Airports: London
Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe Excerpts(9 years, 10 months ago)
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Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
Indeed, it gives me great pleasure to join the noble Lord in wishing the Lord Speaker, on behalf of the whole House, a very happy birthday. In doing so—I am not sure that I shall get the chance later this week—I wish Her Majesty the Queen a very happy 90th birthday.
Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)
On the decision that may be taken in the summer on the third runway and Heathrow, is the Minister aware that, for more than a decade, air pollution around Heathrow has been way above acceptable levels and little has been done by any Government? Regardless of the decision, will any steps be taken to try to solve that problem and ease the poisoning that is taking place, particularly of children?
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
The noble Lord is right to raise the issue of pollution. That is why the Government are taking full consideration of the Davies Commission’s powerful recommendations on mitigating those impacts, so that appropriate consideration is given to ensure that those impacts can be mitigated, whatever the final decision on south-east expansion.
Road Traffic Act 1988 (Alcohol Limits) (Amendment) Bill [HL]
Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe Excerpts(9 years, 11 months ago)
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Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)
My Lords, on the Second Reading of my amendment Bill on 29 January, I opened by saying that the Bill was precisely in accord with what had been piloted through the Scottish Parliament. As a consequence, it contained a provision in Clause 2 that permitted a person to elect to have a specimen of breath replaced with a specimen of blood or urine. However, as this former statutory option was removed from the Road Traffic Act 1988 by Part 1 of Schedule 11 to the Deregulation Act 2015, which came into force in April 2015, I therefore need to withdraw Clause 2 from my Bill. Therefore, I oppose the question that Clause 2 stand part of the Bill.
Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe
My Lords, this amendment arises from the 20th report from the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, published on 5 February 2016, relating to Clause 3(2) on the powers to appoint the commencement date for enactment. The committee recommended that, additionally, subsection (2) should require the regulations for the commencement date to be made by statutory instrument. I accept this and accordingly move the second amendment, which meets its recommendations and relates to Clause 3.
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
I thank the noble Lord for his comments. I agree that changes such as these have an impact. As he rightly pointed out, Scotland has introduced changes. We are talking regularly with our counterparts in the Scottish Government, but it is right that we await a more substantial evidence base for these changes. As I said, we are not contemplating any changes at this time.
Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe
My Lords, neither of the amendments today is contentious so they should not pose any difficulties for the Government, although I know that the purpose of the Bill does. I am grateful to the Minister for setting out again that the Government are endeavouring to limit the damage done to individuals by drunken drivers. However, I am sorry that they still maintain there is not sufficient cause for embracing this measure, which would, in my opinion, lead to further lives being saved, fewer accidents and fewer people being damaged than is the case at present.
I do not want to repeat all that I said on Second Reading. However, notwithstanding what the Government have done, the numbers of deaths, accidents and injuries have virtually plateaued since 2012. Notwithstanding the minor changes made recently, there does not seem to be any indication of significant change ahead, even though Scotland has shown that very big changes can be effected by moving down to the 50 milligrams limit. While the Government are still digging in, I hope that the many individuals, organisations and members of the public who have supported me—I express my public gratitude to them—and who are in favour of this measure will continue to put pressure on the Government to bring about a change which will be in the best interests of all concerned, other than, perhaps, the drinks and hospitality industry.
Airports: Expansion
Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe Excerpts(9 years, 11 months ago)
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Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
Not only does Britain need a hub airport, Britain has hub airports and they play an important part in aviation capacity around the world. In terms of orders for planes, it is really for airlines themselves to decide on a commercial basis what type of aircraft they require.
Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)
My question is on the same theme as that of the noble Lord, Lord Higgins. Will the Minister assure the House that, if perchance the referendum says no, the Government will still make the decision to press ahead with expansion in the south-east and Heathrow?
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
We should not convolute the issues here. In terms of the referendum specifically, it was the previous Government under our current Prime Minister who gave the commitment that the people of this country would decide, and they will decide on 23 June.
Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014
Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe Excerpts(10 years ago)
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Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
What is required is for local councils to learn and look towards good practice. We have seen examples of good practice in place and have also seen how the Act has been used effectively—the transition from having 19 elements within the anti-social behaviour orders to having six has helped. But this is very much a matter for local authorities. We have seen good practice around the country, which needs to be replicated in those areas where we have seen such acts as the noble Lord just described.
Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)
My Lords, can the Minister give a stronger assurance to the Lib Dems that they will not be prosecuted for skateboarding?
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
I assure the Lib Dems that if they were to break into song, they would not be prosecuted.
Road Traffic Act 1988 (Alcohol Limits) (Amendment) Bill [HL]
Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe Excerpts(10 years ago)
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Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)
My Lords, I am grateful for the privilege, the opportunity, and not least the luck in the ballot to get the chance to bring forward this Private Member’s Bill. I am also grateful to all those who have kindly assisted me, including our clerks and the many outside organisations and campaigners who support this aim, and of course to the noble Lords who are going to speak today. I offer apologies from my noble friend Lord Rea, who was down to speak but has had to scratch.
This is a simple Bill whose objective is to better protect innocent citizens from accidental death, injury and harm from vehicle drivers who consume alcohol and then drive impaired. It also seeks to protect the drivers themselves. Specifically, it amends the Road Traffic Act 1988 to lower the maximum alcohol limits permissible when driving in the UK from the present blood alcohol concentration of 80 milligrams of alcohol per 100 millilitres of blood down to 50 milligrams of alcohol per 100 millilitres of blood. There would be corresponding changes to breath and urine limits, but in this debate I will refer solely to the limit change using the acronym BAC.
