Chris Heaton-Harris
Main Page: Chris Heaton-Harris (Conservative - Daventry)Department Debates - View all Chris Heaton-Harris's debates with the Home Office
(13 years, 5 months ago)
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Mr Nuttall
That is indeed a problem, because caffeine can be regarded as an intoxicant, as indeed—I was very surprised to find out—can water. Those apparently harmless substances, if consumed to excess, can result in intoxication, so the definition in section 11 captures not just the obvious drugs that we think of when we hear “drugs”.
Chris Heaton-Harris (Daventry) (Con)
The road haulage industry is in a quandary, because a number of lorry drivers drink high-caffeine drinks, such as Red Bull and Relentless. Is there not a danger that such hauliers, who are just trying to ensure that they are very aware of what they are doing as they drive down the road, and just trying to do the best that they possibly can in maintaining control of their vehicle, could be subject to the Bill and find themselves breaking the law?
Mr Nuttall
My hon. Friend raises an interesting issue. I appreciate that he says such drivers are not doing anything wrong, and are just trying to do their best in their job, but medical evidence may well show that, although they think they are doing the best they can, by ingesting so many intoxicants, which is what they are doing according to the definition, they are putting themselves in a state of well-being whereby they are prepared to take chances that they might not take if they were completely sober.
It would be for a court to weigh up the evidence of whether a person was driving under the influence of drugs, which, under an earlier section of the 1988 Act, is the offence in question, and one can easily see how a bench of magistrates or a jury might decide that a lorry driver who had drunk several cans of highly concentrated caffeine-based drinks had subjected their body to such external influences as to result in their having driven under the influence of drugs.
The fact that the definition in the Road Traffic Act is so widely drawn is one of the reasons it is necessary to bring this Bill before the House. I suspect that it is also one of the reasons there has been such a delay in having a device approved by the Secretary of State for the carrying out of a preliminary drug test within the scope of section 6C. Perhaps when that that legislation, and the amendment to it, was drafted, section 6C should have used the word “devices” instead of “device”, because that might have made it easier for scientists and developers to devise and manufacture one device to deal with one set of drugs and another to deal with another set of drugs. The use of the word “device” has meant that the manufacturers, the scientists and the Home Office Scientific Development Branch have had to work towards coming up with a catch-all machine that is capable of detecting any number of substances. The Act is drawn so widely that a large number of substances could be termed a drug.
Apart from all the obvious drugs, which I will, for ease of reference, call illicit drugs, it is arguable that, as we have heard in my hon. Friends’ interventions, the definition will cover other substances—not only substances that we take in every day, such as coffee and water, but prescribed medical drugs. Intoxication is one of a number of conditions that come under the umbrella term “substance-related disorders”. Of course, the drugs most likely to cause impairment are those whose use is prohibited by law. I want briefly to explain the different ways in which such drugs can affect people. Different drugs affect different people in different ways, and the effects can last for several days, sometimes without people even realising it.
Cannabis slows the actions, affects concentration and often has a sedative-like effect resulting in fatigue and affected co-ordination. I would not be surprised if somebody suggested that cannabis was rather like one of my speeches on a Friday. The parliamentary correspondent from the BBC might put that in one of his reports.
Mr Nuttall
My hon. Friend makes the valid point that a drug that for all other intents and purposes is illegal becomes legal if it is prescribed by a GP. As Members on both sides of the House will be aware, we are often lobbied by those who feel that cannabis should be more widely available to make it easier for those with certain medical conditions to bear the symptoms. I understand that cannabis can make it easier for people to bear certain symptoms that are otherwise unbearable.
Chris Heaton-Harris
To return to a point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope), is the problem not that the Road Traffic Act deals with whether a drug impairs someone’s ability to drive and does not prescribe a limit for how much can be contained in the blood or urine?
Mr Nuttall
My hon. Friend raises a good point. With alcohol, the law sets a specific limit of 80 mg of alcohol per 100 ml of blood. It is relatively easy to test whether someone has more or less than the proscribed amount of alcohol in their blood, whereas a subjective decision has to be taken on whether someone is driving a vehicle under the influence of drugs. The 1988 Act is specific about that. That is indeed part of the difficulty that the Home Office has faced in proposing an appropriate device, because, as my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch said, no standard for device specification has been set. As I will say later, some studies show that as little as 1 nanogram can adversely affect one’s ability to drive.
Fortunately, those who have to draw up the specification will be aided by the fact that some research has been carried out on the appropriate level to be set. A research programme was initiated by the Department for Transport, the Home Office, the Coroners Society and the Association of Chief Police Officers, aimed at establishing systematically the incidence of drug use among fatal road casualties—not just illicit drugs but those that are prescribed or sold over the counter. The interim results were released in February 1998 and included in the road safety White Paper entitled “Tomorrow’s roads: safer for everyone”, published in March 2003. That White Paper stated:
“Studies have shown that compared with ten years ago, five times as many people killed in road accidents had a trace of an illegal drug in their body. Cannabis was by far the most common illegal substance found. However, whilst it is likely that shortly after use the active ingredient of cannabis impairs driving, traces of the drug can remain in the body for up to four weeks, long after it has ceased to have any effect. This can present difficulties for enforcement until we have further research findings.
Class A drugs are most likely to have an adverse effect on driving. According to interim survey results, they were found in 6% of cases (compared with 12% for cannabis). This was a small increase compared with 10 years ago.
In the studies of road accident fatalities referred to above, it was found that there had been no change in the incidence of medicinal drugs over the period. There is scope, nevertheless, to improve enforcement and to make people more aware of the risks of driving while their ability is affected by drugs.”
