Drug Driving (Assessment of Drug Misuse) Bill

Lord Hanson of Flint Excerpts

Friday 18th October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr David Hanson (Delyn) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Weaver Vale (Graham Evans) on bringing this measure before the House. It will have the Opposition’s support today, but I wish to raise a couple of issues about the Bill’s practicality and implementation, so that they can be considered in advance of any Committee stage.

As the hon. Gentleman said, the Bill would close a gap in existing law in respect of individuals being investigated for the commission of offences relating to driving while under the influence of drugs. I think I am the only Member here who had the good fortune to serve earlier this year on the Committee of the Crime and Courts Bill, whose drug-driving provisions we also supported. Today’s Bill would enable the police and courts to require drug-drivers who have tested positive for a specific class A drug to be required to attend up to two assessments with drug workers. I take the point from the hon. Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall) about why this was not part of our discussions on the Crime and Courts Bill, but let us put that to one side for the moment.

The principle behind the Bill is in line with the previous Government’s policy of referring people for drugs treatment in the criminal justice system, which we did through the National Treatment Agency for Substance Misuse, but the agency has now been scrapped and funding is no longer ring-fenced. We will need to test that. We also funded drug prevention and rehabilitation work directly through community safety partnerships. So the principle behind the Bill is sound—namely, that someone who is caught having a drug-driving experience should be referred by the police for treatment.

The Bill raises a number of questions, however. The Department for Transport’s assessment estimates that about 8,800 additional prosecutions a year could take place under the new drug-driving offence in the Crime and Courts Act 2013, but the hon. Member for Weaver Vale has said that we do not yet know which drugs are to be included in the new offence. Similarly, the Department has not yet published the regulations, following the public consultation on this matter. I would therefore be interested to learn how police forces will be expected to interpret the hon. Gentleman’s Bill, given that we do not yet know the details of the legislation that has already been passed.

If the Department eventually publishes the guidance and sets out the boundaries for drug testing, we will need to be told who will fund the drug assessments, who will employ the drug assessment workers, and what assurances the Minister can give us that the necessary resources will be made available to police forces to allow them to offer these services. A police force such as West Midlands, for example, might have a large number of health bodies in its area. How will the treatment programmes be co-ordinated in such an area? What negotiations will take place between the relevant bodies to ensure that that is done in a positive way? The Bill suggests that it will be for local areas to decide whether to carry out and fund assessments. This is therefore an enabling Bill, providing powers at national level, but it will not mean anything unless local police forces and health bodies in England and Wales have the resources, the capability and the willingness to implement them.

The Minister of State, Home Department, the hon. Member for Lewes (Norman Baker), will need to reflect on those matters, and I would like to know his estimate of the costs involved. I have heard a figure of £128 million a year. Is that a genuine figure? If so, how have the Minister and his team arrived at that costing? Who will be expected to pay for this, at a time when we have already seen a 20% reduction in policing budgets? Like it or not, there are also now greater freedoms in the health service in England, and the devolved Administration in Wales, to whom the Bill will presumably apply, could make their own judgment on drug treatment in Wales.

Paragraph 25 of the Bill’s explanatory notes states:

“There were 129,584 police officers in England and Wales on 31 March 2013. As this Bill provides for an enabling power, police officers have discretion on whether to use it. Therefore there should be a de minimis impact on police officer time.”

That is a very broad statement, because police officers would have that discretion. Have the Minister, the hon. Member for Weaver Vale or officials in the Department asked police and crime commissioners whether this would be a priority for them? Introducing an enabling power is fine, but the Bill’s own explanatory notes give the lie to any expectation that the service will be delivered in all parts of England and Wales. They state, as I have said, that police officers will have discretion on whether to use the power, and that there will be a de minimis impact on police officer time.

I would particularly welcome an indication from the Minister as to whether he has solved the problems of the Crime and Courts Act. I am still not clear—that might be my fault; I might just have missed something—whether any assessment has been made of the equipment required to ensure that drug testing can be properly undertaken. I am not sure whether an assessment has been made of the level of drug use and the types of drug that might be present in blood. I am not sure whether people taking drugs for medicinal purposes could be caught by the legislation. That subject was debated fully during the passage of the Crime and Courts Act, but the matter was not resolved.

I am not sure what the unit cost is for any equipment required for testing. I am not sure yet whether police officers have roadside testing equipment or whether they are bringing people from the roadside to medical or police facilities to undertake the drug testing. I am not sure what training police officers have undertaken in drug testing and related areas or which police forces have indicated they wish to sign up to drug testing. I am not sure whether the Minister intends to leave this discretionary, as it appears to be in the Bill, or whether at some point he intends to make it mandatory. I am also not sure what assessment he has made of prison sentences for drug-driving offences as well as of the proposals for mandatory testing that the hon. Member for Weaver Vale has brought forward today.

