Tribunals (Maximum Compensation Awards) Bill

Christopher Chope Excerpts

Friday 17th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.

This is a short Bill that would set a limit on compensation for awards for unfair or wrongful dismissal or discrimination arising out of employment and provides that that maximum limit should be £50,000. I propose this partly because I know that the Government are considering the matter, although they announced their review in May whereas my Bill was presented as long ago as 5 July 2010.

At the moment, there are strict limits on the awards that a tribunal can give in respect of claims for unfair dismissal arising from ordinary employment law. When the claim for unfair dismissal is based on discrimination, however, an unlimited amount of damages can be awarded. That is now leading to all sorts of farcical situations. The situation has been recognised by a group described by Mr Mark Leftly in The Independent on Sunday on 5 June as “an influential group” in the City,

“led by Sir Michael Snyder”

who have

“told ministers that employment law must be overhauled, with tribunal awards for discrimination cases capped at £50,000”—

the exact figure proposed in my Bill. The article goes on to say that

“an employee who successfully sues for discrimination, be it racial, sexual orientation or gender, can get unlimited awards. There is a growing belief that this has led to employees without genuine grievances making discrimination claims.”

People are making or threatening to make claims when they are faced with dismissal, saying that they will not go for the ordinary unfair dismissal but will base their claim on the fact that their dismissal has been on the grounds of racial discrimination or discrimination based on sex, gender or something similar. We are getting a two-tier system in which people threaten to sue in a tribunal for the much larger, open-ended awards that are available and my Bill would place a cap of £50,000 on all that.

[Mr David Hamilton (Midlothian) (Lab)]

In the interests of clarity, can the hon. Gentleman tell us how many such claims have been unsuccessful? That would give weight to the argument that people are claiming just for a chance of getting some money.

[Mr Chope]

I have the figures somewhere, but I do not have them to hand this instant because I have a lot of papers. I hope the hon. Gentleman will forgive me for not answering his question, but the figures that I saw show that many claims are unsuccessful or not pursued, quite often because they are the subject of a settlement. Quite often the settlement is between unequal parties. The claimant has nothing to lose by taking the case to a tribunal but the employer is faced with substantial legal costs, plus disruption to his business, in defending his position. Those claims can end up being settled out of court, as it is called. They would probably be regarded by the hon. Gentleman as unsuccessful claims, but they might have been taken to the tribunal had it not been for the imbalance of power between the applicant and the employer.

[Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)]

May I help my hon. Friend on that point? I suspect that no accurate figures are available because many of these claims are resolved before the application is put to the industrial tribunal. Although figures will be available for those withdrawn or settled after the industrial tribunal proceedings began, I suspect there will be many thousands of other cases that the public do not know about.

[Mr Chope]

To put the issue in context, I will quote briefly from some newspapers. On 24 October 2008, the MailOnline had the headline “Asian bank worker gets record £2.8m race discrimination payout”. On 10 September 2009, another headline read: “Sacked council manager wins £1 million age discrimination payout”,

and a report has come out in the past few days saying:

“Discrimination compensation payouts hit an all time high.

A recent annual survey of compensation awards in the Equal Opportunities Review has revealed that the amount being paid out by employers in discrimination cases has more than doubled in two years.”

[Mr Brian Binley (Northampton South) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend recognise that there is a level below a claim which employers are quite concerned about? They are being threatened with being taken to a tribunal as a way of extracting money from them. Many employers are advised at local level to give in and not allow the case to go to a tribunal. In that respect, there is a certain element of the blackmailers charter about all this. I wondered whether my hon. Friend had thought about that and why he had not included it in his Bill.

[Mr Chope]

I am sure that I could have included it in the Bill, but it is implicit that having a lower maximum figure in the case of unfair dismissal and an absolute maximum figure—there is no maximum figure at present—in the case of discrimination cases will reduce the bargaining power in a situation such as that my hon. Friend outlined. He described it as blackmail. We know that companies can sometimes be threatened with being taken to a tribunal and subject to all sorts of allegations it will find difficult to answer, so they pay up to an aggrieved ex-employee.

[Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)]

I wonder whether the hon. Gentleman has had an opportunity to look at the employment tribunal annual reports for 2007-08 to 2009-10. They set out the median compensation awarded in race, sex and disability discrimination cases. In 2009-10, the median for race discrimination was £5,392 and for sex discrimination it was £6,275, which are well short of the millions referred to in MailOnline.

[Mr Chope]

Obviously I cannot quarrel with the statistics that the hon. Lady quotes, but the issue is causing the coalition Government concern. That is why on 11 May the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills announced that the Government would look in detail at the case for reforming compensation for discrimination:

“Compensation levels for cases of discrimination are unlimited and employers worry that high awards may encourage people to take weak, speculative or vexatious cases in the hope of a large payout. This can lead to employers settling such cases before they reach a Tribunal.”

The Government therefore seem to think that there is a problem.

I see my hon. Friend the Minister for Immigration on the Front Bench—we could have done with his wisdom on asylum cases in the previous debate. I hope he will be able to bring some of that wisdom to bear on this subject in particular, as I had the opportunity to talk to an official from his Department who said that the Government were carrying out a review of the subject. The point that I made to my hon. Friend’s official was that that is all very well, but how will it deal with the rulings in the European Court of Justice. In the ECJ case Marshall v. Southampton and South-West Hampshire Area Health Authority (No.2) (1993) IRLR 445, the court decided that the cap that had previously been put on discrimination compensation did not provide an adequate remedy under European Community law.

[The Minister for Immigration (Damian Green)]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way so that I can confirm to him now, should the debate run out of time before I have chance to reply in full, which I very much look forward to doing, that the Government will be launching a public consultation on this specific matter later in the year. As he has already said, this is a matter that the Government are considering and receiving recommendations on, and we want the widest possible input into the public discussion of this important matter.

[Mr Chope]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, but I thought that in the announcement on 11 May his colleague with responsibility for employment relations had announced the extension of the Government’s review of employment law into this area. The question I was trying to get an answer to was how compatible the Government’s aspiration to introduce a limit on compensatory awards was with the ECJ case to which I have just referred. The issue was drawn to my attention by staff in the House of Commons Library who wondered whether my Bill would cut across EU law, and that is why I have included clause 2, which states:

“This Act shall have effect and shall be construed by the courts of the United Kingdom as having effect notwithstanding the European Communities Act 1972”,

thereby reasserting the sovereignty of this Parliament to decide on such issues and not be subject to rulings from the ECJ interpreting European Union law.

Some firms of solicitors are already on to this point. I have a report from Lee Rogers, an associate at Weightmans solicitors, who says that the Government may face obstacles if they decide to impose such a cap. I really wanted to find out from my hon. Friend whether the Government recognised that this was a problem and, if so, how they would overcome it. There is no point in going out for consultation on something where the Government’s ability to manoeuvre is restricted by European Union law, unless the Government are saying that they will override that law. The fact that my hon. Friend does not seek to intervene again suggests to me that either the message that went through his office was misinterpreted, or that when he sought information from the responsible Minister he did not get a clear answer, so he has done the best that he can in his inimitable way from the Front Bench today with the problems that the Government obviously have on this issue. The public do not believe that compensation for discrimination should be in the hundreds of thousands of pounds; they think that is unreasonable.

People talk colloquially about something costing an arm and a leg, and I would not want to make this issue seem anything other than serious, but if somebody were to lose one leg below the knee, under the criminal injuries compensation scheme they would be entitled to £33,000. If they were to lose one arm and one leg, they would be entitled to far less compensation than is paid to people who bring successful claims for discrimination before an employment tribunal. We value the damage of hurt feelings from discrimination cases far more than the criminal injuries compensation scheme values the actual loss of a leg or an arm and that is absolutely ridiculous, so if the Government were able to bring in some amending legislation that would be very useful.

I also cannot understand why, if the Government are concerned about the level of compensation and tribunal awards, they allowed the ceiling for such awards to be raised in line with inflation in a recent statutory instrument. If they felt that the awards were already too high, why did they not rein them back and not increase their maximum level in line with inflation?

This is a simple, straightforward Bill, and I hope that it receives hon. Members’ support so that it can be discussed in Committee, and so that the Minister can be asked probing questions and answer those I have put to the House this afternoon.

--- Later in debate ---

[Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)]

I stand to oppose the Bill. There was little hard evidence in the opening speech of the hon. Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) for the Bill. The evidence available from employment tribunals on the levels of compensatory awards shows that they are nothing like the figures that he gave. Of course, there have been some high-profile cases in the papers, but the compensation awarded in the vast majority of tribunal cases is less than £10,000.

The Bill intends to limit compensation in wrongful dismissal, unfair dismissal and discrimination tribunal cases. Most people recognise that it is important to have employment regulation that is fair and treats employees properly. The Opposition do not believe that setting the arbitrary figure in the Bill of £50,000 as the maximum that can be awarded in compensation, without having a wider debate about the employment, legal and equalities issues, is the proper way to set employment policy. Issues such as compensation, fines and penalties for health and safety, rights on leave and dismissal, and many others should be dealt with in a far more integrated way.

