Road Traffic Act 1988 (Alcohol Limits) (Amendment) Bill [HL]

Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe Excerpts

Friday 29th January 2016 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe]

That the Bill be read a second time.

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful for the privilege, the opportunity, and not least the luck in the ballot to get the chance to bring forward this Private Member’s Bill. I am also grateful to all those who have kindly assisted me, including our clerks and the many outside organisations and campaigners who support this aim, and of course to the noble Lords who are going to speak today. I offer apologies from my noble friend Lord Rea, who was down to speak but has had to scratch.

This is a simple Bill whose objective is to better protect innocent citizens from accidental death, injury and harm from vehicle drivers who consume alcohol and then drive impaired. It also seeks to protect the drivers themselves. Specifically, it amends the Road Traffic Act 1988 to lower the maximum alcohol limits permissible when driving in the UK from the present blood alcohol concentration of 80 milligrams of alcohol per 100 millilitres of blood down to 50 milligrams of alcohol per 100 millilitres of blood. There would be corresponding changes to breath and urine limits, but in this debate I will refer solely to the limit change using the acronym BAC.

The Act would apply to the whole of the UK, although, as most noble Lords know, Scotland has already enacted this. What they may not know is that the Welsh Assembly has proposed the adoption of a BAC limit of 50 for the Principality, and across the Irish Sea the North Ireland road traffic amendment order not only proposes a lower 50 BAC limit, but an even lower limit of 20 BAC for novice and some commercial drivers.

This amending Bill is precisely in accord with what was piloted from 2014 through the Scottish Parliament. As a consequence, I regret that Clause 2 contains a provision to reduce the limit below which a person could elect to have a specimen of breath replaced with a specimen of blood or urine. This statutory option was removed from the Road Traffic Act 1988 by Part 1 of Schedule 11 to the Deregulation Act 2015 which came into force in April 2015. 1 will therefore need to withdraw Clause 2 later, and I hope that this will make life easier for the Minister.

The European Union does not have a directive on a drink-drive limit, but as long ago as 1988 it first proposed harmonisation throughout Europe at a 50 BAC limit, which it recommended should be adopted. Over the years it has been adopted by all European Union countries except two: Malta and the UK. So I ask: who offers better protection to their citizens, and are the interests in favour of sticking with the present limit being better protected than innocent lives and limbs? To get the answers we need to look at a bit of history and then come up to current developments. These have been recently summarised by Professor Richard Allsop in his 2015 paper for the RAC Foundation entitled Saving Lives by Lowering the Legal Drink-Drive Limit.

It is now well recognised that drinking and driving impairs performance and is a leading cause of road traffic accidents. But, as some noble Lords may recall, that was not always the case. Even in the mid-1960s there was still debate as to whether moderate drinking increased or decreased the risk of collision. But others had recognised the danger much earlier. As long ago as 1954, the World Health Organisation reported that,

“the inference cannot be avoided that at a blood alcohol concentration of 50 milligrams per 100 millilitres of blood, a statistical significant impairment of performance was observed”,

in more than half the cases it examined in the experiments it had undertaken. As a result, the WHO recommended a BAC limit many years ago.

The UK set up its own study in 1953 using what it called laboratory “tasking”, resembling driving vehicles on the road, which reported in 1959. It did not agree with the WHO’s recommendation but, while it acknowledged that substantial impairment of performance still occurred at levels below 80 BAC, it was suggested that those below that limit should not be criminalised. That was the reason given for not embracing the lower limit. In 1962-63 there was a large-scale study at Grand Rapids in the USA. This study quantified the relationship between BAC level and the risk of collision, and provided convincing evidence of greatly increased risk dependent on a driver’s alcohol level.

So why was the 80 BAC limit chosen? The choice of 80 BAC made by Barbara Castle, the then Minister of Transport, should be understood in the context of the evidence available at the time, and in 1967 it was probably influenced by several other salient factors too. The Grand Rapids evidence indicated that the average risk of involvement in a collision was roughly doubled at 80 milligrams. Further, 80 milligrams was within the range of levels then being considered or implemented by other countries. It was plausible that public and parliamentary acceptance could be gained, partly on the basis of advice that most people could have three small drinks without exceeding the 80 limit. However, the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents has long contended that 80 was not decided solely on the basis of empirical accident risk assessments, but was influenced upwards by the need to make acceptable to the public the introduction for the first time ever of legislation limiting the amount of alcohol that drivers could consume.

