Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

Lords Hansard - part two & Committee stage
Monday 8th November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to oppose Amendment 157 and speak to Amendment 164 in my name and that of the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe. I am currently drinking only small amounts of alcohol, so I have no personal interest in this matter.

I have listened carefully to the arguments in support of Amendment 157, but I still do not believe it will have the effect desired. I think that all noble Lords in the Committee will agree that any consumption of alcohol will lead to a deterioration in driving standards and increase the risk of an accident. The noble Lord, Lord Brooke, asked where the current limit comes from. The Grand Rapids study of 1964 showed that the risk of having an accident rapidly increased at a blood alcohol concentration—BAC—of 80 milligrams per 100 millilitres of blood or the equivalent. That is why our current limit is set at that level, and I think that is the correct level.

My understanding is that compliant drivers feel uncomfortable driving with a BAC of more than 30 milligrams. My feeling is that the majority of drivers adhere strictly to a limit of 50 milligrams in any case, and when they are caught driving at more than 80 milligrams, it is often a stupid, but criminal, mistake which can arise for a variety of reasons which I will not weary the Committee with. The evidence for this contention is that when the 50-milligram limit was introduced in Scotland, the initial compliance improved by only 12% and I suggest that when a contravention occurred and was detected, it was often the kind of “mistake” I referred to. In this country, we rightly have severe penalties for exceeding the current limit; it is also socially unacceptable. Other countries, as observed by noble Lords, have a limit of 50, but without the severe penalties, at that BAC, that we have.

After the Scottish Government lowered their BAC limit, the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, and I were very keen to see the data, but, I suspect, for slightly different reasons. I was worried that I might be wrong. If that had turned out to be case, I would be supporting Amendment 157. The Scottish Government commissioned research to measure the effect of their changes to the BAC limit. The conclusions were that the change made no detectable difference to the accident rate in Scotland. I never expected it to, and I will explain why in a moment. The Committee will have been grateful for the frankness of the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, when he touched on this point.

The proponents of Amendment 157 will have to explain to the Committee why they think the results in England and Wales would be any different from those in Scotland. According to 2019 DfT statistics, of a sample size of 243 dead drivers, 34% had a BAC of 10 or more, so had been drinking, 25% had a BAC of 51 or more, 23% of 81 or more, 22% of 101 or more, 16% of 151 or more, and 5% were at 200. What these figures show is that most non-compliant drivers are not just slightly over the limit, but far over the limit.

I have argued from the government Dispatch Box that there is a cohort of drivers who are unregulated drinkers. They are clinically dependent upon alcohol, they do not know how much they have been drinking, and they pay absolutely no attention whatever to the legal limits—thus, changing the limit will have no effect on them. The police do not find it very difficult to detect drunk drivers who have made the criminal mistake I have already referred to. They tend to overcompensate and drive too cautiously, and so give themselves away, and thus can be legally stopped by the police. Unfortunately, an unregulated driver is much more difficult to detect. They will drive fluidly for relatively short distances, and therefore with a lower chance of even being seen by the police, let alone being caught.

As proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, the only way of dealing with and detecting these very dangerous drivers who are unregulated drinkers is for the police to undertake operations where they stop every driver to check that they have not been drinking. I accept that the amendment might not be perfectly drafted, and that some civil rights precautions may have to be put in. However, not only would the police detect more of these very dangerous drivers but the deterrent effect would be considerable. Although it may be imperfect, Amendment 164 achieves this.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as president of the Road Danger Reduction Forum. I support both these amendments. It is absolutely ridiculous that we have such high alcohol limits, and we really ought to bring them down. We should say that no alcohol is permitted when you are driving—when you are in charge of a tonne of metal.

I want to make a small point, but it is something that road safety campaigners care very much about. We have heard the word “accident” used a lot. Road safety campaigners ask that we do not use the word “accident”, because that presupposes that it was accidental. It prejudges the situation, and that is clearly not right when something might come to court. They ask instead that we use the words “incident”, “collision” or even “crash”, but not “accident”. There is also an argument for saying that we should not use the words “road safety”, because that is the solution to the problem; the problem itself is “road danger”. We have to get our head around these differences, because it changes the way we perceive such situations.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)]

My Lords, I will not repeat what I said earlier about my own mother having been killed because of a drunk driver—though I did not mention at the time that I also lost my brother-in-law in a different accident. The people who did this were not dependent, unregulated drinkers at all; they were perfectly normal people, who got behind the wheel of a car when they had been drinking. As the noble Baroness just said, this is not accidental. It is deliberate: these people have a drink and then get into a car.