The RAC has also surveyed a group of young drivers and found that young people are twice as likely to have been driven by someone who has taken illegal drugs than by someone over the drink-drive limit. A Transport Research Laboratory report on the effects of cannabis on driving was published in December 2000, and found that there were measurable effects on driver performance and that drivers could be impaired. A report on the effects of cannabis and alcohol was published in 2002, which confirmed the earlier observations and judged that the general medical examination and standardised impairment testing applied by police surgeons were generally effective in determining impairment.
It may well be that those reports led the Home Office to think that the testing that was already being done was generally satisfactory, and that the matter was therefore not as urgent as supporters of the Bill feel it is. However, there have been several other small-scale qualitative and quantitative studies that have examined patterns of recreational drug use and driving. I wish to refer in particular to one, undertaken by the Scottish Executive. It was published in 2001 and examined aspects of driving while under the influence of recreational drugs. It identified general patterns of personal drug use. When stopped on a toll bridge, some 3% of survey respondents aged 40 and over, and 13% of those aged 17 to 39, had taken an illegal drug in the previous twelve months. Among those attending dance clubs, 76%—three out of every four—had taken illegal drugs in the previous month. Drug-driving was particularly evident among those attending nightclubs.
Mr Nuttall
My hon. Friend makes a very good point indeed. The statistics that I mentioned show the importance of the police monitoring closely those who seek to drive a car after leaving a dance club where drugs must clearly have been available.
Chris Heaton-Harris
I would hate the public listening to this debate to think that everyone here believes that anyone who goes to a club for a good night out is much more likely than others to take illicit drugs and then drive illegally when impaired by them. Most people go there for a damn good time, and they manage to do that. They might well have a drink or two, and they might well have a good boogie in what my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg) might refer to as a discotheque, but most of them are law-abiding citizens just enjoying themselves on a night out.
Mr Nuttall
I could not agree more. I am merely drawing the House’s attention to the findings of a particular survey. I do not seek in any way to draw any further conclusion from it, but there is clearly a problem if that survey—and it is only a single survey—is to be believed.
Mr Nuttall
My hon. Friend makes a good point. It is perhaps one that those with greater knowledge of the workings of the criminal law—particularly as it relates to road traffic offences—would be more able to deal with.
There are two more recent cases that I would like briefly to raise, because I do not want people to think that everyone convicted of driving while under the influence of drugs is sent to jail. There was a case reported in the Dudley News of a Dudley man who was handed a suspended jail term for driving while unfit to do so through drugs. He was given a six-week jail sentence, suspended for 18 months, and banned from driving for 18 months. To run consecutively, the defendant was also jailed for six months, suspended for 18 months, for possession of a class A drug, heroin. He was ordered to pay £600 compensation and court costs at Dudley magistrates court.
Chris Heaton-Harris
My hon. Friend has been generous in giving way to me throughout this debate, which I very much appreciate. He has listed a whole bunch of terrible tragedies that no one in this place would wish had happened, although the criminal justice system has then caught up with the characters involved and punished them—perhaps not accordingly, but it has at least punished them. Surely the art in this case is in stopping people taking drugs and getting in a car in the first place. Even the devices that he was talking about earlier do not do that. Perhaps we need a much stronger education campaign about the effects of drugs on drivers.
Mr Nuttall
My hon. Friend makes a very good point. Such education starts at school, with teachers and parents explaining the dangers of drug taking and the terrible damage that it can cause to the individual and, if they get behind the wheel of a car, to others. We would do well to send that message out loud and clear this morning.
Let me turn to the very heart of the Bill: the drug-testing device. For about a decade now, the Home Office has been developing a type approval specification for a drug- screening device—known as the “drugalyser”—that will help police at the roadside to detect the presence of drugs. A Metropolitan police trial took place between January 2001 and 2002. It had some success, but was hampered by the fact that testing had to be voluntary. In their February 2007 review of road safety, the then Labour Government stated that the first devices developed to specification could be available by the end of 2007, and that the Home Office was developing a prototype device that could both screen and analyse samples, and which was likely to be ready in two to three years. In February 2008, the then Minister told the House of Commons that the Home Office scientific development branch,
“in consultation with the Department for Transport, continues to discuss possible improvements to the field impairment test currently used by the police…HOSDB continues to investigate a possible impairment measuring device through established contacts working in this area. Opportunities for partnership with a suitable university or other outside agency continue to be sought.”—[Official Report, 19 February 2008; Vol. 472, c. 582W.]
This is rather like a mirage of an oasis in the desert—the nearer we get to it, the further away it appears to be. The Times subsequently reported that the Home Office was “preparing to approve” hand-held drug-screening devices, and that
“Philips…announced that it will start deliveries to police next year”—
that is, 2009—
“of a machine that detects five different drug groups, including cocaine, heroin and cannabis, in just 90 seconds from a single saliva sample”.
However, no type approval has yet been given. There is the rub: the Home Office might have thought that it was about to approve such a device, but, as we know, that never happened.
I have seen a picture of the machine, and it is a very simple device. A person is asked to provide a sample of saliva, which is placed into a small tube that is inserted into the machine. The sample goes into the measurement chamber, which contains magnetic nanoparticles coated with ligands that bind to one of the five different drug groups. This delivers test results in one and a half minutes. Philips had apparently been busy developing that device since 2001. It was built as an optical device that would be easy to mass-produce for law enforcement purposes.
Sir Peter North’s review reported on the problems as follows:
“To date a type-approval specification for such a device has not been produced. Consequently, while a range of commercial drug screening devices is available, none is suitable for enforcement purposes in the UK.
Home Office Scientific Development Branch has been working on the development of a roadside screening device based on surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) over the last 10 years, both in house and externally. A SERS based device would be a considerable advance over existing commercially available devices in that it would be capable of identifying any drug.
