Home Affairs Committee
Oral evidence: The impact of serious and organised crime on local neighbourhoods, HC 36
Wednesday 1 July 2026
Ordered by the House of Commons to be published on 1 July 2026.
Watch the meeting
Members present: Dame Karen Bradley (Chair); Lewis Atkinson; Robbie Moore; Chris Murray; Dr Peter Prinsley; Bell Ribeiro-Addy; Jo White.
Questions 93 - 142
Witnesses
I: Deputy Chief Constable Paul Court, Deputy Lead for Drugs, National Police Chiefs’ Council; David Sidwick, Police and Crime Commissioner for Dorset; and Dr Rob Hornsby, Associate Professor in the School of Criminology, Investigation and Policing, Leeds Trinity University.
Witnesses: Deputy Chief Constable Paul Court, David Sidwick and Dr Rob Hornsby.
Q93 Chair: I welcome our witnesses for this evidence session on the impact of serious and organised crime on local neighbourhoods. It has been a very interesting inquiry for us all because this is something that every single one of us can see in our own constituencies. I have learned an awful lot about some of the stores on my high street and what might be going on behind the door. It has been fascinating for us. I will ask the witnesses to introduce themselves and then we will go into questions. I will start with you, Mr Court.
Deputy Chief Constable Court: My name is Paul Court. I am the Deputy Chief Constable of Sussex Police, and I am also the drugs lead for the National Police Chiefs’ Council. It is nice to meet you.
David Sidwick: Good morning. My name is David Sidwick. I am the Police and Crime Commissioner for Dorset. I am also the co-chair of the addiction and substance misuse portfolio for all the PCCs. I have 30 years’ experience in the pharmaceutical industry, which might be useful.
Dr Hornsby: Good morning. I am Rob Hornsby, Associate Professor of Criminology at Leeds Trinity University. My research interests are in organised crime.
Chair: Thank you very much. We have had sessions where we have looked at counterfeit goods and at what is going on in high streets. Your expertise is about the link of drugs to this criminality, so that is what our questions will be focused on. We will start with Robbie Moore.
Q94 Robbie Moore: Good morning. It is good to see you all. This applies to you all but, Paul, we will start with you. Could you outline the scale and size of the illegal drugs trade as you see it and the crimes linked to it in the UK?
Deputy Chief Constable Court: Thank you. I will start off with the size, which is estimated to be about a £9 billion market. I will start answering the question by asking, “What does the demand look like for certain drugs?” We have seen a change in that. We have seen an increase in the use of cocaine and significant increases in the use of ketamine, particularly among young people aged 16 to 24, but also younger; there has been about an 85% increase in that. We have seen a slight decrease in the use of heroin and crack cocaine; similarly, there are reductions in the use of amphetamine and methamphetamine.
What does that actually look like in changing crime trends or how that is playing out? To start with the county lines, As you know, that that is the primary means by which drugs are being dealt. There are probably around about 6,500 county lines across the country. The Committee may have seen the data on the impact we have had on that—the reductions in the county lines through the targeting of those over the last few years with very specific operations. We have also seen a shift in the external and internal county lines, external being defined as crossing the county boundaries, internal being within a single county. We are starting to see fewer external and more internal. They are starting to balance out at about 50% each.
Chair: We have some specific questions on county lines later on.
Deputy Chief Constable Court: Have you? Okay.
Chair: It is okay, it is really helpful, but just so that you know we will be interrogating a bit more on that.
Deputy Chief Constable Court: Excellent. We are seeing that as the prime form. We are starting to see that change in the internal and external. Reducing some of the reliance on county lines, there is the online marketplace for drugs, which brings its own challenges. There is a shift in what that supply looks like as well as a shift in the types of drugs that are being consumed. We see the impact and the link between exploitation and violence. The primary driver of that is the drugs markets, which play out in our local neighbourhood communities.
Q95 Robbie Moore: Can you outline how drugs offending has changed over, say, the last five years?
Deputy Chief Constable Court: Some things have stayed the same. We see acquisitive crime being driven by users of heroin and crack cocaine, so the things that are driving acquisitive crime remain the same. Where we see the change is in the online space and the accessibility of drugs through that and how that can bring in different people, offenders and users. I suppose that is where we have seen the biggest shift over the last five years, and probably the internal county lines issues.
Q96 Robbie Moore: Would anyone like to add their comments on that theme? David, is there anything Dorset-specific?
David Sidwick: Yes. We have briefly talked about county lines, but we have to realise that we are talking about businesses, collective endeavours to drive income, and that is it; they do not mind how they do it. It is not just about the drugs, it is about the way it manifests on the streets of Dorset as well. We have drug offences, and typically in our patch it involves cocaine and cannabis, although we have seen the increase in ketamine as well, which we are very worried about. It also includes the trade and supply of illegal cigarettes, and the enabling functions, the money laundering. This is linked to retail and licensed premises. We have the exploitation of vulnerable individuals, not just the kids through county lines but other vulnerable individuals through cuckooing, taking over their houses, although that is a little bit less. We have the organised acquisitive crime, which includes residential burglaries, shoplifting and theft of motor vehicles.
We have other facets that are unique to a rural environment, because the same serious organised crime groups that are involved in drugs will also be trying to nick tractors and the like—the acquisitive theft of large machinery. That is serious organised crime groups talking to other serious organised crime groups. Their hobby and part of their income streams is things like hare coursing, which is all around gambling. There are many manifestations of serious organised crime, of which drugs is the most obvious and most significant. Of the 15 serious organised crime groups we believe are operating in Dorset, 11 are focused on the drugs trade. I hope that is useful.
Q97 Robbie Moore: Yes, absolutely. To drill down on the drugs strategy—and maybe this comes back to you again, Mr Court—how do you feel this has influenced the policing of drugs at the local level? Do you feel that the drugs strategy is fit for purpose, based on what you have outlined of the relationship with serious organised crime as it sits across things other than drugs?
Deputy Chief Constable Court: The drugs strategy is focused on attacking the supply chains, rehabilitation and ultimately causing that shift, the generational shift. That is what it is looking at.
On how that is received in my own force, and in forces around the country, we have a strong offering with our regional organised crime work and links to the NCA. If you go from the national-international with the NCA, regional organised crime, looking at the cross-border and then local disruption within neighbourhood teams, it is strong in attacking those. Of course, each of those levels attacks a different element of that chain.
There are two things that are important with the strategy. The first is the funding that comes with it, and I think you have probably heard from other witnesses that the short-term funding, year on year, is unhelpful in a 10-year strategy. The ability to plan and be certain of resources is important. The other thing that is important is the buy-in from partnerships, because law enforcement brings a certain set of tools to the party. What we need is continued buy-in, and we have it through the combating drug partnerships across the country.
Is the strategy effective? I think so. It is focused in the right place. It is focused on harm and prevention. It is also focused on the high-harm offenders, which is where we should be putting our finite resource. In essence, yes, but funding and partnership buy-in are important.
Q98 Robbie Moore: Are there any other comments from anyone else on those themes?
David Sidwick: How long have you got?
Robbie Moore: We are going to drill into all the points on county lines and partnership funding and partnership arrangements.
David Sidwick: Can I say something about the drugs strategy? As the portfolio, we input to the From Harm to Hope strategy in the first place. That is absolutely spot on. You need enforcement and treatment and, above all, you have to try to cut the demand, so you need impactful prevention. The politest way of putting it is that the drugs strategy has been on the backburner for two years. It is only in the last couple of months that we have been howling that you have to commit to From Harm to Hope. From Harm to Hope is right. There will never be a better review than the one Dame Carol Black did. That looks at it as a business and that is how you have to look at it. It had the three things that you need. The problem is in the implementation. As I say, the implementation has not been strong enough over the last two years.
The other point is that when it comes to enforcement, it is all about class A drugs and violence. When I talk to our regional organised crime unit, they are looking at which serious organised crime group does the most violence, not who is putting the most drugs on the streets. There is a difference when you look at the harm that comes from drugs.
The second piece, and this is the most vital in my view, is that no funding has come down to local areas to do the prevention, to talk to the kids, to stop them getting into it in the first place. Everything that is happening in Dorset, the four or five things that are occurring, is down to, dare I say it, me driving it through what we have locally. We need to do that because we are focusing on the end game. We are focusing on heroin and crack cocaine in enforcement with class A and treatment, but we are not addressing the majority of cannabis and ketamine, the illegal gateway drugs at the top end, which is driving the market eventually. If we do not do anything, we will be sitting here in 20 years talking about the same things. The strategy is right. The implementation is failing at the moment and it needs to be gripped.