But things have altered in those 60 years. I mentioned seatbelts earlier, and there has obviously been the breathalyser. When I first started campaigning on this, the Government’s Christmas campaign that year was “Stay Low”—it was not even “Don’t Drink”. So we have made enormous progress, and we should not forget that. But it is a journey, and we have not got there yet. We ought to continue on that journey.

Listening to some of the earlier debate, I heard the argument that the way to solve this is not to use sentencing or to send more people to prison. I have a lot of sympathy with this. I think there are times when prison is right, but what we actually want is prevention: we want to stop people getting in a car after they have had a drink.

Just like the changes I have mentioned, we also have to celebrate the fact that the Government and industry have done a lot. There has been a really good dialogue. There is now zero-alcohol beer—my fridge at home is full of it—that tastes very good. It is not like the early stuff; it is very good. There has been a big investment by industry to make that available—you can now get my favourite tipple, Guinness, with zero alcohol. There is the acceptability of water with meals, and a number of pubs serve coffee. We have to accept that this has been a whole-society move, but, as I say, we should not just stop where we have got to; we need to continue on the journey.

Just as the industry has been very good, we should acknowledge what the Government did in the Budget, when they moved to what a number of us have been asking for—oh, for lots of years: that the tax on alcohol should correlate with the strength of the alcohol in the drink. The Government have done that. It will take time for it to be implemented, but we are moving in the direction of understanding that. All of those are great things. It means that there is a much greater choice of drinks, either in the pub or while drinking at home.

However, there is still a problem: people are getting into cars when they have been drinking. I find it extraordinary, even at 50 milligrams. I do not drink at all when I am driving because I know that my foot would simply not hit the brake as fast, even after one drink. I know it would not, so I do not do it at all. Driving round London at the moment, even at 20 miles an hour, I see some cyclists—and I am a cyclist—going round without lights on and wearing dark clothes; you often have to hit the brake very fast. We may need to continue to move that way.

Therefore, I really favour this drop to 50 milligrams. It works very well in France, where much more is done, with proper random breath tests—closing off a road and checking everyone going through. That is what I would like to see. You do not have to do it very often, by the way, just every now and again.

The other possibility—I know we have discussed it in earlier debates—is whether we could move at least to 50 milligrams for new drivers; say, in the first five years of being qualified. My guess is that, once they get used to driving without drinking at all, they would continue that through life. I think some thought and creativity could be given to that.

We need to go further. I hope the Government do not say that they are doing everything they can, that they have an advertising campaign, that everything is brilliant and that we do not need to move any further. While sometimes they have come through Private Members’ Bills, often the changes we have had have been from the Government, whether through Barbara Castle or others. There is a responsibility on the Government to take it a bit further. Therefore, I hope that the response we get will be “Yes, it is time to do more”. And these may be just the two amendments that we need.

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[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to support the noble Baroness. My only complaint is that I do not think it is aggressive enough. I have driven for several decades. I have driven for hundreds of thousands of miles. Touch wood, I have never been prosecuted for a moving traffic offence. The penalty points system is a good system. If I picked up three points for speeding, or for some minor offence, I would be extremely careful not to reoffend. So I do not understand why, if people get a few points, they cannot take the lesson and be compliant. I strongly support the noble Baroness’s amendment.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, and actually agree with him for a change. The wording is not strong enough, so well done to the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, for putting this amendment forward.

As the noble Baroness said, at the moment, “exceptional hardship” is anything but exceptional. I cite the case of a person who was exempted from a ban because he said that he had to walk his dog and drive to the nearest park, which was a mile away. I find that absolutely extraordinary; it leads me to think that magistrates ought to get a bit more tuition.

Essentially, points on a licence and the threat of losing that licence are an important part of ensuring that people drive safely and take care of other road users. Around 8,800 people are still driving despite having 12 or more points on their licence, and there is a whole industry of solicitors advising drivers on how to work the system in this way. It is very frustrating for the traffic police who care about enforcing the law and find themselves working hard to bring people to justice and get them convicted, only to see those people allowed to drive home after the case.

There are times when hardship may be truly exceptional, for example if an offender is the sole carer of a person with a disability who would suffer if the offender were unable to drive. Even then, it is a failure of the state if the only way a person with a disability can survive is by getting lifts from a person who is such a dangerous driver that they should not be allowed on the road.

