Landlords and hotel owners who cash in by turning a blind eye to drug dealers operating from their premises should face tougher penalties, an MP will say today.
Home affairs committee member John Woodcock will make the demand for tougher measures to curb the practice known as ‘cuckoo-ing’ as he leads a debate on the ‘county lines’ drug phenomenon which has hit his constituency of Barrow and Furness.
With cuckoo-ing, drug dealers temporarily move into the home of a vulnerable person, typically a drug addict or person with learning difficulties, and deal from the address. There are also growing reports of serviced apartments being rented for the purpose or budget hotels and caravan parks being used. Products are trafficked to them from gangs in cities by young people who are often forced by threat of violence.
Mr Woodcock claims landlords are able to avoid conviction for allowing their property to be cuckoo-ed because the legal bar of proof is set too high – prosecutors must prove that a landlord had specific knowledge of drugs being dealt from his property.
The Crown Prosecution Service guidelines on section 8 of the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 state that prosecutions must prove the requisite level of knowledge – suspicion per se is not enough to constitute permission.
In today’s adjournment debate in the House of Commons, the independent MP will urge the Home Secretary to review and allow prosecution of landlords who fail to act on reasonable suspicion that their property was being misused.
He will say: “Too many landlords are getting fat off what is essentially drug money by adopting a ‘hear no evil, see no evil’ attitude to what goes on in the properties they rent out. Some clearly don’t care if vulnerable tenants are being preyed on by drug dealers or if their holiday lets are being misused as long as they get their rent. That is hugely damaging for the communities they are making a profit from and makes the job of the police much more difficult.
“If the home secretary is serious about getting on top of the spiralling scourge of county lines drug trafficking he should commit to lowering that standard of proof so landlords have a responsibility to act if there is reasonable suspicion that their property may be being used for cuckoo-ing.”
On Friday, four people were sentenced for their part in a London-based gang selling heroin and crack cocaine in Barrow. Police revealed that vital information was discovered after officers found a 17-year-old from London in a Barrow flat. 53 wraps of ready-to-sell heroin and crack cocaine had been inserted inside her.
Between December and April, at least 12 people have died in Barrow of suspected drug overdoses in the town – which has a population of 67,000 people.
Mr Woodcock is also calling for train conductors, coach drivers and cabbies to be offered cash rewards if they spot young people who turn out to be trafficking drugs from city gangs to provincial towns and rural areas.
The home office will be urged to finance police training of staff on public transport arterial routes and give them incentives to act in a bid to turn the tide against the ‘county lines’ long distance drug running phenomenon which sees city gangs taking remote orders on dedicated mobile phone hotlines and coercing children as young as 12 into delivering the requested drugs.
The British Transport Police is responsible for protecting the railway system, but MPs believe civilian transport staff could play a more active role if properly trained and incentivised by the police.
Faced with evidence that northern towns like Barrow are being targeted by gangs operating from as far away as London, Mr Woodcock will argue that the measure is needed because of the changed nature of drug running under county lines.
He will also urge home office ministers to intervene to reverse moves to remove guards and ticket collectors from trains, a controversial cost-saving measure which has been the subject of two years strike action on several parts of the network.
Towns like Barrow used to be primarily supplied by older drug dealers bringing their products by car, but the young people being forced to act as county lines drug runners usually cannot drive and so must rely on public transport along a limited number of routes to get to their destination. The Home Office acknowledged the role transport staff can play in detecting county lines victims with a ‘know the signs to spot’ poster campaign launched earlier this year.
But action so far has failed to control the problem the National Crime Agency admitting at a recent parliamentary seminar on the issue that their official estimate of the number of county lines – the name for the dedicated phone lines used by the gangs – has soared by over a third in a single year, from 720 in the 2017 NCA report to over 1,000.
Speaking ahead of the debate, Mr Woodcock said: “Train guards and cabbies can so often pick up when something’s not right and some of these young people being made to traffic drugs from the big cities stick out a mile as they head to coastal towns.
“These kids have to use public transport because they can’t drive so it should be easier to pick them up. The government should be funding police training to spot young people trafficking drugs and offering cash rewards for staff who tip off the police.”