Following an expert peer review in 2008, the in-house development by HOSDB of the SERS substrates required for such a device was halted and the emphasis placed on developing external technologies, including those based on SERS. Following two calls for research initiated at the start of 2009, two external research contracts were placed, with the aim of developing prototype devices within the next three years.
With regard to drug screening devices for use at the roadside, the preferred matrix for analysis is oral fluid, which is easy and convenient to collect, and any drugs detected in this medium are indicative of recent use.
Early trials of roadside drug screening devices based on oral fluid…concluded that none of the devices tested at that time was suitable for use in enforcement at the roadside. However, recent evaluations of drug screening devices have highlighted continued improvements in sensitivity and the general performance of oral fluid drug testing devices, but also that the reliable detection of cannabinoid use and benzodiazepines still remains problematic.”
Mr Deputy Speaker, you can imagine my delight when I discovered that the long tentacles of the European Union had found their way into this subject. I promised my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset that I would touch on this matter. It appears that there is a project funded by the European Commission—using some of the billions of pounds that we contribute to the EU each year—and I hope that you will not think that I am straying from the subject if I mention the word “DRUID”. It is actually an acronym for the project funded by the European Commission, and it stands for “driving under the influence of drugs, alcohol and medicines”—[Laughter.]
Mr Nuttall
It is a kind of organised acronym. We have the D and R from “driving”, and the U from “under”. Then we miss out the “the”, adopt the I from “influence”, miss out the “of”, adopt the D from “drugs” and miss out the “alcohol and medicines” bit. That is how we get to DRUID.
Mr Nuttall
But I am not a druid! I am a practising member of the Church of England. I am not sure whether the Archbishop of Canterbury has commented on this matter yet, but no doubt he will later.
The DRUID report includes an analytical evaluation of several on-site oral fluid screeners. The final report is still in production but early results suggest that police evaluations of the devices tested were broadly positive. Eight of the 13 evaluated devices were rated as “promising” and were subsequently included in a scientific evaluation focusing on sensitivity and specificity.
Chris Heaton-Harris (Daventry) (Con)
First, I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) on pushing this matter as he has in this debate. I know he has a significant long-term interest in the subject and has been frustrated over a long period of time about the lack of movement in securing the appropriate checks for the roadside detection of drug use. That is why I congratulate him and rise to support him as best I can.
I also obviously welcome the brief comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall), who has demonstrated in some detail his considerable knowledge of this area of policy, with its history and accompanying problems. I am also waiting for the debate on my Onshore Wind Turbines (Proximity of Habitation) Bill, in which I shall tilt at windmills. Perhaps we will reach that fourth debate in the fullness of time, although I am not so sure.
I have followed road safety issues for a number of years—ever since, indeed, the sister of one of my closest school friends was killed by a drink-driver just after I left school at the age of 18. I have toured around many a primary school in my constituency to talk about road safety in general terms. This is another side of the coin: it is not just about making people aware of what they should do when they cross the road, but about ensuring that we protect those who use our roads and those who walk beside them.
Most people in the UK see driving under the influence of drugs as a growing problem and a growing mess. It is one of those areas where, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North described, the devil is in the detail. We all agree that we want to get rid of this menace; it is a question of having the appropriate method of detection, being able to stand up in court whatever evidence the police have found and then to secure appropriate convictions. That should act as a deterrent to those who might be considering such a course of action.
The public and the press—and, indeed, most hon. Members—would really like to see some action on this matter. We have heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North about all the problems that the detail brings, but we have had a lot of time to think about it. I flicked through some research in preparation for this debate and thought it was interesting to see how past Governments had tackled the issue. There is cross-party agreement on it, so I refuse to make any party political points; there is little distance between the two main parties’ positions—or among any of the parties, for that matter.
If we go back to 31 May 2005, we find BBC reports saying:
“Police officers could soon be using special hand-held detectors in a roadside crackdown on drug-driving. The machines would be used to test motorists for recreational drugs or tranquillisers—which can seriously affect them—at the wheel.”
We then get to what I guess is the main point:
“The Home Office is expected to release its specifications for a testing device soon”,
which we will find is a common theme of the press releases. It continued:
“In December 2004, police were given new powers to carry out roadside impairment tests on drivers they suspected of being under the influence of drugs. Prior to that drivers could choose to take part in the impairment tests, but refusal became an offence in the same way as failure to provide a breath test.”
Back then, a company was touting its wares in this field, with a device that it claimed could pick up a number of the problem drugs.
Moving to 10 May 2009—we should note that all these dates seem to be around the time of local or other elections; that is not a criticism of Labour, because we have done the same this year ourselves—we see a newspaper article which states:
“Motorists face roadside drug tests under Government plans.”
It is as if it has been lifted from the BBC and rewritten, which is quite odd because normally the BBC lifts its information from other news organisations. This is a report in The Daily Telegraph—[Interruption.] There is no one from the BBC up there in the Press Gallery; they will watch us later! The article goes on:
“The Government is ready to change the law so that any driver can be prosecuted for getting behind the wheel with any illegal drug in their bloodstream. Officers would be issued with so-called ‘drugalyzers’ to enable them to screen motorists for a number of substances including cannabis, ecstasy and cocaine. Should the tests prove positive, the driver would be arrested and taken to the police station for a doctor to take a blood sample”—
and so on and so forth in the process outlined by my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North.
It continued:
“The change in the law would bring Britain into line with a number of countries, including Italy, Romania, Croatia and part of Australia, where roadside testing is already in place.”
Although discussions had started in 2005, it was not until 2009 that the Home Office was talking to a number of companies about a design that could be used by the police in Britain. The article went on:
“Detailed specifications are expected to be drawn up by the Home Office and Forensic Science Service within the next few months”—
of 2009—
“and roadside tests could become a reality in two to five years.”
Two years later, I could turn to yet another press release—but I will not, because Members will guess what it contains.