Amendment 158 would ensure that “exceptional hardship” is a true exception rather than just a plea of convenience. Our current road traffic laws, as I started to say earlier, are based far too much on the convenience of drivers rather than justice and safety for other road users. This amendment would ensure that the very worst drivers on the roads do not have a convenient excuse to keep driving.

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[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, I will speak briefly on Amendment 165 in my name and in the names of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, and the noble Lord, Lord Russell of Liverpool. We are grouped together with Amendment 159 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson. I think we are both looking for the same thing, which is a review of road traffic offences, which we discussed a little earlier this evening. It seems that the time has come to put a time limit on this. We suggest two years from the date of the Bill’s enactment.

As I mentioned earlier, this started in 2014. In 2015-16, the Commons Transport Committee reported with an inquiry on road traffic law enforcement, the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Cycling and Walking reported in 2017, with an inquiry on cycling and the justice system, and in 2018 there was a Westminster Hall debate on road justice and the legal framework, which revealed a cross-party consensus on the need for wide-ranging reforms. Many of the amendments we have discussed tonight demonstrate the need for reform but also the very wide range, scope and potential, and to some extent the differing opinions, which is of course quite normal.

In addition to the groups I have mentioned, there needs to be discussion not just with road safety and road user groups but with representatives of the police, the legal professions and local authorities. It is interesting to reflect that, seven years on from 2014, we could have had that debate by now and we could be passing laws that would save lives by taking the most dangerous drivers off the road.

I hope I can persuade Ministers that there is time for such a review now. I suspect we will be told that there are no current plans. However, the amendments which we and other people have tabled to Part 5 indicate that a review is needed. I suggest that it is time to address the awful additional pain and deaths that so many people have suffered as a result of the failure to review and change the law, and I look forward to the Minister’s response.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I think we have made the point that there is a huge inconsistency between road traffic offences and other offences causing injury and death. The penalties are simply not similar in any way.

Many years ago, when I first started getting interested in traffic crime, I went out several times with the traffic police and saw a number of investigations and crashes. At the time, I was told about some incidents that had happened and the sentences that the drivers had got, and these were horrific crashes. A police sergeant working there said to me that if he wanted to kill somebody, he would use his car. He would either get off scot free or would get a minimal sentence because, finally, you can always claim that it is an accident.

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[Lord Paddick (LD)]

My Lords, if the Committee will forgive me, I was not quick enough off the mark in the previous group when we were considering exceptional hardship. The Minister said that the Government opposed the amendment because it limited judicial discretion. As we will see in upcoming clauses, clause after clause of this Bill limits judicial discretion by means of primary legislation. I will remind the Government of what the Minister said in relation to that previous amendment when we come to those clauses.

I move Amendment 160 in my name and, in so doing, express my thanks to the Police Federation for raising this issue and for its assistance in drafting the amendment. Section 163 of the Road Traffic Act 1988 gives powers to the police to stop vehicles, which goes back to the previous group where we were discussing drink-driving. Section 163(1) says:

“A person driving a mechanically propelled vehicle on a road must stop the vehicle on being required to do so by a constable in uniform or a traffic officer.”


Section 163(3) says:

“If a person fails to comply with this section he is guilty of an offence.”


Similarly, Section 164 provides the power to require the driver to produce their driving licence. This poses several real dangers and unnecessary risks to our front-line police officers while dealing with such driver checks. The problem with the current legal framework is that an officer has to leave the relative safety of their own vehicle to make any request or to examine the driving licence. The driver of the stopped vehicle is under no obligation to get out of the vehicle or to switch off their engine.

The current law places officers in a vulnerable position in relation to the driver and occupants of the vehicle. They are permitted to remain in the vehicle to either flee when the officer is most vulnerable or even to use the vehicle as a weapon, as the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, said in an earlier amendment. This is a common occurrence, even in my professional experience, where drivers try to flee after you have got out of the police vehicle and spoken to them. The risk to the officer would be minimised by creating an obligation for the driver of the stopped vehicle to leave the vehicle, but it is also important to ensure others who may be present in the vehicle are not able to then drive the vehicle away, or at the officer, after the original driver has got out.