Eighty milligrams was the level at which the Grand Rapids evidence in the form in which it was published enabled the increased risk to be established with the conventional statistical 95% level of confidence against a background of genuine difference of opinion as to whether the risk was increased or decreased. The last of these points is more statistically technical than the others, but it carried weight among those preparing advice for Ministers, as no doubt former Transport Minister the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, may pray in aid when he comes to make his points. But I will argue that that precise basis is relevant to the case for lowering the limit.

What has happened since 1967, as well as the widespread harmonisation of a 50 BAC limit in so many other countries, including Scotland? Importantly, there have been further large-scale studies, including those conducted in the late 1990s at Fort Lauderdale and Long Beach in the USA. They were similar to the Grand Rapids study, but were helped by advances in statistical techniques which had been developed since the 1960s. Further studies were done in nine states in the USA between 2006 and 2008, and all were read across to the UK in a similar way to the original Grand Rapids evidence. They indicated that the increase in the risk of a driver’s involvement in a collision if they have a BAC of 80 milligrams to be nearly three times as much for collisions leading to injury and about six times for collisions leading to death as compared to the mere doubling which had informed the setting of the limit at 80 BAC in 1967. Even at the lower BAC level of 50, which this Bill proposes, the increases in risk are respectively about 1.5 and 2.5 times more—that is, double the Grand Rapids figures back in 1967.

There is now a broad consensus that risk of involvement in a collision is increased rather than decreased by moderate drinking. Acceptance of this changes the appropriate statistical process for assessing the level of confidence in analysing the Grand Rapids and similar data from a two-tailed to a one-tailed test. The meaning of this for the Grand Rapids data in the form in which it was published is that increased risk is established with a statistical 95% level of competence from 60 BAC upwards instead of the then 80 upwards as applied. There is a stark difference, and there was also a stark difference of opinion on this in 1967.

The foregoing may seem a bit dry, but the science proves that the 1967 BAC of 80 is now not only outdated but can mislead to risk life and limb. At the end of the day, of course it is the motorist’s right to decide whether or not to drive after drinking, but they have a right to know the facts about the risks and impairment that drinking has on their driving. It is the Government’s duty and responsibility to provide those facts, especially when quite innocent citizens are involved or affected through drink-driving motoring accidents. Even though I am moving this, I ask the Minister, first, do the Government accept that the 1967 BAC of 80 carries far more risk than was originally believed? If so, what do they intend to do about correcting that? If, however, they maintain that 80 is still appropriate, I would like them to revalidate the figure and produce the science from a more scientific perspective than we have done previously.

Of course, it can be argued that limits do not really matter, and it is the deterrent of being caught and punished with heavy penalties that really counts. To a degree, that is, no doubt, true. In the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, the UK achieved major reductions in road deaths, injuries and accidents with 80 BAC. This was because the Government more vigorously enforced the limit than did many other countries, even though some had lower limits than we had.

This House produced two EU Select Committee reports on the Commission’s call for a 50 BAC limit in 1998 and 2002. Both supported the Commission’s recommendations. In response to the first, the Government, using their words, “was minded” to move to 50. The transport department supported it also. It was delayed, however, on the basis that it intended to deal with the matter in the context of a possible EU directive. That never came but, instead, in January 2001, the Commission issued a non-binding recommendation that member states should set a 50 BAC limit. It was scrutinised here and, again, adoption of the 50 BAC limit was recommended. The department supported the reduction but, to many people’s surprise, including my own as I chaired the sub-committee, the Government did an about turn at the 11th hour. Instead, they said that they wanted to review the issue in their proposed longer term motoring strategy that they were about to undertake.

During the ensuing decade, deaths and injuries continued to remain high but were reducing slowly, although the 2007-08 recession saw the biggest fall for quite some time. Opinion polls, however, particularly those conducted by the motoring associations, began to reveal growing public concern about drink-driving and support for the lower limit. This culminated in December 2009 in an independent review of drink and drug law by Sir Peter North QC. Most judged his report in 2010 as an excellent piece of work. On drink-driving, North was convinced by the evidence that the risk of involvement in a collision is increased by even moderate drinking. In particular, the review found that lowering the limit from 80 milligrams to 50 milligrams could save over 100 lives a year, based on evidence from NICE, as well as preventing many more serious accidents.