The public are beginning to get a tiny bit hacked off with politicians. We all know that they are hacked off with us in general—they think that we do not do as much as we should, or as quickly as we should, and that what we do, we do badly. We have great public support for action in this field, and they do not understand why it has taken us so long to move from recognising the problem to having a workable solution out on the streets that helps the police to detect a crime that causes so many accidents.
Chris Heaton-Harris
My hon. Friend is correct: the saga continues. A game of table tennis seems to be going on between the Home Office and the Department for Transport. The public, and I, would like to see some action. Approval should be given for detection devices for use by police officers in testing. They have been developed, and a number of them are in existence. We ought to get our bureaucratic processes sorted out, so that we can have them available for use across the police forces of the United Kingdom.
My hon. Friend the Member for Bury North detailed the Department for Transport’s consultation document on road safety compliance back in November 2008. Produced just a handful of years ago, that paper stated:
“We could explore the viability of creating a new offence to target those who drive after taking illegal drugs—those that are controlled by the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971—which can impair a user’s ability to drive. The public rightly perceive”—
this had already been spotted—
“users of these drugs who drive as a danger to road safety”
and to everybody on the roads. The public wanted action to protect themselves.
People who drive under the influence of drugs increase the number of accidents on our roads, and they increase the cost of insurance for all those drivers who drive innocently and honestly on our streets. As we have heard, the human cost of the accidents that they cause can be massive.
The Labour party issued a consultation, which my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North detailed, and it asked the right questions and got the right answers. Sir Peter North’s consultation was very good and was received well on both sides of the House, although the final report was not published until 16 June 2010. 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 and a device that can do that. Both those recommendations have great cross-party support.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
I agree with my hon. Friend that there is great support for such a measure in broad principle, but is it possible to have a machine before we have clearly set out the limits?
Chris Heaton-Harris
That goes back to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North. In England, the law concerns itself with impairment to your ability to drive. You might be impaired three days after you smoked a joint—it is down to the individual. I do not mean you, Mr Deputy Speaker—a member of the public might be impaired.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
I hate to think that we would think it more likely for a member of the public to take drugs than a Member of the House. Surely our electorate do not do such things—not in North East Somerset at any rate.
Chris Heaton-Harris
I am sure that my hon. Friend is completely correct—[Interruption.] Let us not go back down that route; I will stick to where I was going.
It is impairment of an individual’s ability to drive that we are seeking to identify—there is a line that one might cross, and different individuals’ bodies will metabolise drugs, as they do food, in different ways. We have already accepted that with regard to alcohol, so let us make a bold leap. Why not introduce tests for the five main types of recreational drugs—those listed by my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North—that tend to be found in individuals who have caused an accident to which the police are called? This hinges on getting approval for a device, and that is the bureaucratic nonsense behind it all. Having accepted the principle of introducing a level—I would push for a zero level, as in Sweden, because that is much easier for everybody to come to terms with—why should we not bring forward such devices?
In his review, Sir Peter North said:
“The focus should be on public safety”.
The protection of our constituents from those who take drugs and then decide it is fine to jump in a car is one reason why we are all interested in this debate. Such drivers might not feel that their ability is impaired, and even if they do, they probably do not care too much for the other individuals concerned. Sir Peter continued:
“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 reasonably be assumed, as is the case now for drink-driving.”
That is a fairly simple statement. We have accepted levels for alcohol, so let us accept them for some of the more commonly used recreational drugs, and get the type review device approved by the Home Office and out on the streets, adding to the deterrents that we have.
Under schedule 7 of the Railways and Transport Safety Act 2003, the police have the power to conduct roadside drug tests, so there is no problem with that side of the argument. Guidance was issued back in December 2004 on the conduct of the preliminary impairment tests detailed by my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North. There is a host of reasons why we should put more pressure on the Government to get on with this job.
Having had private conversations with the Minister, I think he understands that there is a great deal of anxiety about how long the process has taken. The crime is relatively new, but it is also one of the crimes most on the increase. As my hon. Friends have detailed, the problem is the scientific ability of drug-screening devices to detect what we would like them to identify.
For about a decade, the Home Office has been developing a type approval specification for a “drugalyser” that would help police at the roadside to detect the presence of drugs. The Metropolitan police took part in a trial between January 2001 and January 2002 which, although reasonably successful, was—according to the official phraseology—“hampered” by the fact that testing had to be voluntary at that time.
In their February 2007 review of road safety, the Labour Government stated that the first devices developed to specification could be available at the end of that year, and that the Home Office was already developing a prototype device which could both screen and analyse samples and was likely to be ready in two to three years. In February 2008, the hon. Member for Gedling (Vernon Coaker), then a Minister, told the House that the Home Office’s
“Scientific Development Branch… in consultation with the Department for Transport, continues to discuss possible improvements to the field impairment test currently used by the police… continues to investigate a possible impairment measuring device through established contacts working in this area. Opportunities for partnership with a suitable university or other outside agency continue to be sought.”—[Official Report, 19 February 2008; Vol. 472, c. 582W.]
Clearly there has been no lack of work, and that work has been carried out for a host of years. However, someone sitting in the beautiful village of Flore in my constituency as traffic rattles along a road that desperately needs to be bypassed, and fearing that one night, on one of the bad bends, a person who has had far too much of a good time and used illegal drugs will pile into the side of their house, may feel that, given the length of time for which this deterrent had been talked about, a Government of any colour should have acted much earlier.
As we know, The Times reported in 2008 that the Home Office was “preparing to approve” hand-held drug-screening devices, and that
“Philips…announced yesterday that it will start deliveries to police”
early in 2009. I wonder where those deliveries have got to. There is a problem somewhere, and I hope that, in his considered reply, the Minister will tell us how he is trying to unblock the channels that seem to be blocked.
