SNP block UK attempt to strip drug users of their benefits

[Fullyplumped]

This issue always gets polarised between those who take the line of Fedayn and Blagsta, that drug abusers are victims who need help, and those who take the line of myself and (possibly, please excuse me if I've mischaracterised your view) Fullyplumped, that drug abusers are criminals with mitigating circumstances.

I certainly don't think that drug abusers are criminals with mitigating circumstances, but I don't think they're victims, certainly not if they're not children.

I definitely think that arms of government should work together and that the SNP should stop using this issue to have a pop at the DWP.

 

[Blagsta]

"Outreach, engagement, motivational interviewing, contingency management - stuff that has some evidence behind it!"

That's not part of a programme?

It's an approach. Drug services are arranged into tiers.

Tier 1 is non-specialist public facing, i.e. teachers, youth workers, nurses, policemen etc who should be able to signpost to appropriate services.
Tier 2 is specialist non-structured services, delivering harm min, brief interventions, advice, triage and onward referral
Tier 3 is structured treatment including substitute prescribing, structured (care planned) psycho-social interventions including counselling
Tier 4 is residential

Within these tiers you will have some different approaches.

See Models of Care for details

 

[Azrael]

I certainly don't think that drug abusers are criminals with mitigating circumstances, but I don't think they're victims, certainly not if they're not children.

You'll be better suited to mediate between the two poles. By criminals I'm not referring to the drug use itself (which I think should be legal) but the massive amount of acquisitive crime that goes with it. My sympathy is in inverse proportion to people's decision to thieve and rob.

 

[Blagsta]

The programmes Blagsta listed seem to carry penalties if you don't abide by their terms -- a restriction on bail certainly would -- so I don't see what makes them massively different from the threat of removing benefits.

If it's the loss of money, I'm sure some other penalty could be devised, but if the only requirement is to "co-operate" with whatever treatment is offered, the current scheme doesn't seem too onerous.

Tough Choices doesn't have a huge amount of success though! Not least because probation aren't generally interested in co-operating with drug services.

 

[Blagsta]

Well it might be worse - all I want is for drug misusers to make some moves to stop misusing drugs in return for getting taxpayers money. You wouldn't like my dad to be in charge - he's quite hard line about these things.

Sorry, life don't work like that.

 

[Fedayn]

This issue always gets polarised between those who take the line of Fedayn and Blagsta, that drug abusers are victims who need help,

Well I can't speak for Blagsta but don't caricature my opinions please. I work in the Benefit System. The idea suggested would not only penalise the user/claimant but also their dependents ie children and or partner. That's neither helpful or frankly useful. Nowhere have I simply suggested that drugs users are simplistic victims. I just happen to work in a city and deal with the benefits of those with a history of drug abuse/addiction. As such I find the idea that to penalise them after adding an extra hoop to jump through to get their benefit, for which they already qualify, is neither helpful or frankly workable. It is nothing more than a PR stunt to get thee repugnant Purnell a few brownie points and perhaps a wee bit of breathing space for his government by getting people talking about those least able to defend themselves rather than the tossres who are fucking the economy up.

 

[Blagsta]

This issue always gets polarised between those who take the line of Fedayn and Blagsta, that drug abusers are victims who need help, and those who take the line of myself and (possibly, please excuse me if I've mischaracterised your view) Fullyplumped, that drug abusers are criminals with mitigating circumstances.

Try as I might to see it from the other POV, the two views are so diametrically opposed it's hard to find any common ground between them.

I haven't said this. Stop it with the straw men please.

 

[Blagsta]

I certainly don't think that drug abusers are criminals with mitigating circumstances, but I don't think they're victims, certainly not if they're not children.

I definitely think that arms of government should work together and that the SNP should stop using this issue to have a pop at the DWP.

People with drug problems tend to be both.

 

[Fedayn]

but the massive amount of acquisitive crime that goes with it. My sympathy is in inverse proportion to people's decision to thieve and rob.

