Since being appointed Home Secretary, Sajid Javid has taken a series of bold and overdue decisions. On immigration, he understood that most people would like skilled doctors and nurses to come and work for the National Health Service, so he removed them from the cap that Theresa May had imposed on skilled workers coming to this country.
In his response to the case of Billy Caldwell, the severely epileptic boy whose fits were eased by cannabis oil, Javid brought political nous to a department that all too often lacks it. He recognised that if heroin could be prescribed for medical purposes without further undermining prohibition, the same could be true for cannabis. The oil’s efficacy is an open question, but at least Javid stopped the original plan: arresting the child’s distraught family at the airport, on charge of smuggling a banned substance.
His latest project is to make it easier for the police to stop and search people they suspect of carrying acid, for the purposes of a street attack.
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