Peers defeat Government on legal highs blanket-ban

The Government has been defeated in the House of Lords over plans to introduce a blanket ban on so-called legal highs.

Peers voted by 178 to 139, majority 39, in favour of making it an aggravating offence to supply new psychoactive substances (NSPs) in prisons.

Labour and the Liberal Democrats combined to inflict a fifth defeat in two days on the Government in the Lords.

Under the Psychoactive Substances Bill, sellers of ”hippy crack” – also known as nitrous oxide or laughing gas – and other legal highs will face up to seven years in prison.

Shadow Home Office minister Lord Rosser said: “There is a market in drugs in at least some prisons. It can lead as well to incidents of bullying, harassment and debt.

“The taking of psychoactive substances can undermine safety in our prisons – it may exacerbate unpredictable behaviour and the threat of violence and in certain incidents increase the risk of suicide and self-harm.”

He said supplying drugs to prisoners was the “height of irresponsibility, callousness and indifference to vulnerable people as well as the height of greed”

Home Office minister Lord Bates said that policing and crime minister Mike Penning would write to the Sentencing Council for England and Wales telling them to take into account the views of peers.

He said there was no dispute that supplying drugs to prisoners or in the vicinity of places where vulnerable children lived – the subject of an amendment by Lib Dem backbencher Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope – should be an aggravating feature, merely whether it should be “statutory”.

Lord Bates said the Government was taking “very robust action” on the issue.

The legislation, which follows a similar move in Ireland, introduces a blanket ban on the production, distribution, sale and supply of legal highs after they were linked to scores of deaths.

More than 500 new drugs have been banned by the Government but the current system is seen as laborious as substances have to be assessed individually before they can be outlawed and manufacturers often produce new versions almost immediately after a previous form has been prohibited.

Earlier during report stage debate, peers were warned that priests swinging incense could be criminalised under the new laws.

Labour peer Lord Howarth of Newport warned the new powers were so wide, they could even catch florists selling highly perfumed flowers.

The former minister called for the Government to change the legislation so it is more targeted at dangerous drugs.

His warning came after the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) said the Psychoactive Substances Bill was so widely drafted it could include substances that are “benign or even helpful”, including some “evidence-based herbal remedies”.

In a letter to Home Secretary Theresa May, the ACMD said a blanket ban could even damage the ability of scientists to carry out research on psychoactive substances.

Lord Howarth said: “We really do not want to criminalise priests. The more vigorously the priest swings censer, the more incense is let loose into the body of the church.

“We have to be very careful we don’t unintentionally criminalise either priests or florists, because of course flowers have psychoactive effects.”

Lord Bates said the Government was not ruling out the term “synthetic” but did not want to create new loopholes, which could be exploited by the producers of legal highs.

He said the definition had been deliberately drawn widely to ensure a blanket ban in a fast-changing market.

Peers later finished report stage debate on the Bill.

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