Drugs (Roadside Testing) Bill
Tracey Crouch Excerpts(13 years ago)
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Mr Nuttall
My hon. Friend raises an interesting issue. I appreciate that he says such drivers are not doing anything wrong, and are just trying to do their best in their job, but medical evidence may well show that, although they think they are doing the best they can, by ingesting so many intoxicants, which is what they are doing according to the definition, they are putting themselves in a state of well-being whereby they are prepared to take chances that they might not take if they were completely sober.
It would be for a court to weigh up the evidence of whether a person was driving under the influence of drugs, which, under an earlier section of the 1988 Act, is the offence in question, and one can easily see how a bench of magistrates or a jury might decide that a lorry driver who had drunk several cans of highly concentrated caffeine-based drinks had subjected their body to such external influences as to result in their having driven under the influence of drugs.
The fact that the definition in the Road Traffic Act is so widely drawn is one of the reasons it is necessary to bring this Bill before the House. I suspect that it is also one of the reasons there has been such a delay in having a device approved by the Secretary of State for the carrying out of a preliminary drug test within the scope of section 6C. Perhaps when that that legislation, and the amendment to it, was drafted, section 6C should have used the word “devices” instead of “device”, because that might have made it easier for scientists and developers to devise and manufacture one device to deal with one set of drugs and another to deal with another set of drugs. The use of the word “device” has meant that the manufacturers, the scientists and the Home Office Scientific Development Branch have had to work towards coming up with a catch-all machine that is capable of detecting any number of substances. The Act is drawn so widely that a large number of substances could be termed a drug.
Apart from all the obvious drugs, which I will, for ease of reference, call illicit drugs, it is arguable that, as we have heard in my hon. Friends’ interventions, the definition will cover other substances—not only substances that we take in every day, such as coffee and water, but prescribed medical drugs. Intoxication is one of a number of conditions that come under the umbrella term “substance-related disorders”. Of course, the drugs most likely to cause impairment are those whose use is prohibited by law. I want briefly to explain the different ways in which such drugs can affect people. Different drugs affect different people in different ways, and the effects can last for several days, sometimes without people even realising it.
Cannabis slows the actions, affects concentration and often has a sedative-like effect resulting in fatigue and affected co-ordination. I would not be surprised if somebody suggested that cannabis was rather like one of my speeches on a Friday. The parliamentary correspondent from the BBC might put that in one of his reports.
Tracey Crouch (Chatham and Aylesford) (Con)
Cannabis is often the drug of choice for younger members of society. Is my hon. Friend aware that RAC surveys of young drivers show that they are more likely to have been driven by somebody who has used illegal drugs than by somebody who has used alcohol?
Mr Nuttall
My hon. Friend makes a good point. Although the statistics show that thousands more people have been convicted of driving under the influence of alcohol than of drugs, whenever a survey is carried out we find that people, especially if they have been to a club, will admit that they are more likely to have been driven in a vehicle by somebody who has had drugs than by somebody who has had alcohol.
Mr Nuttall
My hon. Friend makes a very good point, and I shall touch later on the fact that the lack of roadside testing, and the knowledge of that fact among young people, may well lead to widespread use of illegal drugs.
I mentioned that 76% of respondents to a survey who had attended dance clubs had taken illegal drugs in the previous month. Drug-driving was much more prevalent among those attending nightclubs than among the general population. The study showed that 85% of those who had attended a nightclub had driven after taking illegal drugs on at least one occasion. Some 37% per cent reported that they drove after taking illegal drugs on at least a weekly basis, most of whom—89%—were cannabis users. However, whereas drug-driving appeared to be widespread among the sample of those interviewed who attended clubs, it was not identified as being widespread among the general population.
In a separate survey in 2001, the Transport Research Laboratory measured the incidence of drugs among fatal road accident casualties. An earlier study published in 1989 had found that the incidence of medicinal drugs, at 5.5%, and illegal drugs, at just 3%, was relatively low in comparison to alcohol, which was at 35%. However, the 2001 study, based on results collected between 1996 and 2000, found that the incidence of medicinal and illegal drugs in the blood samples of road traffic fatalities was three times higher than in the previous study, at 24%, while the incidence of alcohol had fallen slightly to 31%.