As a consequence, he recommended that the 80 BAC should be reduced to 50 for five years, after which there should be a further review with the aim of establishing a 20 BAC. The newly elected House of Commons Transport Select Committee in 2010 was not so convinced. It believed that the North report sent mixed messages. It in turn sent few messages or recommendations from its report. It did not dispute that drivers were impaired further at 50 BAC and saw an effectively zero limit, although too great a step at that time to take, as probably the best option in the longer term. Instead, its key recommendation was that,

“any reduction in the legal drink drive limit should only occur after an extensive Government education campaign, run in conjunction with the pub, restaurant and hospitality industries, about drink strengths and their effect on the body”.

The committee’s report evidence shows that heavyweight lobbying was on it from the drinks industry. In that decade, 5,330 people were killed and 170,000 casualties were also witnessed in the UK.

Since the North review in 2010, there has been a levelling off in the previous declining figures for drink-related road deaths and casualties. Further models, including that proposed by the RAC Foundation’s report authored by Professor Richard Allsop, also associate significant, if not as dramatic, reductions in death and injury which a drop to 50 BAC would produce. Allsop’s “cautious” estimate is that there would be 25 fewer deaths and 95 fewer serious injuries per year.

Even more recent news and perhaps the most compelling for change comes from Scotland where a 50 BAC limit is now in force. The BAC change has been accompanied by a wide-ranging publicity campaign which has stimulated a nationwide debate on drink-driving on a scale not witnessed previously. An RAC survey shows 79% of Scottish motorists believe that moving the limit to 50 is a positive move while a Scottish Government survey found that 82% of people agreed that it is unacceptable to drink any alcohol before driving, and only 12% of people disagreed with that, which was quite a surprise and a very big change in public attitudes.

I anticipate the Minister will express interest and welcome the Scottish developments. But I suspect that the Government will then want more time and data to assess what is happening north of the border—perhaps even two or three years before they get the figures that they would want to analyse. Meanwhile, the Government state that drink-driving “remains a priority”. But they have made only very small changes to the law over the past five years, nor have they indicated anything really radical ahead. In fact, their policy has probably stalled since 2010, which is why there has been a plateauing in the number of deaths and injuries. In addition, since 2010, police numbers have been cut by 23%, which has had an effect right across the whole of motoring, including drink-driving. I was not surprised, therefore, that 10 of the Government’s police and crime commissioners were in touch with me yesterday pledging support for this Bill. Furthermore, they were pointing out that from a financial perspective, the Local Government Association’s estimate that lowering the current drink-drive limit to 50 BAC would save almost £300 million annually by reducing the number of call-outs to accidents and the associated public sector costs of police, ambulances and hospital admissions. It argued that this funding could be ploughed back into making communities safer. It went on to say that it has overwhelming public support for this legal change. Research released only this morning from the RAC’s Brake, the road safety charity, and the Alcohol Health Alliance of an opinion poll of 5,000 respondents shows that 77% of people in the country favour a 50 BAC limit bringing England and Wales in line with Scotland and virtually the rest of the EU, apart from Malta.

Therefore, the Government have no problem in carrying the country with them on this Bill, apart perhaps the drinks industry. The public know increasingly on this topic what is right and what will help best to protect them. The cost of the change to this highly questionable and now unsafe law made back in 1967 will be minimal. It will be far outweighed by other cost savings, but even more importantly by the saving of more life and limbs. If, however, the Government delay—and it would be a delay because I believe, deep down, that they must know that this will have to come, as we cannot have differing levels between the UK countries, with trains and cars crossing borders every day as we have at the moment—I forecast that they can expect to see at least 600 people killed and around 25,000 casualties over the next three years as a result of maintaining the present level. The Minister and his colleagues can avoid or minimise these figures. They simply have to join the public view and do what is right now. I beg to move.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe]

My Lords, I am grateful to all who have spoken in this quite short debate. I thought that the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, would probably want to maintain the status quo for the time being but if he is contemplating tabling an amendment to go for random breath testing, which would help, I would be very pleased indeed to speak to him about it and would consider accepting an amendment from him in Committee. It will not be just one silver bullet that solves all the problems; neither would the Bill. There have to be a range of factors brought to bear. My complaint at the moment, as the House will have heard, is that the Government are stalling. Yes, the Minister has referred to a number of changes but, quite frankly, they are very small indeed.