As a constituency MP, I saw the Hull trawlermen suffer hugely from not having proper employment rights; they had no redundancy rights and had to fight for pensions. I am therefore very aware of the need for good, clear employment protection legislation. When I worked in law centres before I entered the House, I often acted for people who found themselves in great difficulties with employers who had not treated them fairly and properly.

Of course, before 1997, to get unfair dismissal protection one had to be in employment for two years and there was no statutory right to annual paid leave unless it was in one’s contract. From 1997, the Labour Government opted into the social chapter, brought in the right to paid annual leave, reduced the period for unfair dismissal protection to one year, brought in the statutory right to paternity leave and improved maternity leave. It would be a retrograde step to start to unpick the straightforward and basic employment protection rights we now have in this country.

I will return to the compensation levels that I referred to in my intervention. When we make laws in this country, we must do so based on evidence and consider carefully what that evidence shows. As I pointed out to the hon. Member for Christchurch, £4,903 was the median award in 2009-10 for unfair dismissal claims in tribunals. That is nowhere near the millions that he talked about.

[Mr Chope]

My Bill does not talk about medians, but would limit the excessive awards. She will be aware of a disability discrimination award of £729,347. My Bill would prevent that from happening again.

Drugs (Roadside Testing) Bill

Christopher Chope Excerpts

Friday 10th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.

Before I speak to my Bill, may I, on behalf of the whole House and my constituents, congratulate His Royal Highness Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, on his 90th birthday today?

My Bill, which I hope will receive a Second Reading today, is part of an iterative process to try to maintain pressure on the Government to take seriously the issue of drug-driving. They talk the talk—I refer to both the present and the previous Government—but they have not delivered on the action. Since I was a Minister with responsibility for road safety and then a shadow Transport Minister, I have taken a deep interest in the subject of trying to get evidence to ensure that people are deterred, detected and punished if they are guilty of driving with drugs in their body.

There have been some horrific fatal accidents and accidents causing serious injury. I remember one on the A31 in my constituency, in which a young student was killed in a head-on crash because a lorry driver was on the wrong side of the road, having gone to sleep after taking a lot of amphetamines. There is a real problem here, as the Government accept. As recently as last Sunday, the Minister with responsibility for roads, the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, my hon. Friend the Member for Hemel Hempstead (Mike Penning), produced an article saying that it was essential to get to grips with the issue. My concern is that unless or until the Government enable roadside drug testing to take place, we will never get to grips with the issue.

Back in 2003 I served on the Standing Committee on the Railways and Transport Safety Bill, which was enacted that year. That Bill included provisions to alter the road traffic legislation to allow a roadside drug test of people suspected of having drugs in their system. The test was to show not whether they were impaired by drugs, but whether they had drugs in their system. We were told then that the technology existed and that in due course the test would be available. It was spelled out in the Bill, however, that Home Office type approval was necessary.

That was back in 2003, and not only do we still not have Home Office type approval for a roadside drug- testing device, but the Home Office has not yet even been able to draw up a specification against which type approval might be given. Until a specification is drawn up, it is not possible for the experts in the field to submit their ideas. The best the Government can do is say that they have agreed a specification and type approval for a testing device which could be retained in police stations. That is something, but it is not the answer to the problem. It means that the police will have to have grounds for arresting somebody at the roadside before taking them to the police station. One can assume that relatively few people will be taken to the police station because of the difficulty of establishing at the roadside a reasonable suspicion that a driver has drugs in his system.

Why can we not have a system of roadside drug-testing devices? The irony—it is so sad—is that in this country we are trying to achieve an export-led manufacturing recovery for our economy. It is British experts and British manufacturers who are the key players in the technology. A firm called Concateno is already exporting devices to enable roadside drug testing to take place. It is exporting them all over the world. Various countries, including Finland, Croatia, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, have introduced legislation to enable roadside testing for drugs to take place, often utilising the very same devices produced by Concateno. Even more ironically, these drug-screening devices are used by the police forces themselves to screen police recruits to see whether they have drugs in their system. They are also used by the Ministry of Justice in the Prison Service and by quite a lot of schools, where pupils who have been caught with cannabis or other drugs are put on a drug abstinence regime which is then reinforced by these screening devices. These devices are therefore widely used.

[Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that it is rather strange that the police, and by implication the Home Office, should have sufficient confidence in these devices to use them to test members of the police force, and yet they apparently do not have enough confidence in them to test drivers at the roadside?

[Mr Chope]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point. When presented with such evidence, one has to question the motives. Why has the Home Office been so slow in coming forward with a specification against which it might be able to give type approval for these devices? It may be because it knows that were there to be such roadside testing, there would be a lot more work for the police to do, because many drivers have drugs in their system and if they were detected by such screening devices at the roadside following an accident, the whole process of law would come into play and many of them would end up with a conviction. We know that there is a cost associated with that, and I suspect that behind all this delay is a reluctance by the Home Office to open up a Pandora’s box of increased detection of offences and increased burden on the court system, and ultimately, perhaps, increased numbers of people in prison.

What could be happening? Funnily enough, on Wednesday of this week there was a short post from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation from the Limestone Coast police in South Australia, which said:

“Statistics released by Limestone Coast police have shown significantly more people are being caught driving under the influence of drugs, than under the influence of alcohol. Superintendent Trevor Twilley says 6 per cent of people tested for drug driving are coming back with positive results, while less than half a per cent are returning positive results for alcohol.”

That is a direct consequence of the state of South Australia equipping its police with the technology and the means to do roadside drug tests. It is relatively new in South Australia but it is already having a major impact. If it can be done in South Australia, why can we not do it here, and now?

My Bill, like previous Bills along the same lines, says that a type approval for this drug-testing device must be in place within 12 months. My original Bill, introduced under the ten-minute procedure in April 2007, had the exclusive support of those who were at that time Opposition Members. Among those who supported that and subsequent Bills are a number of distinguished Members of the House. The Bill that I introduced in December 2007, which was identical to my ten-minute rule Bill, was supported by none other than my right hon. Friend the Leader of House, who I am delighted to see in his place today, and also by four colleagues who are now Select Committee Chairmen, and one colleague who is now a Deputy Speaker of this House, as well as, of course, what might be described as the more usual suspects, my hon. Friends the Members for Wellingborough (Mr Bone) and for Shipley (Philip Davies). The legislation thus had a wide range of support, and that was back in 2007. The Bill then said that the type approval should be produced within one year. My right hon. Friend was obviously keen that that should happen. He is now in a very powerful position in the Government—arguably even more powerful than the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, my hon. Friend the Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (James Brokenshire), who will reply to the debate.

Why cannot the Government, with the support of the Leader of House and that of the Minister with responsibility for roads, who was also a signatory to one of my Bills in identical terms on this subject, deliver on this reasonable proposition that we should have type approval for a roadside drug-testing piece of equipment? I am sure that it would result in far fewer people driving on our roads under the influence of drugs or with drugs in their system. Far too few people are being brought to justice at the moment, so people think they can drive with drugs in their system with impunity. It is relatively rare that the courts are asked to deal with people who are guilty of drug-driving, because it is quite hard to detect at the moment.

One of the most famous recent cases was reported on 14 September 2010 when somebody called George Michael was jailed for eight weeks for drug-driving. He crashed his car while under the influence of cannabis and was given a five-year driving ban. He had also been guilty of driving under the influence of drugs on a previous occasion. I am not sure what Members of the House will think about the sentence that was imposed, but it shows that this illegal activity of drug-driving is taking place in this country, and the police themselves suggest that it is much more widespread than has so far been recognised by the Government.

We have had any number of Government initiatives promising to clamp down on drug-driving and have a publicity campaign about it. Even this week, in the Mail Online, there is an article similar to that in The Sunday Times to which I have already referred, saying that the Minister is determined to do something about it. All he has to do, if he really has the will, is to go to Concateno and ask what type approval would be needed to ensure that we can have a roadside testing device. Concateno would be able to give him that information relatively easily and the specification could be drawn up and the testing device given type approval sooner rather than later.

In the Government’s most recent road safety programme, they refer to this issue but only in the most general terms. Even the target that was set as recently as March, that the type approval for the device that would be used in police stations would be completed, has not yet been met. It was said that it would done by the end of April, but we are now in June and it still has not been completed. I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will be candid in explaining the reasons. For one reason or another, we have still not got the type approval that we need for both the roadside testing device and the testing device to be used in police stations. Until we get that we will not have an effective regime for dealing with the scourge of drug-driving.

The principle that Ministers should apply is this: where there is a will, there is a way. If the ministerial team has the will to do something about this and is prepared to override the block in the Home Office, particularly in its scientific branch, they will be able to deal with this. I think that it is an indictment of the Home Office’s scientific branch that, despite all its expertise, it is still unable to come up with the type approval specification.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)]

Is the Home Office not right to be cautious about approving a device that could lead to someone getting a criminal sentence, and possibly going to jail if the accident is serious enough? On this occasion, delay may be wise and prudential, rather than the folly of bureaucracy.

