Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, whether she has made an assessment of the potential merits of linking any interim driving prohibition for drug driving offenders to the successful completion of an approved drug driving rehabilitation course and a negative drug test.

The Department is providing £2.7 million per year for three years for the Roads Policing Innovation Programme, working with the National Police Chiefs’ Council and the Home Office to strengthen national roads policing coordination. This funding supports the programme as a whole, including work on impaired driving. Core police funding, operational deployment and forensic toxicology capacity remain matters for the Home Office, Chief Constables and Police and Crime Commissioners.

On road risk prevention orders, the Department has recently consulted on similar issues through its motoring offences consultation. This included seeking views on temporary licence suspension for those suspected of drink or drug driving until court attendance, guilty plea or while bailed pending forensic analysis, and on suspending licences for those under investigation for serious driving offences resulting in death or serious injury.

The Department also intends to publish a response to the 2022 call for evidence on repeat drug-driving offenders alongside the response to the motoring offences consultation. That call for evidence sought views on a drug-driving high-risk offender scheme and a rehabilitation course.

No final decision has been taken on introducing a drug-driving rehabilitation programme, a drug-driving high-risk offender scheme, or linking any interim driving prohibition to course completion or drug testing. Responses to the motoring offences consultation are now being analysed, and it would not be right to pre-empt the outcome of that process.