Dr Hornsby: I will come in on the size and the scale and give you some figures from the crime survey for England and Wales. It is estimated that 8.7% of people aged 16 to 59 years, approximately 2.9 million people in the UK, purchased illegal drugs last year; 15.1% of people aged 16 to 24 years, approximately 900,000 people, purchased illegal drugs last year. That is any drug in the past 12 months. I may be wrong with this, but my estimation is that one in 11 of the adult population in the UK is consuming illicit drugs at least once annually. That is the scale of the problem.
Q99 Dr Prinsley: Can I ask a health question related to that? Is there an estimation of the number of fatalities associated with drugs?
Dr Hornsby: I don’t have them with me. There are, and there are significant concerns that the fatalities have increased in the last year. I do not have the exact figures, but I am willing to supply them.
Chair: It was coming down for a long time, but it has started to go back up.
Dr Hornsby: Yes. There has been a bit of a spike recently.
Q100 Dr Prinsley: As an absolute marker of the scale of the problem, the measurement of the number of deaths is a pretty good endpoint.
David Sidwick: If you look at the graph, it is going up and has been going up across the UK for drug deaths.
Lewis Atkinson: It is 5,500, which is a record level, and the strategy said it would come down.
Q101 Chair: The issue is that you have quite a cohort of older people who have been using drugs for a very long time and now have multiple health conditions connected to the excessive use of drugs. We can all think of the people we are talking about. The instant ecstasy disagrees with you deaths are rare. It is mainly those older users who have used it for many years.
David Sidwick: Absolutely spot on. With ketamine, for example, which is not something you think of as killing people, we have had 244 deaths since 2013.
Q102 Chair: Ketamine is a real concern. We went to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime in Vienna last year. Ketamine is the thing they are most concerned about in the UK, or not the most concerned but it is our predominant issue.
David Sidwick: I marketed it for 10 years. That was my drug. It should never be used for anything apart from—it is a very poor anaesthetic even—horses and as a battlefield anaesthetic, which came to the fore in Vietnam. It should not in any way be used in the way that the kids are using it because of what it does to the bladder and the urinary system. I was told that there is a whole ward in Essex that is dedicated to this. I spoke to my local NHS trust and they were concerned about their surgical budget. We now have NHS clinics specifically for ketamine. Five years ago I told the Home Office, “You have to get a grip on illegal gateway drugs, ketamine and cannabis.” Yes, absolutely.
Q103 Lewis Atkinson: I have a couple of questions, but on the demand piece first of all, Mr Court, I think you outlined the shift in demand in substance use over time. Is there any evidence that that shift in demand is influenced by the legal regime? I particularly ask about ketamine, given that the Home Office decision on the classification of ketamine is pending, following the ACMD’s recommendation.
Deputy Chief Constable Court: Sorry, I just missed it. What regime did you say?
Lewis Atkinson: On the classification regime and changes in demand, the idea that classifying something as class A is in itself a deterrent and that will affect demand for that drug.
David Sidwick: We had a similar scenario with nitrous oxide a couple of years ago, which was legal and actually went to illegal. My understanding is that the use of that has dropped, but the class A classification, that was put together to look at purely addiction and death. It was not put together to do something on chronic harm. That is the flaw in it. At the moment, as I said earlier, all the police resources are mainly focused on class A and the health resources are focused on class A; 86% of children in treatment are for cannabis, but everything is focused on class A.
Yes, I do think it is a deterrent. When the ACMD looked at it, it was conflicted. It is down to the Government to make the decision. The nitrous oxide decision—I would argue going from legal to illegal is a simpler decision—took 21 days. That was against the ACMD advice. We are now running at over 150 days and while we are dithering, kids’ bladders are being destroyed. I think that class A classification would make a difference. I know there is a graph circulating from the pro-drug lobby that says the opposite, but what they did not take into account was mobile phone usage, which has exponentially got to our kids. If you go on a mobile phone and look at an app called Telegram, it is literally Amazon for drugs.
It would make a difference. It would give pause and allow resources to be dedicated to it. That is why it would make a difference.
Chair: Dr Hornsby, did you want to come in?
Dr Hornsby: From observations, you only have to go into any public house in the UK to see the spread and the depth of cocaine use in the United Kingdom across all age groups. Guys and women in their 50s and 60s steadily trot back and forward to the toilets in pairs. Males go into cubicles together in pairs. I don’t think that is for intimate reasons or otherwise. I did not see that when I was growing up.
Chair: You see it at football matches, at any sporting event. In horse racing it is unbelievable.
Dr Hornsby: You see it everywhere. The use of cocaine is so widespread and it has been normalised in this country. It is normal on a Friday and Saturday night to knock a couple of lines up with your mates. The fact that it is class A drugs, I really do not think for those who are willing to enter into drug use it is a factor. It is similar to saying you start off on a half a shandy and then before you know it you are caning half a bottle of whisky at some point. People progress with their drug use.
The other point I need to stress is that not all people who take drugs end up being drug addicts. It is only a small minority, it really is. They are not the problematic users. It is a leisure pursuit. It is recreational.
Q104 Chair: But it is feeding the demand that is causing crime in other parts of the world.
David Sidwick: It has been allowed to become accepted, culturally to be normalised, and that is why it is happening. When was the last time any of you stood up on a platform and said, “The taking of illegal drugs is a bad thing”? I will tell you what happens. I have done that. The pro-drugs lobby in this country has tried to get me fired as a PCC twice. I have to be careful how I say this. Elements who disagree with my stance on cannabis have stalked my wife—I have had to get the police involved—and I have had a death threat. They have also tried to cancel members of the Royal College of Psychiatry—they actually said in the paper that they had abuse. If you take a stance that is not in keeping with saying that this thing is okay and it is all right and it is a lifestyle choice, they will come for you.
What we are not doing is making the case to our young people. We are not saying it to kids young enough. The youngest person in county lines in Dorset that I know of was eight and it has been six in other areas, yet we are doing nothing to talk to our young people at the moment. If you remember what I said about the classification, it is as much about making the resources go towards it as it is about the badge.
Q105 Chair: It is about the way the other agencies view it.
David Sidwick: Exactly.
Chair: And where the money goes, yes.
David Sidwick: Exactly.
Chair: Can we move on to police priorities with Jo White?
Jo White: Yes, this very much links into what we are talking about.
Chair: I was going to say it is absolutely linked to this.
Q106 Jo White: What prioritisation is given to crimes related to drugs compared with other crime types that the Government have asked the police to prioritise? What factors have influenced this prioritisation?
Deputy Chief Constable Court: It started when I gave evidence talking about the link between drugs and violence and exploitation, and ensuring that we are safeguarding and protecting those who are involved in the exploitation and that we have a proactive response to the violence.
What I don’t think we could do is immediately say, “The priority is drugs,” without realising the consequential crime that comes with it and the priority being there. The hotspot policing that is looking at carrying knives and violence is linked to the trade in drugs. I would be careful about wanting to almost split out the drugs and say that is the priority we need to deal with, because there are other things happening where we need to put resources.
On our prioritisation, as you would expect, policing has a comprehensive prioritisation process, whether that is at local level based on incidents, intelligence and the threats that are occurring in my own force in Sussex, for instance, or where we have cross-border issues, and then the ROCU will have a prioritisation process for where it puts its finite resource. The fact that the drugs trade is linked to so much of the crime means that it is intrinsically linked in our prioritisation processes, and I would not argue otherwise.
If I may pick up on some of the points that were made there, the point around linking the demand to the harm caused is an important one. It is a conversation that we don’t have enough that the market is causing the harm that we all see in our communities that we then have to prioritise. I do not necessarily think that is a narrative that we are speaking to enough to say, “Whereas you think you are taking cocaine innocently, let’s be really clear where the harm is then playing out in our communities. There is a direct link there, and I think it is easy for people to maybe make that break.
This links to our priorities as well to reducing harm. It comes to the discussion about deaths. We also have significant concern around the use of synthetic opioids and nitazenes. There is a significant amount of work ongoing there to monitor the deaths. There have been about 1,100 in three years, so about 400 a year. That is of significant concern to us. I think that the prioritisation speaks to this as well. It is about making sure that we do not let the issue of synthetic opioids get out of hand.
