The demise of Paris Brown: a sign of things to come?

April 9, 2013 by 2 Comments

By Alex Bryan

Today, Paris Brown, the teenager appointed to be Kent’s first youth police and crime commissioner, resigned from her post after the unearthing of a number of offensive tweets sent throughout her teenage years. After newspapers exposed Brown’s history, Kent Police received high numbers of complaints about her language and the permissive attitude expressed towards drugs, binge drinking and violence, essentially forcing her resignation from the £15,000 a year post.

Brown is by no means the first person to have been caught out by ill-advised social media postings; politics is littered with such incidences. Indeed Chuka Umunna, the millionaire Labour starlet tipped for the top, was this week embarrassed by a post on an exclusive social media site from 2006 in which he bemoaned the ‘trash and C-list wannabes’ in West End nightclubs, demonstrating that social media stupidity is not a blight infecting only the young and naive.

Kent Police admitted that they did not check Brown’s Twitter or Facebook accounts before appointing her, suggesting that it may become part of the vetting process in the future.  We should remember that Brown, as the first youth PCC in the country, with a salary bemoaned by the press, was a particular case: she should be blamed for her words but, through no fault of her own, also happened to be stepping onto a public platform circled by a tabloid press at its most predatory. Caught in a confluence of so many of the Daily Mail’s most hated topics, as a symbol of a bloated public sector and of ‘the youth of today’, as soon as her Twitter account was discovered, Brown’s departure was assured.

There should be a zero tolerance attitude towards bigotry and hatred for those wishing to take on positions of power and in this sense it is a relief that Brown has left her post. Those attempting to excuse Brown’s words by appealing to her youth need only remind themselves of Malala Yousafzai, who at 15 is the same age as Brown was when she was tweeting. She surely shows us that youth is no barrier to wisdom.

But not all teenagers are so exceptional, and most teenagers surely lie in between the two: not entirely aware of the eternal nature of social media but also savvy and thoughtful enough to think about whether something is offensive before posting it. But will that thoughtfulness be enough to save them from sharing the same fate as the unfortunate Brown?

Given that Facebook profiles never die, and that few ever delete their Twitter accounts, it is certain that teenagers moving into professional life now have more of their personalities recorded and available for the public to see than any generation before them. Some of those, like Paris Brown, will want to move into politics. Few if any normal teenagers who have grown up with social media will have gone their entire lives without posting anything that, in hindsight, was crass or stupid or unrepresentative of who they actually are.

Some, of course, do. That most hated member of the political class, the fabled career politician, is a prime candidate. It is only those who will have forged a desire to go into politics before they know the entirety of what that means who will tailor the entirety of their social activities towards becoming an MP. One would think that the rise of social media might favour these types even more than the system currently does, but that would be to assume that one can look elegant whilst hoisting themselves onto the greasy pole. William Hague and Boris Johnson are two who took very different paths towards political prominence, but both know that looking smarmy (in Hague’s case) or just plain absurd (in Johnson’s) in one’s youth can haunt one’s later career.

The career politician, then, is as prone to such embarrassing misjudgements as the rest of us. But the question remains of what effect the archive of information amassed by us all will have on future politicians. The answer is not that it will favour those who attempt to look squeaky clean, but that it will favour those who the media favours.

Although Twitter and Facebook records and accounts can be accessed by all, it is newspapers who will put the time and resources into uncovering the minutiae of a political candidates life story. They will more often than not find something. Paris Brown’s words were wrong, but she was savaged by the Daily Mail as much for what she represented as for what she said. The politicians who are best-able to play the media will be those who – like Umunna – escape unscathed. There will even be some who copy Johnson’s techniques and use it as something of a springboard to launch themselves with. Either way, like all information, the social media records of future candidates for high office will be mercy to the media’s  machinations. The difference, of course, is that when it comes to social media, everyone has skeletons in their closet.