[Mr Chope]

My hon. Friend is certainly right that it is absolutely vital that the devices used in police stations to provide conclusive evidence that a person has drugs in their system are 100% accurate. We are on the threshold of having type approval for such devices. I am dealing with screening devices that could be used at the roadside and that are comparable to the devices used to identify those suspected of drink-driving. Those screening devices, which people have to blow into through a tube, indicate prima facie whether there is excess alcohol in the system. It might turn out that those people, even if they have a positive breath test, are found not to test positive when they get down to the police station and a blood sample is taken. The device is a screening device. It enables the police, following road traffic accidents or offences, to screen people they suspect of having alcohol in their system. I am suggesting that we urgently need a similar system for people who are suspected of having drugs in their system.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

I thank my hon. Friend for giving way again. Press reports are saying that the screening devices used for drug-driving will be made evidential in and of themselves, without a second test back at the police station. Would it not be rather peculiar to have two different standards for roadside testing, one that had to be checked at the police station and one that had become evidential in itself?

[Mr Chope]

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

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

[Andrew Bingham (High Peak) (Con)]

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

[Mr Chope]

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

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

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Nuttall]

My hon. Friend makes an interesting point. As my hon. Friend the Member for Daventry (Chris Heaton-Harris) said, people may think that by taking certain substances they are doing themselves great benefit and putting themselves in a state where it will be easier for them to drive. If they are feeling all pumped up and hyped up after being in a nightclub, they think that taking cannabis might slow them down and get them back on the right track. I would submit that it is very dangerous for anyone to go down that road.

That is cannabis. Secondly, there is cocaine.

[Mr Chope]

I am glad that my hon. Friend has dealt with cannabis.

It is thought that one of the reasons prison officers are so relaxed about the widespread use of cannabis in prison is that it keeps the prisoners—or inmates, as the politically correct would describe them—in a relaxed state.

[Mr Nuttall]

That might be so, but the fact is that the use of such drugs is illegal. I hope that one of these devices will be authorised for roadside drug testing in the near future, because it would then be a small step for them to be used in prisons, making it easier to ascertain which of the inmates has had access to illicit drugs.

[Mr Nuttall]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. Ultimately, however, it will be for the courts to decide, not the police, so I do not think it could be said that we would be living in a police state. The police will put the evidence before the magistrates court or, in appropriate cases, the Crown court, where the jury will weigh up the evidence and decide whether the person is guilty of the offence. Let us stick to what we are talking about, which is driving under the influence of drugs.

Cocaine causes over-confidence and can cause erratic behaviour. After a night out using cocaine, people often report that they feel as though they have flu. Some people, however—I said that different drugs can affect people in different ways—feel sleepy and lack concentration.

My hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch) commented that drug taking among young people, particularly in nightclubs, is still very prevalent. One of the principal drugs used in those circumstances is ecstasy. Ecstasy makes the heart beat faster, which can cause a surge of adrenalin and result in a driver feeling over-confident and therefore taking additional risks that could, and do, cause accidents.

LSD can, depending on the individual concerned, appear to speed up or slow down time and movement, making the speed of other vehicles difficult to judge. It can distort colour, sound and objects, and users often see objects that are not there. LSD can cause people to feel panicky and confused—obviously a dangerous state to be in while driving.

Speed makes people feel wide awake and excited. Of course, I refer to speed, the drug, rather than vehicle speed. People who have taken speed find it difficult to sit still and have difficulty sleeping. Someone who has taken speed and has not been able to sleep at the weekend would probably be tired and dangerous on the road. Speed can also make people feel very panicky.

The problem is complicated by the fact that medicinal drugs that are legally prescribed by a qualified medical practitioner can also adversely affect a person’s ability to drive. It is, of course, the responsibility of the driver to ensure that he does not commit an offence when driving under the influence of drugs. Doctors do, however, advise patients of the dangers of the side effects of medication. The Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency issues advice to general practitioners on the possible effects of a variety of drugs. GPs are advised to assume that the majority of adult patients are actual or potential drivers.

The Medical Commission on Accident Prevention has published a booklet, which is available to all GPs, setting out its views on the commoner conditions that affect one’s fitness to drive safely. The booklet, entitled “The Medical Aspects of Fitness to Drive”, contains chapters on prescribed and illicit medicines and driving. Various suggestions are offered to GPs on the advice that should be given to patients, such as not driving at all until any side effects are known, not driving if feeling unwell, and not combining alcohol with drugs. As will be seen from the cases I refer to later, the combination of alcohol and drugs is sadly all too common in cases of death by dangerous driving. GPs are also advised to warn that stimulants and euphoria-producing drugs may lead to unnecessary risks being taken.

In addition to that advice, the DVLA issues the “At a glance guide to the current medical standards of fitness to drive”, which contains sections on driving while taking medication for psychiatric and cardiovascular disorders. Specific illnesses such as epilepsy and diabetes are also covered. A review of the effects of over-the-counter medicines and the associated potential for unwanted sleepiness was published in 2004.

We should not forget the impact of the internet in this area. The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency noted in its evidence to the North review, to which I will refer later, that

“there is an increasing trend of buying prescription only medicines over the Internet.”

Clearly there are dangers that medicines purchased in that way may be misused, because there is no opportunity for an individual to be given advice about the possible dangers and side effects.

Publicity was first given to the problems of driving under the influence of drugs, particularly lawful drugs, by a report published as long ago as April 1995 by the Institute for Human Psychopharmacology, entitled “Drugs other than alcohol and driving in the European Union”. Compared with the research into drink-driving, there was little real understanding of the effects of drugs on one’s ability to drive.

[Mr Chope]

My hon. Friend is making some interesting points, but I do not want him to think that my Bill would cover roadside testing for non-illegal or medicinal drugs. I am trying to deal with people who have illegal drugs and substances in their body while driving.

[Mr Nuttall]

That might be so, but, as I have pointed out, drugs are defined as anything that is an intoxicant, and that includes not just illicit drugs but medicinally approved and prescribed drugs and common drinks such as those containing caffeine and, in extremis, water. Although the focus will be on illegal drugs when the device is eventually brought into use, the producers of the device ought to look at the definition of the word “drug” and produce a device that covers both illicit and medically prescribed drugs, because both are dangerous.

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[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 Chope]

Is there not an even more important survey, which is the one that shows that half of the young people who admit to driving with drugs in their system say that they would not do so if they thought that there was a possibility of their being subject to roadside testing for the presence of those drugs?

--- Later in debate ---

[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.

[Mr Chope]

I am sure that Members would like to know that only last week The Sunday Times had an article headed “Stoned drivers will soon face the ‘drugalyser’”, supported by comments from the roads Minister. That is the latest episode in this saga.

[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.

--- Later in debate ---

[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.

[Mr Chope]

The Bill would not introduce random testing. At the moment we do not allow random breath testing for alcohol and the Bill would not allow random testing for drugs. It would allow testing where the motorist has either been seen to be committing a road traffic offence, or been driving in a way that has caused the police to believe that he might be driving under the influence of drugs or alcohol.

[Stephen McPartland]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. I agree with much of what he says, but the key point is that the police can already tell such individuals that they believe they are under the influence of drugs and will test them at the police station. I am not sure many police officers in Hertfordshire would be keen to allow an individual to get back into a vehicle and continue driving if they felt that the individual was sufficiently impaired to stop and question them in the first place. In nine cases out of 10 they would no doubt take them back to the police station and test them.

There is also the issue of costs and road safety. The previous Government and this Government have done a lot to highlight road safety. A number of excellent charities such as Brake are doing everything they can to ensure that people are educated in improving road safety and, for example, are made more aware of the fact that if people drive at 20 mph in a residential area instead of 30 mph, small children will be less likely to be killed. A lot of work has gone into that and I would refute the suggestion that the reason for the delay by parties on both side of the House was cost. The real reason, as the previous Government concluded, is that none of the previous devices have been considered sufficiently reliable to be used for roadside testing.

My hon. Friend the Member for Daventry spoke about specifications, and the Bill seeks to introduce the specification in the next 12 months. If the previous Government concluded that none of the specific kit out there is sufficiently reliable, I am not sure that we should simply say that one of those pieces of equipment should be taken on board within the next 12 months. My fear is that, as my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg) mentioned on more than one occasion, that would endanger innocent people, and delay may not be the result of bureaucracy but of ensuring—

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Chope]

My hon. Friend refers to the fifth amendment, but he will be aware that there is statute law in the United States stating that there is implied consent on the part of every driver of a motor vehicle. By taking out a driving licence, they are not covered by the fifth amendment, because by implied consent in law they agree to be subject to a test if the police suspect that they have an illegal substance in their body while driving. I am not sure that he is comparing like with like, because a similar statutory regime exists in the United States notwithstanding the fifth amendment.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

My hon. Friend’s intervention is extremely helpful, but we can see how clear America is about understanding the process that is followed, and about what it is doing in relation to people’s constitutional rights. That is what I am highlighting.