I want to give this Bill a fair wind. I really do want to make sure it has potential for reducing drug driving, for preventing deaths through drug-driving, and for making sure that people who have taken drugs while driving can have treatment for their drug addiction or use. I have a lot of admiration for the hon. Gentleman, so I say this with the greatest respect: this whole package appears still not thought through. Drug testing for drug-driving has not yet been thought through in detail, although there is the legislative capacity for it, but what we have before us today is a Government-supported Bill allowing treatment for people who have been caught drug-driving through the use of testing equipment.

While I give this Bill a fair wind, I think the hon. Gentleman needs to go back one whole stage and say, “Is the technology being used? Is it in place? Will it be used? How is it being used? What are the regulations? What are the drugs? Where will this be undertaken? Which police forces will do it?” Then we can worry, on top of that, about what happens in terms of drug treatment orders for people who are caught and require drug treatment, which I fully support. This is full of holes, therefore.

[Mr Nigel Evans (Ribble Valley) (Ind)]

Assuming the equipment is there—and I cannot believe any area does not have equipment that it is using for drug testing—does the right hon. Gentleman believe this may be an ideal situation for the introduction of a pilot to ensure the testing equipment and the services are rigorous enough to be able to take these provisions forward once they are enacted?

[Mr Hanson]

I am grateful for that positive suggestion. Drug-testing provisions were agreed in the Crime and Courts Bill Act 2013. Today’s Bill is about treatment when people are caught through drug testing, yet I know—I would be grateful if the Minister would confirm this—that as of now the drugs covered by the offence in that Act are not yet specified, the limits for the drugs in the body are not yet specified, the consultation by the Department for Transport has not yet been published and, dare I say it, the equipment has not yet, in my view, been sufficiently tested to ensure convictions are possible even if the levels and the drugs were set.

We are putting in place a vehicle, but I do not think we have yet put fuel in the tank, and my plea to the hon. Member for Weaver Vale is to think with the Minister and with the Department about how this will work in practice, because at the moment, although it is a good idea, there are still a number of policy areas that need to be developed and determined.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

I would defer to the Minister if he wished to intervene at this stage, Mr Deputy Speaker—I thought he was going to do so—because my speech was going to be about seeking answers to the questions raised by the right hon. Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson), as we do need answers to those questions before we can take this Bill any further. I was a road safety Minister and I have always been very much against the scourge of drug-driving. Indeed, I have introduced—in successive years, I believe—private Members’ Bills seeking to outlaw drug-driving.

[Mr Hanson]

I hope the questions I posed are valid, but I would not wish them to defer the passing of the Bill this afternoon.

[Mr Chope]

I hear what the right hon. Gentleman says, but my frustration about this is that when I introduced a private Member’s Bill to deal with drug-driving, I was told on successive occasions that we could not do anything about it because we did not have the right equipment to enable us to identify the drugs that were in the people who would be stopped by the police. A rearguard action was fought by the Home Office because, I suspect, it was concerned about the costs of all the prosecutions that would result from changing the law to put on to the statute book what is now contained in section 5A of the Road Traffic Act 1988, as introduced by the Crime and Courts Act 2013.

That Act set out a new provision, which had been promoted the previous year by the Prime Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon Central (Gavin Barwell) and others, who were very concerned about the scourge of deaths on our roads caused by drug-driving. What had caused me to introduce my private Member’s Bills in the first place was a horrific accident on the A31 in which a lorry driver crossed the central reservation and killed a young student. He had gone to sleep, after being high on amphetamines.

I was very disappointed to see from the explanatory notes to the Bill that we have not yet got the new offence in section 5A of the Road Traffic Act 1988 into force. I looked then at the consultation document on the regulations, and as the right hon. Member for Delyn said, that consultation period expired about a month ago, so we have not had a Government response. When we get that response, we will know which drugs will be the subject of the new regime of drug-driving. I understand that they will include cannabis—certainly that was one of the drugs on which the Government consulted. The right hon. Gentleman is shaking his head, but that is included as an option in the consultation document.

If cannabis is not included it will be a disaster, because cannabis was one of the main issues that was raised in my earlier private Member’s Bills, and we know—these are figures from Brake, the road safety charity—that in the United Kingdom 18% of people killed in road crashes have traces of illegal drugs in their blood, and the main substance found is cannabis. Yet the Bill before us would make no provision at all in relation to cannabis, because it is confined to class A drugs. As the right hon. Gentleman makes clear, the Bill does not introduce the offence that everyone has been crying out to have introduced for years. I want to put more pressure on the Government to tell us exactly when they expect that provision to be on the statute book. Section 5A of the Road Traffic Act 1988 needs to be on the statute book sooner rather than later.