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Queen receives an extra £5 million from the taxpayer

April 6, 2013 by Leave a comment

By Derek Van de Ven

Her majesty the Queen has been granted an extra £5 million per year, as a result of new legislation regarding the taxpayer’s contribution to the Queen’s bulging finances. The new rules, called the sovereign grant, mean that the Queen will receive 15% annually of the profits generated by the Royal Estate. The money she receives for the financial year 2013-14 comes from the profits generated by the Royal Estate profits from the financial year 2011-2012, which came to £240.2 million. The total amount she will receive was raised from £31 million to £36 million, a hefty £5 million tax-funded increase. The previous year’s amount, £31 million, does not include the £1 million donated to the Queen to help cover the costs of running the Diamond Jubilee. The new system replaces the old system of the civil list and grants-in-aid, which gave the monarch a set amount of money every year and was not reliant on a percentage of profits.  The BBC has reported that the cost to the taxpayer of the Monarchy has been rising slowly but steadily since 2010, at about £1 million per annum. However this year the costs took a much higher jump due to the changes in funding.

The money is supposed to help the Queen fund the costs of being a Monarch. This includes travel costs, both within and outside the United Kingdom, and official costs of Royal engagements such as public openings and meeting foreign heads of state. It is estimated that £10 million pounds is spent yearly on the wages for the Queen’s Royal chefs and footmen. It is expected that the costs of Her Majesty’s security would be higher but these figures have not been released.

A Spokeswoman for Buckingham Palace said that the majority of the new funds will be spent on maintaining the grounds of all the Royal Estates around the UK. She argued that the money received by the Queen has decreased by 15% in ‘real terms’ over the last five years and this has caused a backlog of work to be done on the Royal Properties, hence why the money is needed. She added further that, by undergoing such restoration, ‘works will see funds spent in the real economy creating work and opportunities.’ It is poor timing however, that the new legislation comes during times of austerity in Britain; the highly unpopular ‘bedroom tax’ could see some of Britain’s poorest families losing £1000 a year, not including increased funds for the monarchy.

Whether or not you support the monarchy it is hard to not feel some anger at the new rules. Without even any public money the Queen and her family would still be ridiculously wealthy. It is therefore questionable as to why we, the taxpayers, should give her a penny at all when much more important government departments are having their budgets cut. It is thus hard to justify such drastic spending when in reality the money going to the Queen is unlikely to come back to us – taxes in the UK are supposed to help fund the key functions of the state – the NHS, education, defence, police and public services. The money is simply not being spent on such things. The anti-monarchy group, Republic, denounced the measures as immoral and absurd. The head of the organization, Graham Smith argued “the Windsors must learn to live within their means like everyone else.” Combined with the £1000 tax cut for millionaires or ‘wealth generators’, it is hard to believe the PM’s pledge that “we are all in this together.”

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Time To Repay The Favour

April 4, 2013 by Leave a comment

By Joesph Parry

After the devastation of World War II, Europe lay in ruins whilst its population struggled to feed itself. The only allied power intact was the United States which from 1945 to 1947 was offering financial assistance to Europe; military assistance to Greece and Turkey and the newly formed United Nations was providing humanitarian assistance. US assistance culminated in the Marshall plan or what was officially known as the European Recovery Program (ERP). Its primary function was to rebuild the economies of Western Europe, which turned out to be a fantastic success. Steel and Coal industries led the economic prosperity and helped to formulate what we now know as the European Union.

Since then the United States has led the West to a Cold War victory and continues to share an economic, military, diplomatic, and cultural allegiance with Europe. However, the US is beginning to reprioritise its strategic interests as it ‘pivots’ towards Asia and a rising China. Leading to speculation by European officials about what is going to happen to NATO as US troops leave Europe for the Pacific theatre. Although the US would still have just under 40,000 troops left in Europe this is a real opportunity for Europe to increase its hard power and fill any power vacuum.

If Europe were to improve upon its current Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) and build up its military capabilities this would prevent Europe from becoming geopolitically irrelevant in an era of giants such as the US, China, Russia and India. Furthermore, Europe could start looking after its own neighbourhood – particularly the Middle East, North Africa, and even deter a resurgent Russia. Moreover we would be returning the favour to the United States, shouldering global responsibilities together.