Which will of course be reduced if they take the benefits off those with an addiction.....

 

[Fullyplumped]

It's an approach. Drug services are arranged into tiers.

Tier 1 is non-specialist public facing, i.e. teachers, youth workers, nurses, policemen etc who should be able to signpost to appropriate services.
Tier 2 is specialist non-structured services, delivering harm min, brief interventions, advice, triage and onward referral
Tier 3 is structured treatment including substitute prescribing, structured (care planned) psycho-social interventions including counselling
Tier 4 is residential

Within these tiers you will have some different approaches.

See Models of Care for details

Thank you - this is very helpful and informative.

 

[Blagsta]

You'll be better suited to mediate between the two poles. By criminals I'm not referring to the drug use itself (which I think should be legal) but the massive amount of acquisitive crime that goes with it. My sympathy is in inverse proportion to people's decision to thieve and rob.

We don't all have the same choices y'know.

 

[Fullyplumped]

Sorry, life don't work like that.

We'll find out, then, won't we.

 

[Azrael]

Well I can't speak for Blagsta but don't caricature my opinions please.

I was attempting to sumarise them to make a general point about these. Please excuse me if I got you view wrong. No caricature was intended.

I haven't said this. Stop it with the straw men please.

Ditto above.

Tough Choices doesn't have a huge amount of success though! Not least because probation aren't generally interested in co-operating with drug services.

I imagine inter-agency co-operation or lack thereof causes quite a few problems, and I certainly wouldn't want drug abusers punished as a result of it.

We don't all have the same choices y'know.

True enough, and courts should take that into account when sentencing.

 

[lewislewis]

I assume that many will choose treatment over destitution, provided the treatment is made available. Those that don't should be gaoled when they commit their inevitable crimes, and treated forcibly.

The dole isn't enough to fund a drug habit. Right now they commit crime to fund their habit and the dole keeps them going in-between their endless muggings and thefts. It doesn't solve anything.

Real treatment solves things and it will cost taxpayers money to fund. The UK government want to (have to?) spend less money not more money, but they have fucked up society so much that there are serious problems that need addressing.

 

[Idris2002]

People really should read the story first. The SNP is not blocking the welfare reforms, rather, the SNP controlled Scottish Executive seems to be instructing government statisticians to keep back from academics at the University of Glasgow data generated by the NHS. There is no question of passing data to DWP that could be used to identify any individual Scottish NHS patient.

As I understand it, the Government intends to make it a condition of receiving certain benefits that a claimant stating that the reason he or she is incapable of work is drug misuse should co-operate with treatment. It follows that treatment needs to be made available. The primary evidence that a person is claiming that they are a drug user will be her or his own statement, not anything disclosed in confidence to the NHS.

Mr Purnell is pushing it a bit when he suggests that the SNP is "blocking" the new conditionality for drug using benefit claimants. The DWP will go ahead with this project, with or without the research being carried out. All the SNP is doing is blocking researchers from carrying out a study which might help evaluate whether the government's plans have any merit.

They would do better to point out that there is a real issue as to whether the treatment services that might be needed as a consequence of this new policy are going to be available. But I really don't think that's on their agenda.

Personally. I think that all this research information should be put in the public domain. It's funded by the taxpayer and so long as individuals' privacy is protected there is no reason why it should be treated as a state secret. Information of this kind will be of great value to the NHS, councils, and communities faced with the impact of drug misuse.

It's quite amusing seeing nationalists finding themselves having to stick up for what they perceive as the interests of drug-using benefit claimants, though. You can be sure that Labour (and everyone else) will exploit this on the doorsteps. I don't think many of the voters in Glasgow East who put John Mason into Westminster last year with a 365 majority will be amused.

I'm outraged that these academics are apparently not protecting client confidentiality either. Even when I was a market researcher we kept names and addresses for ourselves.

 

[lewislewis]

People really should read the story first. The SNP is not blocking the welfare reforms, rather, the SNP controlled Scottish Executive seems to be instructing government statisticians to keep back from academics at the University of Glasgow data generated by the NHS. There is no question of passing data to DWP that could be used to identify any individual Scottish NHS patient.