It is a matter of conjecture whether those changes arose as a result of the legislative framework that existed—my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch made the point that it is well known that there is no device for roadside drug testing—or whether they were merely a result of social changes. I venture to submit that it was probably a combination of both those factors.
The findings of further research, which was sponsored by the Economic and Social Research Council and led by Dr Philip Terry, were set out in January 2004 in a paper entitled, “Indirect harm from regular cannabis use”. It was found that 52% of those surveyed had driven while under the influence of cannabis and of those, 70% believed that that had impaired their driving.
In December 2005, no less a publication than the British Medical Journal published an extract of a paper by—I apologise in advance for my pronunciation—Bernard Laumon, Blandine Gadegbeku, Jean-Louis Martin, and Marie-Berthe Biecheler on cannabis intoxication and fatal road crashes in France. The research was based on a sample of 10,748 drivers, with known drug and alcohol concentrations who were involved in fatal crashes in France. The paper found that of the drivers studied, 7% tested positive for drugs and 21.4% for alcohol, including 2.9% for both drugs and alcohol. Men were more often involved in crashes than women, and were also more often positive for both cannabis and alcohol, as were the youngest drivers and users of mopeds and motorcycles. Positive detection was more commonly associated with crashes that happened during the hours of darkness.
In the light of that growing body of academic evidence, it is perhaps no surprise that Parliament legislated against driving while under the influence of drugs. Under section 3A of the Road Traffic Act 1988, as amended by the Road Traffic Act 1991, the offence of causing death by careless driving while under the influence of drink or drugs requires the prosecution to show that the driving caused the death of another person and fell below the standard expected of a reasonable, prudent and competent driver in the circumstances; and that the driver was unfit through drink or drugs, or that the level of alcohol was over the prescribed limit, or that there was a failure to provide a specimen. Such a charge can be heard only in Crown court. The maximum penalty is an unlimited fine and/or 14 years imprisonment; an obligatory disqualification for at least two years, or a disqualification for three years if there is a relevant previous conviction; and the obligatory endorsement of the driver’s licence with between three and 11 penalty points. The maximum penalty was originally five years imprisonment and/or an unlimited fine, but that was doubled to 10 years imprisonment from August 1993 as a result of the Criminal Justice Act 1993, and it was increased again to 14 years in February 2004 under the Criminal Justice Act 2003.
Under section 4 of the 1988 Act, it is also an offence to drive or to be in charge of a vehicle, as we have heard, while unfit to drive through drink or drugs. The maximum penalty for driving or attempting to drive while unfit is six months in prison, a £5,000 fine and disqualification. The maximum penalty for being in charge while unfit is three months in prison, a £2,500 fine and a disqualification, or 10 points on a licence.
In January 2007, the Sentencing Advisory Panel announced a consultation on advice about “causing death by driving” offences. In January 2008, the panel published its new advice to the Sentencing Advisory Council on those offences. In total, the panel made 18 recommendations. Among them, the panel recommended that when there is sufficient evidence of driving impairment, the consumption of alcohol or drugs prior to driving will make an offence more serious. It said that consuming alcohol or drugs unwittingly before driving can be regarded as a mitigating factor, but that consideration should be given to the circumstances in which the offender decided to drive or continued to drive while their driving ability was impaired.
In November 2008, the Department for Transport published a consultation document on road safety compliance and asked for views of the public on the proposed creation of a new offence for driving with drugs in one’s system. The consultation paper explained:
“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 users of these drugs who drive as a danger to road safety.”
Tracey Crouch
I have always thought that the insurance industry has a role to play. Currently, when somebody’s driving is impaired by drugs or alcohol and they are involved in an accident, if they have comprehensive cover, they can get their car repaired, regardless of the offence that they committed of why they committed it. There is a great deal of benefit in the argument that someone driving under the influence of alcohol should have their third-party liabilities covered, but that damage to their car or their injuries should not be covered, because that damage occurred as a consequence of their taking drugs or alcohol before driving.