If we do what is suggested in the Bill, we have to be aware of the very important principle that is, to some extent, being undermined. It is not necessarily disproportionate to do it, and it may be absolutely essential—I would not begin to say that we should not have the breathalyser and the assumption that if someone refuses a test, they have probably committed an offence anyway. I do not think that is disproportionate, but it is important to be aware of the risk that we are taking with our constitution, and we must ensure that we are very careful if we ever take the idea further. The next time an hon. Member introduces a private Member’s Bill that would do something that looks very good and would improve society, we must consider whether we are doing anything to the constitution that we should be very careful about.

That is another reason for supporting Her Majesty’s Government in this particular area. They are right to be slow and deliberative. The worst thing to do would be to get some fancy bit of kit introduced—made by Philips, as I think was suggested earlier, or perhaps by Samsung Electronics—that comes in, absolutely whizzo, and tests for all drugs but one, or takes just one reading. This “nanogram” thing really makes me suspicious, because it must be easy to find a nanogram from somewhere if that is what one wants to do, or for a nanogram to be stuck in the machine from the last person, who might have come from Gloucestershire. The police might cross over into Somerset, and then some good Somerset fellow would spit on this thing and find himself caught out by a Gloucestershire nanogram. I am very concerned about Gloucestershire nanograms.

I urge Her Majesty’s Government to be very careful about the testing of the machines, and to ensure that they really do what they are said to do. That is the other great point of complexity. When a Labour Transport Minister, one Barbara Castle, introduced the breathalyser in the late 1960s, it was simply a few crystals that changed colour if somebody was over the limit, and they then went for a test. The machines have obviously become much more sophisticated, but they are testing for one thing and one thing only. They are not about finding out whether someone has had five cups of coffee, or whether they have been in one of those dance clubs that we were hearing about earlier, where 76% of people have taken drugs. I must say, I was shocked by that. We have tea dances in Somerset, where I do not think such things take place. The machine that we have is accurate and accepted, but the machines that are yet to come in may be given increasing evidential value despite testing for so many things and being at greater risk of getting things wrong. The Government really need to be, and clearly are being, very cautious.

We have heard a lot of comparisons with Australia. It is not always the model for the United Kingdom to follow, although it sometimes is. In its drink-driving laws, it has accepted random testing for a very long time, because it felt that it had a very serious problem. We have never accepted that. Australia may feel, in its circumstances, that having something relatively untested is necessary in the light of the problems that it has faced.

I am sorry to say that I will not go on with such eloquence and at such length as my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North. I am full of admiration for him, and I wish that I could do so. I wish to conclude with some key points that we have to remember. First, I hope that the Minister will ensure that we put the cart behind the horse—we have to get things the right way around—by establishing the levels that make a substance legal or illegal. Secondly, we must look at the question of somebody using a prescribed drug that in other circumstances is illegal. Will we simply ban them from driving whenever they go through that course of treatment? If we take the zero-reading approach that an hon. Friend suggested, we would do so. Thirdly, we must always bear in mind the deep constitutional principle of non-self-incrimination. We may accept that it can be overridden, but at least we would know what we were doing. Fourthly, we must consider the quality of the machine, and ask whether it will really work. Finally, we must keep the process in the hands of Parliament and not delegate these nanograms to judges. Noble, lordly and wise as they are, we need to make the law, so that they can enforce it.

--- Later in debate ---

[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.

[Mr Chope]

My hon. Friend talks about type approval, but surely the first thing is the specification. Am I right in believing that the Home Office has still not finalised the specification for the roadside drug-testing equipment? What is the problem in drawing up the specification?

[James Brokenshire]

As I have already said, we are seeking to prioritise, as was reflected in the North report, the creation of drug-testing equipment within the police station as the first step. We have worked on the specification for that and we want to see station-based devices available before the end of this year. Six devices are going through field trials and detailed laboratory tests are also necessary. Timing of approval depends on device performance, manufacturer’s reaction, and how quickly it is able to sign the agreement required with the Home Office before the Secretary of State signs the approval order. Purchase and deployment of the devices would then be matters for local police decision. We are pressing hard to see that by the end of this year. That then feeds through to the next step, which is the roadside testing, and our advisers are finalising the additional environmental requirement that devices would have to meet for use at the roadside. Obviously, the environmental issues are different out on the street compared with being in the police station. I can assure my hon. Friend that the specification document is going through final quality assurance, and we expect to receive it shortly. It will then be put to Ministers to decide how best to proceed further. I assure my hon. Friend that we are not just sitting on our hands. We are getting on with the work on the use of the device within the police station and are taking steps forward in relation to a device that can be type-approved for the roadside.

[Mr Chope]

Will my hon. Friend therefore confirm that the Government’s response in March 2011 to the North review that they hoped to take decisions on type approval for the machine in the police station by the end of June is still on the programme, and can he assure me that the specification for the roadside test will be published before the end of this calendar year?

--- Later in debate ---

[James Brokenshire]

When we move from the specification to issuing the type approval, as it is known, a formal legal document has to be drawn up with the necessary approvals and presented to give that consent. In order for police forces to have the equipment in their police stations by the end of the year, the necessary legal documentation to facilitate the type approval, building on the experience of the pilots to which I have referred, would need to be in place. It is the approval that is absolutely key.

Reference has been made to experience in Australia, but recent research has shown that in western Australia, where roadside drug screeners have been brought into use, one in four tests was found to be inaccurate and more rigorous analysis of the specimens in a laboratory led to the exoneration of a number of motorists. Clearly we want to ensure that we get this right, and also recognise the need to take into account experience developed overseas.

On the issue of possible new offences and the question of whether there should be a different offence, and not simply looking at equipment to test or being able to support impairment, we are giving separate consideration to the case for introducing a simple, objective offence of having a specified drug in the body while driving. In addition to simplifying police enforcement, this could give a stronger message against drug-driving and act as a more powerful deterrent. Such an offence would also immediately make a roadside testing device much more valuable. The new offence would be in addition to the current offence of driving while impaired by drugs. Removing the need to prove impairment could deliver a significant improvement in enforcement.

We will, however, keep the impairment offence for those cases where impairment has been caused by a non-specified drug, such as one available on prescription or over the counter. That reflects a number of points that have been made by hon. Members in the debate. Introducing a new offence would be a very complex issue and there would be a need to consider a number of questions of principle, policy and practicality. In many ways that alludes to the comments made by hon. Members in our discussions on the Bill.

We will continue the research and other work that is necessary before any decisions can be made, but at this stage I cannot pre-empt that work. Any proposals that we produce will be subject to further consultation, regulatory clearance and other impact assessments, and implementation would clearly and, for the reasons that have been highlighted today, require primary legislation.

To conclude, I join my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch in wanting effective action against drug-driving. I applaud his dedication to the cause, and I recognise his frustrations and, indeed, those of previous Governments and other Ministers in taking action. It has therefore been good for us to hold this debate and to underline those issues today, but I hope he agrees that we are pursuing the goal vigorously and in the most appropriate manner, and in that context I hope that he will not press his Bill to a vote.

[Mr Chope]

With the leave of the House, may I respond to what has been an excellent debate?

When I became a Member we used to have one day a year on a Friday for a road safety debate, and in a sense this debate has been about one aspect of road safety, highlighting the deep interest that Members from all parts of the House have in the subject. I am very grateful to my hon. Friends for their contributions and to the hon. Member for Eltham (Clive Efford) on the Opposition Front Bench for what he had to say.

I accept the bona fides of the Government and of my hon. Friend the Minister, but I remain disappointed that we are not going even faster. My hon. Friend was not even able to reconfirm, as the March response to the North review stated, that the Government hope to take decisions on type approval by the end of June. That has been replaced by a target for the devices to be in some police stations by the end of the year. So it goes on, as my hon. Friend the Member for Daventry (Chris Heaton-Harris) so brilliantly said, quoting from various press releases over the years. Action always seems to be just around the corner, but we never quite get there. Let us hope that we do get there in the end.

In responding to the points that have been made, rather than going into a lot of detail, I commend to Members a brilliant analysis by Tina Cafaro, clinical professor of law at the Western New England college school of law, writing in the Western New England Law Review in 2010, under an article entitled, “Slipping Through the Cracks: Why Can’t We Stop Drugged Driving?”

In 70 or so pages, Professor Cafaro goes into the detail of what has happened in other countries and the differences between drug-driving and drink-driving, concluding that we will never make good progress unless we have a system of zero tolerance for illegal drugs in the body when people drive—leaving to one side the problem of prescribed and legal drugs. She comes down in favour of zero tolerance, rather as a number of my hon. Friends have during this debate, and I hope that we will now have a widespread debate about where we go from here, because the Government recognise that we should do more.

I hope that the road safety lobby, and other colleagues who are concerned about civil liberties and so on, will engage positively in a debate on whether we should introduce new legislation to deal not only with people who drive while impaired by drugs but with those who drive with illegal drugs in their system.

Having said all that, and bearing in my mind my conflict of interest, given that I wish to proceed quickly to the next item on the Order Paper, I seek the leave of the House to give the Government the benefit of the doubt, reminding them that we will be here to hold them to account if the things said today are not delivered. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion.