The heart of this is that the Government have a policy of saying, “Don’t drink and drive” but in practice they do not try to put forward that policy. In truth, if there was such a policy, the limit would be 20 mg. The noble Earl, Lord Attlee, said that I had got the North report wrong. I have not; I have read the North report well and the Select Committee report. I have also read the Government’s response to the North report and the Select Committee. True, there has been no precise impact assessment made of how the industry would be affected but the industry made vehement and significant contributions to the work of the committee in 2010.

In particular, when the Government responded in Cm 8050, they said in paragraph 2.26 in regard to whether it would affect people that:

“The majority would not need to lower consumption to stay legal with a lower limit, but their response to the present limit suggests that they will not want to take any chance with the risk of offending. These responsible people have the choice to drink even less—and especially to drink less when they are out. If that happened, it would have a substantial impact on the businesses they patronise”.

That was the department’s view and I believe that it is what the Government support. That is why when they talk about a policy of “Don’t drink and drive”, they do not actually follow it through—because there is pressure from other quarters to continue to allow people to drink at low levels. What I have argued today is that those lower levels are dangerous. I have argued not solely about deaths but about those many thousands of people who are injured and still alive. There are such people around in wheelchairs, and so on.

Repeat offenders—those who go well over the limit—are an extraordinarily difficult group to deal with. I would not for a moment deny that and would be very happy to meet with the Minister and talk about that right across the board. But it is odd that in the evidence which has come out these people, when they are tackled, say that the one thing that would influence them would be to be told that there was no drink and driving whatever. Then they would not drink. That has never been tested and there is no science on it but that is the idea which they put forward. If we went to a 20 mg level in due course, maybe that would be the point at which it would be tested.

Scotland has already had a strong outcry from the drinks industry about the way that the changes affect it. To pick up the point of the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, it is making a cultural change in Scotland. As she rightly argued, we have seen many other cultural changes but in this area we have been slow. It is now time to move on.

I thank my noble friend Lady Hayter so much for her support. I pay tribute to the work that she has done over many years. Many of your Lordships may not know that she was the original founder of Alcohol Concern, which deals not just with this issue but with a wide range of alcohol concerns. It has done tremendous work in campaigning over many years.

We need other changes, too. If restaurants and pubs have a problem, what I cannot understand is why the root of what takes their business away is not tackled: the cheap booze sold to the public in supermarkets. If we were to go to a minimum unit price then the pubs, restaurants and so on would be on an equal competitive basis and would find more people going to them than has been the case. They need not drink, as we would hope to be running a campaign saying that if you go to a restaurant and have a drink, you should have a non-drinking driver with a car among you. That is a very good campaign indeed and I would be happy to support efforts along those lines. A package of measures is needed. A minimum unit price, even though it is not being pushed here, is a significant part of it and would answer some of the criticisms that have been levelled.

There are a whole range of issues here that need to come together. I will be coming back in Committee. The British Transport Police has suggested that the present limit needs to be equalised with that in Scotland, where there is a disparity. I think that that arises under different legislation and I am not quite sure how it needs addressing. I will speak to the Minister about it and see whether it is appropriate to table an amendment to the Bill.

In the mean time, I thank all noble Lords for their contributions, in particular my noble friend Lord Rosser on the Front Bench. I know that he had a little difficulty in determining from our friends in the party at the other end just what line to take on the Bill. He pointed to some very interesting and useful statistics and facts. I rather suspected from the way he was speaking that he has been convinced that while he may not have had a strong lead on policy from the other end, he will now go back and give them a very strong lead on what the Labour Party’s policy should be. It remains for me just to thank everyone who has contributed. We will be coming back in Committee, as I have at least one amendment that I will be moving. I conclude by asking the House to give the Bill a Second Reading.

Bill read a second time and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.