to sell off the coal industry.  In 1981 he was also "named" - the next stage up in the Speakers' disciplinary weaponry - and banned from the chamber for five days."