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Mr. Paul Stinchcombe (Wellingborough) (Lab): At this time, of all times, when we are liberalising the licensing laws to encourage responsible rather than binge drinking, would it be appropriate to support a new clause, such as the one under discussion, while
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consistently arguing that when one drinks one has to be responsible, and that part of that responsibility is never to drive afterwards?
Mr. Jamieson: There are two issues to consider. The first is the responsible use of alcohol. I have no problem with people going out, having a drink and being responsible. The other measures that we have introduced are to do with people who act irresponsibly on the streets when they are not intending to drive, which is about people drinking excessively. The second is that my Department is dealing specifically with the idea that wherever and whenever one drinks, be it at home or out and about, if someone intends to drive, he should not drink in the period leading up to it. That is the important point. There are other minority issues to do with general drinking, but they have been addressed outwith the Committee.
On the issue raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford, we are considering the research possibilities for obtaining new information. The roadside survey was very expensive. It is intrusive to the vast majority who are found to be negative—all those sensible people who drive carefully. We are examining the possibility of the police obtaining intoxication levels at the scene of accidents. We have not previously had that information, and I think we will build up some good information from the police. I will consider the issue about research evidence and see if we can provide better research.
New clause 2 deals with drug-driving, which, as the hon. Member for Christchurch says, is important. It is increasingly worrying because of the number of people who are taking what are often known as recreational drugs while driving. I find it difficult to understand why, as a recreation, one would put strange substances into one's body, but that is what they are called. We do not have any evidence about the total impact of drugs on people while driving; nor do we have the equipment to measure either drug levels or the impairment levels of a particular drug. From many years of experience we know that certain levels of alcohol in the blood have a certain effect on people's capacity to drive and act responsibly. We do not have the same detail about the effects of a variety of other drugs. As I said in an earlier debate, the complication is that many people who take drugs take not just one but a combination, and often alcohol is involved, too.
The new clause is important. What we want to detect is impairment, not necessarily the presence of a particular drug. That is the problem. It is true that cannabis can have an effect on a person for a period of time, but it remains in the bloodstream for long after it has ceased to have an effect.
Mr. Chope: I accept that that argument can be advanced, but does the Minister agree that train drivers are not allowed to drive a train with the evidence of any illegal substance in their blood? Someone who tries to drive a train with evidence of having taken cannabis, whether it was last week or last month, is immediately dismissed. Surely the same principle should apply to people who get behind the wheel of a car.
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Mr. Jamieson: We discussed people who drive trains and fly aeroplanes when we debated the Railways and Transport Safety Act 2003, and there was some opposition to breathalysing pilots, which I found remarkable. We thought that even stricter laws should apply to those who had the responsibility for a very large number of people.
I agree with the hon. Gentleman that if people are going to drive, they should not take any drug that could impair them. That applies to some prescription drugs, which people take for medical conditions, that can lead to a driver being impaired. For example, large quantities of cough medicine can elevate the presence of alcohol and other drugs in the blood. We have talked to the Department of Health about the issue because we want better labelling on drugs to ensure that when people take a prescription drug, doctors and pharmacists draw their attention to the possible effects of driving or operating machinery, or of doing anything that might endanger them.
Schedule 7 to the 2003 Act made important amendments to the Road Traffic Act 1988, including replacing section 6 with new sections 6 to 6E, which provided the police with new powers to assist with the roadside screening of suspect drivers. They included a power to require suspects to undertake a preliminary impairment test and a preliminary drug test. In practice, those allow for the use of what has become known as the field impairment test and the drug screening test. The hon. Gentleman may have seen our recent guidance to the police on using the field impairment test, which is used especially to detect people who are impaired by taking drugs. The results of such tests would give the police more confidence in judging whether a driver is impaired and whether that is due to drugs.
However, it is worth emphasising that in the absence of the type of evidence that will enable us to define statutory limits for driving under the influence of drugs, the road traffic issue must remain focused on the impairment of driving. If an officer remains suspicious after using a breathalyser to eliminate the use of alcohol, the new powers provided by the 2003 Act will enable him to require a specimen, such as saliva, using a roadside screening device, when such devices are available.
