Dear Lib Dem backbenchers, Tell the truth on fees before anyone else gets hurt.

I'm furious.

I'm furious for a variety of reasons relating to the higher education funding debate, but not Millbank-trashing furious. No, if I was to mask up and stick a railing through a window, it'd be the NUS who should be pulling down the shutters (I would never take direct action. I'm just trying to attract attention to the seriousness of this situation).

I'm furious because the backbenchers of my party aren't courageous enough to tell the truth to the public.

I'm furious because various student groups who are receiving generous funding to support themselves through university are telling future applicants they won't be able to attend when government proposals should IMPROVE fair access.

And I'm furious because the Scottish government is clinging on to a funding policy which is pinning both Scottish universities and students in disgraceful poverty.

I was going to call this blog post "Failing to see the wood for the fees". Deferred fees are not the determinant of whether young people can support themselves through university. Maintenance funding determines whether students can feed and house themselves through their studies and maintenance funding will RISE following the implementation of government proposals. MORE students from poorer backgrounds will be able to attend higher education if they aren't in ****ing prison after the latest riot.

The fury really started for me when I read that Lib Dems were lobbying Vince Cable to cap the fees at lower than £7000 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-11627039 because when you examine the implications of this you have universities struggling to fund courses and widen access on a lower income than they have at present and for whose benefit? The lowest earning graduates wouldn't be saved any money. The middle half would save a little. The highest earners would save a whole lot more*. When the **** did the Lib Dem back bench become the parliamentary defenders of the marginal financial interests of the wealthiest and most fortunate in society?

Higher deferred fees should only deter those who would not receive net benefit from a university education. Those who aren't academically inclined should look elsewhere. Those who are bright, motivated, highly skilled or entrepreneurial might be able to earn more and be happy without having to struggle through 3 years of academia that doesn't really motivate them. Student groups should be demanding the high quality careers advice that maximises this "good" deterrence and stop driving the "bad" deterrence that comes with poverty and a misunderstanding of the type of debt or costs that studying will bring.

If you really want to fight for the right of the disadvantaged to a top quality education, fight for an access levy so that only those institutions with at least average access to the disadvantaged can keep 100% of their £9000 fee.

But the one thing that made me spitting-mad, grind-your-teeth-while-reading, livid was when I started comparing the maintenance funding available to English and Scottish students and drew up this table: http://bit.ly/cfzp7q (also contains evidence to back up * above) So, in the land of free ****ing tuition, we see fit to let some students try to live on nearly £3000 less than their English counterparts while our universities go to the wall. It's no wonder the disadvantaged kids in Scotland are the least likely to go to university of all the regions of the UK http://bit.ly/ddSEzt Mr Salmond. Mr Russell. You can stick your empty-gesture free tuition up your respective voluminous backsides. I want a quality education for this nation's youth, and I want them to be able to enjoy it without rushing from lectures into a part-time job that they can't support themselves without.

Children. Students. Open your eyes. Aaron Porter doesn't have your interests at heart. Don't buy the lies about your ability to go to uni if your family is poor. Like some on the Lib Dem back benches he took a stance a while back and he's too much of a coward to tell you that stance is no longer correct. Please tell him (in as splenetic terminology as your youth allows) to call off this farce before anyone else gets hurt.

I never thought I'd engage in a near-socialist rant in favour of higher tuition fees and in defence of a Tory minister. But the government is proposing a fairer and better means of funding higher education in this country. Could we please start trying to properly get this message across?

Drugs Harms in the UK: some observations

As Mark Easton reports in his blog this morning,
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/markeaston/2010/11/drugs_debate_hots_up.html
The Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs has today released an analysis of the relative harms of the drugs that are routinely used in the UK today. The analysis has yielded a quite different result to a previous harm assessment that Nutt and colleagues carried out in the fact that alcohol has come out as a clear "winner" in terms of harm done to others and overall harm, with heroin and crack coming in second and third and the rest trailing some distance behind.

The analysis has been made very accessible and informative through the graphical representation of the different components of the final harm score (available on MArk Easton's blog), thus allowing enthusiasts to pick apart where these harms come from and hypothecate how the graphic might be different were drug policies to change.

I am rather disappointed that medically supervised diamorphine (pharmaceutical heroin) consumption has not been included in the analysis, but we can certainly identify major contributors to heroin's harm score which would be substantially reduced by consumption of a pharmaceutical product in a medically supervised environment. Indeed the three major contributors to heroin harm: drug-specific and drug-related mortality and crime would all be substantially reduced, and the only indicators that I suspect would not be reduced are dependence and drug-specific impairment of mental functioning.