There is a slight delay in the reporting through toxicology and those numbers, so they will be a more conservative estimate of what is taking place. Again, I think that demonstrates that our priority and where we are looking at is where the harm is caused. We do a significant amount of work where we see the deaths related to synthetic opioids to try to ensure that we understand where that market is and we are able to target it to try to reduce the harm. Broadly, the processes are in place within policing at the three levels I have described.
My other concern, and maybe it links to the priorities, is that while I am unsure whether there is evidence that if you start taking cannabis that leads you to taking more stuff. When you start using cannabis or ketamine you are opening yourself up to crime groups. You are interacting with them and putting yourself in harm’s way. You will then come into debt and may be subject to violence. It is not necessarily always just about the progression from one substance to another. It is the fact that you are now getting drawn into that world and that causes me some concern as well.
David Sidwick: It is very easy not to prioritise drugs but to prioritise harm. That is the classic that we have from the Government’s missions. To hard-fork, there is a problem there if you do not tackle drugs. We did drug testing on arrest in Dorset. We did a pilot, and 65% to 70% of the men who came in for domestic violence had cocaine or heroin in their system. If we look at halving knife crime, we have the second lowest knife offences in the country. We have about six murders a year. About half of those are drug related. We are not hugely getting lots of violence, but when it happens and it is related to drugs, it is vicious.
My point is that on every police and crime plan in the country there should be drugs specifically and not just the enforcement of drugs. It should be the whole piece, and the treatment also. One of the things that we are poor at is the connection between police and treatment providers, particularly for young people on the illegal gateway drugs. More work needs to be done there. Some police forces do not prioritise drugs, they only prioritise the harm, and I think that is what Mr Court was referring to. We need to make certain we prioritise both.
Q107 Jo White: You are saying that police forces locally are making their own determination about whether it is a harm or whether they should focus on the business?
David Sidwick: I can only speak for Dorset, but I have made it very clear in the police and crime plan we have to cut crime and antisocial behaviour, but number three is to fight violence and high harm. The top of the list is addiction. Before I came into office I was told not to talk about drugs because it was political and I should not do it. Well, I am sorry, with the harm I am seeing on the streets of Dorset, I am going to do it. The second thing was we were just doing safe and well checks. Now we have operations to address county lines, community dealing, and we are working much better regionally together to take out the dealers. If you do not have that priority, you will not get that. You will get the sticking plaster on when the violence breaks out.
Q108 Jo White: If this Government are prioritising neighbourhood policing, how much do you think it is impacting on prioritisation?
David Sidwick: You have the wrong PCC here for that. I am the lowest funded force when it comes to the neighbourhood policing guarantee. I received 15 officers and that was it. It is because it is all done through the national funding formula. I am very grateful for those 15 and it will help, but we have actually managed to find more by homing in on the costs and shuffling people around. We have a very specific problem with seasonality. We have 20 million day visitors and have to police a seven-mile beach, which is always on the news because somebody decides they are having a scrap. That means we cannot do what we want to do about the drug dealers in the way we want to do it in the summer. Yes, thank you for the 15, but that’s the situation.
Q109 Chair: Specifically on that, do you have organised crime groups from other parts of the country travelling to Dorset in the summer? I know I have heard that about Devon and Cornwall, that there are gangs from Liverpool and places like that that travel and relocate for the summer months into Newquay or somewhere.
David Sidwick: Well, I can’t say they come on holiday, but our demand goes up in the summer. In the last two weeks we have had a murder in Dorset, which involved two rival drug gangs, and one of those definitely is from outside. We know that our county lines tend to come from either Liverpool into the west of the county or London into Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole. We are very grateful for the support we have had from the Met with Operation Orochi to try to sort that out. Yes, you are absolutely right. My problem is that I am not paid to police criminals who turn up in Bournemouth in the summer.
Deputy Chief Constable Court: If I may come back on to the prioritisation discussion and where that sits, all forces have a drugs market plan so they understand what the drugs market looks like locally and that informs activity. They also have very good mechanisms for OCG mapping and we know that the majority of OCGs are involved in drugs. I think that our strategic planning, which then leads into the operational activity, is good.
To pick up on a point that David made about domestic abuse and the drug test on arrest, what we are seeking to do in the NPCC drugs strategy, which significantly mirrors what is happening in From Harm to Hope, is look at how that strategy complements other areas. How does our approach to drugs assist in tackling violence against women and girls, and what activity can we do? Drugs is a portfolio that can be cross-cutting in lots of different crime types for which other areas are trying to make progress. We are trying to ask now how we help the mission to reduce violence against women and girls through the drugs strategy and how that complements that work. We are looking across to say this is where it can add value rather than focusing solely on the drugs. It is pushing those priorities.
Q110 Jo White: How it interrelates with everything else, yes. My sense is that for organised crime on the high street shops, there has to be a link between the drugs and the drug dealing has been the front for that. In my area, I have not seen that link with the policing. That correlation does not seem to be working at the moment. Is that different for you or how do you perceive that?
Deputy Chief Constable Court: Are we speaking here about the shops on the high streets and their involvement in it?
Jo White: Yes.
Deputy Chief Constable Court: There have been significant operations and planning done on those across the country, as you have seen in the last couple of months. Our activity is intelligence led and our ability to go in and find the evidence will be based on the intelligence we have, where those shops are involved in a multitude of criminality not solely related to drugs, money laundering and so on. I n many ways you may be going in for money laundering and then discover other things there. These things are not in nice boxes where people are only involved in one criminality. They are cutting through.
That leads to a discussion around the demand that those investigations lead to and the evidence you can extract from your activity in those shops to be able to prove drug dealing, for instance, if you are going in on the back of thinking it is money laundering or trading standards. There are demands in the investigation and our forensics around drugs. There are demands and costs associated with that. There are significant demands particularly around digital forensics, bearing in mind that is probably where we will get the majority of our evidence. There are challenges in the investigation, the demands and the costs that come with it that allow us to prove some of the drug offences that might be taking place in those shops if we have not gone in on the back of that, if we have gone in on the back of trading standards, vapes, counterfeit goods or whatever.
Q111 Jo White: How effective are the current methodologies used by the police to tackle drug crime?
Chair: Dr Hornsby, we will come to you.
Dr Hornsby: As an academic, I do not have the insight of my colleagues here. Traditionally, and in this contemporary time, academics trying to engage with police forces in the UK is very difficult. We do not get the insights. Objective research is very difficult—to get insights to how policing operates. It is often funded by the Home Office, which clearly has an agenda if academics are invited to come on board. My insight of the policing view of the world certainly is not as exemplary as the colleagues sitting next to me. I come from the other side. My research is often on the supply side with those who have been engaged in supplying the drugs, who are often, for some reason, easier to access than police forces, which is interesting from my perspective anyway.
David Sidwick: You are asking about efficacy. I think that is really hard for any of us to give you a profound number and say we have reduced the amount of drug dealing by x percent. I can give you two points of reference. One is drug offences. Drug offences is a measure of activity; it is not a measure of how much is going on. None of us knows how much is going on because we do not have good prevalence data in the market profiles that Paul was referring to. We have what is enforced and what is treated. We do not have what is being sold to the kids at the start, and we are trying to do something about that in Dorset.
The second point I will make, though, is of those drug offences, we have a positive outcome rate of 80%, so we know that we are getting the right people with the right stuff. On a more macro level, since we have been doing Operation Scorpion—we are on our 15th iteration where the five forces come together—we know the way that the serious organised crime groups in the south-west have changed their operations. Originally, it was very much coming down on the trains, in cars, the classic county lines modus operandi. We put what we termed a ring of steel in Operation Scorpion each time.
Now we know they are doing a far more localised thing. They are getting the stuff however they get it and then the kids are operating within the south-west and the county. They have changed the way they operate. They have also changed the way they operate in that we now have this thing called fast parcels, which I don’t know if anybody has spoken to you about at all. Fast parcels is where basically people are ordering online and their drugs are delivered through the postal system to their door.
Q112 Chair: Is that through the Royal Mail?
David Sidwick: Yes. The NCA, the ROCUs and the police forces have all been working together to address that. That is what I am saying. If we do not get this prevention piece right now, we really are in trouble going forward.
