Oliver Letwin: Hug a drugdealer

Oliver Letwin: Hug a drugdealer

Drug dealers are victims, too, says Oliver Leftwing

Tania Branigan, political correspondent
Monday October 1, 2007
Guardian Unlimited

Drug dealers are victims as well as offenders because so many are themselves addicted, the Conservatives' policy chief said today.

Oliver Letwin, chairman of the party's policy review, warned that "enormous numbers" of Britons remained trapped by multiple disadvantages, suffering from addictions and problems such as poor housing as well as low incomes.

Asked about the extent to which drugs fuelled urban crime, Mr Letwin told the Guardian fringe debate at the Tory conference in Blackpool: "A drug [addict] is a victim, not a miscreant, though it may lead to him being a miscreant.

"The pusher is the person who is the most direct cause [of crime], but many pushers are also victims, because they are parts of pyramids in which they are both users and sellers."

He warned that the government had failed to cut back the supply of drugs and backed the Tories' social justice policy review group's call for abstinence-based rehabilitation to replace the prescription of drug substitutes.

But his remarks were likely to raise eyebrows among the Tory faithful and came as the party toughens its message on crime.

Last year, David Cameron urged Britons to "show a lot more love" to troubled young people in what Labour dubbed his "hug a hoodie" speech.

But this summer he declared: "Common sense suggests that with young people you need to hit them where it hurts."

Mr Letwin told the debate - entitled Are The Tories Getting It Right? - that the Conservatives would focus on helping those trapped in deep poverty to help themselves.

"The government has been acting from the top ... rather than enabling people to escape conditions that trap them," he said.

Greg Clark, the shadow charities minister, added: "We think giving people their heads, allowing them to be tested, to make decisions for themselves but to support them ... is how we will tackle some of their problems."

He argued that the Tories had shown that they were now the truly progressive party - citing their concern for the vulnerable and their optimism about and sense of responsibility for the future.

"If you contrast that with the failure of Labour, you see Labour as the 'small c' conservative party," Mr Clark added, arguing that the government's statist prescriptions lacked ambition.

Mr Clark made waves last year when he urged the party to abandon "out-of-date" Churchillian ideas about the welfare state and look instead to Guardian commentator Polly Toynbee's focus on inequality.

Ms Toynbee praised the Conservatives in return for their promise to impose a £25,000-a-year levy on those claiming non-domicile tax status.

"It's essentially cowardly that Gordon Brown, in his [conference] speech, had not one word to say about what's happening at the top, on excess, or on greed," she said.

"I welcome the fact that the Tories should come in round his left side. That's clever and right and goes absolutely with the grain of what people are thinking."

But, attacking his decision to use the money to raise inheritance tax thresholds, she added: "George Osborne is being Robin Hood - but is stealing from the unbelievably, stratospherically rich to give to the very, very rich whose parents have a £1m house."

UPDATE: As I was saying...