The consultation on the regulations has finished, but the Government have not come forward with a quick response. When we get that response, draft regulations will be drawn up, and the Government’s own documentation suggests that when they have been drawn up, it will be necessary to get type approval of the testing equipment. At the moment, despite years and years on this—I know, because when I introduced my private Member’s Bill I got evidence from companies in this country that produce that drug assessment equipment and are marketing it in northern Europe and Australasia, where it is being used, and other countries—a game is being played whereby the Home Office is blocking progress, on the basis that it does not have the right equipment, but it is delaying the implementation of the type approval.

I will give way to the Minister if he wishes to intervene; I have no evidence at all as to when exactly the new offence will be on the statute book. Unless and until it gets on the statute book and is implemented, rather than just being a law, it will not make any difference. As my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) said, we know that some 8,800 people will potentially be prosecuted as a result of that law as soon as it comes into effect. However, there is no timetable for bringing it into effect, because of the prolonged consultation process.

We are being asked today to approve another high-profile Bill that can be used as an example of how serious the Government are about dealing with the issue. However, it would be wrong for the House to give people who are watching this debate the impression that we have sorted out the problem. Unless and until the Government implement section 5A of the 1988 Act, we will not have an effective law against drug-driving, which is killing hundreds of people on our roads each year.

If section 5A is implemented, it will deter a lot of people from getting behind the wheel when they have taken drugs, but the Bill tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Weaver Vale would come into action only when the police made arrests at the roadside. Even then, as it deals only with class A drugs, it would not apply to cannabis users. Their numbers and the impact of cannabis on their ability to drive make them arguably the biggest menace on the roads.

Even leaving that aside, a police force would be able to use its discretion about whether to require a driver to present himself for an assessment, which could take place over two days. The explanatory notes state that the estimated cost of each of those assessments runs to about £200.

[Mr Chope]

In that case, my point is even stronger. We would not be able to get much out of a £100 assessment of somebody who had been stopped at the roadside for suspected driving while impaired by drugs. If the police used their discretion to refer the matter to such an assessment, what would happen afterwards? That would be the stage at which something needed to happen. If the assessment said, “This is somebody who has a drug problem, and they need to go and see a therapist and go for more expensive treatment to wean them off”, that would create a fresh lot of costs. The financial memorandum suggests that they are not regarded as costs directly associated with the measures in the Bill.

[Mr Hanson]

None of these points is a reason to deny the Bill a Second Reading. We can debate them in Committee, despite the comments that I made, and I hope the hon. Gentleman will allow us the opportunity to do that.

[Mr Chope]

I hear what the right hon. Gentleman says. We have not yet heard from the Minister, but if the Bill goes to Committee, he will be able to table amendments. My point is that for a long time, there has been too much gesture politics on the subject. Those of us who are genuinely concerned about road safety would like to see section 5A of the 1988 Act, which is already part of the statute law of the country, brought into effect. That means deciding which drugs will be included in that Act and authorising the equipment that will enable analysis to be carried out.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Hanson]

indicated assent.

[Mr Chope]

The right hon. Gentleman is nodding sagely, but there is something to be said for putting pressure on the Government—more pressure than he has so far—to respond to these points. My understanding is that there has always been a strong conflict between the desires of the Department for Transport, which I had the privilege of serving in as a Minister, and the Home Office, which is resisting taking such measures. If I am wrong about that, and the Minister can give me a target date for full implementation of section 5A, I will happily give way to him—if he is listening.

The fact that he does not wish to intervene to try to ensure reasonable cross-party consensus shows that the Government are again playing games with the House. They talk the talk; they say, “We want to outlaw drug-driving” and they announced, with a fanfare, in the Queen’s Speech before last that they would legislate on the issue. The Prime Minister congratulated my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon Central and met some of his constituents who had experienced tragedy as a result of death by drug-driving. Today, the Minister has the opportunity to tell us exactly when section 5A will come into effect—legislation that was forecast and supported in 2010 in the North report—but he is choosing not to; I do not know why. Perhaps it is because, as a Home Office Minister who has been a Transport Minister, he has, in a sense, a split personality on the issue. His previous responsibility was to try to push such measures through, but now that he is wearing his new hat as a Home Office Minister, the idea is to give people the impression that something is being done on the issue when we know that not very much is being done.

The Bill is a complete side-show compared with the main issue. If the legislation is brought into effect and people are prosecuted under it, it will not address the largest proportion of offenders: those caught with cannabis in their system. The measures in the Bill should have been included in one of the criminal justice Bills that the Home Office brings forward with such regularity.

When my hon. Friend the Member for Weaver Vale (Graham Evans), whom I have the privilege of sitting behind, opened this Second Reading debate—I congratulate him on choosing this Bill—he was not able to say why the Bill was not brought forward at the same time as other legislation.