Motion, by leave, withdrawn.

Criminal Records (Public Access) Bill

Christopher Chope Excerpts

Friday 13th May 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

I beg to move, That the Bill be read a Second Time.

This Bill is similar to my previous Bill in that it comprises just one substantive clause, but it also has a financial provision and it would need to have a money resolution. The Bill arises from what has been accepted for a long time as a big anomaly in public access to court records, particularly magistrates court records. It is most effectively summarised in the Information Tribunal decision EA/2009/0037 in the case of John Carleton and the Information Commissioner on 24 August 2009.

The tribunal looked at the issue of somebody who wished to get access to the record of a conviction in a magistrates court. Because that person was not present at the court hearing, and because the press did not cover the matter and report it, it was not possible for that person to get information from the magistrates court without getting specific permission from the court. In order to do that, they needed to write to the court manager detailing the request and asking for an appointment at court to make a formal request to a justice of the peace. They were able to get that application granted only if they could show that it was in the public interest for them to be able to access that information. The court decided that, although the conviction was on the public record, it was not publicly accessible because of data protection legislation. The relevant paragraphs of the decision read as follows:

“34. The Tribunal notes that there are apparently anomalies created by the current Freedom of Information and Data Protection legislation in this area and which are mentioned briefly below.

35. If the Appellant, as a member of the public, had attended the court on the relevant date there is no reason to suppose that he would not have been able to hear all the information that he was requesting because it would have been part of the normal, public court proceedings.

36. If the Appellant had found out that the press or the media had covered the case and was able to get a copy of the newspaper report or media broadcast then – although the personal data in question would have been processed by becoming part of those reports – the Appellant would have had legitimate access to the information and the personal data he was seeking.

37. If the local newspaper or media outlet put the court report within a webpage on the internet or as a ‘podcast’ to be downloaded by the Appellant – whether there was a ‘search’ facility on the site allowing specific names or topics to be highlighted and retrieved or not - and then viewed, printed out, played or stored, then all of that is legitimate processing of personal data within the current statutory legislation.

38. However he did not attend the Magistrates Court on the day in question and he was seeking the personal data in relation to the individual – from the court itself - after the event.

39. That situation is not permitted in the Magistrates’ Court by the current Statutory regimes save through the filtering situation incorporating permission to inspect the Court Register made in person on application to a Justice of the Peace.

40. It may well be that the Ministry of Justice wish to draw this appeal, the Good Practice highlighted by the Information Commissioner – and these remarks – to the attention of HMCS’s Justices’ Clerks and Legal Managers because it is unlikely that this Appellant’s request is the only one of its kind received by the Magistrates’ Courts throughout England and Wales.”

Only yesterday, Keir Starmer, the Director of Public Prosecutions, was reported in the newspapers as saying:

“I believe that transparency and visibility help the public understand how the criminal justice system works, and shining a light on the workings of the courtroom can only serve to boost its efficiency and effectiveness.”

He was actually speaking in support of a proposal to allow cameras into courts across the country, which is far beyond what I am talking about in this Bill.

This Bill would mean that if somebody was convicted in a magistrates court and that conviction was recorded by that court, as it has to be under a statutory duty, it should be possible for anybody to get access to that information because it is public information and it should be publicly available. At the moment, the only way somebody can get access to that information is by carrying out a criminal records office check. They can do that only if they know a police officer who is prepared to carry out the check, unofficially, on their behalf, with or without a fee, or if they belong to an organisation that can get access to the criminal records office’s information.

The trouble is that the criminal records office’s information goes far beyond just the details of convictions. It includes a lot of prejudicial information, such as details of who has been arrested and not charged, who has been charged and then acquitted in court, and even who has been the subject of suspicion. Such information is all included in the records of the criminal records office. I am not suggesting that people should be able to get easy access to that information, but I am suggesting that they should be able to find out much more easily whether somebody has been convicted in a magistrates court of drinking and driving.

I give that example because if the Government insist on reversing the House of Lords amendment to the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill, it will not be long before this House is enabling people to be elected as police and crime commissioners and that Bill says that it will not be possible for anyone to stand for election to that post if they have a previous conviction, which could include a conviction for a drink-drive offence. Why, therefore, should this information in the magistrates courts not be available? It is already available, but it is not available to everyone and it is not available easily. That is why this Bill is described as a means to facilitate public access to court registers.

[Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)]

Can my hon. Friend confirm that it would be very easy and, indeed, desirable to ensure that this information contained the record of convictions in not only magistrates courts but the Crown courts?

[Mr Chope]

Yes, it would. Of course there are far fewer Crown court convictions and far fewer Crown courts, so it is much easier to get access to that information. As my hon. Friend will have noticed, the Bill states that

“‘a criminal records office’ means the Criminal Records Bureau or any successor body with similar statutory functions to the Criminal Records Bureau”.

It also states:

“A criminal records office must keep, in electronic form, copies of all Magistrates’ Courts Registers, and any other registers produced by a court listing convictions”.

Obviously, that could include Crown court registers.

In drafting this Bill, I have tried to make the regulation and the demands placed on the criminal records office as light as possible. I have done so by, among other things, saying that none of this would have to be retrospective, and so only after the Bill was enacted would the magistrates courts’ registers have to be communicated in electronic form to the criminal records office. There would be no burden on the criminal records office to collate the information on all those records. All that would happen would be that the records would be available in electronic form and could be investigated on the internet by members of the public.

I expect what would happen—this has already been happening in the US—is that people who were interested in providing a public service would start to collate the records themselves, thereby producing a combined database that would be accessible, perhaps for a fee, by members of the public. It would set up almost a private sector alternative to the Criminal Records Bureau.

[Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)]

Many people will be quite astonished that records of convictions are not as publicly available as they should be, I would argue, in a free society such as ours. Does my hon. Friend think that this provision would make the Criminal Records Bureau a little more efficient? If people had direct information about those who have been convicted, it might free up some of the bureaucratic burden for which that organisation is, unfortunately, somewhat infamous.

[Mr Chope]

I hear what my hon. Friend says. I have not recently had any constituency cases relating to the Criminal Records Bureau, but there is a real problem with the time it takes to get information out of it, particularly if one wants to check records for potential volunteers or members of staff.

[Stephen Phillips (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)]

A moment ago, my hon. Friend suggested that the electronic record the Bill seeks to create would be capable of being investigated by the public on the internet. Can he direct the House to the clause that mandates that to be the case?

[Mr Chope]

Clause 1(1) of the Bill states

“and must make them accessible to the public”.

As they are going to be in electronic form, I had assumed that that would be the means by which they would be made accessible to the public. If my hon. and learned Friend is suggesting that he does not think that that is spelt out clearly enough, I would obviously be happy to consider those representations. The idea behind the Bill is that such information would be accessible without someone having physically to go along to the criminal records office. Ultimately, it would be for the criminal records office to decide under the terms of the Bill in what way it would make the records accessible to the public.

The point is quite short and simple. It comes down to the basic principle that if somebody is convicted in a court, that knowledge should be publicly available and easily accessed by the public. At the moment, much to the surprise of many of us, unless one is actually in the court and hears what is happening or reads about it in the newspapers, it might go undetected and might be hard to detect in the future.

To pick up on the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Crawley (Henry Smith), a number of employers might in due course want to see whether somebody who is applying for a job has a conviction from the local magistrates court. The Bill would facilitate their being able to do that without their having to engineer a situation in which they could get a CRB check on that individual.

The significance of the Bill will become greater as we find that fewer and fewer proceedings in the magistrates courts are covered by local newspapers. I am fortunate to have the New Milton Advertiser and Lymington Times, which take delight in printing at length reports from the magistrates courts. That is relatively unusual in local newspapers these days, so if people cannot find out what is happening through their local newspapers there must be an alternative way of enabling them to get that knowledge. That is what the Bill is all about.

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

I shall be as brief as the Bill, which contains only a few clauses. The hon. Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) has pointed out the anomaly that if someone is present in a court or reads a court report, its decisions are a matter of public record but that as time passes the case becomes subject to freedom of information provisions. He made it clear that the intention of the Bill is that such information should be available online. I was wondering about that, because it occurred to me that if we wanted to find out about an individual, we would have to happen across the particular magistrates court that held their record. However, he suggests that he would amend the Bill to clarify that point.

I am not sure that the Bill is consistent with our debates in Committee on the Protection of Freedoms Bill. The hon. Gentleman may not be aware that there was considerable debate about returning information supplied for Criminal Records Bureau checks to the individual so that they could check its accuracy before it was passed to a potential employer or a voluntary organisation. The hon. Gentleman’s Bill does not seem consistent with the Government’s direction of travel in that regard.

[Mr Chope]

Unlike the Criminal Records Bureau, the Bill would not rely on gossip, hearsay or information about cautions or about people who are arrested on suspicion but not charged. It would deal only with written registers from magistrates courts.

[Clive Efford]

I accept that point, and I shall speak briefly about accuracy of information in a moment.