The take-home message we should be going away with from this study is that

A: The misuse of drugs act categorisation of drugs is an absolute joke.
and B: A great many of the harms considered by this study are created or exacerbated by prohibition.

With home office and justice spending being slashed, it's about time we thought about doing things differently.

How crap is the Browne review?

After a fairly exasperated G(lasgow)U(ni)LD meeting last night I thought I'd get stuck in to the Guardian's two-page spread on the Browne review so that I might better judge whether we're right to be furious. I'm probably not going to read the review itself as I have better things to be getting on with, but there are a few things that jump out at me from the article that I'd like to share. Firstly, the IFS analysis: "lower-earning graduates would pay less and higher-earning graduates would pay more" Surely this is a good thing? Raising the threshhold at which repayments start seems to me to be a progressive step that we should welcome and the 9% rate over £21000 certainly seems a fair and effective option for repaying a debt. It is never good for huge debts to be hanging over graduates, but they're not going to send the bailiffs round and your credit rating won't be affected. Just as household debts are not like the budget deficit, student debts will not be like a massive credit card bill. The differences between these proposals and a graduate tax are actually fairly slight.

The major problem that Browne presents is the notion that the elitism of the top universities would be extended. The suggestion that some of the fees charged above £6000 are recouped by the government seems to be a wasted opportunity. Could we not take half of the portion of each fee over £6000 and put it into a bursary fund lowering the fee to £6000 for every third entrant? If you want to charge higher fees, you have to take in a large proportion of students from low income households (how that is defined can be a matter of debate). The best universities need to be accessible to all. Browne might not achieve this. My proposal might help.

Of course this debt burden on students is only coming about due to the teaching grant reducing from £3.5Bn to £0.7Bn. Maybe they're just softening us up with politically unpalatable cut options before they go "OK, OK, we'll put a penny or two on income tax. Just don't riot!"

One thing I do know is that an acceptance of Browne would put Scottish higher education in a quite horrible position. I presume the grant to Scotland would reduce further as a result of this step and the Scottish government will need to act fast to keep standards from plummeting and respected universities facing genuine peril. There are tough decisions ahead, and with an election coming up you can be fairly sure they won't be made for a while.

All-in-all, it's a tough sell for Vince, but with a few tweaks here and there he might just achieve it. Would I rather the general population paid for universities out of taxation? Yes. Do I think these proposals will put a generation off university education? No I really don't. And if we got our act together and campaigned to build upon some of the progressive aspects of these reforms, then we might even see greater equality of access arising out of these changes rather than less. Students, please choose your battles wisely.

It's Time We Talked About Drug Policy (My speech)

This is the speech I delivered on Sunday 19th September 2010 to the fringe event "It's Time We Talked About Drug Policy" kindly funded by Transform and Release. I thought it went pretty well. My dig at Melanie Phillips got a laugh again, so I suspect that will become an annual feature. Unless of course she comes to her senses on the issue of drugs policy. Stranger things have happened? I have also submitted the speech I delivered in the conference hall the following morning for consideration for Lib Dem Voice, so hopefully that'll be up in the next few days.


I am now going to describe what I believe to be a joined-up, responsible drug policy that should be effective at protecting vulnerable young people, reducing crime and regenerating struggling communities. It is also a policy that should be very appealing to the people of Britain, our coalition partners and indeed the parties of opposition.

I hope it is also a policy the UK can take the lead with and that the rest of the world will follow.

The first step we have to take is to reject our wishy-washy, soft-on-drugs cannabis policy which tolerates use, social supply and personal cultivation and calls for legalisation only when the UN allows. We don't use it in campaigns anyway, so we might as well just bin it. It is the soft underbelly that prevents us from starting any serious conversations on the issue.

I put it to you that we should replace this policy with a tough-on-drugs commitment to the strict government control and regulation of a legal cannabis market.

Forget about cannabis cafes, drug tourism, suburban greenhouses devoted to the horticultural hobbies of ageing hippies, and circles of teenagers passing around spliffs in the park.

We need instead to be highlighting the potential of strict government control and regulation to restrict the ability of cannabis to inflict harm, especially on children.

Scientific research points to cannabis use increasing risk of schizophrenia and for this risk being greater the earlier use starts in childhood. The economics of prohibition have also pushed the cannabis market towards the most potent skunk strains, elevating still further the risks to the mental health of young users.

At present we don't have the resources of frankly the necessary political support to take the steps necessary to restrict children's access to cannabis using the standard criminal justice and education tools.