The Act would apply to the whole of the UK, although, as most noble Lords know, Scotland has already enacted this. What they may not know is that the Welsh Assembly has proposed the adoption of a BAC limit of 50 for the Principality, and across the Irish Sea the North Ireland road traffic amendment order not only proposes a lower 50 BAC limit, but an even lower limit of 20 BAC for novice and some commercial drivers.
This amending Bill is precisely in accord with what was piloted from 2014 through the Scottish Parliament. As a consequence, I regret that Clause 2 contains a provision to reduce the limit below which a person could elect to have a specimen of breath replaced with a specimen of blood or urine. This statutory option was removed from the Road Traffic Act 1988 by Part 1 of Schedule 11 to the Deregulation Act 2015 which came into force in April 2015. 1 will therefore need to withdraw Clause 2 later, and I hope that this will make life easier for the Minister.
The European Union does not have a directive on a drink-drive limit, but as long ago as 1988 it first proposed harmonisation throughout Europe at a 50 BAC limit, which it recommended should be adopted. Over the years it has been adopted by all European Union countries except two: Malta and the UK. So I ask: who offers better protection to their citizens, and are the interests in favour of sticking with the present limit being better protected than innocent lives and limbs? To get the answers we need to look at a bit of history and then come up to current developments. These have been recently summarised by Professor Richard Allsop in his 2015 paper for the RAC Foundation entitled Saving Lives by Lowering the Legal Drink-Drive Limit.
It is now well recognised that drinking and driving impairs performance and is a leading cause of road traffic accidents. But, as some noble Lords may recall, that was not always the case. Even in the mid-1960s there was still debate as to whether moderate drinking increased or decreased the risk of collision. But others had recognised the danger much earlier. As long ago as 1954, the World Health Organisation reported that,
“the inference cannot be avoided that at a blood alcohol concentration of 50 milligrams per 100 millilitres of blood, a statistical significant impairment of performance was observed”,
in more than half the cases it examined in the experiments it had undertaken. As a result, the WHO recommended a BAC limit many years ago.
The UK set up its own study in 1953 using what it called laboratory “tasking”, resembling driving vehicles on the road, which reported in 1959. It did not agree with the WHO’s recommendation but, while it acknowledged that substantial impairment of performance still occurred at levels below 80 BAC, it was suggested that those below that limit should not be criminalised. That was the reason given for not embracing the lower limit. In 1962-63 there was a large-scale study at Grand Rapids in the USA. This study quantified the relationship between BAC level and the risk of collision, and provided convincing evidence of greatly increased risk dependent on a driver’s alcohol level.
So why was the 80 BAC limit chosen? The choice of 80 BAC made by Barbara Castle, the then Minister of Transport, should be understood in the context of the evidence available at the time, and in 1967 it was probably influenced by several other salient factors too. The Grand Rapids evidence indicated that the average risk of involvement in a collision was roughly doubled at 80 milligrams. Further, 80 milligrams was within the range of levels then being considered or implemented by other countries. It was plausible that public and parliamentary acceptance could be gained, partly on the basis of advice that most people could have three small drinks without exceeding the 80 limit. However, the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents has long contended that 80 was not decided solely on the basis of empirical accident risk assessments, but was influenced upwards by the need to make acceptable to the public the introduction for the first time ever of legislation limiting the amount of alcohol that drivers could consume.
Eighty milligrams was the level at which the Grand Rapids evidence in the form in which it was published enabled the increased risk to be established with the conventional statistical 95% level of confidence against a background of genuine difference of opinion as to whether the risk was increased or decreased. The last of these points is more statistically technical than the others, but it carried weight among those preparing advice for Ministers, as no doubt former Transport Minister the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, may pray in aid when he comes to make his points. But I will argue that that precise basis is relevant to the case for lowering the limit.
What has happened since 1967, as well as the widespread harmonisation of a 50 BAC limit in so many other countries, including Scotland? Importantly, there have been further large-scale studies, including those conducted in the late 1990s at Fort Lauderdale and Long Beach in the USA. They were similar to the Grand Rapids study, but were helped by advances in statistical techniques which had been developed since the 1960s. Further studies were done in nine states in the USA between 2006 and 2008, and all were read across to the UK in a similar way to the original Grand Rapids evidence. They indicated that the increase in the risk of a driver’s involvement in a collision if they have a BAC of 80 milligrams to be nearly three times as much for collisions leading to injury and about six times for collisions leading to death as compared to the mere doubling which had informed the setting of the limit at 80 BAC in 1967. Even at the lower BAC level of 50, which this Bill proposes, the increases in risk are respectively about 1.5 and 2.5 times more—that is, double the Grand Rapids figures back in 1967.
There is now a broad consensus that risk of involvement in a collision is increased rather than decreased by moderate drinking. Acceptance of this changes the appropriate statistical process for assessing the level of confidence in analysing the Grand Rapids and similar data from a two-tailed to a one-tailed test. The meaning of this for the Grand Rapids data in the form in which it was published is that increased risk is established with a statistical 95% level of competence from 60 BAC upwards instead of the then 80 upwards as applied. There is a stark difference, and there was also a stark difference of opinion on this in 1967.
