ASSASSINATION OF THE TSAR

With a fanfare, Labour announced the appointment of Keith Hellawell as its
anti-drugs co-ordinator would help win the war against drugs. So why is
Labour now turning on him, asks Alasdair Palmer.

Two years ago, it must have all seemed so simple. Tony Blair had announced
that New Labour would wage war on drugs. He appointed Keith Hellawell,
then Chief Constable of West Yorkshire, to be his general in the war. Mr
Hellawell's arrival as "drugs tsar" - the unfortunate name stuck - was
announced with a terrific fanfare. The idea, like the name, was copied
from the United States. High expectations were deliberately created. This
was the man who would lead the first properly co-ordinated strategy to
combat drug misuse and its attendant evils in Britain. The whole drugs
situation in Britain would be transformed! It would be modernised! The
war on drugs would be won!

Two years into Mr Hellawell's three-year contract, what has happened?
Absolutely nothing, according to some ministers and many policemen, who
sometimes appear to be queueing up to denounce him.

Keith Hellawell has done "the job as badly as it is possible to do it",
according to one senior officer. He is "a self-seeking waste of space",
according to another intimately familiar with drugs policy. He has proved a
"severe disappointment", insists one minister. Another official from the
Home Office is more forthright: "I'm afraid he hasn't a clue." Mr
Hellawell's detractors both inside the Government and inside the police
force, are now both numerous and vicious. The first attacks started
earlier this year, when he was excoriated for taking a two-week trip to
Australia. Jack Cunningham, then the Cabinet Office Minister, was reported
to be "furious" that he had not been consulted. Another minister said the
trip was "outrageous ... But it seems we are powerless to do anything
about it." Mr Hellawell's supporters say that he had received written
approval from Mr Cunningham for his trip, and the only outrageous thing was
the criticism of Mr Hellawell. "I don't even particularly like foreign
travel," Mr Hellawell says. "In the two years in the job, I've only been
to Afghanistan, Pakistan, Turkey, Iran and Australia."

More recently, the Prime Minister appeared to be unable to conceal his deep
dissatisfaction with Mr Hellawell's performance. At the Labour Party
conference, he announced that he was "petrified about drugs in respect of
my own children". There was no word of praise for Mr Hellawell, no
indication that he thought he was making an impact, doing a good job or was
even on the right track.

The Prime Minister insisted that drug crime was an issue "all governments
had ducked for too long". The implication was that his own Government was
ducking it, and ducking it because the UK Anti-drugs Co-ordinator - Mr
Hellawell's official title - was not doing what was expected of him. That
impression was further reinforced when Mr Blair announced a new drugs
initiative at his Party's conference. The Prime Minister's new policy was
that everyone arrested should be subjected to a mandatory drugs test.
Although such a scheme would go to the centre of his territory, the "drugs
tsar" knew nothing about it.

"I was ... on holiday at the time, actually," Mr Hellawell told me. But did
he agree with the Prime Minister's new Big Idea for the war on drugs? "I
would rather not talk about it at this stage ... it would be inappropriate
for me to comment." Inappropriate? But he's the drugs tsar, isn't he?
"it is a legal issue," he insisted, not wholly convincingly. "I can't say
more than that at this stage."

Others, however are prepared to say more. The police, almost to a man,
have come out against the proposal, condemning it as unworkable and
impossibly expensive. Roger Howard, chief executive of the Standing
Conference on Drug Abuse, an umbrella organisation for around 600 groups
that exist to research drugs or to help drug users quit, calls Mr Blair's
latest plan "bizarre. And pointless. If the information from such tests
was planned to be put to some use, the European Court would throw the whole
project out. There's no chance it would comply with European law, which,
since the Government incorporated the European Convention, it would have
to". Mr Howard adds that "Mr Hellawell has spent two years specifically
looking at research, talking to experts and coming up with a strategy on
drugs. Not only did his strategy document not include mandatory drug
testing for arrestees, but not a single one of his advisors recommended it.
"I have no idea why the Prime Minister suddenly introduced it. But it
certainly undermined Mr Hellawell. The only way he could have done that
more effectively would have been to come out and say directly: 'Hellawell:
You're useless,'"

Part of the problem, of course, is that Mr Hellawell accepted an impossible
brief. Every government has vowed to "do something" about drugs. None has
so far succeeded. "Every politician," says Mr Howard, "wants a quick
solution. There isn't one. Any policy will take years to have any impact.
"It isn't fair for ministers to look at the past two years, notice that
drug use and drug-related crime has continued on its upward trajectory and
then blame Mr Hellawell, saying it's all his fault because he hasn't done
anything. "He's done a lot of sensible thing. He is trying to switch the
emphasis from just locking up drug addicts to treating them. He has
persuaded the Government to commit an extra UKP220 million over three
years, a substantial portion of which will go on treatment."

Mr Hellawell himself is proud of his record. He insists: "I have already
made a difference. You can see it in the figures. For example, the number
of prisoners testing positive for drugs has fallen sharply, from about 30
per cent to less than five."

Mr Hellawell claims his policies have been responsible for that. Others are
not so sure. "It's nothing to do with Hellawell," stressed one prison
officer. "The truth is that prisoners are just switching from cannabis,
which stays around in your bloodstream for a long time, to harder drugs
like heroin or cocaine, which don't, and so which are much less likely to
show up on tests." Mr Hellawell adds that, thanks to him, "the number12- to
14-year-olds using drugs has started to fall in at least 10 years. John
Balding, the academic who did the survey, has called it 'the Tsar Effect'."
That is true. But Dr Balding, director of the Health and Education Unit in
Exeter, adds: "I didn't mean to imply that anything Mr Hellawell had done
had had any effect at all. It's rather that there's a new level of
awareness about drugs across society. Mr Hellawell's appointment reflected
that. It didn't create it."

Mr Hellawell also insists that his strategy for treating addicts is
reducing the amount of property that each of them steals to feed his habit
from around UKP375 a week to about UKP70 a week. He says research by
Professor Mike Hough "shows that's what will happen, and is happening now".
Prof. Hough himself is rather more cautious. His report notes that his
findings "need to be interpreted carefully", since there was "some response
bias... users clearly presented an exaggerated account of their drug use
before the scheme, plus an optimistic account of their drug use in a month
before interview."

None the less, many neutral observers accept that Keith Hellawell is trying
to move drugs policy in the right direction, and that his initiatives
should, in time, have some effect - although I could not find anyone who
thought that any of his targets for reducing drug use would be met. (Mr
Hellawell says he believes he is "on course to reduce the use of cocaine
and heroin by young people by half by 2008, and to reduce the level of
repeat offending by half by the same year".) But if he is not, in fact, the
incompetent, lazy, junket-enjoying bungler of government leaks, then why is
the Government now dumping on him? He has, of course, no executive or
ministerial powers. Constitutionally, he is just a glorified special advisor.

But he has occasionally, acted as if he had the powers of the Government -
indeed, he would need to, if he were to get anything done. But that
creates a great deal of resentment - resentment compounded by the fact that
he gets paid more than every minister bar the Lord Chancellor, receiving
UKP103,000 a year. But there may be a more fundamental explanation. Crime
is expected to rise in the next two years. It is rumoured that Jack Straw,
the Home Secretary, does not want to be branded as the first Home Secretary
in years to preside over rising crime figures and is looking for someone
else to take the blame. Mr Hellawell, it seems, is being measured up for
that role. He says he "will know when it's time to go". His contract will
be up next year. He "doesn't know" whether he will apply for a new one.
But whoever his successor is, you can be certain that, sooner or later, the
Government will treat him the same way it has treated Mr Hellawell.