As I understand it, the Government intends to make it a condition of receiving certain benefits that a claimant stating that the reason he or she is incapable of work is drug misuse should co-operate with treatment. It follows that treatment needs to be made available. The primary evidence that a person is claiming that they are a drug user will be her or his own statement, not anything disclosed in confidence to the NHS.

Mr Purnell is pushing it a bit when he suggests that the SNP is "blocking" the new conditionality for drug using benefit claimants. The DWP will go ahead with this project, with or without the research being carried out. All the SNP is doing is blocking researchers from carrying out a study which might help evaluate whether the government's plans have any merit.

They would do better to point out that there is a real issue as to whether the treatment services that might be needed as a consequence of this new policy are going to be available. But I really don't think that's on their agenda.

Personally. I think that all this research information should be put in the public domain. It's funded by the taxpayer and so long as individuals' privacy is protected there is no reason why it should be treated as a state secret. Information of this kind will be of great value to the NHS, councils, and communities faced with the impact of drug misuse.

It's quite amusing seeing nationalists finding themselves having to stick up for what they perceive as the interests of drug-using benefit claimants, though. You can be sure that Labour (and everyone else) will exploit this on the doorsteps. I don't think many of the voters in Glasgow East who put John Mason into Westminster last year with a 365 majority will be amused.

I think an analysis of one of the most draconian and unfair New Labour policies ever is more important than cheap bashing of the SNP- you're a Labour hack and will never support anything the SNP does.

 

[Azrael]

Real treatment solves things and it will cost taxpayers money to fund.

That's why I suspect this policy to be tokenism. If a junkie must co-operate with available treatment, obviously they won't be penalised if no treatment is available. So Labour can claim to be "forcing junkies on the dole into treatment" while doing no such thing.

Naturally, I would like to be wrong here, and for ample treatment to be there for those who need it.

 

[Fullyplumped]

Real treatment solves things and it will cost taxpayers money to fund. The UK government want to (have to?) spend less money not more money, but they have fucked up society so much that there are serious problems that need addressing.

And the SNP ministers have no good reason to instruct the Scottish NHS to withhold anonymised data from the researchers at the University of Glasgow.

 

[lewislewis]

Their benefits won't be stopped if they co-operate with local services which aim to help them address their drug misuse.

Oh there we go that's okay then.

I was just thinking, if we're talking about heroin, the UK Government has to carry some of the can surely, for what they've done in Afghanistan in support of the US, who have allowed opium production to flourish there?

 

[Fullyplumped]

I think an analysis of one of the most draconian and unfair New Labour policies ever is more important than cheap bashing of the SNP- you're a Labour hack and will never support anything the SNP does.

I don't have much of a problem with many of the SNP policies. There isn't an ideological hairsbreadth between many SNP policies and Labour policies on routine bread and butter issues.

These are all good developments and I congratulate Scottish ministers on them -
Improving hand hygiene in the NHS
Improving child protection services
Flooding Bill to be strengthened
Ambitious future for NHSScotland staff
Health inequalities take hold early
Plastics recycling key part of waste vision

The problem is that the SNP are nationalists. So much that the SNP does is fundamentally focussed on picking a fight with the UK government. This is bad for Scotland. It is one of the reasons why virtually no new schools have been built in Scotland since May 2007. And purely to pick a fight the SNP is making drug use information a state secret! Pathetic.

 

[Fedayn]

I don't have much of a problem with many of the SNP policies. There isn't an ideological hairsbreadth between many SNP policies and Labour policies on routine bread and butter issues. The problem is that the SNP are nationalists. So much that the SNP does is fundamentally focussed on picking a fight with the UK government. This is bad for Scotland. It is one of the reasons why virtually no new schools have been built in Scotland since May 2007. And purely to pick a fight the SNP is making drug use information a state secret! Pathetic.