The foregoing may seem a bit dry, but the science proves that the 1967 BAC of 80 is now not only outdated but can mislead to risk life and limb. At the end of the day, of course it is the motorist’s right to decide whether or not to drive after drinking, but they have a right to know the facts about the risks and impairment that drinking has on their driving. It is the Government’s duty and responsibility to provide those facts, especially when quite innocent citizens are involved or affected through drink-driving motoring accidents. Even though I am moving this, I ask the Minister, first, do the Government accept that the 1967 BAC of 80 carries far more risk than was originally believed? If so, what do they intend to do about correcting that? If, however, they maintain that 80 is still appropriate, I would like them to revalidate the figure and produce the science from a more scientific perspective than we have done previously.
Of course, it can be argued that limits do not really matter, and it is the deterrent of being caught and punished with heavy penalties that really counts. To a degree, that is, no doubt, true. In the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, the UK achieved major reductions in road deaths, injuries and accidents with 80 BAC. This was because the Government more vigorously enforced the limit than did many other countries, even though some had lower limits than we had.
This House produced two EU Select Committee reports on the Commission’s call for a 50 BAC limit in 1998 and 2002. Both supported the Commission’s recommendations. In response to the first, the Government, using their words, “was minded” to move to 50. The transport department supported it also. It was delayed, however, on the basis that it intended to deal with the matter in the context of a possible EU directive. That never came but, instead, in January 2001, the Commission issued a non-binding recommendation that member states should set a 50 BAC limit. It was scrutinised here and, again, adoption of the 50 BAC limit was recommended. The department supported the reduction but, to many people’s surprise, including my own as I chaired the sub-committee, the Government did an about turn at the 11th hour. Instead, they said that they wanted to review the issue in their proposed longer term motoring strategy that they were about to undertake.
During the ensuing decade, deaths and injuries continued to remain high but were reducing slowly, although the 2007-08 recession saw the biggest fall for quite some time. Opinion polls, however, particularly those conducted by the motoring associations, began to reveal growing public concern about drink-driving and support for the lower limit. This culminated in December 2009 in an independent review of drink and drug law by Sir Peter North QC. Most judged his report in 2010 as an excellent piece of work. On drink-driving, North was convinced by the evidence that the risk of involvement in a collision is increased by even moderate drinking. In particular, the review found that lowering the limit from 80 milligrams to 50 milligrams could save over 100 lives a year, based on evidence from NICE, as well as preventing many more serious accidents.
As a consequence, he recommended that the 80 BAC should be reduced to 50 for five years, after which there should be a further review with the aim of establishing a 20 BAC. The newly elected House of Commons Transport Select Committee in 2010 was not so convinced. It believed that the North report sent mixed messages. It in turn sent few messages or recommendations from its report. It did not dispute that drivers were impaired further at 50 BAC and saw an effectively zero limit, although too great a step at that time to take, as probably the best option in the longer term. Instead, its key recommendation was that,
“any reduction in the legal drink drive limit should only occur after an extensive Government education campaign, run in conjunction with the pub, restaurant and hospitality industries, about drink strengths and their effect on the body”.
The committee’s report evidence shows that heavyweight lobbying was on it from the drinks industry. In that decade, 5,330 people were killed and 170,000 casualties were also witnessed in the UK.
Since the North review in 2010, there has been a levelling off in the previous declining figures for drink-related road deaths and casualties. Further models, including that proposed by the RAC Foundation’s report authored by Professor Richard Allsop, also associate significant, if not as dramatic, reductions in death and injury which a drop to 50 BAC would produce. Allsop’s “cautious” estimate is that there would be 25 fewer deaths and 95 fewer serious injuries per year.
Even more recent news and perhaps the most compelling for change comes from Scotland where a 50 BAC limit is now in force. The BAC change has been accompanied by a wide-ranging publicity campaign which has stimulated a nationwide debate on drink-driving on a scale not witnessed previously. An RAC survey shows 79% of Scottish motorists believe that moving the limit to 50 is a positive move while a Scottish Government survey found that 82% of people agreed that it is unacceptable to drink any alcohol before driving, and only 12% of people disagreed with that, which was quite a surprise and a very big change in public attitudes.
I anticipate the Minister will express interest and welcome the Scottish developments. But I suspect that the Government will then want more time and data to assess what is happening north of the border—perhaps even two or three years before they get the figures that they would want to analyse. Meanwhile, the Government state that drink-driving “remains a priority”. But they have made only very small changes to the law over the past five years, nor have they indicated anything really radical ahead. In fact, their policy has probably stalled since 2010, which is why there has been a plateauing in the number of deaths and injuries. In addition, since 2010, police numbers have been cut by 23%, which has had an effect right across the whole of motoring, including drink-driving. I was not surprised, therefore, that 10 of the Government’s police and crime commissioners were in touch with me yesterday pledging support for this Bill. Furthermore, they were pointing out that from a financial perspective, the Local Government Association’s estimate that lowering the current drink-drive limit to 50 BAC would save almost £300 million annually by reducing the number of call-outs to accidents and the associated public sector costs of police, ambulances and hospital admissions. It argued that this funding could be ploughed back into making communities safer. It went on to say that it has overwhelming public support for this legal change. Research released only this morning from the RAC’s Brake, the road safety charity, and the Alcohol Health Alliance of an opinion poll of 5,000 respondents shows that 77% of people in the country favour a 50 BAC limit bringing England and Wales in line with Scotland and virtually the rest of the EU, apart from Malta.
Therefore, the Government have no problem in carrying the country with them on this Bill, apart perhaps the drinks industry. The public know increasingly on this topic what is right and what will help best to protect them. The cost of the change to this highly questionable and now unsafe law made back in 1967 will be minimal. It will be far outweighed by other cost savings, but even more importantly by the saving of more life and limbs. If, however, the Government delay—and it would be a delay because I believe, deep down, that they must know that this will have to come, as we cannot have differing levels between the UK countries, with trains and cars crossing borders every day as we have at the moment—I forecast that they can expect to see at least 600 people killed and around 25,000 casualties over the next three years as a result of maintaining the present level. The Minister and his colleagues can avoid or minimise these figures. They simply have to join the public view and do what is right now. I beg to move.
Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe
My Lords, I am grateful to all who have spoken in this quite short debate. I thought that the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, would probably want to maintain the status quo for the time being but if he is contemplating tabling an amendment to go for random breath testing, which would help, I would be very pleased indeed to speak to him about it and would consider accepting an amendment from him in Committee. It will not be just one silver bullet that solves all the problems; neither would the Bill. There have to be a range of factors brought to bear. My complaint at the moment, as the House will have heard, is that the Government are stalling. Yes, the Minister has referred to a number of changes but, quite frankly, they are very small indeed.
The heart of this is that the Government have a policy of saying, “Don’t drink and drive” but in practice they do not try to put forward that policy. In truth, if there was such a policy, the limit would be 20 mg. The noble Earl, Lord Attlee, said that I had got the North report wrong. I have not; I have read the North report well and the Select Committee report. I have also read the Government’s response to the North report and the Select Committee. True, there has been no precise impact assessment made of how the industry would be affected but the industry made vehement and significant contributions to the work of the committee in 2010.
In particular, when the Government responded in Cm 8050, they said in paragraph 2.26 in regard to whether it would affect people that:
“The majority would not need to lower consumption to stay legal with a lower limit, but their response to the present limit suggests that they will not want to take any chance with the risk of offending. These responsible people have the choice to drink even less—and especially to drink less when they are out. If that happened, it would have a substantial impact on the businesses they patronise”.
That was the department’s view and I believe that it is what the Government support. That is why when they talk about a policy of “Don’t drink and drive”, they do not actually follow it through—because there is pressure from other quarters to continue to allow people to drink at low levels. What I have argued today is that those lower levels are dangerous. I have argued not solely about deaths but about those many thousands of people who are injured and still alive. There are such people around in wheelchairs, and so on.
Repeat offenders—those who go well over the limit—are an extraordinarily difficult group to deal with. I would not for a moment deny that and would be very happy to meet with the Minister and talk about that right across the board. But it is odd that in the evidence which has come out these people, when they are tackled, say that the one thing that would influence them would be to be told that there was no drink and driving whatever. Then they would not drink. That has never been tested and there is no science on it but that is the idea which they put forward. If we went to a 20 mg level in due course, maybe that would be the point at which it would be tested.
Scotland has already had a strong outcry from the drinks industry about the way that the changes affect it. To pick up the point of the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, it is making a cultural change in Scotland. As she rightly argued, we have seen many other cultural changes but in this area we have been slow. It is now time to move on.
I thank my noble friend Lady Hayter so much for her support. I pay tribute to the work that she has done over many years. Many of your Lordships may not know that she was the original founder of Alcohol Concern, which deals not just with this issue but with a wide range of alcohol concerns. It has done tremendous work in campaigning over many years.
We need other changes, too. If restaurants and pubs have a problem, what I cannot understand is why the root of what takes their business away is not tackled: the cheap booze sold to the public in supermarkets. If we were to go to a minimum unit price then the pubs, restaurants and so on would be on an equal competitive basis and would find more people going to them than has been the case. They need not drink, as we would hope to be running a campaign saying that if you go to a restaurant and have a drink, you should have a non-drinking driver with a car among you. That is a very good campaign indeed and I would be happy to support efforts along those lines. A package of measures is needed. A minimum unit price, even though it is not being pushed here, is a significant part of it and would answer some of the criticisms that have been levelled.
There are a whole range of issues here that need to come together. I will be coming back in Committee. The British Transport Police has suggested that the present limit needs to be equalised with that in Scotland, where there is a disparity. I think that that arises under different legislation and I am not quite sure how it needs addressing. I will speak to the Minister about it and see whether it is appropriate to table an amendment to the Bill.
In the mean time, I thank all noble Lords for their contributions, in particular my noble friend Lord Rosser on the Front Bench. I know that he had a little difficulty in determining from our friends in the party at the other end just what line to take on the Bill. He pointed to some very interesting and useful statistics and facts. I rather suspected from the way he was speaking that he has been convinced that while he may not have had a strong lead on policy from the other end, he will now go back and give them a very strong lead on what the Labour Party’s policy should be. It remains for me just to thank everyone who has contributed. We will be coming back in Committee, as I have at least one amendment that I will be moving. I conclude by asking the House to give the Bill a Second Reading.
Railways: South-West Network
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Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
The noble Lord raises an important issue about investment across the country and connectivity. I will write to him specifically about that particular route but, again, I repeat the commitments made. The investment we are making in the railway industry, including HS2, underlines the Government’s commitment to improve rail network connectivity across the whole of the United Kingdom.
Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)
May I revert to my noble friend Lord Berkeley’s Question and the Answer that the Minister gave? Can the Minister say why the money is not going in and there has been a pause on the work to be undertaken by Network Rail? What is the reason for that?
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
As I said in my original response, the Government have made commitments. The noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, talked about Dawlish, and we have completed the task there. He also referenced the new GRIP study and the issues around governance and finding funding for that. The department is looking at that.
Emergency Services: Central London
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Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)
My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that the public worry particularly about security issues and riots? In 2011 we had riots in London, and according to the Met Police we barely managed to get by. Last week, the Home Secretary announced that police forces could soon be without their own firearms units and should instead be moving towards creating regional firearms units. Given some of the transport difficulties we have in London when getting from point A to point B, are these regional units going to be effective if we are hit by big riots or security issues?