Before the debate I checked the internet, as I was concerned about some of the fee-charging organisations that purport to provide information about criminal record checks. There seemed to be no way to check the background of such organisations to find out whether they were sound and operated reliable processes. A job applicant might find that an employer uses such services and that the information is inaccurate. That is a matter of concern, and is something that the hon. Gentleman has highlighted—yet, the Bill would not deal with it.

There have been cases when information from magistrates courts has been called into question. Between 1980 and 2006, there was a substantial incident in Leeds when more than 2,000 cases were not recorded accurately at a magistrates court and a number of people avoided sentences and fines. It was thus not possible to check their records at a later date. One of the reasons given for that failure was the amount of bureaucracy and the burden it placed on magistrates courts, so we should want to consider the implications of the Bill for magistrates courts before we might support it.

We have no objection in principle to the hon. Gentleman’s desire to share information that is already in the public domain. The force of the logic in his argument is on record, but at this stage he has failed to convince us that the Bill would solve the problems and that it would not have unintended consequences. We will be interested to hear the Government’s response to his contribution.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Chope]

I accept my hon. and learned Friend’s point about the rehabilitation of offenders, but does not the Criminal Records Bureau keep a record of spent convictions, so that a conviction does not disappear once it is spent?

[Stephen Phillips]

My hon. Friend is right, but access to a spent conviction can be gained only where Parliament believes that there should continue to be access to spent convictions to prevent harm that might arise were the convictions not to be apparent to those making criminal records checks. The Bill would go much further and make generally available to the public the entire criminal record of those who might well have mended their ways many years before. That is the first problem with the Bill.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Chope]

What solution does my hon. and learned Friend propose to this acknowledged problem?

[Stephen Phillips]

My hon. Friend asks an interesting question. The short answer—I will be completely honest with him—is that I do not know, because I have not thought about it. I am seeking to point out the Bill’s defects and why it will therefore not secure my support on Second Reading. The solution can no doubt be taken up by Ministers in due course. I none the less consider the points I have made to be valid, so I urge the House not to give the Bill a Second Reading.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Lynne Featherstone)]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) for giving me this opportunity to talk about his private Member’s Bill. I will, if I may, set out how the current system works and our concerns about the Bill as drafted.

The Bill seeks to set up a system under which details of all court convictions will be held by the Criminal Records Bureau, and access to those records will then be available to the general public. This involves several issues, which I will tackle one at a time. First, the Bill would require court conviction details to by held by the CRB. The CRB was established in 2002 and acts as a one-stop shop for organisations checking police records and, in relevant cases, information held by the Independent Safeguarding Authority. It is important to understand the purpose of the criminal records checking system and why there are so many careful considerations about what information the CRB may hold and issue compared with the proposed system, which would be open and accessible in every detail to everyone in this country.

At the moment, two levels of CRB check are available: standard and enhanced disclosures. Both contain conviction information taken from the police national computer, with enhanced disclosure also involving a check of local police records for relevant and proportionate information —local police intelligence is sometimes termed “soft” information. A standard certificate can be obtained if two criteria are fulfilled: first, that the position under consideration falls within the exceptions order to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974; and, secondly, that it has been prescribed under Police Act 1997 regulations as a “prescribed purpose”. That is why I intervened on my hon. Friend to question whether there was an inconsistency between the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act and the laudable desires expressed in his Bill, which perhaps cannot be translated into reality by these means.

An enhanced certificate with barred list information can be obtained if three criteria are fulfilled: that the application falls within the exceptions order; that it is for a prescribed purpose; and that it relates to a position for which suitability information, including barred list information, can be obtained, as also set out in Police Act regulations. At the moment, there are several positions for which barred list information can be given on an enhanced CRB disclosure, including, for children’s barred list information, positions relating to regulated activity in relation to children, other care and supervision for children, fostering and child minding; and, for adults’ barred list information, positions relating to regulated activity in relation to vulnerable adults, registered social care agencies and the Commissioner for Older People in Wales. I am sure my hon. Friend is aware that the Protection of Freedoms Bill is in Committee, where changes to these arrangements are being discussed. There is a further level of check—basic—that has yet to be introduced in England and Wales.

My hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch mentioned the timeliness of CRB checks. In April 2011, consequent on changes to the recording and holding of information by the police, the CRB issued 95.1% of enhanced certificates within 28 days; the figure for March was 95.4%. That is a vast improvement on which it is to be congratulated. Demand for CRB checks has increased year on year and they are now in the millions each year. That improvement is an impressive result.

CRB checks are mainly used for those working with children or vulnerable adults, but they are undertaken for a wide range of other purposes, such as licensing and in respect of people in positions of trust. In addition to the certificates, individuals can make a subject access request if they wish to find out what information is held about them by individual police forces.

The CRB operates under the provisions of part V of the Police Act. To achieve what my hon. Friend suggests in the Bill would require amendments to the legislation. The Bill therefore would not work as it stands.

The Bill would allow anyone to access court records from any court in England or Wales. We rightly have open justice whereby anyone can go into any court to observe what is happening, with a few exceptions involving families and children. The Bill proposes a fundamental change to that access.

[Mr Chope]

The hon. Lady is pouring a lot of cold water on my Bill, but does she accept that an anomaly needs to be addressed, or does she not think that there is an anomaly at all?

[Lynne Featherstone]

I think that there is differential access; information can be obtained by someone who is present on the day of proceedings or if they read about it in the newspapers. The anomaly, as I see it, is about how much information is available to whom, when and in what fashion. What monitor is available to protect those on whom information is held from people who are not acting in the public interest? That is the test at the moment. Anyone can seek information from a court: the test is whether it is in the public interest. That is a matter for a further debate.

What is being suggested would add to the functions of the CRB by requiring it to keep a central database of all court outcomes, or results as they are known in the trade. We have never had such a database. Under the current system, people can visit their local court or any other court and read the results of court hearings in the local and national press. Newspapers and other media outlets can obtain free of charge copies of court registers containing the outcomes of criminal cases and the details of upcoming cases. As I have said, we do have an open system of justice.

If we went down the road proposed in the Bill, where would it lead? First, there is the question of cost. I need hardly explain to my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch that the Government are reducing the deficit. All Departments are working hard to reduce their costs, and introducing a new system such as this would incur substantial costs.

Further, what real mischief is the Bill designed to remedy? What benefit would be achieved from setting up such a system? How would it benefit our communities? It appears to us that the aim is to make the justice process more transparent, by allowing anyone, anywhere in England and Wales, to find out about convictions in any court, but why would we need to do that when we already have an open justice system? The Criminal Procedure Rules 2010 state, in paragraph (15) of rule 5.4, that every court register

“shall be open to inspection during reasonable hours by any justice of the peace, or any person authorised in that behalf by a justice of the peace or the Lord Chancellor.”

As court registers contain personal information that would not be made available in court or elsewhere, the change that my hon. Friend suggests would not simply be a matter of transferring the information to the Criminal Records Bureau. Magistrates courts registers are held not by the CRB but by Her Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service. Recordable offences—not all offences—are passed electronically from HMCTS to the police national computer, from which the CRB accesses them. Making magistrates courts’ registers available to the CRB would therefore require a process to transfer and store them, with the associated costs.

There is considerable information kept on magistrates courts registers that is not in the public domain. It includes, among many other things, details of individuals’ driving licence numbers, personal details of the recipients of compensation and details of vulnerable victims and witnesses, including those in sexual and domestic violence cases. Court registers also contain much information on people found not guilty or acquitted. Does my hon. Friend think that should be in the public domain, too? If not, as I assume, we would need to find a way of removing that information—again, at considerable cost and contrary to the provisions of the Bill.

Magistrates courts registers also include cases on which there are reporting restrictions in place to stop the naming of individuals—offenders, witnesses, victims or others. Those cases would need to be identified—another costly process, as they are recorded only at first hearing so a linking process would have be identified—and removed from the public register. The Bill does not allow for that, either.

Magistrates courts also hear some civil and family cases, details of which are recorded in the register. Those cases would need to be filtered out before publication, but the Bill does not allow for that. Proceedings on more serious crimes are concluded in the Crown court, and from reading the Bill it seems that they, too, are to be included in its provisions. Clause 1(1) refers to

“any other registers produced by a court listing convictions”,

not just those from magistrates courts. Crown court registers are not currently held electronically. The official record is on paper, and making it available would require extra investment.

It is difficult to see what access to court records would provide for the public unless there were some search facility. My hon. Friend said that there would be, but that is not specified in the Bill. Such a facility would be very costly to develop, as literally millions of records a year would need to be sorted through. Someone could find the result they were looking for only if they knew the exact person, court or hearing involved. Effectively, the public would have access to endless data but get very little useful information—a costly exercise for very little public value.