In December, we issued guidance to chief constables on the conduct of preliminary impairment tests. Training of officers in the techniques has increased. The Home Office is continuing to develop a type-approval specification for a drug screening device that would help police at the roadside to detect the presence of a drug. One factor that makes the drugs issue so different from that of alcohol is that there are probably at least five or six different illegal substances in use, and the impairment that they cause may be due to their use in combination with each other or with alcohol. I have great sympathy with the general thrust of new clause 2, but laws are already in place for the police to take action. What we need is equipment, which we are working on producing, to collect evidence that will stand up in court.
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The new clause tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford has allowed us to debate the extremely important issue of drink-driving, which is a menace. A minority of people ignore the law and cause death and injury on our roads. We have had massive success in bringing down the rates of death and injury over the years, and, even though other European countries have lower limits than we do, we still have a better record. However, I take the point. Better enforcement, better education and taking appropriate action when people are caught are the ways to take the menace off our roads.
I am not convinced that just reducing the limits and opening up a debate about penalties and how much one can drink would take us any further forward in reducing the number of casualties. Nevertheless, the debate has been helpful and has aired some extremely important issues.
Mr. Chope: I certainly agree with the Minister's last statement. I still think that he has failed to address the issue of demonstrating the impairment of people who have illegal drugs in their system while driving. The old law in respect of the lawful drug of alcohol was that impairment had to demonstrated. Parliament decided that it was not necessary to demonstrate impairment but simply an excess amount of alcohol in the person's system, and that is for a legal drug.
New clause 2 deals with illegal drugs. It is already illegal to have such a drug in one's system, and it would be helpful to send out a strong message to people that they are guilty of an offence beyond that which is now on the statute book if they have illegal drugs in their system and get behind the wheel of a car, whether or not there is any evidence that their driving is impaired. The Minister has not addressed that.
Having said all that, I shall not divide the Committee on new clause 2 because I wish to study in detail the extraordinary document that has been sent out today. It is extraordinary in the sense that it has been produced at so late a stage that it was impossible for anyone to table a new clause reflecting the contents of it for discussion in Committee. I suspect that that was not by accident but by design. I hope that on Report we will have an opportunity to return to the matter of driving with illegal drugs in the body.
Mr. Kidney: My sole motive in tabling new clause 1 was a desire to improve road safety. Perhaps I meet more than my fair share of relatives who are bereaved because of a road traffic accident, but every life lost on the road through drink-driving is a tragedy to the whole of the person's family. Delightful, talented personalities are lost, often in such random ways. Because someone has the bad luck to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, a life is taken by some idiot who has been drinking all night and then gets behind the wheel of a motor car. My sole motivation was to save lives on our roads, and I believe that I have produced evidence that this measure would do so.
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I am grateful that the party of the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross supports this policy measure. I heard the hon. Member for Bath argue for the lower limit in the debate on what became the Railways and Transport Safety Act 2003. He made the same mistake that the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross made today by opening the Pandora's box of sentencing, as well as punishment. He will notice that there is nothing in the new clause about changing the penalties. It allows the Minister to say, once we start that debate, what complications exist and what the penalties should be.
It is true that Europe has lower legal limits, but the penalties are often lower too. The Minister was right to quote those that he did. There is a three-day ban in France and some countries have a two-week ban. Only Denmark goes beyond the limits of the severity of our punishments. I do not want in any way to undermine the certainty of those sentences, but we feel, as lawmakers, a sense of opprobrium about them, as any reasonable person in this country would. I am not in any way proposing that we change the limit.
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I should like now to address the points made by the hon. Member for Christchurch. It is a shame that I do not have even the support of the Opposition for this change in the law. I fully concur with everything that the hon. Gentleman says about enforcement. The 1 per cent. of people who cause some 400 deaths a year should be caught and taken off our roads. However, I do not agree with him that although we are focusing on the misbehaviour of that 1 per cent., we should ignore the evidence that the time has come to change the law for the other 99 per cent. of road users. I often think of John Maynard Keynes who, when somebody accused him of changing his mind, said, ''When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?'' The evidence to support a change is now building up so compellingly that it is time that we made it.
I shall not press for a vote because there seems little prospect of my winning it, but I will work on the hon. Member for South Suffolk. In an answer to me in the debate on 11 January, he said that
''if it became clear that the hon. Gentleman's suggestion''—
my proposal to reduce the limit from 80 mg to 50 mg—
''was the best way to make progress, I would have no objection to it in principle.''—[Official Report, 11 January 2005; Vol. 429, c. 229.]
I shall therefore work on the evidence to ensure that it is clear enough for the official Opposition to support the proposal.
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