EPPING Forest and Harlow Youth Parliament member Ben Murphy was among Youth Parliament members who met Home Secretary David Blunkett on Saturday to discuss the issue of drugs.

Members of the Parliamentary select committee on home affairs and members of Youth Parliament's select committee on law and society attended the meeting at Channel 4's head office in Horseferry Road, London.

Mr Murphy said: "It was a great success and I learnt a great deal from it. But it was incredibly difficult to write national recommendations for a nation with such varied needs.

"We shall now be recommending that the Home Office allow each policing division to have its own policies on drugs, which allows them to be relevant to young people's needs and also to be able to control the situation, which is the need of the hour."

Mr Murphy said the Youth Parliament also aimed to have the £20m budget allocated to youth services increased to make it more acceptable.?

He said: "With the current budget, it works out to about £2 per young person, which is clearly unacceptable."

October 17, 2001 9:22