Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Baroness Finlay of Llandaff Excerpts

Lords Hansard - Part 2 & Lords Hansard - part two & Report stage
Monday 13th December 2021 Lords Chamber

I hope that the Government will do the right thing—they know in their heart what the right thing is. I hope too that noble Lords will stand by their decision of 2015 on the Private Member’s Bill that I brought before the House, and which was adopted. I hope they will stand by the decision taken then, notwithstanding what their Whips might have said to them today. This House has an independence not seen to the same extent in the other place. I hope tonight that, having listened to me, noble Lords will show their independence and back the amendments that I bring before them.

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)]

My Lords, I have added my name to Amendment 61. During the previous debate on alcohol limits, it was suggested that the evidence from Scotland did not support lowering the blood alcohol content limit from 80 to 50 mg per 100 mls.

Scotland changed its law in December 2014, as has been said by the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe. I am most grateful to the Minister, the noble Baroness, Lady Vere, for asking her officials to provide me with the raw data on alcohol levels in fatalities year by year. I am particularly grateful to those officials who patiently went through the number of fatalities with me. I have spent some time today looking at this and doing graphs; I am sure that the House will be glad that I cannot project Powerpoint here. Looking at the data, two years before and about two years after Scotland changed the law, I am not convinced that there is not a change. In other words, I think Scotland stayed pretty well static, but the number of deaths in England and Wales went up.

I have not had a statistician go through the data with me, so I put that caveat around it—and O-level maths was a long time ago. However, we know Scotland has an alcohol problem and a problem with a culture of drinking. When I was a GP in a poor area of Glasgow, I certainly found that I almost had to redefine alcoholism, because alcohol was completely endemic; it really was a problem, and I think it still is. The importance of the data that I have been looking at, and for which I am grateful, is that the law change brought a message of not drinking and driving, and the messaging is important.

Last week, a young woman I knew, a superb musician who taught and encouraged many other young people, was killed by being run over by an intoxicated lorry driver. The tragedy is compounded by the fact that people apparently knew that this driver was repeatedly intoxicated on drugs and alcohol. This has been pretty devastating for me and my family in the week before we came to this amendment, but I want to share it with the House, because I want people to understand that this is real. Young, completely innocent, people are being killed by someone with this powerful weapon in their hand: the keys, the steering wheel, the accelerator, et cetera.

In 2019 alone there were 130 fatalities where alcohol was detected on the driver of the car, motorcycle or other vehicle, some at very high levels. The purpose of a threshold is not to say that it is safe to drive below that threshold, because it is not: the threshold is the threshold for prosecution by the police, because that is the level at which the impaired reaction time and co-ordination become indefensible. That impairment, however, is not all or nothing: there is a gradient of deterioration. In some people, that deterioration happens at very low levels of blood alcohol—lower than the limit set in law. I would like to see the threshold set at 10 milligrams per hundred millilitres, but I know that that would not be acceptable to others.

Laws send powerful messages, so I ask the Government: who benefits from leaving intoxicated drivers to kill people? Who loses out if they cannot drink alcohol and hold the car keys? Are the Government in the grip of the alcohol industry? Is that why we have to accept fatalities and life-changing injuries, at enormous cost to health and social care, to education services, which have to cope with the bereaved children, and to our society overall? The current law is indefensible, and it is about time we changed it.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure and a real responsibility to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay of Llandaff, and her hugely powerful speech. I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe, for introducing Amendment 61 in particular. I speak on behalf of my noble friend Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb. She is much more of a lark and I more of an owl—so the timing works for this amendment.

I start by picking up on the account that the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, gave the House of one death, and the fact that the Institute of Alcohol Studies estimated a few years ago that if the level was reduced to 50 micrograms, at least 25 deaths would be saved every year. It sounds like a number, and perhaps not an enormous number compared to the total number of deaths on the road. Think, however, about 25 individuals, like the single victim that the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, just spoke about—their families, their work colleagues and the people they have helped—and ask yourself why we have the highest level of legal blood alcohol in Europe.

It is also worth picking up a point that the noble Baroness hinted at: the level we have now encourages people to think how much they can drink and still drive. I entered a search, “knowledge drink-drive units UK”, on a popular search engine—one of those that throws up a series of suggested questions based on what lots of other people have asked. The most popular question was “How many drinks can I have and drive in the UK?”, followed by “Can a man drink two pints and drive?”. That is where our current level is set—it invites people to push up to the limit.

Going back to my origins in Australia, in particular my time as a young journalist in rural Australia, I saw a great deal of drink-driving and its effects—the casualties and the families left behind. It is important, however, to stress the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, which is that any level of drinking and driving is drink-driving. Figures from the road safety charity Brake show that in the 50 to 80 microgram range, you are six times more likely to be in a fatal crash than at zero micrograms, and between 20 and 50 micrograms you are three times more likely to be in a fatal crash. It is clear that we should be at zero or at such a low level that it is effectively the same as no drinks. Let us at least improve it.

