Ministers don't care about evidence and reason. They care about the views of tabloid editors.

By Ian Dunt

"It is the punishment of the wise, who refuse to take part in government, to live under the government of worse men." Plato said that. I always found it rather charming. Presumably Professor Nutt and his colleagues at the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) are mulling similar thoughts today, after the home secretary sacked its chief, and watched his colleagues resign in protest over the weekend.

The morning lobby today, in which the prime minister's spokesman tries to put as favourable a spin as possible on the day's events, was dominated by the subject. An extremely competent man, the PM's spokesman was unable to safely bat away the question of why the government bothers to appoint advisors if it plans to sack them for giving their advice. It wasn't his fault. The sacking was indefensible. Plato himself wouldn't be able to justify it.

Frankly, he struggled to decently justify some of his own ideas. There was a dark side to Plato's thoughts. The Greek philosopher believed society should be ruled over by the 'philosopher kings', a trained sect of experts at the peak of their physical and mental powers, who could tell the people what's best for them. It is, of course, an immensely dangerous and undemocratic idea. But it is the ideal version of the argument that all policy should derive from evidence and reason, and that only those unaffected by the requirements of elections and popularity are fit to make those decisions.

It is not an idea that has succeeded in Western civilisation, which is far more democratic. But democracy has a problem too. It relies on one very important variable, which British society has utterly failed to deliver: accurate information.

In theory, democracy works for the benefit of mankind because the government responds to public demands. This requires two things to be fulfilled. The public have to be rational, which sometimes pertains, and it has to have access to reliable information, or else its demands rest on false assumptions. But the media, its main source of information, does not deliver. It provides truth, yes, but it also spews out myths and nonsense to substantiate its editorial agenda.

Nowhere is this more evident than in criminal justice. The myth, and myth is the best word you can attach to it, that putting more people in prison for longer will reduce crime is continually parroted, like a short man insisting he's tall. If this absurd claim was true, we would have surely seen the effects by now. Labour has thrown people into prison, for relatively minor offences, since it came to power, in a bid to pacify the tabloid press. Our prisons are now literally overflowing. It has accomplished nothing, except the criminal education of young men and women who had previously only been capable or interested in minor infringements of the law.

A similar myth is readily propagated when politicians talk of the bobby on the beat. Bobbies on the beat accomplish very little other than a minor sense of public reassurance. It is, in fact, an appalling use of police time, which would be better targeted at particular problems. But politicians still parrot this argument because it is the focus of tabloid concerns.

And the same is true for drugs. Any move to liberalise the current drug laws is jumped on and killed, like a chicken emerging in the middle of a famine, because government assumes the tabloids will object. David Blunkett could only get away with downgrading cannabis after a period as home secretary which managed to be more draconian and authoritative than any other in recent memory. And even then, it was quickly reversed.

Current drug policy condemns our young to death, by putting drugs in the hands of dealers, who regularly pollute them to increase their profits. It funds the black market, and provides a major source of financing for a limitless variety of ills in society, including human trafficking, prostitution, and gun crime. So many ministers have smoked cannabis that you might think they'd be good enough to spare similar teenagers the ruination of their future careers with a criminal record, just because they experimented with something people have playing with for centuries.

The government should have known better than to establish the ACMD in the first place. Any time you get experts and scientists to produce reports on the prohibition of drugs, they always reach the same conclusions, not because of some vast conspiracy, but because it's the only solution a reasonable person with the evidence in front of them can produce: relax the laws.

You might even call it treason. The government runs the country not on the basis of what is shown to be beneficial to Britain, but on the whims of tabloid editors' prejudices. It is a derogation of responsibility toward the British people. We might not want the philosopher kings, but we do want ministers capable of saying the word.

What's the solution? Certainly not a change of government. David Cameron's comments on the story this morning were flaccid. After defending the current status of cannabis, he offered this less-than-ferocious contribution: "What seems to have happened here is a breakdown of confidence, of mutual confidence, between advisor and minister, and some rather unseemly scenes have followed." Yes, thank you David. Very helpful. Cameron has defined himself as the heir to Tony Blair, whose manipulation of the media became the weapon by which he maintained power, and eventuality the end of power itself. He won't criticise the sacking, disgraceful as it is, because he knows he might one day have to do the same. The leader of the opposition offered no defence of the rights of scientists to reach their conclusions based on evidence, rather than political calculations, despite the fact he is known to secretly harbour progressive views on drug regulations himself.

It's a horrible position for a country to be in. We have none of the wisdom of the philosopher kings, and none of the public benefits of democracy. The solution is to find a middle ground and make evidence gathering and expert testimony a fundamental part of the policy formulation process. The establishment of the advisory council was a good step. You can see how good a step it was by the fact it is now unravelling.

But it cannot be left to merely advise. The reports of such bodies should exist for all policy areas and their reports should trigger debates in parliament where the evidence provided must be taken into account - with a requirement to that effect confirmed in law. Similar changes need to be made to select committees, whose final reports should be put before the floor of the Commons as the basis for debate.

It's a little bit of both; the democracy of elected representatives combined with the unassailable wisdom of evidence and expert analysis. But to do so requires a fundamental rethink of how government is conducted, from a public relations exercise to a public good exercise.

You won't get that from the current government. And you won't get it from the opposition either.

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