IN its short period of office, Boris Johnson’s government has delivered a series of shocks to those who still retained some respect for the Mother of all Parliaments. Yet the behaviour of Johnson’s Minister of Crime and Policing Kit Malthouse still takes the breath away.

The conference he called in Glasgow last week was supposed to be Westminster’s response to Scotland’s spiralling number of drug deaths and leading experts had considered it important enough to clear time in their diaries for the greater good.

Malthouse, though, was able to devote just hours to attend the conference that he had called. He missed key evidence from internationally renowned experts, including his own Home Office recovery champion, and presentations from Welsh and Irish health ministers.

There was some suspicion about Malthouse’s motives in calling the conference in Glasgow in the first place. The Scottish Government had already announced its intention to hold a drugs conference in Glasgow. Malthouse’s decision to hold his own conference looked suspiciously like an attempt to emphasise the UK’s role in drugs policy.

Scotland’s drugs problem is too important to be used as part of political one-umpanship. With accusations that it is also guilty of doing so, the Scottish Government must now push ahead to do everything it can to address the crisis within existing laws, at the same time as it aims to change them. Treatment and rehab remain priorities.

It’s almost impossible to believe a government minister would turn a deaf ear to important evidence at a conference he himself organised. What remains true is that Westminster’s approach to the drugs problem – based as it is on a law-and-order approach rather than the Scottish Government’s more health-orientated approach – is not working.

While politicians talk, people are still dying. With Westminster continuing to block a safer drug injection room to save lives it’s hardly surprising some activists are planning to defy the law and provide such a facility themselves.