Mr Nuttall
Is my hon. Friend aware of a report that has appeared in the Daily Mail in the last few days? Apparently police in Australia are launching trials of a testing system this week, and similar equipment is already in use in Finland and is being tested in Italy.
Chris Heaton-Harris
I was aware of that. It was in one of the press releases that I chose not to read out earlier. It adds to the frustration that people feel, which I hope I have been able to convey to the Minister.
My hon. Friend the Member for Bury North mentioned the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, my hon. Friend the. Member for Hemel Hempstead (Mike Penning), the road safety Minister. Not long ago, he said:
“Drink and drug driving are serious offences and drivers should be in no doubt that if they are caught behind the wheel under the influence this summer they risk losing their licence as well as facing a fine and even a prison sentence.
We are taking forward measures to make it easier for the police to tackle drink and drug driving and protect law abiding road users including plans for drug testing kits to help detect drug drivers and tightening the law on drink driving.”
We would all welcome that, but I have a sneaking suspicion, based on the press reports that I read out earlier, that Ministers have been heard to utter those exact words before. If there is a drug-testing kit that we are happy to put on the streets in the summer, let us arrange for it to be type-approved by the Home Office and supplied throughout the country.
Back in December, the Minister—this Minister, the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, my hon. Friend the Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (James Brokenshire)—said:
“Any equipment for use by the police in this country must be of a type approved by the Secretary of State. Type approval is granted on the basis of compliance with a specification which sets out the detailed requirements a device has to meet and the testing regime which it has to pass to be suitable for use in British operational conditions and within the British legal framework. We hope to issue very shortly the specification for a device for use in a police station and are continuing work towards the specification for a roadside device. It will be for manufacturers to submit for testing and approval any devices which they think meet the specification.”—[Official Report, 2 December 2010; Vol. 520, c. 1098W.]
Given that we have been waiting for specifications for so many years, can we please get them out quickly? The question of when the devices will be available is of concern to our constituents throughout the country.
I do not wish to condemn a certain section of society too much, but it is possible to see examples of it daily on the Jeremy Kyle show. There is a type of person who is much more at risk of taking drugs and getting into a car without realising what he or she has the potential to do as a result of lack of education, awareness or care. Such people tend to be young, and they tend to be uninsured and untaxed. They tend to be breaking the law simply by getting into their cars, let alone having taken drugs beforehand. They are probably either going to or coming from a location that is known to the police. Obviously such locations do not exist in North East Somerset, and I should of course be stunned and surprised were there any in Northamptonshire. Indeed, such people tend to be known to the police themselves. I am afraid that there are not too many surprises when the police stop them and subsequently find that they have been driving under the influence of drugs, and when their names flash up on the system in connection with an earlier drug-related offence.
I suggest to the Minister that there is a certain group of individuals out there who need to be targeted—not as in police targeting but for education purposes, so that they can come to terms with the fact that in taking an illegal drug and then getting into a car, they are not just already committing a crime but are about to drive a lethal weapon that could potentially kill someone’s child. Although this debate is about roadside testing, surely the whole point of it is the need to stop people even being tempted to take drugs before getting into a vehicle, so that none of us have to experience a tragedy in our constituencies or among our friends, as I have in the past and as so many other Members have.
Stephen McPartland
Indeed. As my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg) said, the device used to establish drink-driving, the breathalyser, provides the evidential basis. My concern is that if a drug-screening device is produced in the next 12 months, it will identify whether people have drugs in their system, as opposed to the police stopping someone because they thought his driving was impaired by having drugs in his system. My hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch cited a case in which an individual was prosecuted for crashing his car and received eight weeks in prison for being under the influence of drugs.
As the law stands, if the police stop a driver because they feel that he is driving the vehicle irrationally and is impaired in some way, they have the power to take him back to the police station and test whether he has drugs in his system. Increasing the powers of the police would move us closer towards a police state, as they could stop anybody and test them for drugs, because the drug- screening device would have evidential power, whereas at present only a blood sample is allowed to be used in court.
Hon. Members have given a number of examples—discotheques in North East Somerset, dance clubs where one boogies in Daventry, or dance clubs in Bury North. Statistics show that 76% of young people surveyed admitted to having drugs in their system. That brings me to my second objection to the Bill, which is the social aspect. We would not want the police to use a drug-screening device to target younger people leaving such premises to identify whether they had drugs in their system. My concern is the practical one of the device being used in a slightly different way.
Chris Heaton-Harris
I understand my hon. Friend’s argument, but surely some existing drug-screening devices are appropriately used—for example, to detect drug use among the prison population. It is a case of horses for courses. If we try to keep ourselves focused on a device that is proven to work for a limited amount of illegal drugs for roadside use by the police, hopefully we can, with debates in the House and pressure on Ministers, maintain it for that use and not have it spread further in ways that might impinge on people’s liberty.
Stephen McPartland
I agree with my hon. Friend’s sentiments. As I have said, I also agree with many of the sentiments in the Bill. My concern is how it will be applied in practice. My real concern is how individuals will use these devices to target specific sections of society and then use that evidence to say that people are under the influence of drugs.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
My hon. Friend, in his opening remarks, put it extremely clearly that the courts should determine these matters, but I do not agree. The courts should not determine the levels. They can determine the individual case. They can say, “Yes, we accept what the police are saying, yes we accept that that person was unable to hold his leg 6½ inches off the ground for two hours”—or whatever it is—“and that therefore he was affected by drugs.” However, it would not be right for the courts to establish the broad principle that 1 nanogram of some substance was the limit, or 2 nanograms. I could keep counting up to one full gram; on another occasion, Mr Deputy Speaker, I may find it advisable to do so, but not today. This should be decided by Parliament, because that is what we are here for—to determine the principles that are then applied by the courts.
