Swiss Sense

Voters in Switzerland today backed a change in health policy that would provide prescription heroin to addicts. Final results from the national referendum showed 68% of voters supported the plan.

The scheme, where addicts inject the drug under medical supervision at a clinic, began in Zurich 14 years ago before spreading across the country. This is great step forward is using health remedies rather than the failed policies of arrest and jail.

The policy already has had positive results - getting long-term addicts out of Switzerland's once notorious "needle parks" and reducing drug-related crime. Forgotten here is that this was our policy in the UK b before 1971. Heroin addicts had medical heroin prescribed to them from the NHS. It was clean, pure and a known strength. There was no need for addicts to resort to crime to get their fix.

It was very successful. There were fewer than a 1,000 addicts and virtually no drug deaths or drug crime. The convention that I am pressing Europe to adopt will included prescribed heroin as a practical ambition to cut drug harm.

One prohibitionist buffoon on Radio Five Live this morning attacked the Swiss ‘needle parks’. Where has he been? They disappeared years ago. All the Swiss anti-drug measures produce outcomes than ours in the UK.

We should follow the Swiss lead.

Poverty choice

Some more ugly pension chickens have come home to roost.

In 1988 Prime Minister Thatcher answered an oral question of mine on the floor of the Commons with a ‘no’ and a sting in the tale, ‘The Hon Gentleman is a socialist and therefore against choice.’ The choice I was opposing was the con that the Tories were foisting on an unsuspecting public. In the belief that Private is always better than Public, the Government was campaigning to persuade people to abandon their safe good value occupational pensions and jumped into the gamble of personal pensions.

Millions moved out of their safe pensions. Banks, Insurance companies, and salespersons made small, and large fortunes, in commissions and charges. At least six million pensions were mis-sold.

Funded occupational pensions were – and still are – the best bet as final salary pensions. Personal pensions depend to a greater extent on the vagaries of the stock market. There was manic optimism in the eighties that the stock market values would always rise.  Many pensioners with maturing policies are now doomed to pensions well below their expectations.

Many of these people were conned out of occupational schemes that are now paying far higher rates. The ‘choice’ the Tories promoted in the eighties is now impoverishing millions of today’s pensioners.

Perhaps they will say ‘sorry.’

Comments

[GrahamMarlow]

"In the belief that Private is always better than Public"

Unfortunately for us all, Paul this belief has endured under the Blair/Brown ToryLite regime, perhaps not in pensions but in the NHS and in Welfare to name but two. In the latter case this is thanks to the multimillionaire amateur "welfare reformer" David Freud. I am sure Mr Freud votes New Labour though

[Stop using American spelling...]

Paul, Paul, Paul..

I am disappointed in your naivety. Are you seriously thinking the Tories did this because they thought people would get better pensions on the back of stock market 'growth'?

This was done to get these liabilities off the state's books.. - and now that Gordon Brown has loaded up the books again with PFI debt and banking bailouts, it will not be long before the Tories get in, and remove all the other public sector final salary schemes. So that we are all slaves to big business. Just like under Labour - only a bit more so..

Please don't expect us to believe one party is better than the other - it is like Pepsi and Coke - both are rotten, just one tastes slightly less bitter..

[Philip Thomas]

Okay, Conservative councillor here, just dropping by to say it's nice to see a Labour MP talking sense on drugs (I'd read your archived post on the drug tsar). I'm a pro-legalisation type for both civil liberty and practical outcome reasons. Can I ask how many of your colleagues feel similarly to yourself? I think our current drug policy (largely inherited from decades of previous administrations) visits huge social, economic and human harm, that few in government seems willing to consider alternate solutions towards.

BTW, you're by far the best Labour MP blogger I've so far encountered because you're using the medium to voice personal opinions rather than the party line. Very refreshing.

[Paul Flynn]

You are wrong. SUAS. Classic Labour still lives. It ii due for another renaissance, as idealistic as ever. It will happen in the slipstream of Obama.

Yes the Tories wanted to unload people from SERPS, They did not abolish it and managed only half the job. The Insurance industry did not want to take on the bottom end of the market.

[Kay Tie]

I am very pleased to read what you wrote on drugs policy. The War on Drugs has been a scourge on our society and created far more hagn than it sought to prevent.

I opted out of SERPS. With my eyes open - I did not trust a future government to pay me an earnings-related pension. I was proved right - SERPS payouts are to be capped, but payments in are not. Anyone on an average salary is better off out of SERPS (or S2P as it's called now) - even with weasel salespeople and their commission.

[paul flynn]

KayTie I wonder whether it was wise of you to opt out of SERPS. It depends on many things, but SERPS has proved good value to many who have retired in the past 15 years plus. The drop in value of all money purchase values in recent years has been at least 37%. That was a calculation by the Equitable Life Campaigners

[Kay Tie]

"KayTie I wonder whether it was wise of you to opt out of SERPS."

The Government has virtually guaranteed that anyone on a salary of more than about £32k/year will lose by staying in S2P: this is because the S2P pension paid out is capped in line with a contributions level of £32k/year, but the S2P component of NI levied on wages above £32k/year continues. Anyone with a salary significantly above £32k is insane to continue paying into the S2P (notice how it was renamed from SERPS to S2P? That's because it's not earnings-related, and anyone who thought that it would provide a pension in proportion to their earnings has been cheated).

The problem with any kind of government-backed pension scheme is that you have to be in it for 40 years or so, and this means you have to trust that 40 years of ministers will not cheat you. This has already happened with SERPS. It happened years ago to married women who paid a "half stamp" and discovered decades later that they'd been cheated out of their own pension entitlement.

[Philip Thomas]

Any advance on how alone you are in speaking sense on drugs? Okay, loaded question, on holding your particular perspective of medicalisation over criminalisation? I'm not clear if you're actual pro-legalisation, whether with markets or with state-shops.

[Andrew]

Pity that Gordon McBroon hoovered so much cash out of pension funds whilst leaving public sector pensions to get even more bloated and leaving future generations with a huge burden.

[Kay Tie]

"I'm not clear if you're actual pro-legalisation, whether with markets or with state-shops."

Paul is never going to answer that in public. You remember Clair Short being shot down in flames for some very mild opinions in this area? It's going to tip eventually, like a dam bursting, but don't expect it to happen on a blog!

[paulflynn]

Thanks. My views are pro-legalisation, but it's unobtainable in the near future. That is why I putting my energies into a new Convention which is attainable and could help millions.

We cannot make Sweden into Holland or the UK into Switzerland. But we can get them all to agree that health soulutions work and are better value than the criminal justice system.

[Philip Thomas]

Thanks for being honest, would that all politicians were as such. I reckon even Kay Tie will be impressed.

[Natural Health Remedies]

Yeah, But we can just pray for them.