Lord Bates
The armed side of things, a point referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Harris, is something on which the national policing unit liaises with the various chief constables and police and crime commissioners to check that the provision is adequate. I understand that the number of trained firearms officers is something that the Metropolitan Police Commissioner is discussing specifically with the Home Office at this time, in response to the Paris attacks.
Civilian Use of Drones (EUC Report)
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Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)
My Lords, I, too, as a member of the committee, wish to express gratitude to the people who helped. In particular, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady O’Cathain, for her sterling and interested leadership. She was given a task to pursue which she was not initially enthusiastic about, but in the event it has turned out to be a very worthwhile exercise indeed; she thoroughly enjoyed it and we enjoyed working with her. I also thank our clerk, Alicia Cunningham, who worked extraordinarily hard for us, as well as our policy assistants and Tony Henley, who was our adviser.
In particular, I would like to express gratitude to the many organisations and individuals who came not just once before us but several times to give us their evidence and to guide us in particular directions. They were generally a very enthusiastic bunch who are keen to see drones moving forward quickly and expanding, and most of them are very much interested in light-touch regulation—they are real entrepreneurs in many respects—and it was very interesting for us to see how it worked. At the end of the day we produced a report that will be quite influential. When we turn to Europe and see that they are preparing to produce some further legislation towards the end of the year, and as the noble Baroness, Lady O’Cathain, just read out to us, what we have had to say on this will have a fair impact on Europe.
The report demonstrates the value of the House of Lords; when it turns its attention to serious business it produces a very serious and influential report which has wider implications. In addition, the issue before us proves the case for Europe and the single market. I do not know what some political parties will do when they start to see drones not just flying around within sight but flying from France to England and vice versa. This is a case where, because they can cross borders, we need to have regulation across the whole of Europe and not only there but throughout the rest of the world. While a non-appointed, not particularly accountable body is working on much of the regulation at the moment, most people have a general confidence in it. It will produce a report in due course, which will help Europe and which in turn will influence what happens at international level. The United Nations has a body that governs civil aviation, and what we are doing in Europe will be a very big factor in determining what applies throughout the rest of the world.
Our report, as others have mentioned, does not pick up on the defence side. It is quite interesting that the internet came from defence, as did drones in the main, and as we heard yesterday, drones will not be off the agenda.
The pace at which change takes place will be governed to a very fair extent by public opinion. I am not quite sure whether those in the industry felt the Prime Minister’s Statement yesterday helped the industry to move forward at a faster pace. It is appropriate that he made it, but I do not know whether it will help the civil side of it to move faster. A whole range of questions about drones will come to the fore in people’s minds. Yes, they will help the police, but what will they use them for? We could not quite get to the heart of what police forces were doing—different forces were doing different things. There is a case there for an open public debate about how drones will be used by public bodies such as the police in the future. We asked questions about the security industry in this country, which of course takes so much work that used to be done by the police. How will it use this technology, how will it be held accountable and where will the public be able to engage with it? Again, those questions still remain unanswered and need to be addressed.
I was in Richmond Park a week last Sunday, and to my surprise I found notices all over the place saying “No drones to be flown here”. I had never seen that before. I am not quite sure under what regulation that was done, but I presume that because they are the Royal Parks they can say, “Do not come on our patch”. Equally, however, there will be people in this establishment who have quite big patches, who might say, “Why shouldn’t I be able to say that nobody should be able to fly within the area above my lands?”. These are interesting points of development, and I wonder whether some changes have taken place here which now give people the right to decide that they do not want drones coming into their area.
Going back to the defence side, it is very concerning indeed to read reports that the Russians are now moving very quickly into this sphere. According to some press reports, they have now developed technology which will enable them to bring down a surveillance plane which British defence is currently working on. Whether or not the Minister can comment on that, it would be very interesting for us to find out.
I also sense that, with the change I saw in Richmond Park, a general toughening is taking place in attitudes to regulation, even within the CAA. When we saw it in the early part of the year, the CAA seemed to be fairly relaxed about trying to be hands-off and let the industry get on with it. However, I read a couple of weeks ago in the Times that it is now pressing the Department for Transport for legislation which would substantially increase the fines it will place on people if it catches them flying drones in restricted airspace or breaching the rules within high-density built-up areas. Can the Minister say whether some legislation is in prospect, with fines of £7,500?
These are all shifts which will tend to tighten up on the regulatory side and which will, to a degree, slow down the growth of the industry so that it does not progress quite at the pace my noble friend Lord Giddens talked about. As we have seen over the course of the past two weeks, something happens, it is immediately photographed and goes round the world, and immediately we see changes in policy taking place which three, four or five weeks ago we would never have envisaged would occur. Similarly, with drones we can see changes taking place there that could make a very significant impact on public opinion and in turn on the pace at which they will move.
Overall, we have done our best to produce helpful guidance over a very wide area. Again, I thank all those who I have worked with, and in particular the chairman for her leadership on this. We have produced an outstanding report, and looking at reports that go into Europe from the House of Lords, this one will make a change in the future—hopefully for the better, so that the industry will grow, but also so that in turn we get a proper balance with the right regulation that is needed, and that in due course we get that all around the world.
Psychoactive Substances Bill [HL]
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Lord Mackay of Clashfern (Con)
My Lords, it is important that in this Bill, it is not proposed that there should be a criminal offence of possession of psychoactive substances. In due course we shall see how that works, and it may well be that the lesson to be learned from that could have an effect on the older legislation to which the amendment refers.
