SIR Keir Starmer has insisted “there is not a case” for altering laws across the UK in response to Scotland’s drug deaths crisis.

Last month, Lord advocate Dorothy Bain announced all simple possession offences in Scotland, including for heroin and crack cocaine, could be diverted from prosecution by police and can instead be issued a warning by officers and signposted to support if needed.

The UK Labour leader appeared to support the move, labelling it “probably the right thing to do”.

But now Sir Keir, a former director of public prosecutions in England, has warned there is no justification for changing UK-wide drug laws.

Speaking to the Scottish Parliamentary Journalists’ Association, the Labour leader said: “There is not a case for changing the drugs laws across the United Kingdom. I wouldn’t go down that route.”

Sir Keir stressed that Scotland’s record of drug deaths, the worst in Europe, was “tragic” as he pointed the finger at Nicola Sturgeon and her “poor” record of tackling the issue.

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He added: “The funding for some of the preventative work was taken out before it was then put back in again. That is the wrong approach. Obviously, prevention has to be a key element of this.

“They made a big mistake in taking the funding out. I acknowledge that some of it has gone back in again, but they made a big mistake strategically in doing that, in my view.”

Asked if he backs the Scottish Government’s and his party in Scotland’s stance that Scotland’s drug deaths crisis should be treated as a public health emergency instead of through the criminal justice process, Sir Keir said: “There is always a health dimension to this.”

He added: “What we all want to see is the prevention of these deaths and that will involve a health dimension as well as a criminal justice intervention.”

But he stressed: “I wouldn’t be looking to change the drugs laws across the United Kingdom in relation to it.”

Sir Keir added: “I do think this is genuinely an area where devolution allows Scotland to look specifically at a problem that tragically has impacted in Scotland in a different way to the position in England and Wales and Northern Ireland and European countries.”

Pressed on the Lord Advocate’s announcement on diversion away from prosecution, the Labour leader claimed he had “not seen the detail yet”.

He added: “These are very broad principles in terms of the Lord Advocate's position and I would certainly like to see the detail of it.

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“I've drawn up these prosecutorial before, and I know there is a lot in the detail that matters...where is the discretion, what are the exceptions, what happens in circumstances x,y,z and these are all of the unanswered questions.

“In my experience in prosecutorial policy, when you look at the detail it is much more complicated than the overall principles.”

But he warned against a UK-wide solution for a Scottish-specific problem, with drug deaths much higher north of the border.

Sir Keir said: “I do not think what happens in Scotland should be a general application across the UK.

“One of the benefits of devolution is to allow each of the nations to look separately in context to the challenges they have.”