Alcohol (Minimum Pricing)
Tracey Crouch Excerpts(13 years, 5 months ago)
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Tracey Crouch (Chatham and Aylesford) (Con)
I am delighted to speak under your chairmanship, Mr Sheridan. I congratulate the hon. Member for Blaenau Gwent (Nick Smith) on securing this important debate. As vice-chair of the all-party group on alcohol misuse, I believe that this is an incredibly important issue for all hon. Members, and I welcome the Government’s commitment to tackling the serious issue of alcohol abuse. The proposal to introduce a minimum price for alcohol is undoubtedly a small step in the right direction, although I say that having listened to the hon. Member for Leeds North West (Greg Mulholland), who says the opposite.
I want to say clearly and early in my contribution that minimum pricing is just one aspect of what must be done to deal with increasing dependency on alcohol. I look forward to future statements by the Government on their alcohol strategy. In my view, treatment and rehabilitation services in this country are poor, availability is limited and service is disjointed across agencies. Little is done to help individuals and families ripped apart by alcoholism. The availability of cheap alcohol has undoubtedly encouraged the kind of drinking and antisocial behaviour that blights town centres each weekend. A culture, which is exclusive in many respects to British streets, has emerged in which it is fashionable to drink more than one is capable of. As a consequence, ill health and antisocial behaviour have become common.
The cost to the NHS of alcohol-related harm resulting from that culture is alarming. The statistics are well known, but one indication of strain on the NHS can be seen in the proxy services dedicated to treating binge drinkers. An SOS bus patrols Medway towns on Friday and Saturday nights, providing services to inebriated revellers. I visited it recently, albeit early in the evening, as I did not particularly want to see the consequences of heavy drinking. The dedicated volunteers are amazing and divert pressure away from the blue-light services, keeping vulnerable and very drunk youngsters safe. I certainly intend to try to protect that service during these financially constrained times, but it is a sad indictment of our weekend drinking culture that it is needed in the first place.
On minimum pricing, evidence points to a link between cost and sales. The theory is, obviously, that as cost rises, demand will fall. That might be a basic economic mechanism, and in principle it should make minimum alcohol pricing an effective policy for driving down dangerous levels of alcohol consumption, but the decision to set the base at the low rate of duty plus VAT is clearly controversial, and it remains to be seen whether it will work.
I share the concerns expressed by colleagues and others that such a policy will do little to help our beleaguered public houses, which must now compete with supermarkets rather than each other. I was interested to hear the price statistics quoted by my hon. Friend the Member for Burton (Andrew Griffiths), but I do not believe that the proposal will help tackle long-term alcohol dependency. It will be a small step in the right direction, if its aim is solely to clamp down on aspects of binge drinking such as pre-loading, which other hon. Members have discussed and the sole motivation of which is keeping the costs of a night out to minimum. Most leave their homes already very drunk, which prompts the question why they are allowed to continue consuming alcohol in licensed premises having already drunk enough before they arrive. As others have pointed out in this debate and others, one of the good things about public houses is that responsible landlords tend to prevent overly drunk and disorderly behaviour by stepping in and refusing to serve those whom they believe have had enough to drink.
As my hon. Friend, drawing on his experience, has pointed out, minimum pricing will, in theory, abolish the deep discounting that encourages that kind of drinking, thus equalising the cost of a night out and driving down alcohol consumption. However, the low minimum price proposed will only stop the very worst cases of discounting, and it may play out differently in practice. Therefore, bolder proposals should still be considered, targeting specific drinks associated with binge drinking, such as strong lagers, white ciders and alcopops.
It is important that we in this Chamber give credit where it is due. I was pleased to learn that Heineken, which produces White Lightning, recently discontinued the product due to its binge-drinking connotations. It should be commended for acknowledging the need to reinforce its stance on responsible drinking.
