Drugs (Roadside Testing) Bill

Andrew Bingham Excerpts

Friday 10th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Chope]

My hon. Friend is right, but he has read reports that these roadside devices will be used to provide evidence of guilt in themselves. As a lawyer, not to mention as a politician, I would be rather concerned about that, because I think that trying to streamline the processes in such a way could lead to an enormous amount of injustice. On the most recent sitting Friday we heard that quite a lot of criminal records are inaccurate. If the criminal records are inaccurate, how can we be sure that a roadside device for indentifying whether someone has excess alcohol in their system will be 100% accurate?

In response to my hon. Friend’s reasonable concerns, I would argue that we should keep the existing system for detecting alcohol, which has proved successful and resulted in a significant reduction in the number of people driving with excess alcohol in their system. We should keep the system of a roadside test and apply the same screening principle to people suspected of having taken drugs or whose driving is impaired as a result. We should then ensure that there is a cast-iron, rigorous system at the police station for ensuring the accuracy of those tests.

[Andrew Bingham (High Peak) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making a compelling case and I agree with much of what he says. We hear of the dangers of passive smoking, so if a person has been in the presence of someone smoking cannabis and has ingested the fumes passively, might that not show up in some tests? Can we be assured that someone would not be found to have taken drugs when there had been a passive intake, rather than a distinct taking of drugs?

[Mr Chope]

I am afraid that my hon. Friend leaves me speechless, because I know nothing anything about how people can be contaminated by others smoking cannabis and so cannot comment on that. Perhaps he will in due course make a further contribution to the debate and explain a little more of his background knowledge—and how he acquired it. To be candid, I do not know the answer to his point.

Whatever the answer is, it should be within the capabilities of the Home Office’s scientific branch to reach a conclusion within an eight-year time scale, as it has already been working on this for eight years and we are now talking about another two or three years. If all the promises that have been made are treated in the same way in future, we will still be debating this in five, six or seven years’ time. Meanwhile, people will continue to be killed and maimed on our roads as a result of drug-driving. Drug-driving kills or injures people on our roads every week. I know that the Government and the Minister responsible for road safety take the issue seriously. They talk the talk, but can we please ensure that we introduce roadside drug-testing systems sooner rather than later, which means before the end of this year?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Nuttall]

It is possible that such provisions are already written into contracts—I would be unsurprised if they are. If they are, perhaps they should be more widely advertised. People might know about driving while unfit from alcohol, but they may be unaware that driving under the influence of drugs risks invalidating insurance policies.

[Andrew Bingham]

Does my hon. Friend agree that if a measure such as the one outlined by my hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch) were implemented, insurance premiums for a great many law-abiding motorists would be reduced, which I am sure would be welcomed by one and all?

[Mr Nuttall]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point indeed. That is one beneficial and happy side effect of the Bill. As a result of fewer people driving under the influence of drugs, there will hopefully be fewer accidents. Therefore, insurance premiums for everyone else would be much lower.

If I may, I shall continue my brief explanation of the contents of the Department for Transport consultation document, which states:

“The public rightly perceive users of these drugs”—

drugs that are controlled by the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971—

“as a danger to road safety. As this paper has shown, it is difficult for the police to deal with these offenders. The nature of the effects of the drugs they take mean it is inappropriate to regulate the use of impairing illegal drugs using a prescribed limit based on the same principles as the limit for alcohol, even if it was acceptable to do so…Such an offence could be framed in such a way that a driver could be convicted of a new offence if an appropriate test showed such an illegal drug in their body. The effects of particular drugs on different individuals are complex, and, as set out below, there would be a lot of further work to do to develop this possibility, but our ultimate aim would be to treat in this way any illegal drug that is capable of impairing driving…The penalties for drivers exceeding the prescribed limit for alcohol are the same as for those convicted of the alternative offence of driving while unfit through drink or drugs. We therefore envisage that penalties for the possible new offence should be the same as for the existing offence of driving while unfit through drugs, which is a mandatory minimum disqualification of 12 months; offenders may also be fined up to £5,000 and sent to prison for up to 6 months.”