I worry when we give either too little or too much discretion to the courts, because it depends so much on the area that is covered. When it comes to the appropriate sentence, we should set the maximum, and possibly the minimum, but we do not want to set the finer details. With quantities of drugs, likewise, we want to set the minimum and the maximum for legality, but we do not want the judges to develop their own precedent that gives them a power that rightly belongs to Parliament. That is why the Government are right to consider this. I have not suddenly decided that I am in favour of bureaucratic dithering, because it is not bureaucratic dithering; it is a right understanding of the very difficult issues that exist.
I move on to the question of what is legal and what is illegal. I thought of quoting Coleridge:
“In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure-dome decree”.
That was written under the influence of what would now be an illegal substance. Coleridge had been taking opium for some time beforehand, and he wrote out his poem until interrupted by a gentleman from Porlock, which is notably in the county of Somerset. Taking opium was perfectly legal at the time. He was not committing any offence by doing so, nor are some people today who are prescribed opiates for the relief of pain. If somebody is prescribed an opiate for the relief of pain and is driving perfectly well, is it conceivably reasonable to say to them, “We’ve found a nanogram of this substance in you and therefore you’ve committed an offence and must be banned from driving for a year”? It is not the same with alcohol, because very few people absolutely need to take alcohol. That is not entirely true, as I knew a man who was prescribed gin and tonic by his doctor towards the end of his life, but that was for more complex reasons than as a curative—I think it was more of a palliative. Some people need these serious and otherwise illegal drugs for good and proper medical reasons, and therefore a blanket test could be a very unfair and unjust way with dealing with them. That is why the Government are right to consider this thoroughly and properly so that ultimately we can not only set the limits but differentiate as regards where the limits ought to be set and what we are trying to include and to exclude.
Beyond the drugs that are illegal in certain circumstances and legal in others, there are the drugs that are always legal but can, in certain quantities, create an impairment. That leads to a balance of advantages. Lots of people suffer from hay fever, for example. If someone is driving along and has a fit of the sneezes, that is quite dangerous, as they could drive into a ditch, or something worse. If they take a more old-fashioned type of antihistamine, they may find that it makes them feel a little sleepy if they have that type of reaction to antihistamines. Are we suddenly going to say that someone who takes an antihistamine cannot drive because it is better that people should have a fit of the sneezes? Would it show up in the test anyway?
The broad problem that, I am afraid, often comes up on Friday mornings is that the laws that we look to pass are about motherhood and apple pie. They are saying, for example, “The world is simple and it’s all very straightforward—we’ll have a nice test, and bingo, we’ve got the drug dealers and the drug users off the roads.” But it is not quite like that; the situation is much more complex and nuanced, regarding not only the levels but the legality and the illegality, and then some of the broader general principles.
I want to return to the piece in the Daily Mail on coffee earlier this week. I was astonished to read that anybody who has five cups of coffee a day is likely to hallucinate. I should think that I have had at least five cups of coffee every day since I was a young teenager, and I have never, to my knowledge, hallucinated; it may be that one does not notice these effects. I would be very reluctant to see the Government introduce some hand-held device to test Members of Parliament as they drive out of New Palace Yard to see whether they have too much caffeine in their system. After some of our sittings that last until 4 in the morning, quite a lot of Members have a lot of caffeine in their system, not to mention some who might have other things in their system. I would not think it right for the police officers on duty to ask us to spit at them, as I mentioned earlier, which would be most unpleasant and improper. There are real issues and difficulties in how we deal with legal and illegal drugs, and the measuring of them.
There is also the general principle. I have a certain sympathy with the US constitution, and the fifth amendment in particular, which allows people not to incriminate themselves. We have made an exception for drink-driving. The motorist, oddly, is the one person in British life who is not protected from the general principle of non-self-incrimination. The motorist who does not reply to a speeding ticket is guilty of an offence and therefore incriminates himself, and occasionally members of his family. There are obvious questions over the breathalyser, because a failure to provide a sample without good reason is an offence and one incriminates oneself by failing to give one. Already with drug-driving, as I have said, it is an offence to refuse to stand on one leg for the specified time with the other leg a specified number of inches from the ground. That ought to worry us constitutionally.
Chris Heaton-Harris
I thank my hon. Friend for giving way. I know that it is unwise to interrupt his flow of words, eloquent and beautiful as it is, and especially so after five cups of coffee on a Friday morning. There is another group of individuals in the position that he has detailed. Sportsmen and athletes have to report in about where they will be going in hourly or three-hourly segments—I cannot remember which—and they have random drug tests. This is not just something that is proposed in the Bill; we accept the concept that drug testing should be allowed in some circumstances. Surely when a person is pulled over for a road traffic offence and the police suspect that they have been taking drugs, the police should be equipped with a device so that they can test the person there and then.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
I think that my hon. Friend’s point is slightly disconnected, because belonging to a voluntary body, the rules of which state that one must subject oneself to a test, is very different from Her Majesty’s Government and Parliament, through legislation, taking away one’s right not to self-incriminate. One does not have to be an athlete—I never could be anyway. It is not compulsory to be a runner or a jumper. It ought to be compulsory to be a cricketer, but sadly it is not. However, if the Government get involved, one may commit an offence by going about one’s ordinary daily life and that is a higher degree of intrusion. The same point applies to the earlier intervention about the Home Office testing the people who work for it with these machines.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (James Brokenshire)
I should like to join other hon. Members in congratulating His Royal Highness the Duke of Edinburgh on his 90th birthday today. He has been a great servant of our country over an extended period, and we all wish him well today.
I commend the commitment of my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) to the cause of road safety. He said that he had had a genuine interest in these matters for a long time—in fact, since he was a Minister with responsibility for road safety. I understand his commitment to the underlying issues, and his view that we need to treat the matter extremely carefully. We have heard today about the appalling tragedies that can arise as a consequence of drug-impaired driving. I also understand his reasons for introducing the Bill. However, I do not think that it is necessary, or the best way to proceed, and I hope that I will be able to persuade him and the House of that.