Fair enough, Europe’s economy is hardly vibrant. The Euro Area has no growth with unemployment at 11.9%. Suffering from the worst financial collapse since Wall Street in 1929 and the subsequent sovereign debt crisis, the EU has lost its swagger.

The result of economic misery is stagnant or reduced defence budgets. Austerity measures across Western and Central Europe have meant that eighteen European countries have seen real-term falls of more than 10% in military spending since 2008. This is unlikely to change in the near future, not until the Eurozone crisis is finally resolved, economies restructured, and growth levels begin to rise.

So how can the EU help the US with a sick economy and ailing defence budgets? The obvious answer is pooling resources so as to offset some of the impact on defence budgets. This to a degree is already happening. The UK and France are currently training together to develop a new joint expeditionary force. Belgium and the Netherlands co-operate in helicopter maintenance and Bulgaria and Romania have made it easier to police each other’s airspace. A catalogue of national niche military capabilities could go some way to remedying any military shortfalls. For example, Britain supported France by providing logistical support it did not have for its intervention in Mali.

Europe could significantly improve its military strength were its economic engine, Germany, willing to bolster its own armed forces. Currently the German military lags behind the UK and France much to the displeasure of hard headed Europeans who wish to see a more involved EU. Speaking in Berlin last year, Philip Hammond the UK defence secretary said that Germany’s ‘historic reluctance’ to launch military action outside its borders is now limiting its international importance. If the EU-3 were to combine equal military strength with the rest of Europe, then the ability to conduct a mission such as in Libya remains feasible.

By utilising all of Europe’s resources and maintaining the hope that Germany will eventually match its economic might militarily, Europe can do three things. First it can aid the US ‘pivot’, in which the EU has an interest, by taking over some US responsibilities in European trouble spots like the Balkans and more importantly NATO. This will free up troops for the US whilst securing the Trans-Atlantic alliance’s strength and importance.

Second, the EU can become more self-reliant in defence and not rely solely on the US. Interventions in Libya and Mali exemplify Europe’s ability to do this although these conflicts were relatively small-scale and short. However, whether through EU institutions or bilaterally, Europeans have a real opportunity to fill a potential power vacuum with their own strength.

Thirdly, in a world increasingly dominated by powers of continental dimensions, the EU can avoid becoming a geostrategic irrelevance by strengthening its voice. This does not have to conflict with the EU’s normative power. If anything, Europe could do with hard power behind its soft not only to defend what the EU has achieved but also to support spreading its message to the periphery of Europe.

The United States has done plenty of good for Europe but is now coming under criticism from EU officials for changing strategic direction. Understandably, EU members wish to make sure that NATO is still important to America as well as the continent itself. However, the response to the US ‘pivot’ should not be fear. It is an opportunity; to help the US when it too is going through fiscal and economic difficulties, whilst increasingly under strain after ‘a decade of war’. At the same time the EU will have a more muscular voice, greater European cooperation and security in its own borders, all the while repaying a favour from over sixty years ago.

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Cyprus Exposes Chaos to Come

March 26, 2013 by Leave a comment


By Thomas Knight

There was celebration today at the news that a deal has been reached which will save Cyprus at the expense of those savers with over £85,000. Unfortunately, now that the EU has officially declared its position, it seems that they have chosen to take the side of debtors over citizens. With the decision to seize the savings of those deemed ‘wealthy’, the EU has set a precedent which will make the following year even more unstable than the one just past.

2012 was the year of the bailout, with economic news revolving around a series of increasingly desperate measures to try and deal with Europe’s catastrophic debt problem. Looking back over the financial news, it is almost funny how the EU continued to try and do the exact same thing on an almost monthly basis, and was continually taken by surprise when repeating the same motion as before failed to win the day. What we’ve seen in the first three months of this year is a continuation of that flawed attempt to prop up a corrupt and failed banking sector by throwing taxpayer money at the problem.

Cyprus does mark a turning point, though. With the decision to support the bailout by seizing the savings of those in the banks – even just those with over £85,000 – the EU seems unaware of what this means. It is no longer possible to see any European bank as a safe place to put large sums of money. Cyprus was saved in part because of the large exposures other European banks have to the Cypriot debt, and the fact it was feared that if the banks collapsed, other banks would soon follow. This interconnectedness of the banking system has been at the heart of the European financial crisis since it began.