Dr Hornsby: Yes, the market has changed and more and more people, often through word of mouth locally, are now purchasing their drugs online and they will be delivered by the Royal Mail generally. It is trouble free. As society changes, so in lagging fashion does its types of crime. That is a quote. You know about the increase of online shopping. Why wouldn’t crime follow suit? It mirrors the legitimate economy. Organised crime mirrors the legitimate economy. It is not an underworld, forget about that. That finished in about 1982.
Q113 Dr Prinsley: If you could change the rules, how would you stop the postal service delivering drugs to people’s front door?
Dr Hornsby: How would you stop individuals shopping online, purchasing their shopping online? You cannot.
Dr Prinsley: You must be able to do something about this.
David Sidwick: They are doing something about it. Do you know more about this, Paul?
Deputy Chief Constable Court: Yes. Fast parcels is an issue. They are predominantly deliveries internationally, so USA, Thailand is where they are coming from. It is an issue. We are working with the Royal Mail, the NCA and our regional organised crime units locally to start gripping it and enforcing against it.
Q114 Chair: Presumably, these are small amounts. We are not having tonnes and tonnes of cocaine being posted in; we are talking about a small amount?
Deputy Chief Constable Court: The import is predominantly cannabis, but the volumes are—
Chair: Would you not smell that?
Deputy Chief Constable Court: The volumes are significant. A significant amount of the demand of cannabis into the UK is being supplied through the fast parcel means. There is work under way in this area as we speak.
On measures of success or how effective the methodologies are, I suppose—and I am not being smart in saying this—it is what we define as the measure of success. If it is reducing drug consumption, our waste water analysis and all the other means would tell us that that is not the case. If it is some of the violence that we see, we might say that that is not the case. We have to be clear on what we actually are defining that the endgame is as the measure of success, and then it is for others to judge how close we are getting to that.
How effective are we? Well, we have good system leadership at the top across law enforcement agencies. We have good intelligence flow structures up and down and access to the capabilities that we require. We invest in technologies to be able to deal with it. The work we are doing, as always, seeks to suppress and disrupt it because we are never going to get to the point, if we are honest, where there is an end date, where you go, “No one is using drugs today”.
David Sidwick: That is not going to happen.
Deputy Chief Constable Court: It is not, so this is about the highest harm disruptions. There is a very good IT system nationally, which all forces contribute to, that looks at the effectiveness of the disruption. This is not about activity. It is about what the outcome of that is and that is what we are measuring nationally. We do track it but the question goes back to what our measure of success is.
Dr Hornsby: The gain in use, to go back to Jo White’s earlier question, going from the ONS statistics, there was no statistically significant change last year in drug use. That means that the supplies are getting through, despite over 2,500 county lines being closed down. The drugs are still getting out there, despite the successes of the police in closing down over 2,500 county lines.
Chair: I promised we would get on to county lines and Bell Ribeiro-Addy has specific questions on that. Jo, had you finished?
Q115 Jo White: Yes. The only question I have—and you might answer it as you go on—is what work is being undertaken to anticipate how drug crime is likely to change over the next five years?
Chair: Is there also any difference between rural and urban environments? I suspect these are questions that we will get the answers to as we probe you on other things.
Jo White: Yes, the county lines one might pick it up.
David Sidwick: If I could just finish, we have had 44 interceptions of fast parcels in the last quarter. That is £500,000 worth of drugs taken off the streets. My definition of success is if we are stopping people from harming themselves with these drugs, we are winning. We have to be clear. There is such guff spoken about the war on drugs being lost. The war on drugs will be infinite because even if you legalised everything, they make synthetic copies and flog to a bigger market, which is exactly what is going on in the areas where legalisation has occurred. Let’s be clear. We win when we stop a drug dealer. We win when we get somebody into effective treatment. Where we are not winning is we are not stopping our kids thinking about this stuff in the first place. That is the battle we need to fight.
Q116 Bell Ribeiro-Addy: Thank you, panel. Following on from that, I want to ask in particular, with the changes you mentioned to how things are being sent, of the drugs that have been stopped via post, is that because of the technology they use at the airport or when things are being scanned and tested for? Is that what is being used via post?
Dr Hornsby: I have seen the Border Force at work at Coventry in a different project, looking at the smuggling of tobacco and cigarettes by organised crime groups. Unless it has changed, they have hotspots where they know drugs and certain illicit goods are coming from, so they target those areas. I was told at the time that sniffer dogs do not work because of the vastness of the hangars, the air postal hubs.
Chair: They can’t pick it up. There are just too many parcels.
Dr Hornsby: There is too much going on, there are too many smells going on, and the dogs get confused, I was informed.
Chair: That seems odd when you see them being used at airports and things like that.
Dr Hornsby: They can target a specific individual usually and run along. There is a massive conveyor belt that goes through, a huge number of conveyor belts, up high coming in and then gradually working their way down in a system to different areas where there will be Border Force agents scanning through, looking through goods, and Post Office workers also examining the goods that are going through. It has to be Post Office workers who open the goods, of course; no one else is entitled to do it. They have to give the authority for the goods to be opened.
David Sidwick: I think we are possibly confusing the innovation of these businesses. They know that a dog could be the way it will be addressed and they will do everything to mask the smells. I am pretty certain Border Force still uses dogs, unless things have changed. I know when we have used dogs we can train police dogs to look at SIM cards, cash, as well as drugs. You can train a dog to look for all sorts of different things. They are still a great tool. There are lots of ways that you could continue to look for it, but the thing that you need most is intelligence. That goes for every stage, local, regional and national, to stop them bringing it in.
Deputy Chief Constable Court: It is probably for Border Force to speak more broadly on its technologies and I am very conscious not to share some sensitive information. I know that the Committee was interested in the data sharing. There are means by which we will be able to identify whatever that is, what these packages are or who is involved. The key thing is that our mail infrastructure is able to share that data effectively with us and we are able to action it. We are seeing positive work going on at the moment in that respect, where we are working closely with the Royal Mail and others from a preventative point of view, and there has been some significant work done with other partners in this arena, and going forward certainly with those. I think we have the intelligence that we need and we have access to that information with good partnership working, and from that will flow operational activity.
Q117 Bell Ribeiro-Addy: I want to find out a bit more about how the county lines operation has changed over the last five years. I know you began touching on that already. In particular, have there been any changes in trends about where the young people are being caught up, whether from a particular area or average age?
Dr Hornsby: County lines are heavily concentrated, we should not be surprised. You only have to look at the indices of deprivation to find out where the concentrations are. As with any public health significant concern, you know the concentration, and these two things are connected. The socioeconomic standing of an area will be connected often into the level of problematic drug use. The two go hand in hand. That is a different argument, but the two are connected. We find it in the poorer areas. You will have more levels of addiction and more demand for drugs, and county lines fulfils that function. It gets the goods to market, and it is a marketplace and a business.
Going back to the types, often these are young people who are vulnerable. If we were to do some research on adverse childhood experiences, I am sure there would be a correlation, as there often is. Not all young people are exploited who go into county lines, depending on your use of the term. It is the chance of making £300 a week and not having to work in McDonald’s. Many of them do get paid for their function. Not all of them are paying off drug debts or loss of goods or loss of money, being turned over and robbed by other dealers. It is not that simple. It is a mixed bag of young people who simply by their age are vulnerable, of course, but some young people are more than willing to enter into that game. They see it as a quick way to make money and a simple way to make money, as long as they avoid the police and other organised crime groups, if that is what we are calling them, who venture out into their territory.
David Sidwick: There is an element that I totally agree with Rob on, the area of deprivation. There is evidence of deprivation in county lines, but it is dangerous to just say, “Oh, that is the answer.” When I first got to Dorset, I was told there were no county lines outside of Bournemouth and Weymouth, our two biggest conurbations. I said, “I don’t believe that absolute twaddle.” We have county lines and drug dealers operating in our market towns as well and in some cases the villages. A warrant that happened in the last month was in one of the smaller market towns, taking out not just drugs but weapons. It is wrong to say it is just areas of deprivation.
It is also wrong to make the assumption that it is only kids from very poor backgrounds who get involved in it. I have a charity called Escapeline. It started in Somerset and I got it into Dorset, where it has done a lot of work. I would have them in here to this Committee. It has somebody called Rhys, who started off as an eight-year-old. He is very clear and I am afraid his reality is very different to what has been painted from the point of view that he did not do it for fun. He was lured into it and then exploited. You start off by being given trainers or scratch cards or you are just doing it because they are your friends and you do not have friends. Then you are part of the gang and then you are exploited because that is the business model. They want the kids to be under their control because then they can exploit them for other purposes. If you are a girl, that means other purposes. Rhys is very clear. He was earning less than 50p a day, but when it started off he was earning a lot more.