This amendment is intended to highlight this gap in the law, although I accept that it is not suitable as drafted. I am grateful to my noble friend Lady Randerson for pointing out that electric cars, for example, do not have an engine that can be switched off in the traditional sense of the words and that other vehicles do not require a set of keys to be in the ignition to start the engine. However, noble Lords will see exactly what the problem is and how, potentially, the risk to police officers could be minimised if, for example, the driver was required to immobilise the vehicle and get out of the car, unless there was a reasonable excuse for not doing so, for example if the driver was disabled. I look forward to a sympathetic response from the Minister, and I beg to move.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I am sorry, but I am going to speak on this if the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, is not going to.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

No.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

I feel very strongly about this. It offends my sense of justice that people who do hit and runs never pay for their crime. They are a menace to society, with only six months’ maximum sentence for leaving someone for dead having hit them with a car and, of course, the figures are going up year after year—

[Lord Paddick (LD)]

I think the noble Baroness may be speaking to the next group rather than this group.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

I am. Sorry, ignore that. Strike that from the record. I will come back to that.

[Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede (Lab)]

My Lords, I was interested in the explanation of this amendment by the noble Lord, Lord Paddick. As he rightly said, there are all sorts of potential issues—one can think of electric cars—and reasons this may not be workable as it has been drafted. Nevertheless, the noble Lord made the point about the vulnerability of police officers when they are in this situation, and of course the vast majority of cars do use conventional engines at the moment.

The other point made by the noble Lord is that a driver is under no obligation to get out of the vehicle. I have to say that, in the current circumstances, if there was a lone woman in the vehicle and a lone police officer asked her to step outside, that may be problematic. Nevertheless, that is not the burden of the noble Lord’s amendment. He has raised an interesting point; we want to protect police officers in vulnerable situations, and I look forward to the Minister’s reply.

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[Lord Paddick (LD)]

My Lords, Amendment 161 is in my name, supported by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb—as we already know. I am grateful to Living Streets, British Cycling, RoadPeace, Cycling UK, and the Road Danger Reduction Forum for their joint briefing and suggested amendment on this issue.

Currently, the maximum penalty for the offence of failing to stop to report accidents is a six-month custodial sentence. This may be appropriate in cases where someone has simply driven off after scratching the paintwork of someone else’s parked car, but not when someone has been left for dead by the roadside.

The briefing provided by two noble Lords cites the case of Scott Walker, who was struck and killed by a driver who was driving without insurance, failed to stop at the scene of the collision, failed to report the incident and then tried to conceal his involvement by having his car repaired to cover the damage. The sheriff who heard the case said that the maximum sentence of imprisonment

“would not adequately reflect the gravity of the offence.”

The parliamentary petition calling for tougher laws when someone dies and the driver fails to stop attracted more than 104,000 signatures.

Section 170 of the Road Traffic Act 1988 as amended requires:

“where, owing to the presence of a mechanically propelled vehicle on a road or other public place, an accident occurs by which … personal injury is caused to a person other than the driver of that mechanically propelled vehicle … The driver of the mechanically propelled vehicle must stop and, if required to do so by any person having reasonable grounds for so requiring, give his name and address and also the name and address of the owner and the identification marks of the vehicle … If for any reason the driver of the mechanically propelled vehicle does not give his name and address under subsection (2) above, he must report the accident … A person who fails to comply with subsection (2) or (3) above is guilty of an offence.”

The amendment would add a new subsection creating a new offence, where the driver knew or ought reasonably to have realised that the accident had caused serious or fatal personal injury, with a maximum penalty of 14 years’ imprisonment. As with the previous group, this amendment is intended to highlight the inadequacy of existing legislation.

Again, I accept that the wording may not be right; for example, the Road Traffic Act would need to be amended throughout, as other noble Lords have said, replacing the word “accident” with “collision” or “incident”, as some of these incidents involve deliberate acts, rather than being accidents, and the 14-year term may not be the right one. But the law is inadequate when someone fails to stop after a collision involving death or serious injury. I beg to move.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, as I said before, I support this amendment very strongly because hit-and-runs are a menace.

One of the problems is that the families who suffer from having somebody killed or injured rarely feel they get justice. That seems completely wrong. This amendment would mean that a judge has available the range of sentences necessary to reflect the severity of the offence. Sometimes the existing six months might be enough, and other times 14 years in custody would be the only option that can punish the wrongdoing and deter others from driving away from a serious collision. I am not big on increasing prison sentences, because I think we have far too many people in prison already, and many of them are there for the wrong reasons. But in this case, when you deliberately harm a person, prison is the place for that sort of violent person.

Judges should have the option of a lifetime ban for people who hit and run. There is no excuse for fleeing the scene—it is trying to escape justice. People should not be back on the road once they have done that. Hit-and-run is a cowardly thing; it is an attempt to escape and to not admit that you have done something wrong. Quite often, it can mean the difference between life and death for the person you have hit. This is a valuable amendment and will mean justice, not only for victims but their families and friends.