It doesn’t take much to realise the problems here. If you were one of the top one per-cent, with a fortune in the bank, you would have to be stupid to leave it there now. Europe has proven that it is perfectly happy to punish those foolish enough to trust their banks with their money in order to try and prop up the sector as a whole. As a result, over the next few days it is likely that wealthy individuals and businesses will begin closing accounts and shifting fortunes to other places perceived as untouchable by Europe’s sticky fingers. I wouldn’t be surprised to see that off-shore banking and American banks in particular benefit greatly from the Cypriot bailout when we look back in ten years’ time.

Unfortunately, Europe’s banks are not in a position, despite years of bailouts and hand-wringing from the EU, where they can survive the sudden liquidity crisis this will bring about. As a result, more countries will ask for more bailouts. More banks will teeter on the brink of collapsing entirely and taking people’s savings with them. This is because the constant bailouts have not addressed the fundamental weakness that has pervaded the banking sector across Europe over the past decade. If anything, continuing to provide bailout after bailout has only succeeded in placing the sector on life support. If we consider the bad debt as the disease, a continued lack of growth and sickly economy has just helped grow the likelihood of more bad debt whilst making it difficult – almost impossible – to protect against the existing mountain of it that banks are holding.

This has been evident nowhere more clearly than Cyprus’ neighbour, Greece. If the EU had simply paid off all of Greece’s debts in 2008 – when they stood at 260 billion Euros – it would have saved a massive amount of money. As of January 2012, total EU bailouts to Greece amounted to 340 billion Euros, because continued instability, a weak economy, and a starving population meant that the government needed to borrow more to try and keep its public sector operating, something which they arguably failed to manage anyway.

Rather than learn the lessons of Greece, the EU has remained wed to the idea that those nations most heavily indebted must be punished for their sins. In doing so, they’ve finally taken a step too far and slapped the very people they were meant to be protecting in the face. Although choosing to tax only those with large savings is an easy political compromise, the ramifications are now going to start spreading. Whilst the EU prides itself on saying that it is ready to take difficult decisions when needed to deal with the debt crisis, what they’ve proven over the past week is quite the opposite. The countries in the EU are incapable of working together when it matters. They have been unable to grasp the consequences of their actions in the past, and do not understand what their actions mean for the future. Now we just have to wait and see which country’s banks are finally strong enough to drag them under completely.

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West Ham and the Olympic Stadium

March 23, 2013 by 6 Comments

By Derek Van de Ven

It has long been known that West Ham would take over the Olympic Stadium in Stratford, East London after the Games. Boris Johnson and the government have repeatedly stated the need for it be sold rather than used for various national events, as it would become (and has been) a major drain on the taxpayer. The battle for ownership of the stadium was fought out between Tottenham Hotspur and West Ham, with Leyton Orient even arguing that due to their location they should be part of any deal, for fear of fans being taken away. Spurs would have perhaps had a much better chance of filling the stadium, given their possible partaking in the Champions League, and of late, competition for the Premier League title. However, despite West Ham’s relegation worries of a few years ago, they won the rights to the Stadium, largely because they planned to keep the running track (or most of it). The move from current home Upton Park to the Olympic stadium is expected to take place in time for the 2016-2017 season, providing construction is completed. However, up until today, where the necessary funding would come from has been a bit of a mystery. Now it all seems to be in place. The club will have the stadium on a 99 year lease.

In reality, West Ham, despite being guaranteed major occupants of the stadium, will pay only very little of the enormous cost estimated. The Treasury will contribute about £60 million, today confirming an extra £25 million on their part, which is the main reason the move can go ahead. The London Legacy and Development Corporation will provide a loan of £20 million, and another loan from Newham Council will provide 40 million. Boris Johnson is also expected to make a contribution. The go-ahead was finally authorised when the club agreed to up their part of the budget from £10 million to £15 million.

