Member

That takes me to a point that the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, made—his speech in Committee has been referenced quite a lot. He talked extensively about a situation where a police officer comes across a woman and there is a dead child; they have to secure it as a crime scene and have to make sure that they build the correct prosecution. That would be plausible if it were what a police officer always did in every case where they believed that a crime had taken place, but they do not. Taking class A drugs is a crime. If a police officer shows up and somebody has overdosed, they do not do that—they work with the medical profession to try to make sure that that person gets the right care and attention in the hope that they can stop it happening again. That is what every professional whom we have spoken to has said, and we have spoken to many over the last few months.