But no mention from you that Purnell is being entirely dishonest with his claims.

 

[lewislewis]

I don't have much of a problem with many of the SNP policies. There isn't an ideological hairsbreadth between many SNP policies and Labour policies on routine bread and butter issues. The problem is that the SNP are nationalists. So much that the SNP does is fundamentally focussed on picking a fight with the UK government. This is bad for Scotland. It is one of the reasons why virtually no new schools have been built in Scotland since May 2007. And purely to pick a fight the SNP is making drug use information a state secret! Pathetic.

That's potentially a credible point to make. But if you read the original post- and your subsequent post about Purnell being wrong backs it up- it's actually the UK Government trying to pick a fight with the SNP here, not the other way around.

 

[Fullyplumped]

I'd prefer to say that Mr Purnell is making a stupid mistake in dignifying the SNP's petulance with a response. The SNP ministers decided to make the drug use information a state secret, withholding it from academics at the University of Glasgow. He would have done better to emulate his cabinet colleague Jim Murphy who knows how to handle Alex Salmond.

 

[Fedayn]

I'd prefer to say that Mr Purnell is making a stupid mistake in dignifying the SNP's petulance with a response.

It's not a stupid mistakje, it's an untruth ie a lie. The same as with his lie that some policy wonk was to blame for the inclusion of interest on loans for the unemployed in the recent report.

 

[phildwyer]

Ah so a gulag then?

Slavery, in effect. One of the many ways in which slavery continues long after its supposed abolition. But you watch, they'll do it in the UK too. In fact, aren't there already private prisons there, or public/private partnership ones, or somesuch New Labour fascism?

 

[Fullyplumped]

It's not a stupid mistakje, it's an untruth ie a lie. The same as with his lie that some policy wonk was to blame for the inclusion of interest on loans for the unemployed in the recent report.

Well here are the quotes from the Scotsman.com story -

Speaking exclusively to Scotland on Sunday, Purnell said: "The SNP Government has complained that there is not enough evidence (to push through the plans], yet they are now blocking attempts to reassess the problem in Scotland."

Purnell said researchers at Glasgow University had been asked to compile new data on the number of drug addicts on benefits. He added: "They (the SNP Government] are saying they're not prepared to release the evidence. I challenge Alex Salmond to allow his officials to release this data, stop blocking NHS drug treatment for people on benefits and tell his MPs to vote for these plans on Tuesday."

None of that is untrue as far as I can see. I just think he shouldn't have made such an issue. The SNP is attempting to block the research, but whether they do or not it won't block implementation of the policy.

Alex Salmond is incorrigible. He's now got himself into trouble for claiming Kofi Annan has agreed to deliver a speech at his invitiation - except that Kofi Annan's staff are saying it's not true and he's coming to do something with Gordon Brown in Kirkcaldy.

Big weans, the lot of them.

 

[Blagsta]

That's why I suspect this policy to be tokenism. If a junkie must co-operate with available treatment, obviously they won't be penalised if no treatment is available. So Labour can claim to be "forcing junkies on the dole into treatment" while doing no such thing.

Naturally, I would like to be wrong here, and for ample treatment to be there for those who need it.

What if there is treatment, but it isn't suitable?

 

[Fullyplumped]

What if there is treatment, but it isn't suitable?

Then the policy will fail. Which is unacceptable. So make sure that all you drugs workers do proper assessments and provide the right treatments! James Purnell's career is resting on it!

 

[FridgeMagnet]

I'd be interested to hear more about exactly what it being blocked and why, given that I used to work with exactly these sort of data in England. It isn't compiled in the same way in Scotland, but the principles are similar. I expect I'd have to read the specialist press to see any real details rather than bluster though.

The basic idea is of course bollocks anyway.

 

[Blagsta]

Then the policy will fail. Which is unacceptable. So make sure that all you drugs workers do proper assessments and provide the right treatments! James Purnell's career is resting on it!

You don't actually have a clue how any of this stuff works, do you? Don't you think you should find out?