Workplace Drug Testing

Ed Davey Excerpts

Monday 13th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills (Mr Edward Davey)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock (Jackie Doyle-Price) for raising the matter and for the way she has done so. I hope that I will be able to give her some satisfaction on the points she wants the Government to address. Before doing so, it is important that I state for the record the legislative background to drug testing in the workplace.

Employers have a general duty under the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 to ensure, as far as is reasonably practicable, the health, safety and welfare at work of their employees. They also have a duty under the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 to assess risks to the health and safety of their employees. If they knowingly allow an employee under the influence of drugs to continue working and his or her behaviour places themselves or others at risk, the employers could be prosecuted. Their employees are also required to take reasonable care of themselves and others who could be affected by what they do at work.

The Transport and Works Act 1992 made it a criminal offence for certain workers to be unfit through drugs and/or drink while working on railways, tramways and other guided transport systems. The operators of those transport systems would also be guilty of an offence unless they had shown all due diligence in trying to prevent such an offence from being committed. The Road Traffic Act 1988 states that any person who, when driving or attempting to drive a motor vehicle on a road or other public place, is unfit to drive through drink or drugs shall be guilty of an offence. The principal legislation for controlling the misuse of drugs is, of course, the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971. Nearly all drugs with misuse and/or dependence liability are covered by it.

Therefore, there is a legislative framework that makes it clear that employers have a duty to ensure that they look after the health and safety of their workers. There are several codes of practice to assist employers in this, most notably a free booklet published by the Health and Safety Executive, “Drug Misuse at Work”, which mentions a number of related matters, including drug screening, which is what concerns my hon. Friend.

My hon. Friend will know that I cannot comment on the individual case, but the main thrust of her speech related to how drug testing is carried out. My Department is responsible for the sole Government-recognised UK national accreditation body, the United Kingdom Accreditation Service. UKAS operates accreditation as a public authority activity, as required by European legislation. It has a strong international reputation for the quality and rigour of its accreditation assessments and is itself regularly assessed by its peers.

UKAS accredits laboratories when required to do so by legislation or when voluntarily requested to do so by a laboratory. Accreditation is an assessment and attestation that a laboratory is competent to undertake specified conformity assessments. International standards exist to cover the collection of samples, and UKAS is happy to accredit against those standards. My Department works closely with UKAS and has full confidence in its work.

My hon. Friend raised the specific case of her constituent, as well as making a wider point. I am happy to ask UKAS to work alongside the Health and Safety Executive to improve the HSE’s guidance on drug misuse at work and to expand the guidance coverage to include the complete drugs testing life cycle from the collection of a sample to its testing. I think that that was the point that she was seeking to make, particularly when she talked about the integrity of the collection process and the chain of custody. I hope that my officials will talk to UKAS and the HSE to ensure that the guidance can be improved in the way she mentioned. I agree that this is not an area in which new regulation is needed. Having listened to the case of my hon. Friend’s constituent, I believe that we can deal with the concerns, which she rightly raised, through Government guidance. I hope that she will be satisfied with this response, but if, on reflection, she has any further questions, I would be very happy to deal with them personally if she writes to me.

Question put and agreed to.