There are several areas that the money will go towards. The venue is not ideal for football, and especially for West Ham who struggle to fill the 35,000 capacity Upton Park, and thus the capacity of the Olympic Stadium will be reduced from 80,000 to 60,000. The main problem with athletics arenas is that due to the running track, fans feel far away from the action. Thus it will be partially brought forward, but not all the way. The roof will also be extended to cover all fans, and this must be completed by 2015 in time for the Rugby World Cup. West Ham want the stadium to be used for athletics in the future and intend to keep the Olympic legacy at the stadium, as well as use it for live music performances. This is the only reason West Ham’s bid was successful.

West Ham of course must pay back these generous loans. They will also pay £2 million annually to rent the ground and have agreed to share 50/50 all catering and hospitality revenue with LLDC, but will keep all ticket and merchandise sales revenue. The club directors, David Gold and David Sullivan have agreed to make a one-off payment to LLDC if they sell the club within ten years, and a proportion of any future sale after that. They stated that “the public should benefit from any money made” by West Ham’s future sale of the stadium.

The move giving West Ham ownership has always seemed an odd decision. Firstly, it is a huge stadium, it will be as big as Arsenal’s Emirates’ Stadium, and the third biggest football arena in England and West Ham are not as big a club as Arsenal. Thus if they can’t fill the stadium on a regular basis there will be little or no atmosphere inside, only harmful to the club. However the main question is of course regarding public money – Boris Johnson made it clear that the future use of the ground must not drain the public purse anymore than it already has. The Tottenham plan for the ground would have been largely privately funded, not costing the taxpayer a substantial amount more. West Ham are planning to contribute approximately 6-8% of the overall finance of the stadium’s conversion, hardly fair given that they will be the principal users. The decision seems to have been made on the emotional grounds that West Ham would preserve the “spirit of the games” something which could have been done much more cheaply. Spurs’ plan would have saved the public a lot more money and would have likely been much more successful for the club. Whilst geographically it makes much more sense for West Ham, in times of austerity it makes much more sense to allow Spurs to move. Thus it was emotions, rather than rationality that won the bid for West Ham.

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Intervening in Iraq was no mistake

March 22, 2013 by Leave a comment

By James Le Grice

It’s been a war of mistakes, there’s no denying that. I won’t list everything that Bush, Blair and Co. bungled up; you can find all that in any newspaper’s coverage of ‘Iraq – Ten Years On’ from the past three weeks. The Guardian and Independent are good places to start. The success stories of Iraq remain, as ever, overlooked. But amongst the successes, there’s one particular biggie: ten years since the invasion of Iraq, the free world is still fighting terrorists; it is not fighting a nascent Islamic empire.

Saddam Hussein’s threat to the world may have been exaggerated, but the threats posed by those who tried to take his place have been anything but. To appreciate the nightmare that could have been, there are a few inevitabilities and some unsettling realities to consider.

The first inevitability is that Saddam Hussein’s rule would come to an end at some point. He was not an immortal god, no matter how much his propaganda made him seem that way. And if alive today, he would be nearing 76.

Inevitability number two is that the end of Saddam’s rule would be violent. Modern Iraq has been particularly prone to coups and revolutions, even within the same factions, but at no other point in its history has power been so monopolized by one single person for so long. Saddam’s end would leave an incredible void, not one that his playboy son and heir Uday could easily fill. There would be a scramble for power, and the sectarian tensions between Sunnis, Shia, and Kurds, deliberately exacerbated by Saddam’s method of rule, would be unrestrained to boil over. Whoever was to fill the post-Saddam void would get there by strength of arms.

Now for the unsettling realities. The religious revivalism of the 20th century gave rise to a new jihad amongst the extremists in the Islamic world: overthrow the nation-states in Muslim lands, replace them with the rule of Islam, and purge these societies of everything un-Islamic.

The threat of this jihad was compounded in the time since Saddam Hussein came to power by the rise of two opposing entities seeking to redraw the map of the entire Islamic world.