We are also concerned that the Bill could work against rehabilitating those convicted by the courts. Let me explain why I say that. The Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 sets out various times after which a conviction becomes spent—when it does not have to be disclosed. My hon. Friend said that it would be done in real time, or within relatively real time, and that an electronic system could be devised incorporating a natural lapse of spent convictions. The aim of current legislation is to allow individuals to move on with their lives, particularly those whose offence was at the lower end of the scale. In order to safeguard the more vulnerable elements of our society, such as children and the old or infirm, certain professions are exempted from the Act, and all convictions, whether spent or not, have to be disclosed.

That is where the Criminal Records Bureau comes in. That is why we have an expert body doing the criminal records work. It does the necessary checks, and passes the information on to a prospective employer when relevant. I think that most people would consider that to be perfectly reasonable. It strikes a balance between open access to the criminal records system and the rights of those who have transgressed to move on with their lives. My hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall) made a point about people who change their names in order to get away from a criminal record. The Bill does not address that point. However, the CRB has in place a thorough system of identity checking. The registered body, which must countersign any application to the CRB, is under a statutory duty to carry out thorough identity checks. The proposed online system would not put in place anything to cover that loophole.

Hon. Members on both sides of the House will know that we are changing how the system operates through the provisions in the Protection of Freedoms Bill that is before the House, as I mentioned briefly before. Furthermore, the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act was itself the subject of a recent Green Paper, and the results of that consultation process are still under review by the Ministry of Justice. We would not want to take any action that could prejudge or impact in any way upon that review. However, if we put in place the system proposed in the Bill promoted by my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch, there would be considerable potential for anyone to circumvent the provisions of the 1974 Act and find out about matters that have become spent.

To avoid that we would need to put in place a series of checks to weed out such spent offences, which would add to the cost overall. However, if court registers were made available online or in some other electronic form by the CRB, there would be no guarantee that removing the spent conviction from the records would achieve much.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Chope]

That comes as a great surprise to me. I thank the Minister, however, for her response. All the mischiefs she said would arise were my Bill to be enacted are the very mischiefs that can arise at the moment when information is gleaned at the time of the court case by the media. That takes me back to the point I made at the outset, which was that if

“the press or the media had covered the case and was able to get a copy of the newspaper report or media broadcast then”—

at that time—

“although the personal data in question would have been processed by becoming part of those reports—the Appellant would have had legitimate access to the information and the personal data he was seeking…If the local newspaper or media outlet put the court report within a webpage on the internet or as a ‘podcast’ to be downloaded by the Appellant—whether there was a ‘search’ facility on the site allowing specific names or topics to be highlighted and retrieved or not—and then viewed, printed out, played or stored, then all of that is legitimate processing of personal data within the current statutory legislation.”

I am grateful to those who participated in the debate. I think that everybody, except the Minister perhaps, recognises that there is an anomaly. It is inconsistent that court cases can be dealt with differently as regards public access to information about those cases depending on whether they are covered by the media, whether an individual is present in court and so on.

If the Minister reconsiders the issue, I hope that she will recognise that there is an anomaly. If she accepts that there is one, I hope that she will feel that it is incumbent on her Department to try to find a solution. Although my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Stephen Phillips) poured quite a lot of cold water on my Bill, he accepted that there was an anomaly and that this was an attempt to address it. When the Director of Public Prosecutions talks about the possibility of introducing cameras into courts and reasserting the importance of public access to the criminal justice system, it seems anomalous that we have this problem. One thing that has come out of the debate is that I have accepted that my Bill is probably not the right solution to the problem at this time, but I hope that the pressure of the debate on the Minister will be such that she will try to get her officials to work on coming up with a proper solution—perhaps one that could be brought forward as an amendment to the Protection of Freedoms Bill on Report, as all the issues relating to the criminal records office are being dealt with in that Bill.

Finally, I am very concerned about the inaccuracies on the registers, which must cause everybody great concern. The Criminal Records Bureau is producing inaccurate material. I had a constituent who was a wing commander who wanted to do some voluntary work somewhere. He found that somebody had stolen his identity and that his records had been linked with the criminal records of another person. That caused enormous embarrassment and, in the end, it was only after we went to see the then Minister in the Home Office that things were put right. My constituent was the victim of fraud, but there seem to be a lot of victims of mistake.

[Lynne Featherstone]

On the point that the Criminal Records Bureau might be holding incorrect information, I am sure my hon. Friend will be glad to know that one of the new provisions in the Freedom of Information (Amendment) Bill means that the certificate will now go only to the individual applicant and not to the employer, giving them the chance to dispute the information before it causes any harm to their employment.

[Mr Chope]

That is helpful, but my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham was making the point that inaccurate information is being recorded in courts. We must have a system to put that right. My Bill relates only to prospective court registers, not historical ones. Even so, I hope we can have a system whereby from now on magistrates court records of convictions are 100% accurate, rather than containing anomalies and inaccuracies. That is my hope—perhaps it is an aspiration—but having said that, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion.

Motion, by leave, withdrawn.

Proposed Directive (Information Systems)

Christopher Chope Excerpts

Thursday 3rd February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

The Minister refers to the Council of Europe convention, which covers 47 countries plus the United States and other countries, but what added value does the directive have when compared with that convention? If the directive is inadequately drafted, as my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr Cash) says it is, why do we not wait to see whether it can be correctly drafted before we sign up to it?

[James Brokenshire]

The directive builds on the convention and deals with certain additional issues, such as the response that other EU countries provide to requests for information on cyber-related attacks and cybercrimes, so we think that it has important benefits. It is precisely because of those practical benefits that we think it appropriate to opt in at this point and to negotiate on and change the drafting where it requires further work. We believe that, because of the directive’s practical and direct benefits, it is important to be there and do that.

Alcohol (Minimum Pricing)

Christopher Chope Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd February 2011 Westminster Hall

[Andrew Griffiths]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman. However, there are those who say, “Why should we penalise someone who wants to buy a 24-pack of strong lager and take it home and drink one can a night for 24 days? Why should we penalise that?” The reality, however, is different. The clients at the Burton addiction centre in my constituency will talk about the impact that cheap booze has on fuelling people’s drinking consumption.

[Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

My hon. Friend seems to be against these loss-leaders. Would he outlaw loss-leaders for chocolate, salt, butter and other things that are not good for us if we take them in excess?

[Andrew Griffiths]

My hon. Friend makes a very important point. However, I cannot remember the last time I was on Burton high street and saw two guys knocking seven bells out of each other over a Toblerone. I also cannot remember the last time I was in Queen’s hospital A and E and doctors were pumping somebody’s stomach because they had overdosed on too much butter. The reality is that alcohol is a very different beast from things such as chocolate.

[Mr Chope]

Surely the issue is not whether alcohol is distinct from other products, but the use made of it by the people who consume it. Is my hon. Friend not in danger of victimising people, particularly poor families, who benefit from these loss-leaders? He is trying to put forward the argument that, by penalising those poor families, he will tackle the problem of binge drinking, which I do not think he will.

[Andrew Griffiths]

I recognise my hon. Friend’s concern, but the people we are penalising are the taxpayers, who have to pay for the consequences of binge drinking through the costs of extra policing and the impacts on A and E departments. Furthermore, if I am being brutally honest it is those poor families who suffer most as a result of cheap alcohol. Young people and poor families are much more price-sensitive to alcohol than others.

--- Later in debate ---

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to be present in a debate under your chairmanship, Mr Sheridan, and to follow the hon. Member for Burton (Andrew Griffiths), who made an eloquent and thoughtful speech.

I think that this is going to be a great debate. It will also provide a lot of information for political diarists. We have already heard this morning about butter-related crime, or the possibility of butter-related crime, from the hon. Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope); we have heard the hon. Member for Burton offer the working men in his constituency the prospect of welcoming my hon. Friend the Member for Darlington (Mrs Chapman) with open arms, and we have also heard about the Minister’s various meetings with beer groups, of which I am sure there are many, although some will think that the Minister, with his youthful good looks, might not even be old enough to drink.

Having said that, this is a very serious issue and I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Blaenau Gwent (Nick Smith) for choosing it for a debate. It has attracted so many right hon. and hon. Members to Westminster Hall on a Wednesday morning, each one of whom has a constituency interest and a desire to ensure that we continue to move in the right direction.

Other Members here will be able to talk about the health aspects of the issue, for example, the hon. Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston), who has vast experience in the NHS. Indeed, my hon. Friend the Member for Blaenau Gwent and the hon. Member for Burton both mentioned the cost of binge drinking to our health service and the health of the nation.

In the next few minutes, I want to concentrate on alcohol-related crime and the report of the Select Committee on Home Affairs, “Policing in the 21st Century”, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Blaenau Gwent referred. That report was published last year and it addressed the cost to the taxpayer and to the public of alcohol-related crime. When our Committee began the inquiry that led to that report, we were looking at what a police officer did with his or her time; we never intended to look at alcohol-related crime. It was only after we had visited a number of town centres, including Colchester, that we did so. The hon. Member for Colchester (Bob Russell), who was then a member of the Committee, invited the Committee to visit Colchester and hear from local police officers there about the amount of time that they spent on alcohol-related crime, especially on a Friday or Saturday evening. The latest estimate is that 70% of police officers feel that they are distracted from other aspects of policing because they are dealing with alcohol-related crime.

