Heroin addicts 'getting fix in NHS shoot-up rooms' blasted by Black Country MP

The controversial treatment features in the Home Office's Modern Crime Prevention Strategy which was signed off by Prime Minister Theresa May in March when she was Home Secretary.

The idea behind the scheme is to give addicts a safe place to inject themselves with clean heroin.

The document states: "For a small cohort of entrenched, long-term opiate users who have not achieved recovery through optimised oral substitution treatment, there is evidence that heroin assisted treatment (supervised injectable heroin) reduces crime."

But the method has been slammed by Dudley North Labour MP Ian Austin who said: "Decent people who go to work and pay their taxes will be appalled to discover Theresa May wants to use taxpayers money to give drug addicts their fix.

"Instead of this crazy nonsense, she should reverse the cuts to the police so they can put drug dealers in prison and stop them causing this misery in the first place."

Trials took place in England during 2011 and a European-wide study was published in 2012 which reported positive results but cited its obvious controversy and said it would be expensive.

A Department for Health spokesman confirmed that the technique was used in Britain but in 'very rare' cases where all other treatment 'had failed.'

He added that only specialists with a Home Office licence could oversee the injection of heroin.

In the Modern Crime Prevention Strategy, Mrs May says: "Investment in drug treatment got more heroin and crack dependent offenders off drugs."

Earlier this year the British Medical Association passed a motion, claiming the scheme would help reduce crime, prevent the spread of HIV and ensure addicts did not overdose.

Addressing the BMA's annual conference in Belfast, Dr Iain Kennedy, chairman of the association's public health medicine committee, said: "These are not places that just anybody can go to. They are for people that may lead particularly chaotic lives and otherwise inject in public places, such as homeless people.

"They are for people who are already enrolled in drug treatment programmes. It's a very small number of people. The consumption rooms are not needed in every town and city in the country. They are an adjunct to existing treatment."