We must consider the limited scope of the policy and the likelihood that it will make headway only with a certain type of drinker. There is a growing dependency culture, and it is often hidden behind the closed doors of houses throughout the country. They are difficult to identify and affluent enough to absorb any increase in price, especially something as low as duty plus VAT. However, just because the minimum price does not impact upon them directly, that does not make them any less of a concern or any less dependent on alcohol and at risk of serious health issues in years to come. Current research reinforces that concern, because wealthy districts dominate the top of hazardous-drinking league tables. Although minimum pricing will target the binge drinkers who do it on the cheap, it is clear that it will do little to tackle alcohol dependency as a whole.
I appreciate that the Government have to balance their strategy of introducing a policy that meets their stated aims of reducing dangerous levels of alcohol consumption while not penalising the vast majority who enjoy alcohol sensibly. The question is: does this minimum price do that?
The pricing of alcohol is only part of the problem. It must be introduced in conjunction with a review of the late-night licences available to establishments, stricter alcohol-control zones and a close examination of the quality of treatment and rehab offered to those with a high dependency.
David Simpson
Will the hon. Lady join me in congratulating the Scottish Health Minister, who introduced a price structure in relation to vodka last September? As has been mentioned, the minimum price used to be £7.97, but it is now £11.81 under the new structure, which also applies to some beers. We encourage all the regions, including the Northern Ireland Assembly, to do the same.
Tracey Crouch
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. I have read about the new proposals in Scotland, which are currently being debated. We should look at what is happening in Scotland. Indeed, we should have looked at what was happening there in relation to the 24-hour drinking culture before it was introduced here. The evidence that the police had gathered in Scotland should have been made available to the previous Government before they introduced the licensing extension.
In conclusion, we need to engage with the professional classes and young adults who regularly drink to hazardous levels, and target those establishments that prop up the binge-drinking culture through irresponsible sales and business practices. If we can in any way reduce the weekend strain on the NHS, the police and the local authorities that clear up the mess created by binge drinking, we can certainly hail this as a small step in the right direction. However, in order to reduce dependency on alcohol across the board and to stem the devastating effects that it has on the lives of individuals and families, let alone its financial cost to society, so much more needs to be done.
Temporary Immigration Cap
Tracey Crouch Excerpts(13 years, 6 months ago)
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Damian Green
I am sorry that the hon. Lady did not listen to the answer that I gave the shadow Home Secretary, but I am quite happy to repeat it. The judgment was given on Friday but we do not have the written judgment yet, and we will not get it until January. It is clearly absurd to ask us to decide what to do about individual applications in advance of deciding whether to appeal against the judgment, and we cannot do that until we have the judgment in writing.
Tracey Crouch (Chatham and Aylesford) (Con)
Does the Minister agree that it is a bit rich for the shadow Home Secretary to talk about chaos, given the parlous state of the immigration system that the new Government inherited?
Damian Green
My hon. Friend makes a perfectly good and valid point. The reason why we needed the interim limit was that we inherited an immigration system that was in complete chaos. We said at the election that we were going to introduce a permanent limit that would come into force next April. Between that point and next April there would have been an unimaginably large surge in applications if we had not imposed an interim limit. It is a perfectly sensible policy, and we will take steps tomorrow to ensure that it meets the Court’s requirements so that it can continue to do the essential job of bringing immigration numbers back down to a level with which this country can feel comfortable.
Immigration
Tracey Crouch Excerpts(13 years, 7 months ago)
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Tracey Crouch (Chatham and Aylesford) (Con)
As a new Member speaking in a debate that has been called as part of a new process, I must confess that it feels a bit odd to be speaking after the Minister and the shadow Minister have summed up the debate thus far. I am in no doubt that my contribution and those of hon. Members still to come will encourage the shadow Minister to offer more than just cautious support for the Government.
I congratulate the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field) and my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Sussex (Nicholas Soames) on securing the debate. I also congratulate the right hon. Gentleman on his excellent speech, with which many people on both sides of the House will have agreed. I record my appreciation of the fact that the Backbench Business Committee has secured time in the Chamber to discuss this issue, which has been a key concern for some time in my constituency and across the country.