Let’s be clear what this is. This is using violence to get the kids to do what they want. You may notice I have a hairspray here. I am not vain. That was to remind me of a story told to me by a police officer in the first week about county lines. They had just picked up a kid, terrible background, deprivation, adverse childhood experiences. At 12 he is into cannabis, at 14 he is into heroin and coke, at 15 he is part of a county line. They find him using that to make himself more attractive so he can carry more. I will let the Committee decide how he is using it, but I will tell you it was not a small one. They will use dogs, guns, knives, acid and sheer brute force to keep the kids in line. It is the most horrible element of serious organised crime that is happening on our streets.
Dr Hornsby: I have a quick example from research that I have recently conducted from the supply side, from someone who owned—they were his—a number of county lines. On that recruitment side and the exploitation, a young kid is hanging around on the periphery of the group. The county line owner is recruiting for the county line, spots him, slowly edges him into the group, and then gives him tasks to do, “Run to the shop and get me a can of Coke and a packet of crisps.” He comes back and gives him the change and he gives him a couple of quid, and then it progresses.
Then the young kid is absorbed into the—I won’t say it is a gang, I will say a group. He says to him, “You like hanging about with this lot?” and he says, “Yeah, yeah, yeah.” He comes from the background that one would expect from a young person like that. He is out of school. He has been in the pupil referral unit. He is 14 years old and rarely going to school. Mum is bringing up four kids on her own in the rough end of town. He looks him up and down and he says, “Well, you need some trainers,” and he takes him down to JD Sports and he buys him a set of trainers for £200. The kid has never had a gift like that in his life. “And I’ll buy you a new top as well. Yeah, stick that on, that looks good on you.” Now you are in.
Two weeks later, he picks him up going to school, times it and picks him up in a Series 5 BMW, “Jump in, I’ll give you a lift.” He is going to the school for the pupil referral unit, and he says, “Can you do me a favour? Can I trust you?”, blah-blah-blah. “You keep hold of that for me and I’ll pick it up tomorrow afternoon. I have to go to Birmingham and I can’t carry that with me so you watch that for me. Don’t share it with anyone. Don’t dip into it. Don’t tell anyone, okay?” Picks him up the next day as he is coming out of the pupil referral unit, picks him up away from the school gates, further down the road, “Jump in.” Takes him to a secluded spot. “Have you got it?” “Yeah, I’ve got it.” Now he gets out his scales. “That is light. You’ve dipped into that. Now you’re going to have to work it off. Now you’re going to have to work off that £300.” It is as simple as that, crude, nasty. Even the guy himself said it is nasty. It is rotten, he said, but that is the business.
Q118 Bell Ribeiro-Addy: I want to ask about some of the policing strategies that have been put in place to combat this, so the impact, let’s say, of the disrupting county lines policing strategy and the intensification weeks and neighbourhood policing. How have those had an impact, or have they had an impact?
Deputy Chief Constable Court: I will just do an introduction by talking about what the change may be over the next five years. We may see that the online marketplace ends up disrupting some elements of how county lines operate and the drugs that county lines are dealing with will start to narrow. The online marketplace will disrupt it to some degree and we may start to see changes in how they operate.
I was with a sergeant yesterday who was describing how the violence associated with county lines is now being published online for effect. There is an intimidation aspect, a fear that comes with that. I can see how the online space is not going to just be used to deal the drugs but as a way of enforcing the debts and threats that come with it. Certainly, that sergeant would describe that to you. I think that the risk of county lines will cause the controllers of those lines to be further away and at distance, and there are real examples. Again, the sergeant yesterday describes the controllers being abroad, which of course makes the control of the line more difficult to bring to justice.
What I don’t think will change is the vulnerability and the reliance on vulnerable people, particularly young people, to allow that line to operate. I do not think that will change, but I do think the marketplace will be slightly disrupted. The drugs that are being dealt will be, and we may start to see more of the use of online as an intimidation and enforcement tactic.
On your question about the effectiveness, there is a co-ordination centre around county lines. We have the intensification weeks and the activity that is ongoing in neighbourhoods. I think the intensification weeks are useful, helpful, effective in so far as it keeps it on our radar. It keeps it at the front of our activity. We are building the packages to allow us to take enforcement action. Those intensification weeks are high impact, and it keeps it at the fore of our local neighbourhood policing activity.
However, outside the intensification weeks, the sergeant I spoke to yesterday working in Sussex is the drug harm lead for that neighbourhood and he is constantly doing activity related to county lines work and constantly trying to have effect. That is not always in the form of intelligence. That is in the form of using other means by which we can get through a door and using that opportunity then, as I mentioned with the shops, to start investigating and doing more. If he were sitting here, he would tell you that some of the greatest successes come through that rather than maybe the direct intelligence around county lines.
The intensification weeks are effective in keeping it at the forefront of what we do. They have impacts in neighbourhoods, particularly when you see the closure orders that follow. If you are looking for one of the most impactful activities police do on the back of county lines enforcement, it is the closure of properties that have been related to drug dealing and the antisocial behaviour and violence that comes with it. What does the community want? The community living in the area where this is happening and seeing it want it to stop. The closure orders are such an effective way of doing that. Again, the sergeant will say that the neighbours will shake your hand on a closure order, not necessarily on the arrest. It is that high-impact thing of making it stop in our community.
Dr Hornsby: A massive roll-out now has come from the Home Office on clear, hold, build, which is a strategy that has been deployed where the police go in and clear out from the intelligence they have received and analysed and reviewed about the dealers. They are kicking in doors and arresting people. They are trying to implement a strategy. Unfortunately, it has a militaristic sound to it because it was borrowed from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and we saw the outcomes from those. However, the objective is to go in heavy-handed with the police on intelligence, seize the dealers, clear them out of the area, and hold the area with high-profile local neighbourhood policing.
I am surprised that Shane Roberts, who is seconded to the Home Office, is doing a PhD at De Montfort University on the build element of clear, hold, build, because that is a problem. The intelligence and the doors is the easy bit, and the arrest is very much the easy bit. Then holding the community and holding back the insurgents again is not that difficult of a task with the right amount of policing involved. The problem is getting the community involved to build it back up without the threat of organised crime groups or individuals actively involved.
Chair: You are linking us neatly to the next set of questions on neighbourhood intelligence. I want to bring Peter Prinsley in because I know he has to leave relatively soon. He has some specific questions. Mr Sidwick, we will come back to you with the point you need to make there.
Q119 Dr Prinsley: I will ask one or two questions on neighbourhood intelligence, but I would like to ask a little bit about the linkage with the health departments. I am about to go and meet the president of the College of Psychiatrists, who wants to talk to me about this matter. Are we taking a sufficient public health attitude to the problems that we have been listening to with increasing horror? I may say that the two things that you have said that have horrified me the most are that there is an Amazon for drugs called Telegram, and that you can dial up on the internet and get somebody to send you drugs through the post. Those things horrify me. Could you tell me a little bit about what I should talk to the President of the College of Psychiatrists about?
David Sidwick: Yes, I would be delighted to. You could talk to him about the issues of medical cannabis. I will try to quickly explain. In the late 1990s, I was working to bring cannabis in as a prescription product. The animal data prevented me from going forward with a common condition. I was trying to make money for my drug company. A common condition is where you make the money—pain, anxiety, depression; a large number of people have it. If you have a drug that cause birth defects and cancer in the animal data, you cannot take that forward into regulatory studies.
The only regulatory studies that have been done for cannabis are in difficult-to-treat, life-threatening areas such as paediatric epilepsy, Dravet syndrome and tuberous sclerosis. Some work has been done to show that it helps with vomiting with chemotherapy and spasticity for multiple sclerosis, and that is it. Without any safety data or any efficacy data—and it has been shown in journals across the world that there is no efficacy in common conditions—we have a medical cannabis industry growing up, which is basically blurring the lines.
When you look into the fact that 15% to 20% of kids on cannabis wind up doing other things and it is clearly a gateway drug, even though the Home Office denies that, and when you also look at the fact that significant psychosis comes from this, he might talk to you about that. I would certainly talk to him about that because the psychiatrists are worried about it.