As I understood the noble Lord, Paddick, he said that one of the successful police techniques is the conditional caution, which of course depends on the underlying offence—that is the power on which the conditional caution rests. It is an extremely valuable approach to this difficult problem. I agree entirely with what has been said about how difficult a problem this is. I have no doubt at all about that and I do not need to reiterate the point. The conditional caution has a degree of authority behind it to persuade the person who receives it to do what it requires him to do. That is extremely important. The difficulty I have with this amendment is that if a senior officer suggests or requires that someone should attend one of the systems as defined by the Secretary of State in a later amendment, there is not much power to ensure that that will happen.
It is a long time since I had experience as a judge in criminal cases involving drugs where possession was an issue, but I distinctly remember the sadness I felt when sentencing a lady with a young child who had been in possession of quite substantial quantities of prohibited drugs. As the sentencing judge, I had the power to invite her to subscribe to a programme as a condition of her probation, rather on the same principles as the conditional caution, except at a slightly more authoritative level. The lady was obviously very attached to her child and there was a risk that if the situation continued, she might be separated from the child by the social work authorities. I was keen, it if was possible, to help her get out of that situation. A good programme aimed at helping people out of addiction was being run in Glasgow at the time. I got her agreement to attend the programme, subject to the probation order, which, as noble Lords will know, meant that if she left the programme she had agreed to attend, there would be other possible consequences. It was to my extraordinary sadness to discover that after she had been getting on well for a few months, she suddenly left. That is one of the difficulties of a programme which has no authority to continue.
I am not good at getting into the minds of very young people, for reasons which are obvious, as the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, would attest, but there is the question of the psychology of all this. There is also the question of a level of authority, so that the treatment becomes something a person is required to undertake in order ultimately to get out of the criminal justice system. I agree that this is an important matter, and it would be good to see how the regime set out in this Bill works. It might have a good lesson for the existing legislation.
Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)
My Lords, I apologise to the Committee: I did not speak at Second Reading, but I would like to make a brief contribution at this point and to ask a question. Following up on the issue of alternatives to formal action being taken by the police in introducing people to recovery courses, I should say that I have had a good deal of experience over many years of dealing with people with drug and alcohol addictions. There is a big question mark over whether the addictive personality ever truly recovers, in the sense that people talk about recovery, because people often switch from one addiction to another, but they reach a stage at which they can maintain their addiction and lead a good life. However, it has been my experience that, before they get to that point, no one can undertake a course or programme of any sort unless they have an inherent willingness and desire to recover. One drawback, unexplained in the amendment before us, is this: what does one do with the literally very high percentage of people who will want to opt for this course because it is the soft option, but who have no intention whatever of displaying the willingness and commitment required to achieve recovery?
Lord Cavendish of Furness (Con)
With the leave of the House, I follow the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, in apologising for not having taken part at Second Reading. I declare an interest: I am what is called a recovering alcoholic. I am not about to fall over—it is 30 years since I last had a drink—but in keeping with what the noble Lord was saying, I regard myself as possibly still being an addicted person and therefore have to conduct my life accordingly. I endorse everything that the noble Lord says: we have to learn to take responsibility for our lives.
Getting that help means confronting some extremely ugly truths about what we have done and the effect we have had on ourselves and members of our families. That is a very hard role for the state to take on, and it has always been my view that one should rather encourage the private sector. The cost to the economy of addiction —whether to alcohol or to drugs, and in my view the two are closely related—is known almost precisely. The best outcome would be if a leading firm with good social values pioneered something that the rest of the world could piggyback on. Firms have a vested interest in their employees and their employees’ families being clean and free of drugs and alcohol, and they know what the cost is. It would be of enormous benefit, which perhaps could be reflected in some tax concessions, if the private sector were encouraged to lead on this matter.
The Deputy Speaker (Baroness Fookes) (Con)
My Lords, I point out that if Amendment 29 is agreed, I shall not be able to call Amendment 30 by reason of pre-emption.
Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe
My Lords, had I spoken at Second Reading I would have supported the Government’s aims of trying to avoid the harms which arise from legal highs and to prevent them wherever possible. However, like the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, I would have gone on to ask why the Government are so inconsistent in their approach. Ethyl alcohol is a psychoactive substance. There is no question whatever about that—the Government cannot disagree. It will be very interesting to hear why they believe it should be treated differently.
When one considers the differing approaches the Government take to alcohol these days, one sees the great sledge-hammer—that is the best way to describe it—that has been brought in to deal with an issue that, although worrying, is a nut compared with the boulder that is alcohol and the problems it creates for our society. The noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, just described those problems, so I will not repeat them. The Government should think long and hard about moving, fairly quickly, on some of their policies on alcohol if they want to carry the confidence of this House in trying to make changes of this nature. They have a responsibility deal whereby, in partnership with the drinks industry, they seek to reduce the volume of alcohol consumed in this country. They have targets, yet the Chancellor stands up in March and announces a freeze in duty on wine, beer and cider and a reduction in some other areas, including a 2% reduction in the duty on spirits.
The Government will not use pricing as a mechanism to try to discourage drinking, and the drinks industry sees that such pricing effectively discourages people from buying its products, so it lobbies the Government to reduce duties, which the Government, in turn, do. On the one hand we have the responsibility deal, with its targets that seek to reduce the consumption of alcohol, while on the other hand we have the statement made by the Chancellor. As the Government documents produced after the Budget prove, he will in fact increase the volume of alcohol that is sold, which, in turn, will increase the harms that arise for people who abuse it. So, a conflict does arise. I want to persuade the Minister to think ahead about what might be happening with alcohol and alcohol-related substances, and about whether there is a case for making a change to the schedule.
