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Prime minister Tony Blair

Tony Blair yesterday claimed that a whole new approach to tackling Britain’s drug problems was needed, writes Clare Jerrom.

The prime minister highlighted that 300,000 children are growing up with one or both parents addicted to drugs and half of all crime is drug-related. He said a different approach to drug and alcohol abuse was required to tackle law and order problems.

Speaking at the University of London, Blair stressed that drug treatment saves the economy £3 for every £1 invested.

But while the number of treatment places were up by more than 50,000 since 1998, the amount invested in tackling hard core drug addicts had doubled and the Serious Organised Crime Agency was focussing on drug trade, the scale of the problem was not being met.

“The challenge is immense to provide a whole new national infrastructure capable of tackling drugs effectively – the big traffickers, the small street dealers, the 280,000 regular users of heroin or crack cocaine, the high proportion of the prison and offending population which are addicts,” he added.

Blair used his speech yesterday to set out his plans to reform the welfare state and stressed that the big challenges facing the country were child care, increasing employment, public health and pension reform.

He pledged to “move from a welfare state that relieves poverty and provides basic services to one which offers high quality services and the opportunity for all to fulfil their potential to the full”.

The prime minister re-iterated education secretary Charles Clarke’s earlier promises to develop “universal, good quality, affordable childcare for children aged 3-14 shaped around parents and children’s needs”. This would include an expansion of provision for under-fives and give parents more choice between public, private and voluntary sectors including nurseries and childminders.

Full proposals on new support to help parents manage work and life commitments would be revealed over the coming months he added.

The prime minister also pledged to help people “trapped” on benefits and highlighted the government’s new approaches to helping people receiving incapacity benefit return to work through the Pathways to Work initiatives, which were hailed as a success yesterday by Alan Johnson, the work and pensions secretary.