New Clause 1 - Alcohol-prescribed limits
Road Safety Bill
10:00 am
Mr Mark Fisher (Stoke-on-Trent Central, Labour)
I do not wish to quiz the Minister on his fantasies about his youthfulness in reading Loaded and FHM; I want to return him to the main thrust of his argument. I was sympathetic to the robust case that he made for zero tolerance—that what is acceptable is no alcohol in the bloodstream. I agree with him that that would be a simpler and clearer law. It is also in tune with how all of us behave.
Several years ago, once I became impressed by the then Government's campaigns against drink-driving, I went through a period of trying to drink very little when driving—perhaps one glass of wine. However, I found that that did not work, and that the only way to ensure that one was not driving with alcohol was to have nothing if one was going to drive—not a single drink. The Minister seemed to be making that case robustly.
Surely the logic of the case is that that should be the legal limit. Once one starts saying that we will allow the public some degree of alcohol it is then fair to say that there should be some gradation of penalty—the two are consistent and logical. If we do not want gradations of penalty, the logic inexorably leads us to saying that there should be no alcohol in a person's blood if they are driving a car.