The first of these is the Islamic Republic of Iran, whose main foreign policy objective is to export its revolution. At its heart is the belief that the Mahdi, the messianic figure of Shia Islam, is returning imminently with Jesus to lead the faithful to victory in an epic war against the unbelievers, and that the Supreme Leader of Iran is a guardian sent to ready the world for the Mahdi’s rule.

The second of these entities is al Qaeda, which seeks to build a new caliphate and make it the supreme world power after bankrupting the United States.

By the 2000s, these entities had grown strong enough in their financial, military and human resources to be major game players in the internal affairs of Muslim countries. And that’s exactly what happened in Iraq.

Their proxies fought under the banner of anti-Americanism, but they would have been there even if America hadn’t. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, al Qaeda’s proxy, was in Iraq before the Americans got there, building links between his Jordanian group, Jama’at al Tawhid wal Jihad, and anti-Saddam rebels in the northeast. The Shia cleric Muqtada al Sadr, whose militias received training and weapons from Iran, is the son of the most prominent anti-Saddam Shia leader of the 1990s. And even if these specific two did not enter the post-Saddam void, al Qaeda and Iran would have found other proxies, because controlling Iraq is a vital necessity for both.

Iraq was the first country Osama bin Laden sought to gain after forming al Qaeda. In 1990, he appealed to the Saudis to give him and his holy warriors, fresh from fighting the Russians in Afghanistan, a base from which to fight Saddam. The Saudis snubbed him for the US military instead. As for Iran, it has been boxed in since its revolution by a hostile Iraq, a country home to the holiest sites of pilgrimage in Shia Islam.

Most importantly, Iraq is the golden ticket that would allow both to stop fantasizing about a new Islamic empire and start building it. Iraq is an industrialised nation strategically located at the heart of the Islamic world. It offers a forward operating base to spread directly into Western Asia, the Levant, and the Arabian Peninsula, and more than enough oil to fund it all.

So what might have happened without America’s intervention? Saddam would have probably faced a rebellion; the conditions were ripe for it in 2003. Twelve years of UN sanctions had devastated the country, and while his people starved, Saddam built himself more palaces. There were rising defections within the regime, and a well organized and internationally funded opposition. If a rebellion didn’t kick off then, it certainly would have by the 2011 Arab Spring.

And we know what this would look like. In March 1991, the Iraqi people rose up against Saddam and took control of 14 of Iraq’s 18 provinces. Armed with helicopters and chemical weapons, Saddam crushed the uprising, displacing 10% of the population, draining the southern marshes and obliterating the centuries-old livelihood of the Marsh Arabs, and killing some 180,000 people in one month. As perspective, Iraq Body Count estimates that the civilian death toll in Iraq from the last ten years of fighting is 122,115.

But with a strong al Qaeda and Iran supporting Sunni and Shia proxies, rebellion would not be so easily crushed. Their involvement would turn this into a long protracted civil war, costing hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of lives.

Al Qaeda would have the advantage to come out on top. In search of an endgame, it is not unlikely that the Baathists and al Qaeda would form a united Sunni front against their common Shia enemy. Together they could defeat them and that would then pave the way for al Qaeda to get rid of Saddam and his family and turn Iraq into an emirate with Zarqawi in charge.

Then Sunni extremists in the Gulf, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria, Turkey, and Iran could escalate their jihads to overthrow those states, safe in the knowledge that from just over the border, they’d have a steady supply of soldiers, weapons, and money, as well as the backing of one of the most powerful militaries in the Middle East.

The West would get drawn into the conflict eventually, once it’s oil supply, Turkey, or Israel came under serious threat. Except in this case, they wouldn’t be fighting terrorists armed with just AK-47s, RPGs and IEDs; they’d be fighting suicidal jihadists armed with Iraqi tanks, scud missiles, aircraft, and possibly biological and chemical warheads.

So thank goodness that didn’t happen. Thank goodness the coalition forces managed to overthrow Saddam Hussein in just 20 days. Thank goodness the Americans and British won the battle of Fallujah, denying al Qaeda one of their most important Iraqi strongholds. Thank goodness Zarqawi is dead, courtesy of the US Air Force. Thank goodness the Americans, British and Iraqi government forces won the battle of Basra, leading Muqtada al Sadr to disband his militias, and adopt a peaceful cooperative strategy. Thank goodness that al Qaeda and the Sadrists are fringe movements in Iraq today, not the dominant powers. Thank goodness the dominant military force in the post-Saddam void fought to give democracy to the victims of totalitarianism, rather than to give them a new totalitarianism. Thank goodness that intervening in Iraq was no mistake.