Dr Prinsley: I was in the United States of America on another parliamentary trip. On the streets of Manhattan, on the street corners shops are openly selling cannabis.
David Sidwick: You are absolutely right.
Chair: Toronto is the same.
David Sidwick: Yes, absolutely. I presented to the policing Minister two weeks ago the data on cannabis harm, which is not the mental health data. There is a whole textbook on this because you can look at places in the United States where it is been legalised and places where it has not been legalised, and look at the birth defects and the cancer and you will see the difference.
Q120 Dr Prinsley: I will move on to the neighbourhood intelligence questions that are on my brief. The question is about how we can apply all sorts of new technology to fighting this crime. I am particularly interested in thinking about how we might use the new technology to follow the money.
Deputy Chief Constable Court: I want to come in on the health one, cheekily, albeit I accept that the person you are speaking to is in the psychiatry world.
One thing we are interested in—and the evidence is bearing it out in some of the studies we have seen—is buprenorphine, which is a long-acting injectable to deal with opiate addiction. It takes up to about 12 months and reduces the need. A trial is running in Reading at the moment where retailers have come together in a partnership and funding is available. We are seeing a 53% reduction within the top 20 prolific offenders. This is about getting people off opiates. I recognise that the person you are speaking to might not be particularly expert in that area, but in our strategy we will be pushing using Buvidal treatment methods to reduce addiction and, therefore, reduce crime. Bear in mind that about 80% to 90% of acquisitive crime is being driven by addiction to opiates and so on.
Do you want to come in on that, David, before I move on to the neighbourhood intelligence?
David Sidwick: I do. Long-acting injectable buprenorphine is a game changer. At the moment, people get methadone every day. This thing you can take weekly or monthly. It gives them time to sort out the rest of the things they need to sort out. At the moment, we have Scotland and Wales using it, 20% and 40% respectively. England is using it in about 5% of the cases that it could. We are trying to push it hard. We have a similar pilot particularly for prolific shoplifters, to try to break the cycle of constantly going to prison, coming back out and carrying on doing it. Yes, absolutely.
Deputy Chief Constable Court: Also on that point, when people are released from prison with those addictions, that programme is there.
Q121 Dr Prinsley: That is encouraging. That is a good story. Tell me about the money and the tech.
Deputy Chief Constable Court: For the money and the tech, I mentioned before the challenges we have in digital forensics and the demand. Every investigation that we have in policing now has a digital footprint and the effort that you need to make to abstract that evidence and intelligence is significant.
As you all know, the TOEX programme is bringing together that intelligence and information, and there are programmes around our technology platforms within that nationally. Places locally are using technology as well to draw together the links and to be able to do the mapping from DANOS and so on. We see it in our own force when we have invested in the economic crime unit to chase the money. When we put resource there, we are able to get that back through POCA, which then becomes a self-funding mechanism.
The online space creates a digital footprint, which allows us to do more tracking. It provides us with the intelligence and the evidence, but it comes down to the size of the investigation that follows. We are talking here about local intelligence, which is ensuring some action, either an investigation or an enforcement, once that exists. Those processes exist in places and you will see it within your own constituencies where police are taking the fight to the front door. I am confident that the intelligence flow is there throughout the tiers that we have mentioned.
The use of technology is a continual fight. There is a continual diversification in how the technology is being used. We have spoken about some of the encrypted apps that are used. That makes it more challenging, not insurmountable but more challenging, more costly and more resource intensive. Every day there is a new way of utilising technology to ensure that the trade continues and we continue to take that fight. We also have, of course, cryptocurrency. The use of that for payments for drugs creates a challenge. Again, we are invested in following the money through that.
Q122 Dr Prinsley: We visited TOEX in Wymondham with this Committee about a month ago. It was impressive. It seemed to me that it needed to be a whole lot bigger. It was effective, but it is about bang for your buck. It seemed to me that spending money on that sort of intelligence was pretty effective.
David Sidwick: The APCC had a meeting with Ofcom recently. The reason for the meeting was we had the University of Bath come and talk to us about vapes in schools. We were clear that we wanted to try to do something about them being sold by TikTok. These are basically spice vapes. It has come to light that Ofcom will not take evidence that social media is driving drug use. You have to give it evidence of a specific drug on a specific platform and then that will allow it to take action. Do you see the problem? It means that somebody has to gather that evidence in the first place, not as a whole, which is blatantly obvious. You only have to go on Telegram yourself and you can see what is going on, but you have to have it specific for the platform and for the drug. Serious organised crime is getting away with murder because we are playing with our hands shackled the whole time.
Q123 Chair: What could you do to change that?
David Sidwick: I do not know. That is how Ofcom has been told it has to operate.
Q124 Chair: Under what, online safety?
David Sidwick: Yes, I believe that is the criterion. Maybe you want to ask Ofcom because we can’t get any further.
Dr Hornsby: Snapchat and Telegram are now advertising for runners on those apps.
Q125 Dr Prinsley: If we quickly move on to something about shops, we are all aware that there are high street shops that have a suspect purpose. All of us have them. Could you tell us a little bit about what a trading standards officer does if they suspect that drugs are being traded from a shop?
Dr Hornsby: They would speak to their partners. They would let the police know if they had a suspicion. Police forces and trading standards have quite good relationships, as far as I am aware. I am currently working with trading standards on a couple of projects.
Q126 Dr Prinsley: What do the police do?
Deputy Chief Constable Court: You will have seen joint operations between us and trading standards, for the reason I said about the crossover and the criminality that takes place. First, the operations are broadly joint. If they identify criminality on their own, they refer it to us through information sharing agreements that we have with our local trading standards. I am confident that the reporting mechanism between us works.
What do the police then do? It is context specific. If they are telling us they are at a scene and have recovered drugs at these shops, we will respond immediately and take action. If it is more retrospective reporting to us that it is taking place, that would form part of the intelligence picture for the warrants or any further activity.
Q127 Dr Prinsley: According to my brief, the High Street Organised Crime Unit is being put together.
David Sidwick: Yes.
Dr Prinsley: Would you expect that to work proactively or will it just respond to information received?
David Sidwick: Can I make one point about that? That has £30 million attached to it and it will work in London, west midlands and Manchester. It will not touch anywhere else. It is not that helpful to me in Dorset.
Q128 Dr Prinsley: A member of the general public might expect law enforcement to periodically inspect some of these shops to work out what they are doing, but it does not sound like that will be happening.
David Sidwick: Only if there is intelligence, and that is why it is so vital that we have community intelligence. Part of the problem is that some of these shops are cloaked as vape shops. Let’s be clear, I would rather that we had the New Zealand approach to vapes. It would make life a lot easier. That is that a vape is a drug and you get it from a pharmacy to help with your tobacco addiction. That is what they did in New Zealand. We have it basically as a high street store that sells this thing. That makes it difficult, unless we license them so that they have to have a licence like they do to sell booze and those licensing committees had teeth and used those teeth to take the licence away. That would be how to help clear up the high street of the vape shops.
Dr Prinsley: That sounds like a recommendation from a Committee like this. Thank you.
Chair: It does not deal with American candy and Turkish barber shops.
David Sidwick: It does not deal with American candy and it does not deal with Amsterdam sweets, but the clue is in the name, for God’s sake.
Dr Hornsby: The community knows long and well before the police know what is going on in neighbourhoods. That is why local community intelligence, which used to be a thing back in the prehistoric days with your local police officer, was an important form of gathering information—now called intelligence—and then feeding it upwards from the bottom. They know long before the police do who is doing what and who the dealers are in the local community.
Dr Prinsley: Look, thank you very much. I am sorry I need to go. It is so interesting and so lovely to meet you. Thank you for everything you are doing. I must go.
Chair: I will bring Lewis Atkinson in.
Q129 Lewis Atkinson: I will start on the policing side. We are in a situation where you have outlined that county lines and other elements of supply run across police forces and so on, and we know about regional organised crime units. How do neighbouring police forces work together at the moment where there are cross-border issues?
David Sidwick: In Dorset we have started this thing called Operation Scorpion with our five neighbours. The five PCCs came together and said they wanted to put drugs as a priority in the south-west. We have now done 15 iterations of that, and so we work closely together. We also work closely with the regional organised crime unit. That is part of what we do. That has allowed us to take out some mid-level dealers, most recently in Bournemouth. You can find online what they have done and so on.