Legalising cannabis sale to adults instead means we can greatly reduce the numbers of potential dealers who might try to sell to children. Such a step should also make it easier to stigmatise and apprehend those illegal dealers who remain.

There is still thought to be risk in the consumption of cannabis for those over 18, and so we should aim to provide detailed education on potential social, economic and health implications of use with special focus on how to recognise early warning signs of psychosis before anyone uses for the first time. A licensing scheme for use of the drug might be the best way to ensure delivery of this education, with licenses only available to those who have gone through an education process. Such a requirement firmly establishes this as a policy focused on attempting to protect our citizens from harm.

Wanting to allow your citizens to get high is not good grounds on which to challenge UN conventions.

Stating firmly that the UN conventions severely restrict our ability to protect the health of our citizens I would argue is a very strong starting point in diplomatic negotiations. Negotiations that could hopefully end in states following our experiment with interest rather than queueing up to condemn us.

There may be many of you sitting there thinking “This is never going to happen. We avoid talking about drugs for a reason. All the polls say it's suicide.” Well you're wrong. I'm happy to say with confidence that this policy will go down very well with the British people. The poll that LDDPR commissioned in July found 70% of participants favoured some sort of legal regulation. The poll described 3 regulatory scenarios: Light regulation, strict government control and regulation and prohibition. The groups that found strict control and regulation most tolerable were Daily Mail and Express readers and 36-55 year old females. Total support from Daily Mail and Express readers for some level of legal regulation was 66%, for Conservative voters it was 67%. Maybe we've got the Daily Mail readers all wrong. Maybe they read Melanie Phillips and Peter Hitchens, chuckle to themselves, shake their heads and think “Wow, they're totally crazy” just like we do.

The 36-55 year-old female group, likely to contain the most mothers of teenage children, and therefore the people you would think would be most worried about cannabis use, appear to be the group most supportive of the strict government control and regulation of cannabis. It's quite probable these women want to know that their children are safe from the harms of cannabis, and it is quite clear to them that prohibition is failing to provide that protection.


Proposing the strict control and regulation of cannabis is an action we can take with confidence and pride. It is specifically designed to reduce harms, it is projected to be very popular with the electorate, and, whether through taxes, or through the profits of state-run companies, it can raise considerable funds for other projects.

Such a policy should raise hundreds of millions, perhaps billions of pounds in government income. We could spend that money on reducing the deficit, on protecting services, or we could divert as much of that money as is necessary in order to make our drug treatment services the best in the world.

We have hundreds of thousands of problem drug users in this country and nearly a million unemployed young people. If we get drug policy wrong at this time there is a very real possibility that more and more young unemployed people will join the ranks of problem drug users. We need to find a drug strategy that blocks that path, while also diverting existing drug users back into productive roles in society.

The kind of policies the coalition government are apparently discussing fill me with great concern. Policies like time-limited methadone and withdrawal of benefits from addicts who refuse treatment are the kinds of policies that are likely to make our heroin problem worse not better. They are likely to increase demand for street heroin and increase the amount of crime addicts are compelled to commit to fund their drug habit.

Methadone maintenance treatment is undoubtedly effective at reducing harm to patients, their families, and the communities they live in, but there is now an undeniable body of evidence showing that heroin maintenance is far more effective at retaining individuals in treatment, reducing their use of street drugs and reducing the crime they commit to pay for them.

Lord McNally, our own Liberal Democrat Minister of State for Justice has recently cited cost-effectiveness as a reason why diamorphine maintenance isn't being pursued. The truth is that if the Home Office allowed maintenance treatment clinics to buy tubs of diamorphine powder then the average cost of the diamorphine for a year's treatment would be between 500 and 2000 pounds. This is tiny relative to the £11000 the average problem user spends on street heroin each year and the average £50-60,000 calculated cost to society they represent. At £6.80 per gramme, diamorphine could be made available at less than one fifth of the cost of an equivalent dose of methadone.


If the government removed barriers to the affordable supply of diamorphine then all the UK's dependent heroin users could potentially benefit, and we could make an effort to attract as many problem drug users as possible into top quality treatment services. We cannot afford to leave people parked on methadone. We have to be able to give people the best chance of recovery by finding a treatment regime that works for them, that identifies their problems and seeks to address them.

I believe that treatment services should embrace two very important principles. The first of these is early intervention. We are passionately committed to early intervention in medicine and in social work as a means of limiting harm. I believe we should have the same passion for attracting heroin users into treatment before they prostitute themselves or start habitually committing acquisitive crimes. Their chances of leading a happy, productive life are vastly increased, and the negative impacts of their criminal behaviour upon society can be prevented if we intervene early.

