Day of hope

After 40 years of error, multiplied by mindless grandstanding by politicians on the make, is this a time to think? In 1971 with all-party agreement in the Commons (always a bad sign) Britain decided to follow the UN and get tough on drugs. There was a vain hope that illegal drug use could be stamped out in a decade. All that was needed was really tough prohibition. Cannabis, cocaine and heroin were illegal then but a benign sensible system allowed doctors to maintain the tiny number of addicts with prescribed heroin. The lesson of the futility of alcohol prohibition in America in the thirties has been forgotten. There is always a welcome from the mindless for superficially tough policies. It's been forty years of mounting failures involving thousands of deaths and hundreds of thousands of broken lives. Politicians, including David Cameron and Oliver Letwin, admit in private that prohibition does more harm than good. As timid vote gluttons they refuse to challenge the moronic common denominator of tabloid public ignorance. Could today be a turning point? It was good to be included in today's list of 40 British people asking for decriminalisation to be considered. Sting, Judi Dench and Richard Branson provide celebrity status, three former Chief Constables add gravitas to the charity Release's list. Although the issue had to fight for attention in a news packed day, all the debates I heard were serious and the case for reform persuasively made.    All we need is a bit of courage from Government.    Amnesty sense  The Amnesty that is not an amnesty is welcome. My immigrant asylum seeker workload is one of the heaviest of all Welsh MPs. In the past three years there has been a large group of so-called 'legacy' cases. All we could tell them has been that their cases would be reviewed in 2011.  They were all illegal. Most had bought their passage here through agents in their home countries. The deal organised their passage here by lorry, boat or plane. They all had impressive accounts of why their lives were at risk. The similarity of many of the stories invited incredulity. The vast numbers of cases could have gone the ritual of tribunal and appeals at enormous cost to the public purse. The longer they stayed the less likely the deportations. By the time they were put on the plane home, the taxpayer had paid about £80,000 per person. It's madness that no party has controlled. Today's Amnesty is pragmatic sense. But it really is an amnesty regardless of how embarrassing that word is to the Tories.