To give you an idea, Operation Scorpion has run 15 iterations now. That is over 1,477 arrests. It has also over 1,300 people safeguarded and £4 million pounds worth of cash and drugs taken off the streets. We believe that is a key part of why they have had to change how they operate. We know they have changed the way they operate, and now we have to flex and try to address how they are doing it. They are now much more local, rather than bringing the stuff in. With phones, they look for what are called clean skins to have the phone for the county line. They rotate dealers and runners almost daily to make it harder. It has changed. We have close partnership working happening in the south-west. I cannot speak for other areas.
Dr Hornsby: One of the biggest issues that law enforcement in the UK has faced is intelligence sharing. That may have improved but from insights into police officers and the agencies involved, there tends to be a siloing of intelligence, which for a number of reasons different agencies, even within the same police force, are unwilling to share. It has been termed to me by some detectives as not giving up your crown jewels. They are the big ones for you and your unit or your department. It has been a long-running problem within law enforcement agencies to share intelligence.
Q130 Lewis Atkinson: I can see Mr Court wants to come in. I am particularly interested in the proposals in the police reform White Paper, which clearly look to regionalise forces. We do not know what will happen and we do not know the potential boundaries, but in the context of, say, five forces operating together within a region and sharing intelligence and a regional organised crime unit, what do you think, Mr Court?
Deputy Chief Constable Court: I am sure that David has a view on police reform as well. I will start with the cross-border operations. I have been fortunate in my career. I have worked in a number of forces and seen effective local operations between two forces. I worked for much of my career in Merseyside and I saw good operations between Merseyside and Lancashire on the border. I am in Sussex now and I see good operations. For instance, we have done one recently on rural crime between Kent and Sussex where we saw that. Operationally, the relationships are there cross-border between the neighbourhood inspectors, even if they are working within different force areas. We do see the operational activity.
I also have the benefit, as you may know, in Sussex that we have collaborated with Surrey. We can see the benefits from that in our shared IT. Maybe one challenge of police reform but a benefit I see is that we will all be operating off the same digital infrastructure. That is where we start to gain the benefits of information sharing because it is all accessible.
The neighbourhood-to-neighbourhood operation is successful. The ROCU set-up stood the test of time and works there. We have an assistant chief constable who works across the regional forces in my area and has the overall responsibility for the delivery of our SOC activity. We see the benefit of collaboration with forces within Surrey and Sussex. If we move on to police reform, clearly a national police service will bring together capabilities that can be best used.
The challenge—and it is not a showstopper—is retaining the localism and being clear on which functions or capabilities forces will have transferred either regionally or nationally, and the accessibility of those forces and accessing those capabilities when they need it. You may end up seeing a drawing of resources to the busiest area in a region. That is all to be worked through. I have not seen the plan and so I am commenting very theoretically on it.
Of course, the regionalisation they are bringing together with those capabilities will give you a more effective response. We will see that in the area we are talking about here with drugs and in the public order deployments, which we have seen over the summer. You can see where the benefits of that come. My responsibility is to deliver to the people of Sussex. Therefore, we have to make sure that there is localism, that the policing service still recognises the sensitivities of the communities it is operating in, and that that is considered in our policing approach and is not just a regional person coming in.
Lewis Atkinson: I understand. Clearly, this is not a session about police reform overall, but I wanted to ask the question in the context of drugs and organised crime in this element, given some of the cross-border issues that we have identified. If I can move on to—
David Sidwick: I would like to put my five penn’orth in.
Lewis Atkinson: I am sure you have a view, Mr Sidwick. Go on quickly, yes.
David Sidwick: My view is that the effect of this whole organisation of serious organised crime and drugs is felt locally. They operate regionally. Nationally, you have to have the constructs to try to stop it coming in, but if you basically move resource from the local to the regional or the national, you will lose this and you will lose it worse.
Reform will be a catastrophic disaster for local policing. I will give you one reason. I have spoken to Lord Bernard Hogan-Howe, who was waxing lyrical about the amalgamation in Scotland and the merger. I asked him a question. The people in Dorset want drug dealing, antisocial behaviour, shoplifting, rural crime, high-volume and low-harm crime dealt with. The question I asked him was how much crime and antisocial behaviour has gone down in Scotland since the merger. It worried me that he could not give me the answer, but he then told me that murders had gone down in the centre of Glasgow. It is not designed to do what it needs to do for the people, but it is designed to centralise for the Home Secretary.
Q131 Lewis Atkinson: We are not having a wider conversation about police reform. We recognise people will have strong views on it. I want to ask specifically about the drug-related element of it.
David Sidwick: Yes, but we have one specific issue. At the moment, a lot of money is being spent on police reform. At the same time, the British Transport Police’s County Lines Taskforce is being cut by 25%. At the same time, waste-water analysis, the key element that allows forces to understand what is going on in their patches, is being cut. That is being made up by an underspend from the NCA. Probably fundamentally they are cutting the money for the ROCUs, the very people who are addressing the mid-level dealers. At the same time as we are rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic, we are allowing serious organised crime to carry on unabated. That is terrible.
Chair: Dr Hornsby, you have 10 seconds.
Dr Hornsby: We do have some example of history on this. If we go back to the regional crime squads during the 1980s and 1990s, we set off with the regional and then transferred that into national crime squads. Then a few years later they realised that was not working and could not do the job it had been set up to do. They reverted back to the regional crime squads. They have now been disbanded, of course. We do have history, and so let’s look at history to see what can go wrong and why it goes wrong before we jump ahead and make such a fundamental change to policing in England and Wales. It needs to be taken very seriously.
Chair: I will bring this panel to an end and close at 11 o’clock, if that is all right with you. We have 10 more minutes.
Q132 Lewis Atkinson: On wider partnership issues, we mentioned earlier that the drug strategy outlined the need for local combating drugs partnerships to be in place. I am interested in your assessment of how effective those partnerships are at the moment.
David Sidwick: I am speaking for Dorset, but I am also speaking as the portfolio lead here. They have improved cross-partnership working. An element needs to be addressed because not every CDP has prevention as part of it, although From Harm to Hope did. About 30% do not. That area needs to be addressed.
Also, it would be good if some sort of duty was laid on local authorities to push hard on this because one of the problems that we have sometimes is money. I will give you an example. We see long-acting injectable buprenorphine as a gamechanger. We know that other parts of the country are using it more and more, but it is glacial because of money and also because it is new.
Q133 Lewis Atkinson: Can I speak particularly on that? You mentioned local authorities there. It struck me looking at the combating drugs partnerships that they have very different geographies. Some are at local authority level. For example, the London boroughs have borough-wide CDPs. However, mine is at force level and so will take in potentially six or seven different local authorities.
David Sidwick: I have a small one with two local authorities and we collaborate on the CDP. That works well. I don’t know what it is like when you have seven. I could not comment.
Q134 Lewis Atkinson: On the current Government emphasis, back to our role of scrutinising the Home Office, when the drug strategy was launched, I felt there was a real push from the Minister at the time on delivery and accountability of local CDPs up through the Home Office. What is your sense of that now?
David Sidwick: It was one of my early comments when we were talking about drug strategy. Basically, we have had two years adrift, if I am honest. The JCDU has not operated as grippingly as it did before. Part of the problem with that is either commit to From Harm to Hope and say that it is a good thing and carry on with it, or change it to something else. Don’t do what has happened. We used to have a drug tsar, Matthew Rycroft, who was very engaged. We have been trying to find out who the new person is and get engagement through the portfolio. Dame Carol Black, who should have carried on being the drug adviser, has only two years later been reappointed. It does not feel like drugs matter. Without gripping that, we will be sitting here in 20 years’ time.
We have written, but it is not just grumpy PCCs; it is also treatment providers. We did a joint letter together because we want to know what the drug policy is. I worry about regression to what we have done before when we were looking at enforcement around class A and treatment around class A. The bit that we have not gripped is the other bit, the bit that is driving more and more of our young people to start dabbling and then start doing stuff and falling into crisis.
Q135 Lewis Atkinson: Can I ask specifically about treatment and the partnership approach? As I understand it, basically, there is a police funding stream and then a separate public health grant to local authorities, which may or may not be aligned with the CDPs and is not at the level that Dame Carol Black initially was accepted by the Government at the time. How far does that help or hinder tackling the demand element, which is where we started? Ultimately, there is no organised crime without demand for what they are selling.
