PAUL GOGGINS AND DR STEPHEN LADYMAN

15 MARCH 2006

  Q320  Chairman: They are not policemen; they are not policing, as you frequently tell me.

  Dr Ladyman: No, they are not policing but they are doing things that the police used to have to do so the police are now freed up to do more expert things.

  Paul Goggins: We have calculated that in all probability what has been freed up by that move is around about 540 full time equivalent police officers.

  Q321  Chairman: As you just said to us, it is a very new scheme and we will have to wait and evaluate it when we have enough evidence, will we not?

  Dr Ladyman: We do have some very good evidence from the West Midlands which I am happy to let you have.

  Chairman: We are always impressed by what happens in the West Midlands.

  Q322  Mrs Ellman: Operational police traffic officers have reduced by 20% between 1999 and 2004. Is that a deliberate policy? Do you think that is satisfactory?

  Paul Goggins: It is not a deliberate policy but the number of officers, if you make a different comparison, has increased slightly if you look at the figures for 2002-03.

  Q323  Chairman: Start again. I am not very clever. Are you telling us that the rest of the world thinks they have gone down but the Home Office thinks they have gone up?

  Paul Goggins: I will just give you two simple figures. In 2002-03 there were 6,902 full time equivalent police traffic officers and in 2004-05 there were 7,104.

  Q324  Chairman: What is a full time equivalent? In nurses, I know what half a nurse is but what is half a policeman and which half are we talking about?

  Paul Goggins: We are talking about full time road traffic officers. I want to go on and make a different point, if I might.

  Q325  Chairman: You are skating on thin ice. I would move on rapidly.

  Paul Goggins: Just giving you those figures only tells a part of the story. I would argue it is rather old-fashioned to think simply in terms of dedicated road traffic officers. What we want are police officers who are able to enforce roads policing. When I was out recently as I was with an inspector in a part of my constituency, he was in a vehicle equipped with ANPR technology. He was dealing with antisocial behaviour. He was reassuring the public. He was also able to detect if there was a vehicle being used illegally and perhaps also then connected with other crime, because we know people who drive illegally are much more likely to be committing other offences. There are many aspects to this police officer. He was not a roads police officer but he was doing roads policing as well as other aspects of his work. As we go forward, we want to see roads policing integrated. It is not enough just to say there are so many officers. We want every officer to see roads policing as part of his responsibility.

  Q326  Mr Goodwill: The Committee may have been falling into a bit of a trap which Dr Ladyman picked up on in that it is almost as if, if no offences were committed, nobody drank and drove, nobody broke the speed limit where there is a speed limit, nobody would be killed on the roads. Quite obviously, there are a number of accidents which are preventable through better policing and a number which will happen anyway. Given that we have the safest roads in Europe and given that the law of diminishing returns will apply, has any attempt been made to estimate which of these 3,200 casualties are potentially preventable and which is the base line figure at which, no matter how well we are policing, everybody will obey every law every second of the time?

  Dr Ladyman: I do not know whether we have a precise figure for that but I will happily write to you with the figures we do have. What I can tell you is that certainly we know that, for those people where a fatality had taken place who had been drinking or where drink was a factor, the figure is probably around 500. There are 500 people who may not have had that accident if they had not been drinking. We know speed is a factor in a very significant percentage of fatalities and I will drop you a line and tell you exactly what that percentage is, but what we do not know of course, and what we can probably never know, is precisely how much speed was a factor in those accidents and precisely how much drink was a factor in those accidents. We can only tell you that it was a factor.

  Q327  Mr Goodwill: Do you think we need more emphasis on drinking and drugs as an issue, because it seems you will almost certainly get caught speeding if you speed but people get away with drinking and driving for years until they have an accident.