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Theresa May and Drug Decriminalisation

March 20, 2013 by 1 Comment

By Derek Van de Ven

Theresa May, the Home Secretary has called for a study on the effects of drug decriminalization in Portugal and other countries. She rejected both the Home Affairs Select Committee recommendation for a Royal Commission to examine drug laws, and also advice from the UK Drug Policy Agency on relaxing current legislation. So, yet again, we don’t know how much Theresa May will change about British policy on drugs, but she is right to investigate the benefits of decriminalisation.

Drug decriminalization has been bouncing around British politics for a while. The Green Party fully supports treating substance abusers as patients not criminals, and the ambiguous Lib Dems fully support the idea of a royal commission. The Home Affairs Select Committee has been investigating decriminalisation for over a year, recognizing the good effects it has had, and that drugs and drug related issues in the UK are a big problem. They sent a team to Portugal, a country which decriminalised – not legalised – all substances in 2001.

In Portugal, the cultivation, selling and trafficking of drugs is still a criminal offense. The possession of an amount of drugs equal to enough to satisfy ten days usage, with authorization, is not followed by prosecution. The individual in question agrees to speak to a “dissuasion commission.” The commission is made up of an attorney, a psychiatrist and a social worker, who will establish if the person is an addict or recreational user, and give the user a choice of treatment, and if not, a fine or community service is given. If they go through the extensive treatment process and come out clean, nothing goes on their criminal record. The committee can impose sanctions on the individual, such as a travel ban or the withdrawal of a license for professional purposes. The process of reintegration and rehabilitation is fully supported by Portugal’s Health and Interior ministries, who provide funding, personnel and even benefits for individuals needing employment or housing. There are free consultation and detoxification centres all around the country, addicts can ask to be given substitution substances, and dirty needles can be traded in for clean ones.

State intervention with drugs has risen dramatically since the laws were introduced – only this time it is designed to stop people using drugs and mitigate the risks users pose to themselves and others. The idea is not to stop drug use altogether, but minimize negative consequences. Dealers and traffickers, those who are involved in the wider organized crime around drugs, are the ones treated as criminals.

The new laws have turned around a worsening STD crisis in Portugal, and also considerably decreased drug use rates. The number of addicts has halved, and deaths from overdoses have vastly decreased.  HIV infection among substance abusers had dropped 30% – showing that the main aim of the legislation, to combat HIV, has been successful. The number of people in treatment for addiction has increased by a third, due to the decreased stigma around drugs more people are seeking help. Also, the amount of deaths from overdoses has dropped from 400 to 290 annually. The justice system workload has vastly decreased, as crimes relating to drugs have dropped from 14,000 a year in 2000 to 5,000 in 2009. Those who get out of hand are offered free and unlimited help from the state, and more and more people are getting out of drugs and not catching diseases transferred using drugs.

Portugal’s main aims have been achieved, and it’s obvious that the UK can benefit from lessons learned from Lisbon. Cities like Glasgow struggle with a homelessness and crime problem largely linked to drugs, among other things. Cocaine use in the UK is one of the highest in the world. The stigma relating to drugs is another big thing that has been targeted in Portugal and something that needs to be tackled in the UK. It’s very hard to get a job if an employer knows you have an addiction problem. We need to accept that people are always going to take drugs, and that is not necessarily a moral problem. People need to know how to do it safely and not endanger others around them. If they seek help for their problem, it should be freely available, and it should not affect other areas of their lives. The Portuguese system ensures people who want help, seek it, and its results show that it’s getting people out of addiction. The Home Affairs Select Committee and other specialist groups are clearly in favour of learning about other systems and adopting the successful measures. It’s time the Home Secretary put aside outdated views and did what is in the national interest

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