Parties take right (and left and centre) of reply

IN THE final part of our series designed to stimulate debate ahead of May's Holyrood elections, two former political advisers respond to the ideas raised in draft manifestos written for their party by one of their political rivals

The criminal justice system and the cycle of reoffending were at the heart of draft manifestos written for The Scotsman Picture: PA

A senior Scottish Labour peer said to me recently: "Our justice policy can't just be banging you up if you carry a knife, and building more prisons." And you know what? The peer had a point. Sam Ghibaldan's draft manifesto was a bit too soft and liberal for many in Scottish Labour's leadership - and for me too in places - but he had a point.

In Tony Blair's framing of New Labour's law and order policy, "tough on crime, tough on the causes" - itself coined by Gordon Brown rather than Tony - there was always meant to be a balance between prevention and punishment, and this needs to be restored. With a stiffer policy spine, and slightly harder edges, Ghibaldan's work sketches out a plausible Labour approach.

First, early intervention is crucial. Scotland currently has very weak childcare provision - SureStart here is a parody of what is available in England. This is despite the evidence that investment in the under-fives pays off long-term in reducing educational and economic inequality. A significant problem is that the spare educational cash in the system is spent on providing free university education to middle-class students. Robin Hood in reverse - steal from the poor to give to the rich.

Introducing tuition fees to release funds for real SureStart services would be an excellent move. But we can't neglect the role of parents. Stronger support and training is needed, but some people aren't fit to be parents. Their drug and alcohol addiction ruins their children's lives. Children should be removed from these parents.

Second, we can't leave adults wallowing in drug and alcohol dependency. They need high quality programmes to end their addiction and get them into work. This cannot, though, be optional. If you receive welfare then you should be in a programme. Too much incapacity benefit and disability living allowance ends up subsidising the addicts' lifestyle.

A similar approach should be considered for council tenancies. It seems ridiculous to decent people that current homelessness legislation requires councils to rehouse the anti-social repeat offender. Addiction may be a cause of offending, but it is not an excuse. State support must not maintain addicts but help them break their habits. Otherwise their pattern of destructive behaviour will spread costs and consequences widely.

This leads to the third point: drug and alcohol misuse fills our prisons. Petty crime fuels drug purchase. Drink is at the heart of a large proportion of assault and violent crime.Effective intervention can divert drug addicts from jail - if they are getting clean they will not be robbing. But we will need a massive expansion of methadone maintenance. The smug morality of those who preach abstinence is no help. Some people need sustained medication - and that is vastly preferable to the alternative.

Alcohol abuse needs serious attention. The villain here is the drinks industry that spends millions encouraging greater and greater consumption regardless of the health and human costs. Their behaviour has to change if society is to break the habit.

Drugs, of course, are also a problem in prison as well as outside. Something like one in five prisoners with a drug problem develops it in jail. We need better treatment programmes for sure. But we need to end the easy supply of drugs too.

Smuggling is a problem. Seasoned observers of prisons say: "There wouldn't be such a large amount of drugs in prison if prison officers didn't sell them."

This may be too cynical, but the supply comes from somewhere.

There is, of course, one further striking fact about our prison population: the sheer number of prisoners with no or low educational qualifications. Teaching them basic literacy and numeracy can be the first step on liberating them from a life of crime. But let us not be nave. You have to be a serious and often a repeat offender to get into prison nowadays. It is not cheap to jail someone nor is it inexpensive to rehabilitate them but the costs of crime are real too. Punishment, prevention and rehabilitation must go hand in hand.

The tone, and the content, of the welfare must reflect the care and concern for an individual that our values demand. Equally, though, there cannot be the soft option of welfare being the very support network that facilitates destructive and chaotic lifestyles.

Early intervention plus early removal of children at risk; drug treatment that is high quality but compulsory; rehabilitation as an integral part of punishment. Tough love. We need it because it works and because it is right.

• John McTernan is a former political adviser to prime minister Tony Blair and first minister Henry McLeish