  Dr Ladyman: I absolutely agree with you on both cases. We are seeing a worrying increase in the incidence of people where drug use might have been a factor in that they have been using drugs in the recent past when they were involved in an accident. In particular with young people, there is certainly anecdotal evidence and a growing body of substantial evidence that many young people are designating a driver when they go out and that driver is not engaged in consuming alcohol but they may be smoking a joint, because young people sometimes do not appreciate that drugs can impair driving as well. In addition to that, there is a growing number of people who do not think you can be caught for drug driving. It is entirely erroneous but nevertheless there is that group of people out there. So far as drink is concerned, as the Committee will know, there has been a worrying increase in the number of deaths where drink was a factor in the last year or so, although strangely there seems to have been a reduction in the number of people seriously injured where drink was a factor, which just might indicate—this is something that we are thinking about—that the people who we are not getting at are the serious drinkers who just do not care. It is not somebody who has just drifted slightly over the limit; it is somebody who just does not give a stuff about the law and is drinking heavily and driving.

  Q328  Chairman: You will give us a note, as far as you can sort out those figures?

  Dr Ladyman: I will.

  Q329 Mr Goodwill: What about random testing? Certainly in my area if the police descended on a pub and tested every car leaving the car park, that news would travel around like wildfire. Do you think there is a place for random testing?

  Dr Ladyman: I think there is a need to pick up our game on drink driving. ACPO have recognised this already and I think the previous chief roads police officer publicly acknowledged that they need to pick the pace up on this again. The department and the police are working closely on how we are going to do that. We are talking about having a major summer drink driving campaign as well as a Christmas drink driving campaign.

  Q330  Mrs Ellman: Why is it taking so long to secure approval for roadside alcohol screening equipment? We are told that would make testing much simpler.

  Dr Ladyman: My understanding is that they are trying to develop a very tight specification for that equipment.

  Paul Goggins: It is a complex process. The Home Office Scientific Development Branch are closely involved with that. There is no complacency about it but, because we have to provide something which will stand up as evidence in court, it is important that the devices that are used are completely and utterly reliable. Indeed, the Home Secretary would not sign off approval for anything that was not capable of giving that kind of evidence 100% of the time. We are working on it. Clearly, we have the power to use it now and, as soon as it is feasibly possible, we will be bringing that forward for practical use.

  Q331  Mrs Ellman: When do you think that is likely to be?

  Paul Goggins: I am told if things go well maybe within the next 12 months, but I would not want to be held to a particular date. As soon as I can give better advice than that, I will certainly let the Committee know because you will be as anxious as I am—and indeed as Dr Ladyman is—to get this into use as soon as possible.

  Q332  Mr Leech: Do you accept that more lives would be saved if the permitted blood alcohol content was reduced from 80 to 50 milligrammes?

  Dr Ladyman: It is not as simple as that. Clearly, if everybody obeyed the law and we reduced the blood alcohol level to 50 milligrammes[3], yes, we would save more lives but we think about 500 deaths a year are attributable to people over the 80 milligrammes and I think the figure is about 50 to 70 lives a year would be saved by reducing it, involving people between 50 and 80. It seems to me obvious that the target for our enforcement, our priority, has to be catching all of the people who are over the 80 milligrammes limit and saving the 500 lives before we start diverting police resources to try to catch the 70 or so that are between the 50 and 80 limit. I do not rule out the possibility, once we have strict enforcement at 80, once we have the situation under good control with 80, of the government of the day wishing to move down to 50. Let us focus where the big gain is to be made first.

  Q333 Mr Leech: Do you not think though that the number of people who are over the limit when they are breathalysed would be massively reduced if they reduced the alcohol limit? If they reduced the alcohol limit, there would be a fair proportion of people who just would not drink at all; whereas at the moment there is a lot of people who will have a couple of drinks thinking that is okay but very often it is not okay.

  Dr Ladyman: That is only an opinion. I do not think we have the slightest bit of evidence to suggest that that is the case. It is a judgment call. My judgment is that there are 500 people whose lives are to be saved if we can target police resources where the serious problem is and that is where I would like the police to be focusing. Going to a 50 microgram limit would be a distraction. It is often put to me by people who lobby on this issue, "Look at all these countries around Europe that have already gone to 50 micrograms or tighter levels than that." Frankly, there are countries around Europe where they have a zero limit but they have a hell of a lot more alcohol related road deaths by proportion than we do because they are not enforcing at the zero limit. My view is get it right at 80 and then we can think about moving to 50 but do not go to 50 now because the police will spend their lives breathalysing people who are much less of a risk than the serious offenders.