I am proud of the British sense of tolerance and the generous manner with which we have welcomed a great many people to our country over hundreds of years. The vast majority of those who come to the UK make a valid contribution to our society and enhance our multicultural credentials, which I value very much. Although I am proud of our tolerance, however, I am acutely aware, unlike the previous Government, of the fact that our generosity has been overstretched.
I appreciate that the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz) is elsewhere in the House, but given his earlier intervention, I am sure that he will be delighted to read in Hansard tomorrow that I intend to focus the majority of my comments on EU immigration. Our porous border controls have materialised into a considerable problem across the country, but welcoming vast numbers of migrants from eastern Europe into the country with no thought to their integration or the sustainability of our public services has proved incredibly short-sighted. At the time, Opposition Front Benchers warned of the impacts of uncontrolled immigration from eastern European countries. The then Home Secretary gave reassurances that despite the high estimates of net migration for 2004 and beyond, the country was well placed to accommodate new migrants. In fact, net migration for that period dwarfed those estimates, and net immigration totalled nearly 244,000 in that year.
At the time, we were shielded from the true effect of that drastic and sudden increase by our economy’s relatively good health. A booming construction industry soaked up many accession migrants seeking work, and our public services were able to cope with the unprecedented strain. Now, however, our economy finds itself in a weaker, less prosperous position, competition in the job market is high, demand for housing continues to rise, and our health and education services are struggling to meet the demands of a growing population. With a substantially different economic outlook, with slower growth predicted and with pressures on public services, the decision to welcome such a high number of EU migrants to our country is cast in a rather unflattering light.
That is most evident in deprived wards. Two of the most deprived wards in the country fall within my constituency. Tensions there run high and social divisions are deep. That is partly down to the fact that those who are on low incomes or who are welfare dependent feel themselves to be in direct competition with, if not threatened by, new migrants arriving in the neighbourhood. Indeed, constituents from those areas contact me regularly, deeply concerned at the impact of the unprecedented scale of immigration into the area, and they specifically cite people from eastern Europe. They have real concerns about their communities, about the erosion of traditions, language and heritage, about the added strain on our public services—education, welfare, housing and health care—and about heightened competition in the job market.
The impact on public services is becoming acutely obvious in my constituency. I was recently shocked to learn of a primary school in one of the deprived wards in my constituency suffering from a vast influx of eastern European migrants and reporting that almost 40% of its pupils did not have English as a first language. I appreciate that that figure is considerably higher in other wards across the country, but it is new for parts of Chatham. Furthermore, we have found that the migrant community is less settled, creating a worrying inflow and outflow of pupils during the school year. There is a genuine concern that such volatility will have an adverse effect on children’s schooling because teachers are unable to plan properly, based on full-term and yearly educational progress.
The impact of migration and of the significant number of pupils in the area who do not have English as a first language is illustrated in the percentage of pupils achieving level 4 in English at key stage 2. In the four years following EU enlargement in 2004, those percentages dropped significantly from 70% to 61%, a trend completely at odds with that in the rest of my constituency and the country. Importantly, it is not the quality of teaching that is in question. If one compares those percentages with those for pupils who achieved the equivalent grade in maths and science, one does not find a similar fall in achievement.
Similarly, the cost of Kent police’s translation services increased by some 30% between 2004 and 2007 to more than £420,000, according to figures reported in my local press. My constituents will interpret that those figures are a direct result of the rapid increase in net migration, and their assumptions would not be unfounded. Following a recent freedom of information request, Kent police confirmed that the top five languages required by its translation services in the past four years were those of countries that joined the EU in 2004, with the exception of Russian.