That consultation closed in February 2009, and in December 2009 the then Labour Government announced that they would seek further advice on the matter from Sir Peter North—it was his review that I referred to earlier as the North review. Although Sir Peter North provided initial advice to the then Minister, Lord Adonis, before last year’s general election, his final report was not published until 16 June last year, which of course was after the change of Government. The main recommendations of the North review relating to drug-driving were that police procedures enforcing current drug-driving laws should be improved, and that there should be early approval for saliva testing. The press notice accompanying the review stated:

“The Review also assesses Great Britain’s less well-understood drug driving problem, challenging the lack of reliable statistics, out-dated research and police emphasis on drink driving detection. In the short term, Sir Peter recommends that police procedures enforcing current drug driving laws are improved, making it more straightforward for police to identify and prosecute drug drivers by allowing nurses, as well as doctors, to authorise blood tests of suspects. Medium-term, he recommends early approval of saliva testing of drug driving suspects in police stations, which will largely overcome the environmental problems in roadside use that had previously slowed technological development of so-called ‘drugalysers’.”

On the question of a new law setting banned drug levels, Sir Peter was keen to say:

“The focus should be on public safety. Any new offence should therefore focus on establishing levels of drugs in the blood at which significant impairment – and therefore, risk to public safety – can be reasonably assumed, as is the case now for drink-driving”.

--- Later in debate ---

[Andrew Bingham (High Peak) (Con)]

I have listened with great interest to today’s debate, and I broadly support the idea of drug testing. As we have heard, drug use is now more prevalent. We may be in a similar situation to that in 1967, when Barbara Castle introduced drink-driving tests. I support the principle, but as other hon. Members have outlined, there are a few queries and wrinkles that get in the way of the Bill at the moment.

I asked my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) in an intervention about passive drug taking, which might be prevalent in the clubs about which we have heard a lot—I have not visited them, but I am perhaps too old for that sort of thing nowadays. Even so, if people are in an arena where others are taking cannabis, will they inhale the fumes and then be tripped up by a drugs test because of that passive intake?

I realise that performance-enhancing drugs are not illegal, but in 1988, when Ben Johnson fell foul of a drugs test at the Seoul Olympics, Linford Christie, who was initially a bronze medallist, was also tested. After much thinking about whether his test was positive, it was thankfully found to be negative, and he was duly elevated to the silver medal position. The problem was that he had had a cup of ginseng tea. As far as I am aware, ginseng tea is not a performance-enhancing drug, but it created an anomaly. It is alleged in today’s newspapers that Kolo Touré, the Manchester City footballer who is currently serving a ban for taking a performance-enhancing or other drug, had taken a water tablet. Those are queries and anomalies with drug testing. As I said, those are not illegal substances, but the problems with tests for illegal substances could be similar. Will such tests produce rogue readings? That needs to be ironed out.

As we have already heard, there is a problem with caffeine in coffee, and as my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg) mentioned tea dances, I should say that there is also caffeine in tea. He could find that the good burghers of North East Somerset end up cluttering up the cells on their return from a tea dance because they have taken too much Typhoo or Brooke Bond.

I have been in the Chamber for the most of the debate—I left it only briefly—but I am unsure whether the issue of thresholds has been addressed. We are talking about illegal substances. If any such substance is found in a test, will someone then be taken away for a more detailed test? Is my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch proposing a threshold, as there is with alcohol, of which people are allowed a certain amount? Does any amount of an illegal substance mean that a person will fall foul of the law?

My hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall) has told me of a drug- driving incident in Cambridge—not Gloucestershire, my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset will be pleased to hear—and it bears repeating. The Cambridge News reported:

“A drug driver who led police on a seven-mile chase around Cambridge at speeds of up to 80 mph has been spared jail.”

He

“overtook on blind corners and ignored red lights as he tried to shake off officers in the early hours of the morning.”

The deployment of a stinger device did not stop him despite puncturing his tyre. The report goes on to say that the gentleman

“had taken cannabis and mephedrone, before he was eventually arrested in Great Shelford. He pleaded not guilty to dangerous driving and cannabis possession, denying that he was the driver, but was convicted…and…given a nine-month”

suspended sentence.

He was told by the recorder:

“'You were driving very fast, you overtook on blind corners, and you ignored a number of red traffic lights. It was…a miracle nobody was killed or injured.'”

We were hearing such stories 10 or 20 years ago to do with alcohol and drink-driving, but the world has moved on, and we now hear a lot about the prevalence of drugs and drug taking. Are we now in a position with drug-driving that we were with drink-driving many years ago?

We should urge the Government to take action as quickly as possible. However, for reasons that have been eloquently dilated upon today, I still have concerns about the mixture and the substances. I remember somebody saying many years ago, “Would you be done for drink-driving if you had had too many portions of sherry trifle?” We are now talking about illegal substances, which someone might have ingested unwittingly, and they could be criminalised for doing so. I support the idea in principle, and I think that we should move quickly, but let us not rush head over heels and make a mistake, and end up criminalising people on their way from a perfectly harmless tea dance in North East Somerset.