BLAIR: I'M SCARED FOR MY CHILDREN

PM Declares War On Drug Crime

TONY Blair yesterday admitted his fears for his children over drugs - and
pledged to tackle the problem head on.

In a frank admission, he said: "I'm petrified about drugs, for the sake of
my own children and other people's children.

"People are petrified about it, they're frightened about it, they're worried
about it. What we have got to do is take measures that move the whole policy
up several gears in order to tackle this." He promised an urgent Crime and
Justice Bill to give the police power to test arrested suspects for drugs.

This could provide the evidence for officers to oppose bail for high-risk
drug-takers who might re-offend to feed their habit.

Action had been "ducked" for too long, said Mr Blair on the first day of
Labour's centenary conference in Bournemouth. No Government had yet "woken
up" to the problem, he said. Tackling it would form the centrepiece of the
Queen's Speech programme for the coming year's parliamentary session.

"One of the biggest social problems we have in this country today is crime
and drugs and if we don't tackle it, then we are not tackling what I find
people are talking about, what I think about for my own children day in and
day out. And I think, fundamentally, we've got to change gear on this
issue," he told BBC television's Breakfast with Frost. Citing one
"terrifying statistic", Mr Blair, who has three children of school age,
said: "In some inner-city areas today, 50 per cent of those arrested have
drugs in their system.

"A very large proportion of the crimes committed in Britain are drugs-related."

Home Secretary Jack Straw said that Mr Blair had already announced a target
of halving drug-related crime within the next decade.

Home Office research last year showed that almost two-thirds of people
arrested in five areas had at least one illegal drug in their-system and 28
per cent were on Clsss A drugs such as heroin and cocaine.

Nearly half of those arrested said that their drug habit was linked to their
offence - and the heroin and cocaine users were stealing to the tune of
between UKP10,000 and UKP2O,000 a year to pay for their drug supplies.

In addition to police testing of arrested suspects, the Government is also
expected to extend random drugs testing from prisons to people on probation,
and to expand the current UKP20milllon programme of treatment for offenders
on drugs.

The other, more political message from Mr Blair to his party activists was
that the Labour Government was sticking to its fundamental principle of
standing for the many not the few - but that it needed discipline and
prudence to deliver the goods.

That iron law of Labour finance will be repeated by Chancellor Gordon Brown
in a Bournemouth debate on the economy this afternoon. Mr Brown will say
that Labour's aim is full employment - "high and sustainable levels of
employment - a goal now within our reach for the 21st century".

The reference to the long-term goal of full employment - one of the most
cherished targets inherited from Old Labour is designed to strike a chord
with party members and trade union activists.

Mr Brown will be making a flying visit to Bournemouth from IMF and World
Bank talks in Washington. He will be telling the conference that economic
prudence has brought record lows for inflation, interest rates and falling
unemployment.

Yesterday Mr Blair declared: "If we run the tight and disciplined economic
policy we're running at the moment, we'll get the three years of the
largest-ever investment in schools and hospitals coming in now, and then
we'll be able in the three years after that, to get substantial additional
sums." That would mean a commitment to a possible repeat of the current,
three-year, additional spending of UKP40billion in schools and hospitals -
for the three years after the next election.

That extra spending could be used to ease the issues that continue to drive,
or "motivate", Mr Blair - such as extra money for nurses and a better living
standard for pensioners.

Confessing that stories of pensioners' hardship "tug at the heartstrings",
Mr Blair said that there was much still to do. and he would not rest until
it was done. "That's what I am here for;" he said, "because these are real
people living real lives of hardship."

But he would not spend money that had not first been earned. "I think back
on Labour governments in the past, and they came into office, they spent a
lot of money for the first two years, and they spent the next three years
cutting back. I don't want to do that."