New Clause 1 - Alcohol-prescribed limits
Road Safety Bill
9:25 am
Mr David Kidney (Stafford, Labour)
Yes, of course. The hon. Gentleman makes a point about the increase in the number of vehicles on our roads. That is quite right. The Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency has 60 million vehicles registered. That is a big increase since the 1970s. I do not deny that in the slightest. However, we take pride in reducing deaths and serious injuries from all causes. The figures have reduced year on year, and the Minister can tell us of the success of the present road safety strategy later. That is continuous, but here is one instance, amid all the reductions, in which the trend is going in the wrong direction. We all need to take account of that alarm bell. So the increase in deaths over the past five years is one factor.
The second factor is the practices in the drinks industry. There are new kinds of drinks, such as alcopops, and there are higher strengths of beers and wines. When we set the limit, a mainstream beer was typically about 4 per cent. Today it is often 5 per cent. Wines were about 8.5 per cent. by volume strength. Today they are typically 12 to 14 per cent. A significant development is that people buy wine in all sorts of sizes of glasses. A typical measure used to be a 125 ml glass. Now there are 175 ml and even 250 ml glasses.
Ideas about the legal limit which have been established over 20 years, in particular the number of drinks that we can consume and still safely drive, are simply myths and are wrong. Many people have too great an ignorance of what is a safe measure. I have some sympathy with the argument made by some, including the British Medical Association, that a new level of 50 mg would give people the message that if they drink and drive, the only thing of which they can be sure is that one unit of alcohol is definitely within the limit. That is a clear message for everybody to grasp.
Bearing in mind that the Minister's response will be, in part, that we have a settled law and that it is important to have known harsh penalties, strict enforcement and so on, the third factor relates to a briefing from a company called TTC 2000. It claims to be the
''largest provider of the Department for Transport drink drive rehabilitation course''.
We mentioned that course on Tuesday. In the course of its briefing to me, TTC 2000 said:
''It is amazing how many drink drivers that we see who were surprised to find that there was an automatic minimum disqualification of 12 months.''
That is a significant factor because the Minister assumes that everybody knows that we have one of the harshest penalties in Europe and that that penalty is a great deterrent. However, if people have lost that message, they do not know about the harshness of the penalty and it is not a deterrent. So complacency is setting in.
Lastly, in January we received the results of the breath tests that the police carried out in the two-week Christmas period. It is a tradition to have a crackdown during Christmas and new year. The police produce figures that tell us how that crackdown went in the following January. As part of its report, the Association of Chief Police Officers of England, Wales and Northern Ireland produced a news release on 6 January, in which it said that, despite the successes of this year's campaign,
''a worrying proportion of those involved in collisions are still driving having consumed excess alcohol. The trend has been increasing since 1999 and . . . the current rate of 8.75 per cent.,''—
of positive tests—
''although less than last year, has, for the second year running, virtually reached the 1997 baseline of 9.11 per cent.''
So the police report a worrying trend of increasing positive results. Richard Brunstrom, the well known chief constable of North Wales police who leads for ACPO on such issues, says in the same news release:
''I again reiterate my strong belief that it is time the Government followed the European Commission Recommendation that the blood alcohol limit be lowered from 80 mg to 50 mg.''
He strongly supports the case that I am making.
Are the four factors that I mentioned simply straws in the wind or signs of something more serious? I answered that by saying that alarm bells are ringing and it is time for us to take notice of them. I accept that we do not really know how many people drive with excess alcohol in their blood, except for those indicators that I pointed to—rising deaths and a rising number of positive breath tests after accidents at Christmas.
However, in 1990 we did know, because the Department paid for roadside surveys to find out what the general level of drink-driving was in this country. In a six-month period, officials from the Department for Transport stopped 14,500 drivers and asked them to take part in the survey. Slightly less than 1 per cent. refused, which is an interesting factor. Of those who agreed to be tested, 3 per cent. were found to have in their blood between half the legal limit and the legal limit of alcohol, and 1 per cent. were found to be driving with excess alcohol in their blood. That was 15 years ago. I suggest to the Minister that more people are now driving with excess alcohol in their blood. If he cannot agree to the new clause, will he agree to repeat his Department's survey to find out whether I am right and, therefore, agree that more action needs to be taken?
The new clause has a lot of support. I mentioned the chief spokesperson for ACPO. I also mentioned the British Medical Association, which is well placed to have a view on the subject, bearing in mind that doctors understand the effect of alcohol on people's behaviour, have to treat those who are mangled in car crashes caused by drink-driving and manage to save some lives but fail to save others and, sadly, see people die. Road safety groups such as Brake and the Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety also support the new clause. As I mentioned, I co-chair PACTS so do not give much weight to its support, but it is the pre-eminent organisation that gives advice to the House based on evidence and research, rather than opinions about what should be done.
The best advice to any driver is, ''Never drink and drive''. I fully support all the money that the Department for Transport spends on its hard-hitting advertisements and on education to persuade people to be responsible, but we must accept that, human nature being what it is, some people will drive with some alcohol in their blood. We must also accept that some medical treatments, and the natural reactions in some people's bodies, mean that it is not possible for everyone to have zero alcohol in their bloodstream. There is also the difficult question of the time it takes for alcohol to leave the bloodstream after it is consumed.
A limit of 50 mg is more reasonable. I have explained the BMA's ''simplicity of understanding'' argument. I will focus on the argument that such a limit would save lives. The explanation for that lies in the calculations of Professor Richard Allsop, of the Centre for Transport Studies at University college London. He breaks down drivers into three groups. Some 97 per cent. of all drivers, by far the biggest group, never drive with an alcohol level over 50 mg. One per cent. drive with an alcohol level far over 80 mg. They are the most dangerous drivers, and he estimates that they cause more than 400 deaths every year. They completely ignore the law and we are not going to persuade them to accept my limit of 50 mg. For them, detection and severe penalties are always going to be the answer.
That leaves the 2 per cent. who drive at somewhere around the present legal limit of 50 mg to 110 mg and who cause about 130 deaths a year. Professor Allsop calculates that if they modified their behaviour and drove somewhere around the limit of 50 mg, 65 lives a year would be saved and 230 serious injuries prevented. An alcohol level of 50 mg is dangerous enough. We all understand that the risk of death increases with the increase in alcohol consumption. According to Professor Allsop's calculations, the risk increases by five times at a limit of 50 mg, but at 110 mg it increases by 34 times.
I had a go at drawing together all the legal limits in different countries. There was some controversy over whether Luxembourg's limit is 80 mg or 50 mg. In the whole of Europe, both inside and outside the European Union, there is a zero limit in Romania, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Lithuania. There is a limit of 20 mg in Poland, Sweden and Norway. A 50 mg limit applies in Portugal, Spain, France, Italy, Greece, Bulgaria, Austria, Slovenia, Luxembourg, Belgium, Germany, Holland, Denmark, Finland, Estonia, Macedonia, Croatia and Yugoslavia. That leaves us on 80 mg with Ireland and Switzerland. Clearly, the mainstream has moved on, and we have not moved on with it. It is time we did.