Crime: Drink-driving

Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe Excerpts

Monday 8th October 2012 Lords Chamber

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, on my noble friend’s last point, during the passage of the Road Safety Bill under the previous Administration, that proposal was suggested. The previous Government turned it down and I believe that they were probably right to do so.

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe]

My Lords, although I recognise that the major problem that we face is dealing with repeat offenders, does the noble Earl agree that the second group with which we have the greatest problem, and who suffer the most deaths and have the most accidents, are people aged under 21? Following on from the previous question from that side of the Chamber, would the Government be prepared, among the several initiatives they are looking at, to contemplate a programme of zero tolerance for the under-21s, so that we might perhaps achieve a cultural change and so get the benefit in future generations?

[Earl Attlee]

The noble Lord is quite right that young drivers feature disproportionately in the statistics. A difficulty arises in initially telling youngsters that they cannot drink at all and then, at a certain point, we tell them that they can. The problem is not so much youngsters with a little bit of alcohol in them, but when they have drunk far too much.