The second principle is prevention. The more heroin addicts are attracted into treatment, the fewer are the points of entry into the lifestyle for vulnerable young people.
The vast majority of local dealers also use the drug. Commonly termed “user-dealers” they are the footsoldiers of the illegal market. Attract them into treatment and they no longer need to deal to raise money, and should stop marketing heroin to others.
A heroin addict's access to heroin is more secure if they are surrounded by friends who are also seeking the drug, and so it makes sense to introduce others to the experience. With genuinely effective and attractive drug treatment services, these circles of friends might instead work together to help each other into treatment and recovery rather than ensuring each other has access to drugs and drawing others into the lifestyle.

Combine all this with intelligent, honest, and well-targeted education provision and it's possible we can vastly reduce recruitment into the lifestyle of a dependent drug user.

The Tory backbenchers and The Daily Mail would probably like to complain about heroin on the NHS and taxpayers' money being spent on irresponsible addicts. That argument doesn't wash if the money being spent is that of other supposedly irresponsible drug users.

So there we have it: Two fairly straightforward drug policies. To control and regulate cannabis and to utilise heroin maintenance treatment as part of a vastly improved drug treatment service funded by the proceeds of the regulated cannabis market.

With these changes we could see the following effects:

Reduced use of both cannabis and heroin by teenagers.

Earlier intervention in psychotic illness and a potential 10% reduction in the rate of schizophrenia.

Reduced incidence of overdose, infection, hepatitis and HIV.

The end of red light districts in our cities and towns.

Drug-related crime going down not up in a time of stretched resources.

And resources diverted from raids on cannabis farms, putting addicts in prison for the umpteenth time, and generally fighting a drugs war in which drugs are giving us a good kicking.

If we present our message as “Drugs are harmful, we need to find a better way to protect people from their harms,” then Keith Vaz will probably still tell everyone we're sending out the wrong message. But those who actually listen will understand us and support us and we will make the breakthrough.

This is a simple message, with obvious benefits and one that we now know the public are ready to embrace.

Last year at a fringe event I called for courage to speak out for reform. But we don't need courage any more. We've established that this proposed policy is now the populist position, so let's get our act together and make it happen.


A version of this blogpost will appear in Liberator issue 342.

It's Time We Talked About Drug Policy (fringe event)

Here's the text of the flier I have produced for the LDDPR fringe event happening this Sunday in the ACC in Hall 1B at 8pm. Please get in touch if you would like to help distribute fliers in Liverpool.

It's Time We Talked About Drug Policy

A Liberal Democrats for Drug Policy Reform
fringe discussion

With speakers:

Niamh Eastwood of Release
Danny Kushlick of the Transform Drug Policy Foundation
and
Ewan Hoyle of LDDPR
chaired by Julian Huppert MP


A recent poll found 70% of Brits deem the legal regulation of cannabis a more tolerable option than prohibition

Would ideas coming out of the coalition government risk making the UK's drug problem worse?

Can a new, rational drugs policy better protect young people from the dangers of drugs?

Can pharmaceutical heroin be a far more cost-effective tool than methadone in aiding the recovery of addicts?

Can drug policy reform cut crime, safeguard mental health and save expenditure as budgets are slashed?

Come along and join the debate!

ACC Hall 1B
Sunday 8pm-9:15

Growing numbers of respected figures in British society are calling for decriminalisation or legalisation of drugs to be considered as potential solutions to the serious health and social problems that drugs - and arguably prohibition – create. Numerous editorials and commentators have backed these calls in the press. But politicians are still sticking stubbornly to the same tired old script.

The speakers at this event will describe some of the ways in which current policy impacts negatively upon British citizens and other communities around the World. The impact and cost-effectiveness of current British drugs policy has never been formally assessed.

You will also hear a new policy proposal that has been specifically designed to limit the harm that drugs cause and that is likely to be very appealing to the public.

Websites and twitter accounts:
www.tdpf.org.uk @TransformDrugs
www.release.org.uk @Release_Drugs
www.lddpr.org.uk @ewanhoyle

contact ewanhoyle@gmail.com for further info on Liberal Democrats for Drug Policy Reform

Professor Pertwee's pot proposals

Yesterday brought the news of yet another respected expert calling for a broader drug policy debate, this time with the specific suggestion of licensed cannabis sale: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11287130

I'm grateful to Prof. Pertwee for drawing attention to the cannabis legalisation debate, but would like to examine some of his proposals in more detail and consider what impact they might have relative to alternatives.