As long ago as last summer, I wrote to the noble Earl, Lord Howe, about a powdered white alcohol called Palcohol which is being marketed in the United States. Powdered alcohol has been around in Europe for quite some time. It was produced in Germany and then in Holland about seven or eight years ago but was not marketed. It is now being produced and marketed in the States. I wrote to the noble Earl to find out what the Government were doing in their conversations with the drinks industry at the responsibility deal level. The reply was:
“The Department has not discussed the import, production and sale in the United Kingdom of Palcahol and its European equivalents with partners in the Responsibility Deal”.
I also wrote to the noble Lord in the Home Office to ask,
“what assessment they have made of the decision of five states in the United States to ban the sale of Palcahol”.
He replied:
“The Government is aware of powdered alcohol from media reports and the banning of the product in five states of the United States of America. The Government is not aware of powdered alcohol being marketed or made available to buy in England and Wales”.—[Official Report, 6/1/15; col. WA 107.]
I followed that up with another Question:
“To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the status under the Licensing Act 2003 or the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 of imports from the United States or Europe of alcohol powders”.
The noble Lord, Lord Bates, told me:
“Although the Act refers to liquids and this product is sold in solid form, it is intended to be drunk as a liquid”.
I tell the Minister that he is not quite up to date with what people are doing with this powdered drink. They are not simply taking it as a liquid; it can be snorted. Admittedly it is an uncomfortable experience, I understand, but it can be snorted. More particularly, it can be baked into cakes or go into confectionary and a whole range of products that people are now contemplating using it in. The noble Lord went on to say:
“The Government is not aware of powdered alcohol being marketed or made available to buy in England and Wales, although we are aware of its sale in other countries. In the event that there is a proposal to market powdered alcohol in England and Wales, the Home Office will make a formal assessment of its legal position”.—[Official Report, 7/1/15; col. WA 223.]
I would argue that this is the day when the Government can start to look at the legal position of Palcohol and at whether they are prepared to see it come into the country. If so, how are they going to handle it? It will shortly be available on the internet and imported through the internet, because that is how it will be marketed. It is already spreading on a wide scale within the US and, as night follows day, it will come to the UK.
Therefore, I suggest that the Government go back to the Answers that they sent me. I suggest that they look at what is happening in the United States at the moment, the problems that are arising there and the reasons why some of the states have banned it. If they are not prepared to accept in totality the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, which I support—although I suspect that the Government will not—I also suggest that they look at whether they are at least prepared to consider whether this is a borderline area in which they should take some action, which they could do under this legislation. If they are sensible, they will look to the future, lay the ground, put this substance into the schedule and ban it, in the same way as they are banning legal highs. I hope that they are prepared to consider that.
Lord Blencathra
My Lords, I could never hope to give my noble friend an intellectual answer as to why all alcohol is exempted, but perhaps I can try to give him a legal one and a practical political one.
Most alcohol policy in the United Kingdom is now controlled by the EU and we have a few little bits left. I refer the Committee to the last report conducted by EU Sub-Committee F on the EU alcohol strategy. It was an eye-opener for all of us. Given the parts of alcohol policy we control, if we were to be completely consistent, there would probably be an increase in the price of Scotch whisky. However, that cannot be done for a variety of reasons—not least, it would probably feed into nationalism. With regard to the other parts of the policy, cider is desperately underpriced. No Government have felt it appropriate—no doubt for political reasons—to increase the price and disadvantage manufacturers in the West Country. It may be that with only one Member left in the West Country—I am not meaning to be snide here—a future Labour Government may, in due course, feel it more politically acceptable to put up the price of cider.
The parts that are controlled by the EU mean that, for example, we see on wine and spirit bottles in this country how many units of alcohol are in a glass and how many are in the bottle. That is a purely voluntary system because we are not allowed, under EU rules, to make it compulsory. We also discovered on the committee that some young people—mainly women, although men as well—may be on some form of crash diet and think they can avoid fatty food and sugars and just drink white wine instead. We are not allowed to put the calorific value of a glass of wine on the bottle, except by some voluntary means.
In Scotland, they are trying to conduct an excellent experiment on unit pricing. There may be considerable merit in unit pricing and I think that the Government in England are watching carefully to see how they get on. But of course they have been taken to the European Court, where it may be regarded as a constraint on trade —so Scotland may be prohibited from using unit pricing under EU rules. I could go on, but I will not, because I do not want to be seen to be too mischievous on this. However, there are a lot of other aspects of alcohol policy that we are no longer completely in charge of.
The other, more serious point is that all of us on EU Sub-Committee F, including my colleagues, noble Lords and Baronesses who are much more experienced than I, began the report a year ago thinking that alcohol abuse was out of control in this country, that everyone was drinking more and that we had a terrible problem. We were very surprised to discover that alcohol use is declining, particularly among young people. We cannot have an EU alcohol strategy because every country has a completely different problem. They all have problems with binge drinking, but different age groups are bingeing on different kinds of alcohol. What we discovered is that a small minority are drinking more to excess. I think that I am right in saying that alcohol deaths through cirrhosis of the liver have increased, but it is a smaller minority drinking extraordinary amounts—one or two bottles of vodka or scotch a day, so long as they can afford it. But overall, alcohol reduction policies are working.
In conclusion, I say to my noble friend that if he wants to really have more control over alcohol policy and be able to implement his amendment, he will need to vote no in the referendum when it comes.