  Q334  Mr Leech: Would you not accept though that by reducing the limit we would be sending out a very strong message to people that drinking and driving, full stop, is a bad idea and therefore people might be more discouraged from drinking at all?

  Dr Ladyman: There are all sorts of ways of sending out messages. I think there are better ways of sending out that message that will not divert the police from the real target.

  Q335  Mr Donaldson: Why is the legal emphasis on detecting impairment through the use of illegal drugs rather than driving while on drugs?

  Dr Ladyman: That is a debate that we need to have. One can argue that we should have the same sorts of strict legal measure that we have for alcohol in respect of drugs. That is something I am giving some thought to at the moment. The position as it is at the moment, with the state of testing and with the myriad of drugs available that people might be using, is that the sensible measure to use is one of impairment, but it is a debate and I would be interested in hearing the Committee's views on that.

  Q336  Mr Donaldson: The Association of Chief Police Officers has called for changes in the law in this regard and they have also been criticised by companies such as D-Tech, which makes drug detection equipment, for not being more active in developing technology to detect drug use. Are these criticisms valid and why have there been delays?

  Dr Ladyman: I am not sure I would take criticism from a company that makes drug detection equipment, suggesting that we should be more active in developing drug detection equipment. I would have thought that was their job. As a general point of debate, as an issue where public policy may need to evolve, I think this is a valid area for consideration and it is something that I am discussing with ACPO and I am considering. I would be very interested in hearing the Committee's views on it.

  Paul Goggins: Government and all of us would be equally intolerant of drug driving as we are of drunk driving. The question is how it can be measured. We have a reliable way of measuring alcohol content in the blood. That is now accepted. We have increasingly sophisticated was of measuring that soon by the roadside in a way that is reliable and will stand up in court. It is simply harder to do that in relation to drugs, partly because of course some people are able to take drugs legally, which are prescription drugs and so on. The illegal drugs we have impact differently on our systems. Cannabis, for example, remains in the system longer than cocaine does. It is extraordinarily complicated. I too would welcome the debate but it is more complex than the alcohol.

  Q337  Mr Donaldson: Yet in Germany the traffic police have been using this drug detection equipment for 10 years. It is on trial throughout Europe. Finland and Belgium have recently adopted it and it is now operational there so why is the UK lagging behind the rest of Europe when the equipment is there, is available and is being used in other European countries?

  Paul Goggins: Maybe as part of the debate there are things that we need to look at there and learn from. At the moment, we are still trying to develop a more sophisticated impairment test in relation to drug misuse. That in itself is a challenge that we are grappling with at the moment, so I would be interested to look at the technology they have developed in Germany to do what they do. If there are things we can learn from that, we should, but my view is that deploying this in relation to drugs is more complicated than it is in relation to alcohol.

  Dr Ladyman: I am not 100% convinced of the accuracy of your statement because certainly from my conversations with transport ministers for all of those countries—I have had informal discussions with all of them and I have had formal discussions at road safety meetings—I do not have the impression that any of them think that we have a solid, satisfactory strategy for drugs and driving yet.

  Q338  Mr Donaldson: The suggestion is only that they might be a bit more advanced than we are. It is the case though that throughout the UK not all police forces adopt field impairment testing to detect drug impaired drivers. Do we not have the same equipment in use and the same traffic enforcement and detection capacity right across the United Kingdom?

  Paul Goggins: We should of course be encouraging the highest standards throughout. We are in the process at the moment of developing a more sophisticated way of measuring impairment in relation to drugs. That also is something which is in development and will take some time to come to fruition but when it does that will equip the police throughout the country with an up to date, more sophisticated way of doing this measurement and we would expect people to use it.

  Q339  Mr Donaldson: Why does the Home Office not collect data on drug driving offences separately to drink driving casualties?

  Paul Goggins: Clearly that is something we may need to give some further thought to. It is a more complex area than it is in relation to alcohol.