A statistic was sent to the Committee from the Cabinet Office showing that it costs £59 extra to process someone in a police station who has been arrested because of alcohol-related crime. In the current climate, the Government want to save money on policing, and there is no better way of doing that than to have responsible laws that reduce the time that police officers spend on this issue.

[Mr Chope]

I do not think that anyone will disagree with the right hon. Gentleman about the problem, but how will limiting the price at which supermarkets sell alcohol be the solution? We know from our constituencies that it is alleged that small shops, where alcohol is sold at a much higher price than at the supermarkets, enable young people under the legal age to access booze.

[Keith Vaz]

I have huge respect for the hon. Gentleman because he was my Greater London councillor when I was in Richmond many years ago. I have always had a great deal of time for what he says, but I think that he is wrong on this issue. It is not the little shops or the pubs, but the supermarkets, that cause the problem. The evidence is clear, and it is in our report. As the hon. Member for Burton has pointed out, people get tanked up before they go out on a Saturday night, because of supermarkets’ special offers, which make beer cheaper than bottled water, even the cheapest water—I am not saying that we should not drink tap water.

[Keith Vaz]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. She tries to tempt me down Leicester high street, especially the Melton road, where we are currently fighting an application by Tesco to build one of its supermarkets in the middle of one of my main shopping areas.

My hon. Friend the Member for Blaenau Gwent mentioned the cost to the health service, but the cost to the taxpayer as far as crime is concerned is £7.3 billion a year—a huge amount. What do we do about that? It is in the hands of the Minister. At the last Home Office questions, I got up to praise the Home Secretary for moving in the right direction. We could not get the previous Government to do this; I do not know why. It is not that they were not concerned about the matter—I think that they were worried about alcohol-related crime and the pressure on the health service—but that the debate perhaps got distracted by claims that somehow the extension of licensing hours meant that people were drinking more alcohol. I do not think that that is correct, but as someone who does not drink alcohol, and has no constituency interest—no distilleries or production units—I feel that the previous Government should have taken up the Select Committee’s recommendations. This Government are moving in the right direction, but not far enough, as I think we will find from the contributions of most Members here this morning.

Some would say that the hon. Member for Burton has the most to lose because of the production in his town. I have visited Burton and been to the Coors headquarters there. It is a remarkable town, and the world centre of beer making, but down the high street there is an alcohol addiction centre—how very convenient. The people I visited made the case for minimum pricing, so if they can do that, we can look at the issue very seriously. There is something of a practical nature that the Minister can do, picking up on what the hon. Member for Gainsborough said.

[Mr Chope]

I represent Christchurch.

[Keith Vaz]

Oh, I am so sorry: Christchurch, of course. How could I confuse the hon. Gentleman with the hon. Member for Gainsborough (Mr Leigh)?

What the Minister needs to do is to get the chairmen and chief executives of the five biggest supermarkets around the table for an alcohol-free sandwich lunch with both him and the Home Secretary, to discuss the issues. It is in their hands; they can do this.

DNA and CCTV (Crime Prevention)

Christopher Chope Excerpts

Tuesday 6th July 2010 Westminster Hall

[Caroline Flint (Don Valley) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to contribute to this debate, and I congratulate the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) on securing it. This is the second time in a week that we have appeared together on the same side, so we are in strange times in terms of alliances. What unites us today is the argument about the balance between respecting individual freedoms and liberties and recognising that the people we represent want the freedom to live and work safely in their communities, free from crime as much as possible.

We all know that crime has gone down, but the reality is that often people’s perception is that it has not. We politicians in the previous Government tackled that and tried to do so further. I am sure that the present Government will find that they face the same problem. CCTV has contributed to people’s sense of personal safety. In Doncaster, CCTV cameras at the taxi cab ranks in the town centre have undoubtedly helped to solve crimes. I know of one case where some young men waiting in a queue for a taxi were attacked by some other young men. Before the victims had rung the police to inform them of the attack, the police had already seen it on camera and, by tracking the offenders by camera through Doncaster, they picked up the culprits before the victims got to the police station. That is a good example, showing how effectively CCTV can work.

CCTV has also been a tool in respect of antisocial behaviour. I was pleased that we in the previous Government had started to talk more about how communities could have more say in where cameras would be positioned. Undoubtedly, mobile CCTV units have been effective when placed in hotspots for antisocial behaviour that may lead to crime.

Today we should be talking not about restrictions, but about how we can improve the quality of the technology that is available. Let me tell an anecdote. Before I was a Member of Parliament, my husband and I were involved in helping stop an armed bank robbery in a local bank on a Saturday. Unfortunately for us, as part of the solution in solving that crime, it was the early days of CCTV and the Saturday staff who came in from another branch forgot to turn on the camera inside the bank. We have moved on a long way since then. It is important to ensure that the equipment is of the highest quality.

The hon. Gentleman cited a number of important cases. I should like to mention that CCTV was used in pursuing Steven Wright, who was responsible for the murder of five women in Ipswich. As I have said, CCTV is also used in multiple cases of drunk and disorderly behaviour, antisocial behaviour, graffiti and vandalism. I appreciate the points that have been made by hon. Members about other organisations, including local authorities. Again, I agree with the hon. Gentleman. I do not advocate putting cameras into people’s refuse bins. But when tackling fraud, for example, CCTV cameras can be useful, whether they are used by the Department for Work and Pensions or the local authority, where people say one thing about their inability to work, although the reality, which is caught on camera, is that they are working at or are seen leaving local sites regularly each day. Unfortunately, we do not live in an ideal world with enough police officers and benefit fraud inspectors out there on every street—and I do not think that that would be a good use either of public money or their time.

It is vital that we equip the police with the technology that they need. I am proud, as a former Home Office Minister, to have been in charge of this area of work. Automatic number plate recognition is a fantastic tool. I recommend that all right hon. and hon. Members sit in a police car and see how it works, connecting up to the cameras. It is amazing. Undoubtedly, despite police complaints about bureaucracy, they welcome that technology wholeheartedly, as do the people that they work with in the community.

We have to ensure that CCTV can be used and that it is not stopped. It needs to be made more effective. I am pleased that under the previous Government an interim CCTV regulator was appointed to look at that. I hope that in all the rhetoric that is used we do not lose sight of the important job that CCTV does.

It has been suggested that we should reduce the amount of time that DNA is retained in the database. By 2012 we will have six years’ worth of statistics. I urge the Minister to be cautious about doing anything to destabilise that information, which can then be looked at, allowing us to make a more considered choice. This is a good example of devolution politics. Although there is a three-year limit in Scotland, with a caveat on its being extended, we need to be clear about what we are talking about. Despite the three-year headline, in Scotland they are still mindful that the period for which information is kept might want to be extended. I understand that the Scottish police would like a system that is more like the one in England. Why not have something more like English policy once in a while?

The DNA database has been transforming. It has been used, for example, in south Yorkshire to resolve a case involving rape some decades old. The culprit was found because his sister was picked up years later on a drink driving charge. Her DNA was taken and matched in the system, making a connection with her brother, who had been responsible for a huge number of rapes many years ago. Without doubt, the DNA database has contributed to solving thousands of crimes.

Between March 1998 and March 2009, DNA evidence helped solve more than 304,000 crimes. In 2008-09, there were 252 homicides and 580 rapes with a DNA scene-subject match. It is also important to recognise that DNA also picks up people who have not been convicted of a former crime. In 2008-09, 79 rape, murder or manslaughter charges in England and Wales were matched to the DNA database from DNA profiles that belonged to individuals who had been arrested but not convicted of any crime. The evidence shows—this is not easy to come to terms with—that there is a justification for retaining the DNA of people who have been arrested but not convicted because their risk of offending, as measured by the risk of re-arrest, is higher than that of the general population. This risk is higher than the general population for six years following the first arrest, at which point their DNA would be removed.

We should also not forget the potential deterrent effect of DNA. People are less likely to commit crime if they know that there is a good chance they could get caught. There are many ways of deterring people from committing crime. We can look at our neighbourhoods and create designs to make them safer, but we should embrace and deal with technology and not be luddite about it. If people know that DNA can play a significant role in securing convictions, they will be less likely to commit crime in the first place.

The head of the National Policing Improvement Agency, which hosts the DNA database, has said that it has been the

“most effective tool for the prevention and detection of crime since the development of fingerprint analysis more than a century ago.”

As the hon. Gentleman said, DNA does not only find those who are guilty; it can ensure that those who were thought to be guilty, or who were sent to jail as a result of a court conviction, can be proved innocent. I urge the Minister to be cautious in proceeding in this area in a way that could undermine some tools that are effective in fighting crime in the 21st century.

[Mr Christopher Chope (in the Chair)]

Order. Before calling the next speaker, can I say that it would be sensible to have the wind-ups starting at 10 minutes past 12 to allow more time for Back-Bench participation?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Christopher Chope (in the Chair)]

Order. There are four hon. Members still trying to catch my eye and 12 minutes to go before the winding-up speeches. I call Mr Keith Vaz.