This has been a good debate on the important issue of drug testing and road safety. The debate has been good natured and there is a great deal of agreement across the House. I greatly welcome the comments of the hon. Member for Eltham (Clive Efford), speaking for the Opposition and recognising some of the challenges and complexities that have developed over time.
It has also been a humorous debate in many ways, drawing together references to druids and Coleridge. Although we have had lots of references to impairment in the debate, there has been no impairment in the contributions, although I could not see from my place on the Front Bench whether my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg) was delivering his speech while standing on one leg. I think I can safely say, however, that if my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall) had attempted to do that, he would probably have required some medical attention, as it would have been quite a feat.
It has also been a full and well-informed debate. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch for bringing this matter to our attention through his Bill. I certainly understand the frustration that he and other Members have underlined in respect of equipment for drug testing—whether at the roadside or in police stations—being brought forward. I will explain the steps that the Government have taken and where we are now in making progress on the issue.
It would be remiss of me not to underline the huge tragedies that these incidents can bring—the very personal cases that Members have brought to our attention today. We need to view the issue in that broader context. I think it was my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North—and also my hon. Friend the Member for Daventry (Chris Heaton-Harris)—who highlighted the impact of these incidents on young people. I can certainly think of many good local projects that involve working with young people to highlight the dangers of drug-driving and drink-driving and the importance of responsible driving, by which I mean not driving too fast, in the knowledge that young lives have literally been cut short as a consequence of some of these appalling incidents.
Drawing together the work of the medical profession, Highways Agency staff who keep our highways safe and the police, it is possible to go into schools and focus on prevention through hard-hitting messages. I have sat through some hard-hitting presentations myself and know that the victims of incidents are sometimes involved, which can make for powerful road safety messages for our young people and help to prevent these appalling tragedies. The breadth of our debate has been useful in that context.
Chris Heaton-Harris
My hon. Friend is quite right to highlight the organisations that tour around the country, teaching young people road safety and, indeed, the impact and consequences in the justice system of breaking the law. Has he heard of the “Prison? Me? No Way!” scheme? It involves crashing a car in school and calling the emergency services to cut people out; the magistrates sometimes come in to go through the legal process and prison guards may be on site, turning the classroom into a prison. It takes school kids through the whole thing. It is a fantastic scheme that has gone ahead in the whole of Northamptonshire and many midlands schools. It is exactly the sort of thing that improves people’s knowledge in this regard.
James Brokenshire
I am not aware of that specific scheme that operates in Northamptonshire and the midlands, but I am familiar with a number of innovative locally developed programmes that bring various agencies and organisations together to send out preventive messages about drug-driving, drink-driving and speed. I remember spending an afternoon watching one of those presentations and seeing some of the hard-hitting images. I saw a victim in a wheelchair and the lifelong impact that being involved in a road accident had had on him. The impact that that real-life context had on the young people who received that presentation was palpable. To get across road safety messages to young people, we should look at the broader context and underline the real-life consequences of thoughtlessness in relation to those who might be in the car or vehicle with them on the road.
Clearly, road deaths are a tragedy, and road traffic collisions are the leading cause of death for young adults aged 15 to 24. They account for more than a quarter of deaths in the 15 to 19 age group. Injuries caused in such collisions lead to suffering and distress, and can result in a serious lessening in quality of life. It is not only the victims who suffer, but their partners, children, families, friends and all those associated with them.
There is also a serious detrimental impact on the emergency services, on health costs, on economic output, and on the roads. It is estimated that preventing all collisions could benefit the economy by £16 billion a year. Insurance payouts for motoring claims alone are now more than £12 billion a year. That is why I say clearly to my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch, who implied that there was a financial reason why measures had not been advanced more speedily, that that is absolutely not the case. Given the costs to society arising from such incidents, we need to move forward as quickly as possible to deliver on road safety and drug-driving. As the many contributions to the debate have highlighted, there are levels of complexity, and there are issues that need care and attention. Even so, we should get on with this and ensure that the relevant “drugalysers” are available in police stations and, thereafter, on our roads. There are, however, some complex issues and dilemmas in relation to how that will fit into the context of the existing law and in relation to appropriate changes to the law to make arrangements more robust.
Road deaths are not all a result of drug-driving—we do not know the level of drug-driving. A survey of a sample of victims of fatal road crashes between 1996 and 2000 showed traces of drugs in 18% of drivers—six times more than a survey 10 years earlier. Hon. Members who read their newspapers this morning may have read a survey by the insurer Direct Line, which highlights the potential scale of the problem. We are in no doubt about the seriousness of the issue and the need for it to be addressed effectively and appropriately.
Nevertheless, we can say that more than half of road deaths are associated with one or more of the following: driving while impaired by drugs; drink-driving; speeding; careless or dangerous driving; and driving while distracted and not wearing a seat belt. Drug-driving is a serious problem that we as a Government must address. We will address all bad driving behaviour, not just speeding, as sometimes appeared to happen in the recent past. Drug-driving, like drink-driving, is something to which we want to give particular attention.
As has been mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North and others, we set out our plans in the Government response to Sir Peter North’s report on drink and drug-driving law and to the related recommendations of the Transport Committee. Last month they were included in the Department for Transport’s new strategic framework for road safety. We agree, in principle, with the main thrust of the 23 recommendations in the North report. The steps recommended are
“to approve preliminary testing equipment which can be procured by police forces for use initially in police stations, and later at the roadside; to implement other measures to make the law against drug-driving work more effectively; to continue research into equipment which could be approved for the police to test for these substances; on the basis of this work, to examine the case for a new specific offence—alongside the existing one—which would relieve the need for the police to prove impairment case-by-case where a specified drug had been detected.”
