LILLEY TO CALL FOR LEGALISATION OF CANNABIS

PETER LILLEY, the former deputy leader of the Conservative Party, is
preparing to call for the decriminalisation of cannabis, The Telegraph has
learned.

Mr Lilley, who was dropped by William Hague this summer, confirmed yesterday
that he has been moving towards a radical position on drug issues - and is
planning to call for legalisation in a series of speeches.

Now outside the gagging constraints of shadow cabinet responsibility, Mr
Lilley is free to make such a radical statement, although it would break
Tory taboos and infuriate his leader.

William Hague decided only this month to toughen up the party's anti-drugs
policy.

Mr Lilley's move would also be seen as the act of a man still bitter at his
treatment by the leadership, although he insisted last night that he was
"100 per cent loyalist".

However, he confirmed that he had discussed a radical approach towards drugs
policy with friends.

He said they had looked at ways of distinguishing between people who bought
cannabis for their own use and those who make a living out of hard drugs.
"There is a difference between buying cannabis and selling it," he said. And
someone said it would be a jolly good thing if we could separate people who
do a bit of cannabis from the people who push heroin.

Someone mooted the idea that we ought to be able to break the link between
people who buy cannabis and people who push heroin, which over dinner sounds
a nice idea."

Mr Lilley's comments come after the shadow cabinet decided this month to
introduce a policy of automatic life sentences for drug dealers twice
convicted of supplying youngsters. The Tory leadership is highly sensitive
about the decriminalisation of drugs.

One of Mr Hague's front bench spokesmen, Alan Duncan, dropped a chapter on
drugs from a book last year. The section in which he acknowledged that
"prohibition" of soft drugs was not working was removed from the paperback
edition of Saturn's Children.

When Mr Lilley was dismissed as deputy leader, senior Tories made little
attempt to deny that he had been sacked because of criticism of his
lacklustre performance as head of the party's policy review.