The issue of age restrictions is an important one and I would be interested in hearing the Professor's reasoning for settling on 21 as the age at which someone can legally purchase the drug. If taking the cannabis trade out of the hands of criminals is the Prof's goal as he states then I would suspect there would be a vast number of cannabis users between the age of 18 and 21 that could help prop up the illegal market. Setting such an age limit also limits the level of stigma that would be experienced by an illegal cannabis dealer. There is an extent to which dealing to under 21s might be tolerated by society as many would continue to think the law was unreasonable. Lowering the age requirement to 18 firmly casts remaining drug dealers as people who deal to children. There is a greater likelihood such behaviour will be deemed unacceptable to society. Fewer individuals would be able to profit from illegal dealing, tolerate the stigma associated with it, or escape prosecution whilst operating in communities hostile to their activities.

A further argument for a lower age of legality is the ability to deliver targeted education at individuals seeking to use the drug. Professor Pertwee's proposals mention the possibility of licensing, but seemingly only as a means to exclude individuals with mental illness. I would favour the issuing of a license being dependent on receipt of detailed education on the potential harms that may come about as a result of cannabis use, and with special focus on the potential implications for the mental health of the user. Rather than exclude the mentally ill from legal use (also would they not just seek out an illegal supply anyway?) it might be very useful indeed for scientists to use the newly legal cannabis use environment to study the relationship between cannabis and mental health in greater detail. Cannabis is a complex drug, and the effects on the user of the active ingredients THC and cannabidiol (and also nicotine from the commonly co-administered tobacco) are not close to being fully understood. A good scientific relationship between mentally ill users and well-trained pharmacists might allow patients to be guided towards cannabis strains that do not jeopardise their mental health, and indeed might even help them. If Professor Pertwee is as concerned about the mental health implications of cannabis use as I am, I hope he would welcome the massively increased public knowledge of the warning signs of mental ill-health that should come about associated with a licensing regime linked to education rather than to sanity.

Of additional concern are Professor Pertwee's comments about the marketing of cannabis: "We should consider licensing and marketing cannabis and cannabis products just as we do alcohol and tobacco." I am decidedly uncomfortable with this loose talk of marketing cannabis like alcohol and tobacco. Any reform which leads to greater consumption of cannabis will face criticism, and the more marketing and branding we allow, the greater the chances of a rise in consumption. Surely it would be better for the first step in reform to start from a point of zero sanctioned branding or marketing?

Professor Pertwee also makes some assumptions about the manufacture of the drug:
"It depends on a private company being willing to produce a branded product." Does it? Will the public stand for private companies profiting from the manufacture, distribution and sale of recreational drugs? Would they view more favourably a level of state intervention that sees all the profits from the trade being redirected instead into drug treatment services and education? Can the state efficiently run such an enterprise purely for the benefit of public services and society as a whole, or would co-operation between the state and regulated companies yield greater success?

Again, I salute Professor Pertwee for opening up the debate. I don't think he has all the answers just yet, but I do hope the debate progresses as it is vital for our society, public health and economy that we find them soon and can move on, leaving history to judge prohibition of cannabis as it has already judged the prohibition of alcohol.

Winning that 2nd Glasgow list seat

Warning: This post contains assumptions based on national polling that it is probably not advisable to apply to the Glasgow regional list vote next year.

A poll by YouGov for the Scottish Mail on Sunday published at the weekend put the Scottish parties on the following percentage share for the regional list. Applying that national swing to the Glasgow region we get projected list vote shares of:

National Glasgow

Lab 36 47.4
SNP 26 22.8
Con 15 7.2
Lib 12 7.9
Gre 6 6.2

Assuming Labour win all 10 Glasgow constituency seats (sorry Nicola)... (I'm not sorry), that projection leaves us with 4 SNP MSPs, and 1 each for the Liberals, Conservatives and Greens. If either of Labour or the Lib Dems fancied winning the 4th SNP seat, they would need fairly large vote increases. Labour would need an increase of around 15% to a 63% share (highly unlikely), and the Lib Dems would need an increase of around 3.5% to 11.4%.

So if the Liberal Democrats want 2 Glasgow MSPs we can take them by winning over just 1 in 13 of the projected Labour list supporters. Essentially we have to persuade these people that voting for Labour in the list is almost entirely pointless and you should instead be voting for whether you want an extra SNP or an extra Lib Dem representative. I do hope we could point to our successes in previous coalitions with Labour in an attempt to persuade them that switching their support to the Lib Dems would be a canny move on their part.

Obviously all this skullduggery serves to demonstrate just how ferociously abysmal the Scottish electoral system is, but that is an argument for another day.