In one ward in my constituency, Chatham Central, there is growing tension between the eastern European migrant population and their native counterparts. Divisions are not limited to culture; there are also geographical boundaries. Migrants occupy and dominate certain areas, making them no-go areas for neighbouring residents. Those areas are typified by multiple-occupancy homes, antisocial behaviour and high levels of criminal activity, which makes life for those who have lived in the area for many years unbearable—I am afraid to say that it also makes them hostile to immigrants. That is clearly a concern, and efforts have been made by the local authority, in partnership with community groups, the local police and their excellent community support officers, to help to ameliorate the divisions. Regular seminars, development programmes and cultural events are held, but we are still in the early days, and measuring the success of those events will be key.
Following on from that is the issue of integration, which other hon. Members have spoken about. Integration is viewed by some immigrants as a scheme from which they can opt out, which is quite simply not good enough. We cannot aspire to cohesive communities without wilful integration, and we must do more to ensure that it happens. One of the EU’s common basic principles on integration states:
“Basic knowledge of the host society’s language, history, and institutions is indispensable to integration; enabling immigrants to acquire this basic knowledge is essential to successful integration.”
As the host nation, we have a duty to enable migrants to acquire the basic knowledge to integrate successfully, but we must stress that that is very much a two-way relationship. Far too often, immigrants have arrived with no intention of learning the basic tenets of our society, despite our attempts to allow that to happen. That reflects the majority of views that have been expressed to me on the doorstep and in local resident association meetings in my constituency, where communities in deprived areas are characterised—sadly—by an us-and-them approach.
In conclusion, I reiterate that immigration is a good thing for our country as long as we have the right to exercise control over our borders. Controlled immigration can help to stimulate an economy while enriching the fabric of our society, but for too long it has been assumed that we cannot control the inflow of immigrants, and our public services suffer as a result. That is why my constituents and I welcome the Government’s ambition to restore net migration to the levels of the 1990s.
Sajid Javid
My hon. Friend rightly identifies the issue of the supply of EU migrants. However, on the other side of the coin, there is a demand problem. One local farmer to whom I was chatting recently in my constituency of Bromsgrove told me that of his 60 employees, 54 are from the EU, mostly from Poland. He has found it very difficult to hire local workers. Does my hon. Friend agree that the Government’s approach—a universal benefit, other welfare changes, the skills strategy and so on—will make a difference on the demand side and help the situation?
Tracey Crouch
Welfare reform and the demand for proper provision of opportunities have been touched on in this debate. When I was at university and studying for my A-levels, I worked in McDonald’s. At the time, there were very few non-British people working there, but now it is very difficult for young people seeking employment in the service sector to get a job, whether in McDonald’s or a sandwich chain. There has to be a balance between the provision of opportunities and a sensible approach to welfare reform that can encourage people to take all the opportunities available.
It is important that we are brave on EU immigration—indeed, we must be brave—and provide for future conditions, even if that means renegotiation in relation to those wishing to come to the UK. Like the right hon. Member for Birkenhead and my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Sussex, I recognise that welfare reform will play its part in that process, but we cannot rely on that alone to reduce the numbers of people wishing to make the most of the services that the UK provides. It is important that local authorities and community partners receive support to help promote integration and cohesion in communities suffering from social divides and tensions, but that needs to be done much better.
Finally, I am sure that our constituents will all welcome this sensible and constructive debate on what can be a sensitive issue, and I join others in calling on the Government to take note of the comments made in the Chamber today.
Counter-terrorism and Security Powers
Tracey Crouch Excerpts(13 years, 11 months ago)
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Tracey Crouch (Chatham and Aylesford) (Con)
Under the previous Government, a photographer from Medway was arrested in Chatham high street under section 44 stop-and-search powers, and he and fellow photographers from Medway will welcome today’s announcement from the Home Secretary. Will she assure the House that any future revision of anti-terror legislation will strike the right balance between protecting the public and safeguarding the rights of individuals?
Mrs May
I am happy to give that assurance to my hon. Friend. She may have noticed that in my statement I specifically said that we would look at the issue of photographers and stop-and-search powers. It is one issue that has been brought home forcibly to me. I have had constituency cases of people who have been stopped under those powers and been concerned about it, and I have received a number of representations from Members of this House, and indeed of another place, about those problems.