David Sidwick: It is not tackling the demand. It is tackling the demand and trying to reduce drug deaths for crack cocaine and heroin. Those are the primary drugs that it tries to fit. You will struggle if you try to find treatment for ketamine for your kid.
Q136 Lewis Atkinson: I have heard that, but even where it is focused on treatment, how far does the funding model of police and public health grants being separate help or hinder the joint, good, effective partnership working? Also, I will throw in a little bit around the use of diversion schemes because I know some forces—Durham, West Midlands and others—have used more of a diversion scheme approach, which absolutely requires alignment of treatment provision and policing resource.
David Sidwick: Yes, those diversion schemes have some merit now that we have the data around them. Before there was still some scepticism. They have not been adopted by all forces.
Deputy Chief Constable Court: It is a work in progress. It is a mixed picture across the country. I suppose the NPCC’s role within our strategy is to try to bring some co-ordination and consistency to our approach to enforcement of drugs more broadly. I know you are speaking there about the diversion, but if you look at our approach to the street use of cannabis, the approach of forces is different there. We have as part of our strategy for the next few years to start bringing that together and trying to get consistency across the service.
Q137 Lewis Atkinson: If I may say, Mr Court, Mr Sidwick’s diagnosis was that there has not been ministerial Government focus on this in the last two years. How much is there a Government direction from a policy point of view from the Home Office on the standardisation of diversion, enforcement and other elements?
Deputy Chief Constable Court: I am not sure there is on this particular topic for bringing consistency. Whether policing needs it for its processes and policy approach—maybe not. It will need the resource and/or the funding to implement it. The connectivity needs to be there.
David Sidwick: Can I make one point about where we have had the drift? We had an interministerial forum that operated alongside From Harm to Hope. This was the strategic arm that then went down to the CDPs. The way that the inter-ministerial forum met was connected to the frontline. It had us as a portfolio, the NPCC and public health directors. Literally, it was a replica of a CDP. Critically, it had health and justice there. The one we were struggling to get there was education, but we were working on it. It had local government and everybody joined up. That has not met for two years and we have been howling about it. We have said, “Why isn’t there the interministerial forum?” That made a difference. That was chaired by the policing Minister and it drove change. We could all put in our bits.
I howled like mad, like I do here, about prevention. It was decided that the ACMD would look at prevention. It came out with its recommendations. Where has that gone? Do you see what I mean? It was an element for change. To turbocharge long-acting injectable buprenorphine, a central pot of money would be handy. That would have come up, but that is now missing. Critically, the bit that is missing is the connectivity to the frontline through us.
Q138 Lewis Atkinson: That is interesting, and we will have a think about that. One area of cross-departmental collaboration that is particularly pertinent on this at the moment is with justice; I am thinking particularly around the changes to prison release. We know that a significant number of prisoners on release are prescribed opiate substitution therapies, putting potentially a significantly increased number of people receiving drug treatment into the community. What work have you seen between the Ministry of Justice, the Home Office and the Department of Health on managing the impact of a greater number of offenders having been released from prison earlier and making sure that that does not impact on crime and drug use?
Chair: The looks on your faces say it all.
David Sidwick: I can’t comment. I have no data on that.
Deputy Chief Constable Court: Likewise.
Q139 Lewis Atkinson: You have no visibility of work that is going on between the Ministry of Justice and the Home Office or the Department of Health about how to deal with that?
David Sidwick: As chair of the local criminal justice board, I am getting a presentation from the police on how it will affect them and seeing what we can do locally to mitigate any effects that we have. On the inclusion of health in that conversation, I am sorry, I have no data whatsoever.
Chair: Don’t worry. Thank you, Lewis. I will bring Chris Murray in for the very final questions.
Q140 Chris Murray: Thanks, and apologies for being late. I want to pick up on a point you made about community intelligence and how that is the key currency that you need to pursue. What is your view on the role of technology and how you can secure new technology to help with that? You already referred to waste-water analysis and things, but as local representatives we know that so much of the local intelligence is on community groups and Facebook groups and that is where you can find out what is going on. What is the capacity to adopt new technologies to get the data and the intelligence you need?
Dr Hornsby: With most police forces now, you can report crime online. The technology is already there. I may be somewhat old-fashioned, but it is looking someone in the eye and asking, “How is it going today? What is happening in the neighbourhood? Are there any concerns?” It is general discussions with individuals by trusted police officers who are known there and have established themselves as representing the community. That form of policing still has scope to have a pivotal role in acquiring intelligence, which then can be fed upwards. It should be a two-way street as well. The ROCUs have bits of intelligence that they can divulge further down to the officers closer to the population in those localities.
Q141 Chris Murray: I absolutely take the point about the community link and the trust being there. I am driving more at other technologies that might become more available. For example, facial recognition could give you intelligence about what is happening in the community if you are able to roll that out and get the investment for it.
Dr Hornsby: There is a real danger. We had the discussion on the concerns raised by CCTV in the early 1990s about a surveillance society. How far do we go? How far do we allow the state to go to impinge on our day-to-day activities? What is it, East Germany? Are we trying to create the German Democratic Republic? How far are we willing for the state to survey each and every one of us? I understand the argument that if you do not do anything wrong, you have nothing to hide. I understand that, but there is a danger in pushing that level of surveillance to each and every high street. How could that be distorted by the state further down the line at some point? We have to be cautious about how far we are willing the state to provide levels of surveillance on us all.
Chris Murray: I know we are running over a little bit, Mr Court, but you wanted to come in.
Deputy Chief Constable Court: I recognise we are tight for time and so I will bullet-point my points here. Waste-water analysis is important. It tells us where the issues are and what the consumption looks like in the geography. Without waste-water analysis, it makes it more difficult to put a finite resource in the right area. That is point one. Point two is forensics. The ability to test substances quickly to know what we are dealing with or what it is and then to put a harm package in place is important. The technology for the forensic analysis of substances is also important.
On the broader technology that policing is using, hopefully I have articulated how the online marketplace is starting to change and become bigger. Serious organised crime groups are not stopping in their use of technology to allow their business to continue. Policing and law enforcement need to make sure we are on the front foot with every single piece of technology that is available to us so that we are lawfully audacious in using that to take the fight to the people who are causing harms. Whether that is facial recognition with the right watch lists deployed in the right way, supporting VAWG or elsewhere, we need to do that.
Q142 Chris Murray: My exact final question is about the lag between how business models adapt and use new technologies and how quickly a force can catch up. What is your judgment of how speedily that can be done and how it could be improved?
Deputy Chief Constable Court: I have three issues with the procurement of technology for fighting crime. First, funding: the technology is expensive. Secondly, the procurement processes are not quick. Thirdly, whatever technology you have introduced, you need to have data sharing and data impact assessments done. Some of those things are barriers to the rapid execution of a new technology, not least you have to find out what trends you are dealing with to make sure the technology you are about to install in 12 or 18 months’ time can achieve the aims. There are barriers to it.
That said, we are successful in our deployment of technologies and so I do not want to give the impression that these things are stopping us. They are not. They just create the lag you described there.
David Sidwick: The point I will make is the one I made about Ofcom earlier. You also have to have the legislation in place that allows you to have the teeth to use. That is important around the technology.
On your point about intelligence, Dorset police has been able to address the issues mostly through community intelligence. It is about having local officers, local police staff on the ground. That is why I am worried about police reform going forward, particularly if there is a top slicing of all the forces and the money goes centrally.
The other point I will make is that policing is great at public problem solving and is great at dealing. It is not that great about communicating. The Single Online Home has two elements. I spend most of my time telling people about the “share the intelligence” button because most people looking at drug deals are not a victim of the crime. They are in the broadest possible sense, but they want to share the intelligence. I spend a lot of time saying, “Share the intelligence and, if you are worried about anonymity, use Crimestoppers because that is totally anonymous”. We need to get those two messages out to everybody.
Chair: I will bring this to a close. I want to thank the panel. You have been a joy to have because you have all had a lot to say, which is always good in a panel. We enjoy that. Thank you so much for your time and for being with us this morning. You have given us an awful lot to think about and we will have more thoughts about how we take this inquiry further forward. This will not be a quick inquiry because we are covering an awful lot more as we go through it, but thank you so much. I will bring it to a close.