Drug Driving (Assessment of Drug Misuse) Bill

Nigel Evans 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.