The report proposed that
“priority should be given to type approval for, and supply to police stations of, preliminary drug testing devices… type approval ought in the first instance to focus on devices capable of detection of those drugs or categories of drugs which are the most prevalent, including amongst drivers, recognising that more than one device may be needed to cover the whole range.”
There has been discussion of both the nature of the drugs involved and the interrelationship between different drugs. Drugs are often not taken in isolation. They may be taken along with other substances, including other drugs. The concept of polysubstance, or multiple-substance, drug abuse is well known. The science and technology that can provide meaningful, reliable readings in the context of different substances taken together are not entirely straightforward. The need to assure those in the criminal justice system and those who may be required to take tests that neither false positives nor false negatives are being created, with all the consequences that that may involve, has informed the careful approach that has been taken.
Our priority is to deter people from driving when impaired by a drug, and to ensure that those who persist in such dangerous behaviour are detected and punished effectively. Considerable progress has been made in reducing the level of drink-driving, but drug-driving can clearly be just as dangerous, which is why we are anxious to do more work in that regard.
I noted the discussion between my hon. Friends the Members for Stevenage (Stephen McPartland) and for Bury North about the need for clarity on the provisions of the current law. Under section 4 of the Road Traffic Act 1988, it is illegal to drive, attempt to drive or be in charge of a mechanically propelled vehicle when unfit to drive through drink or drugs, whether legal or illegal. The offence is to be unfit, not simply to have a drug in the body. “Unfit” in this context means having, for the time being, an impaired ability to drive properly. Section 6 empowers the police, subject to certain conditions, to conduct at the roadside or at a police station compulsory preliminary or screening tests for impairment and the presence of a drug. If a preliminary test is positive, the police can immediately require the suspect to take a blood test. In the absence of a positive preliminary test, a blood test can only be authorised by a doctor.
While I think it right to engage in broader discussion of whether the law itself should be changed, the availability of equipment enabling the initial test to be conducted can itself make a difference in speeding up the process because the authorisation of a doctor is not required at that stage, thus ensuring that the process can be conducted more efficiently.
I want to clarify the fact that only the evidence from a blood test can be used in a prosecution to support a constable’s opinion that a person was driving while impaired by a drug. People might think that simply having a drug in one’s system creates the offence, but it is attempting to drive while unfit that creates the substantive offence.
The hon. Member for Eltham and my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset referred to the field impairment test, which can be persuasive in demonstrating impairment when presented in court, but other evidence can be provided. It is not essential that the impairment test is failed. Other factors can be presented to the court, and ultimately it is for the court to determine, on all the evidence, whether the driving was impaired and whether the person was driving while unfit through drink or drugs. The various elements fit together.
The police can already take a suspected drug-driver to a police station and require him or her to provide an evidential blood specimen. Currently, however, the requirement can be made only if a medical practitioner is called to the police station and advises that the person’s condition may be due to a drug. The availability of an approved device will mean that if a positive reading is obtained, a blood specimen can be taken immediately, potentially by a custody suite nurse, without the need to call out a medical practitioner. Clearly, this will save time and money and, we believe, will be effective in ensuring that more people are brought to justice.
In that context, according to the latest figures I have on drug-driving, 1,598 were convicted of the offence—that is, the impairment offence. If one has more than the prescribed number of milligrams of alcohol in one’s blood, that is the strict liability offence, which my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset highlighted. The vast majority of cases are dealt with in that way, although probably many people who fail the drink-driving test have taken drugs as well as alcohol. It is therefore difficult to get specific figures for the conviction of those who have driven illegally, having taken drugs.
The essence of the Bill is that we need to do more. The coalition agreement sets out our commitment to authorising drug-testing technology, which will streamline procedures, for use in tackling drug-driving and we will fulfil that commitment. The analysis will show whether drivers had a drug in their system that might have caused impairment. In a prosecution it will support a police officer’s opinion that a person was driving while impaired by a drug.
In the debate we heard a number of contributions relating to the assessment of the device and the type approval process. Such a device must legally be of a type approved by the Secretary of State, and no devices are yet approved. Drug screeners are already commercially available, but they are designed for other purposes and use in other settings.
Successful use of a testing device—for example, where someone is referred for drug treatment—is not the same as testing to justify an invasive physical procedure for evidence that could support a criminal charge. Use of devices in other countries might be dependent on their different operational powers, requirements and practices, their different laws and legal conditions, and their particular social and political expectations. It is relevant to highlight experience from other countries, but it is also difficult to ascribe direct read-across in the way that perhaps has been suggested, albeit that we should learn from overseas experience.
The concept of type approval for drug screeners is parallel to the long-established type approval of devices used for other traffic law enforcement, such as speed and red light cameras, and breath-alcohol test devices. The primary purpose of type approval and its requirements is to ensure that the approved device is reliable, consistent, precise and accurate. This prevents repeated court challenges on the grounds that the reading allegedly justifying subsequent police action came from a device in which no confidence could be placed. If the level below which a device was not required to detect was raised, for example, some people pharmacologically affected by a drug might not be detected. If a device falsely gave a negative reading, a suspect might be allowed to continue driving, which apart from frustrating the ends of justice could clearly be dangerous. Not letting the suspect go despite a negative reading would be time-consuming and bureaucratic for the police, and might be seen by the suspect as oppressive and give rise, understandably, to complaint. Type approval of devices without requiring them to satisfy a detailed specification with clear standards and rigorous extensive testing, as required for all other type approvals, might be liable to judicial review on the grounds of unfairly favouring current manufacturers and of being irrational. But in saying all of that, I do not use that as an excuse for not getting on with things. I simply seek to set the context of the work that is required.