Lord Bates
That is true. I see my officials in the box becoming terribly nervous, as I am jousting way out of my depth here and I should just stick to the script. The point which I was trying to make was that we are dealing in this Bill with a new menace, where there are no controls. People of any age can go into a head shop and procure products which are designated as plant food or as not fit for human consumption. There is no supervision of their manufacture; nobody is required to produce an ID card; and they are unregulated. We have explored different ways of dealing with them and have come down on the side of a blanket ban. I will leave it to the Committee to deduce whether, if alcohol were to be introduced into society today, we would take a different approach. That might be as close as I can possibly get to addressing that.
Let me put on the record some remarks about the Government’s position on alcohol. Alcohol-related harm is estimated to cost society more than £21 billion a year. This figure includes the £11 billion cost of alcohol-related crime and £3.5 billion in costs to the NHS. The harm caused to health is clear. Alcohol misuse is one of the three biggest lifestyle risk factors for disease and death after smoking and obesity. In 2013, more than 6,500 deaths in England were due directly to alcohol consumption. There has also been a steady increase in the number of adults accessing specialist alcohol treatment services, from just over 100,000 people in 2008-09 to nearly 115,000 people in 2013-14.
Alcohol is also a key driver of crime. In particular, it is strongly associated with violent crime. In 53% of violent incidents, victims perceive offenders to be under the influence of alcohol. This is clearly unacceptable.
We can all agree that alcohol, when consumed excessively, is a dangerous substance, which is why the sale of alcohol is tightly controlled under existing legislation. However, when used responsibly, alcohol plays an important social part in our communities. More than £10 billion is raised each year in alcohol duty and more than £38 billion worth of alcoholic beverages were sold in the UK in 2011. Almost 2 million jobs in the UK are said to be linked to the alcohol industry in some way.
The Government’s alcohol strategy, launched in 2012, promoted targeted action to reduce crime and health problems caused by alcohol without disproportionately affecting responsible drinkers. Local communities, agencies and businesses are best placed to identify and deal with alcohol-related problems in their area. The Home Office has worked with 20 local alcohol action areas to tackle the harms caused by excessive alcohol consumption. These areas worked on initiatives to strengthen local partnerships and share innovative ideas that work. Some of the areas which looked at ways to reduce alcohol-related health harms also explored the evidence and local processes that would be required to introduce a health-related licensing objective to address alcohol-related health harms caused by high density of premises. The project ended in March, and Home Office officials are collating the learning from the work that took place in each of the areas with a view to sharing it more widely in due course.
The alcohol industry has an important part to play, too. The Government challenged the industry to take action as part of the public health responsibility deal. The industry has taken a number of positive steps, such as reducing the number of alcoholic units sold and putting more information on labels—though not as much as my noble friend Lord Blencathra would ask us to, probably for the reasons that he alluded to. In addition, the Government have asked Dame Sally Davies, the Chief Medical Officer, to oversee a review of the alcohol guidelines to ensure that they are founded on the best science and help people at all stages of life to make informed choices about their drinking. The review is under way and we expect consultation on new guidelines to take place from the autumn.
There have also been government-led initiatives on alcohol and drug prevention in schools. In March 2013, the Department for Education launched a new drug and alcohol information and advice service for schools, providing information and resources on what works and assisting local areas to choose interventions which are right for their circumstances. The Personal, Social, Health & Economic Education Association has produced a revised programme of study based on the needs of today’s pupils and schools which includes alcohol and drug education. In February 2015, Public Health England launched the Rise Above website, helping to empower young people to make positive choices about issues that have a profound impact on their health. In its first two months, the site received more than 250,000 visits.
Since the alcohol strategy was launched, there has been a reduction in the level of alcohol-related violence. Consistent with trends in overall violent crime, there has been a 34% fall in the number of violent incidents perceived as alcohol related since 2004-05. There have also been reductions in the level of binge drinking and in the number of 11 to 15 year-olds drinking alcohol. The Government have sent a strong message that selling alcohol to children is unacceptable, and there is now an unlimited fine for persistently selling alcohol to children.
Looking ahead, this Government are committed to building on the successes of the alcohol strategy to tackle alcohol as a driver of crime and to supporting people to stay healthy. When misused, alcohol is undoubtedly a harmful substance, and it is right that its availability is properly regulated and that we tackle the health and crime-related issues that arise when people drink to excess. But for most of the population, alcohol is not a dangerous psychoactive substance which should be subject to the blanket ban provided for in the Bill. I hope that, having prompted this timely debate, my noble friend will be content to keep alcohol as an exempted substance for the purpose of the Bill and consider withdrawing his amendment.
Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe
I would be grateful if the Minister will respond to the points that I made about Palcohol, which is quite different from what we have been debating today.
Lord Bates
The noble Lord is right. We will go back and look again at those Written Answers. We are alert to the risk of powdered alcohol and are actively looking at how best to meet this challenge. However, we are not persuaded by this amendment. We are alert to the problem and are looking at it. I will be happy to meet with the noble Lord, together with officials, if he has new evidence to share with us about how the problem of powdered alcohol is being tackled in other countries and if and how it is being used in this country.
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Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)
My Lords, would the noble Lord answer the question that was posed by my Front Bench?
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
One part of the question was about the new Government, which is a Conservative one—and we will act in accordance with the commission’s report. It is somewhat incredible for noble Lords opposite to suggest that after the Government have commissioned an independent report, which is due imminently, we should not actually wait for its recommendations. We will not have to wait long.