Ministers under fire over drugs ignorance

The cross-party Public Accounts Committee (PAC) described the Government's failure to evaluate the overall impact of so much spending was "unacceptable".

The committee said there were 330,000 problem users of heroin and crack cocaine who cost society 15bn a year, with crime accounting for 13.9bn of that.

In a report today, the PAC said: "The Government spends 1.2bn a year on measures aimed at tackling problem drug use, yet does not know what overall effect this spending is having."

It added that the Home Office did not know whether a cross-Whitehall strategy started in 2008 reduced the cost of crimes committed by problem drug users.

Nor could it "prove a causal link between the measures in the strategy and the levels of offending by problem drug users", the PAC said.

The Home Office has now agreed to publish annual reports from 2011 on progress against the 10-year strategy.

The PAC found that problem drug users typically relapse several times during or after treatment, and that about a quarter resisted any help at all.

Deaths among problem drug users increased in the past five years, to 1,620 in 2008/9.

The committee also raised concerns about the "limited impact" of attempts to reduce the use of heroin and crack cocaine among young people.

At the 2008 strategy's launch, it was reported that the prevalence of class A drugs among young people stayed relatively unchanged since 1998.

The committee added that the National Treatment Agency for Substance Misuse told it that the number of under-24s receiving help for heroin and crack abuse had started to decrease.