Driving under Influence: Prosecutions

Asked by: Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth (Conservative - Life peer)

Question to the Attorney General:

To ask His Majesty's Government how many prosecutions there have been in each police authority area for drunken or drug influenced driving in each of the past three years; and how many of these prosecutions led to convictions.

Answered by Lord Hermer - Attorney General

A number of driving offences created by the Road Traffic Act 1988 relate to driving when under the influence of drink or drugs. These are as follows:

• Section 3A(a) causing death by driving without due care and attention / reasonable consideration while unfit through drink or drugs.

• Section 3A(b) causing death by due care while over prescribed limit.

• Section 3A(ba) causing death by driving without due care / consideration while over specified limit - specified controlled drug.

• Section 3A(c) causing death by due care and fail to provide specimen.

• Section 3A(d) fail to give permission for a laboratory test on a blood specimen having caused a death.

• Section 4(1) driving a motor vehicle when under the influence of drink or drugs.

• Section 5(1)(a) driving a motor vehicle with an alcohol concentration above the prescribed limit.

• Section 5A(1)(a) and (2) driving a motor vehicle with a concentration of a specified controlled drug above the specified limit.

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) does not hold any data which shows the number of defendants prosecuted and convicted of the above offences and to establish whether defendants charged with these offences were convicted would require a manual review of case files and this would be at disproportionate cost.

The figures in the table below relate to the number of offences and not the number of individual defendants. It can be the case that an individual defendant is charged with more than one offence. No data are held showing the final outcome or if the charged offence was the substantive charge at finalisation.

Management information is available which shows the number of offences of charged by way of the above list of Road Traffic Act 1988 offences in which a prosecution commenced. The table below shows the number of these offences in each police force area from 1st January 2022 to 31st December 2024.

Offences of attempt, in charge, aid and abet have been excluded but failure to provide specimen following drunken or drug influenced driving have been included to produce a list of offences that meet the criteria of ‘drunken or drug influenced driving’ prosecutions.