Pubdate: Tue, 04 Nov 2014
Source: Independent  (UK)
Copyright: 2014 Independent Newspapers (UK) Ltd.
Contact:  http://www.independent.co.uk/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/209
Author: Nigel Morris
Page: 4

'I'VE ALWAYS TRIED TO DO THE UNEXPECTED'

A Failure to Act on the Evidence of a Drug Policy Report Spurred 
Baker's Decision to Resign, He Tells Nigel Morris

When Norman Baker closed a landmark Commons debate on drugs last week 
his final remark - "the genie is out of the bottle and it is not 
going back in" - had a secret personal significance.

They were to be his final words from the Commons dispatch box.

He had privately told Nick Clegg two months earlier that he wanted to 
step down from the Government after more than four years, including 
12 months trying to get the Liberal Democrat voice heard in the Home Office.

His departure, just seven months ahead of the general election, will 
cause surprise across the political spectrum as Mr Baker is widely 
regarded by friends and foes alike as among the party's most 
effective ministers.

"I have always attempted to do things people don't expect. I think 
that's a good thing in politics," he told The Independent yesterday.

"I don't regard ministerial office as the only worthwhile thing to do 
and I have never understood the mentality that says you have got to 
cling on as long as you can."

A key factor in his decision has been the gruelling experience of 
working alongside a Home Secretary, Theresa May, who is renowned for 
her determination to be involved in every element of her brief as 
well as her reluctance to delegate.

Mr Baker, who included drugs in his policy portfolio as crime 
reduction minister, had initially intended to bow out following the 
publication of a Home Office report on drugs policies abroad.

It was repeatedly delayed - by Downing Street, according to Mr Baker 
- - and was only produced last week as MPs staged their first Commons 
debate for 43 years on drugs legislation.

The report, which concluded that a punitive approach to drugs did not 
reduce levels of abuse, provided ammunition to supporters of reform. 
Although the Tory and Labour front benches remain hostile to 
reviewing drugs laws, almost every speaker called for a fresh 
approach to tackling addiction and putting the criminal gangs behind 
the drugs trade out of business.

Mr Baker said: "At the end of the debate I felt it had been a surreal 
debate and was I somehow in a parallel universe, where the House of 
Commons was behaving differently to how I thought it was going to behave.

"I was hugely encouraged by spread of support for reform ... across the House."

For the outgoing minister, the wrangling over the timing of the 
publication was further proof that senior Tories were playing 
politics with contentious issues rather than being driven by the evidence.

As he suggested in his valedictory speech from the front bench, he 
believes he is quitting at a "turning-point" for discussion of drugs 
policy in Britain.

He said: "I think the facts by and large support reform in certain 
areas and dare I say support the approach the Liberal Democrats have 
taken as opposed to the approach the Conservatives have taken.

"People are entitled to different views on these things, but to have 
this kind of mindless wall of rhetoric that says everything is hunky 
dory and we don't need to do anything seems to me to be not serving 
the public very well."

Mr Baker said he was "very attracted" to decriminalising possession 
of drugs and treating it as a health issue by encouraging users to 
discuss their habit with clinicians and lawyers.

He also favours wider use of medicinal cannabis as part of a "proper 
NHS process where it is prescribed under clinical conditions just as 
opiates are in hospital" as well as extending pilot schemes in which 
patients are given injections of pure heroin under medical 
supervision in treatment for dependency.

Mr Baker said he now intended to spend more time in his constituency, 
with his family and speaking out on subjects outside his Home Office 
portfolio. As a parttime singer in a rock band, he also plans to 
indulge his musical ambitions.

He is not about to prove a thorn in Mr Clegg's side as he is a strong 
supporter of the decision to go into coalition and more optimistic 
than many of his colleagues about the party's election prospects.

"I find that Conservative voters - not the hardline headbanger type, 
but the normal Conservative voters - actually like the Liberal 
Democrats in government.

"They think we have acted as an influence to stop extreme policies," he said.

"I think we will get credit for it. I think the polls continually 
underestimate our support and as the Labour Party veers off to the 
left to its comfort zone and the Tory party engages in a hopeless and 
pointless challenge to run after Ukip to the right, there's this huge 
space opening up in the middle for where I think the majority of the 
public are.

"No one is filling that space apart from the Liberal Democrats and I 
think as we go towards the election that will become more and more 
apparent. And that puts us potentially in a good position despite 
what the polls say."
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom