Lib Dem peer and Home Affairs spokesperson has talked to Buzzfeed about the death of his former boyfriend from an accidental overdose of the drug GHB.

In an emotional and candid interview, he described how he and Michael had been in a relationship, which, after they split up, became a very close and enduring friendship.

In 2013, Brian received a call from Michael’s brother with the horrific news that Michael was on life support. He rushed to the Intensive Care Unit to say goodbye.

At the inquest into Michael’s death, the Coroner pointed out the key sign that he had been in trouble – which none of the others at the party had realised.

He lay down on a sofa and started snoring, prompting the other men at the party to move to another room. As the party’s host described this to the inquest, Paddick says, the coroner interrupted the evidence and told the hearing: “For future reference, if someone has taken GHB and they start snoring, that’s when to call the ambulance, because that’s a sign their respiratory system is shutting down.”

Brian says that education about the risks of chemsex drugs is essential. But there also needs to be a change in the way the Police deal with these things:

“I don’t have all the answers around legislation,” he says. But what he is sure about is what the government needs to do to shift the police into better managing the problem. Currently, many gay men who use GHB and experience a crime within a chemsex setting (in particular sexual violence) don’t report it for fear of being themselves subject to a police investigation for using an illegal substance.

The Home Office, therefore, needs to instruct the police and CPS to “say [publicly] that our priority is to look after victims of sexual assault and save lives rather than prosecute people for the possession of drugs,” he says. “Then the police and the CPS will change.”

“The whole system, whether it’s the law, the police, or the CPS [Crown Prosecution Service], needs to be focused on saving people’s lives rather than social control,” says Paddick, “because if we’ve learnt anything about the so-called war on drugs it is that it doesn’t work.”

In the interview, he also describes how, some years ago, the current Met Police Commissioner Cressida Dick advised him against coming out as gay because he’d always be labelled as “the gay policeman.” In all sorts of newspaper reports, this was indeed added in whether it was relevant or not.

The intense pain and loss of losing someone so close in such circumstances is clear. Everyone who reads this interview will have huge sympathy with Brian. He wanted to speak out to raise awareness of the issues around chemsex drugs and we should listen to him.