Prior to this amendment, the Government said in 2018 that they were interested in looking at this issue and were thinking very seriously about it. That was three years ago. They might say that we have had a pandemic et cetera since then, but surely this is the time to take action to get us at least to a better place and to save lives like the one the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, was just speaking about.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, for again affording us the opportunity to debate the issue of drink-driving. I commend him for his long association with this particular subject; it well predates my time in this House. I know that, since the debate in Committee, he and other noble Lords have discussed this issue and other matters with the road safety Minister.

Let me again reassure the noble Lord—I fear I am at risk of repeating what I said in Committee—that the Government take road safety very seriously and believe that any form of drink-driving is unacceptable and a serious road safety issue. We are committed to tackling drink-driving and ensuring that those guilty of this offence are detected and appropriately punished. As I explained in Committee, our approach combines tough penalties and rigorous enforcement with our highly respected and effective THINK! campaigns. This approach reinforces the social unacceptability of drink-driving and reminds people of the serious consequences that drinking and driving can have on themselves and others.

Turning to Amendment 61, which seeks to change the prescribed limits, we remain to be persuaded that the proposed lowering of the limits would deliver the desired result. We believe that more work needs to be done to assess whether a reduction in the drink-drive limit would deliver the hoped-for benefits in improved road safety and a reduction in deaths and injuries on our roads. I think every noble Lord involved in this short debate has referenced Scotland. The evidence we have, following the change in the law in Scotland in 2014, does not suggest a material improvement in road safety in that jurisdiction, as the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, just noted.

Noble Lords will be aware of the findings from the studies by the University of Bath and the University of Glasgow that have also been referenced. The research by the University of Bath established that there has been no change across all types of accidents involving alcohol as a result of the introduction of a stricter drink-drive limit in Scotland. The independent evaluation by the University of Glasgow, published by the Lancet in December 2018, found that lowering the drink-drive limit was not associated with any reduction in total road traffic collision rates or serious and fatal road traffic collision rates, but that the change was associated with a small reduction in per capita alcohol consumption from on-trade alcohol sales.

I obviously cannot comment on enforcement. I have seen the statistics too, but I think the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, is right: each percent represents lives saved, and we should be aware of that. Of course, the personal tragedies movingly mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, also bring this debate into sharp relief.

The Government believe that our approach to any proposals for changing the law in this or indeed any other area must be evidence based. As things stand, the evidence does not support the case for lowering the drink-drive limit, although we of course keep this matter under review. But until there is a weight of evidence demonstrating that material enhancements to road safety would result from a lowering of the limit, the Government do not believe that the case for Amendment 61 has been made.

Turning to Amendment 62, which seeks to introduce random breath testing, it is again unclear to the Government if this would deliver the desired result of making the roads safer. As I indicated in response to a similar amendment in Committee, more work needs to be done to see whether there is any benefit resulting from introducing random breath testing. We would also need to examine carefully the equalities and human rights implications of doing so—an issue which I know is of concern to a number of noble Lords. I also take the point that the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, made on deterrents, particularly with regard to recent announcements in other topical areas on this subject, and I will take those back.

Having said all of that, I am going to repeat what my noble friend Lady Williams said earlier. My ministerial colleagues in the Department for Transport are currently working on a call for evidence on parts of the Road Traffic Act. While details are still being worked up as to its scope, I am sure they are paying close attention to the points raised in this debate and others and will welcome suggestions on what issues could be tackled. Once the call for evidence is concluded, we would welcome submissions from all interested parties, including noble Lords and Members of the other place. I obviously cannot give commitments on how long this will take, but I hope, having heard the debate in this House, that it will be speedy.

In conclusion, we need more evidence to justify the changes to road traffic legislation proposed in these two amendments. To this end, as I mentioned, the department is considering that call for evidence. I would therefore like to ask the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, to be patient for a little while longer. In the meantime, I hope he will be content to withdraw his amendment.

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)]

Before the Minister sits down, can he just confirm, in the light of the comments he has made, that the consultation will consider lowering the limit below 50 down to 10 or 20, which would allow for what is termed “Grandma’s sherry trifle”, served up at a weekend, but would not —I repeat not—allow for a glass of an alcoholic beverage if you are holding the car keys? It may well be that 50 is completely the wrong level because it gives mixed messages.

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

I cannot give that assurance but, as I say, the scope of the consultation is still being worked up. As I have also said, once the call for evidence is concluded we would welcome submissions from all interested parties, so I am sure that that can be part of the scope.