Clause 14 - Alcohol ignition interlocks
Road Safety Bill [Lords]
2:30 pm
Owen Paterson (Shadow Minister, Transport; North Shropshire, Conservative)
Perhaps the name of the hon. Member for Stafford was noted in the Whip’s book—he will recover.
We are not convinced by the proposal for alcohol ignition interlocks. A recent report from the European Transport Safety Council notes that alco-locks have been used in rehabilitation programmes for drink-driving offenders in the USA, Australia and Canada. It claims:
“experiences in the USA and Canada have shown that the interlocks can lead to a 40 to 95 per cent. reduction in the rate of drink-driving repeat offences”.
It continues:
“Existing studies clearly indicate however that this reduction in recidivism is limited to the period of alcolock installation in the car, or at best for a limited time thereafter”.
European trials have been limited. In Sweden, 900 drink-driving offenders have been on an alcohol interlock programme, but about a third of them dropped out because the programme was strict. Finland is only just about to introduce an alcohol interlock programme lasting one year for all drink-driving offenders, and France has begun a pilot project, with only 40 participants, in Annecy. The UK is cited in the report as also taking part.
The European Transport Safety Council refers to P. R. Marques, who has written an in-depth report for the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation in Calveston, Maryland. The report states:
“20 years beyond their initial field trials in several California counties, interlock devices and programs have reached a high level of maturity”.
However,
“Researchers will need to continue to evaluate interlock effectiveness evidence to determine if interlock programs can reduce recidivism systemwide, not just in small programs, and no one has yet documented and overall crash reduction due to interlocks although alcohol-related crashes are almost certainly reduced. Much more needs to be done to enhance the impact of interlock programmes, through integration and other counter-measure programmes, most notably alcohol treatment and rehabilitation ... An interlock programme requires some level of administrative control and monitoring”
and needs to
“make good use of the dual functions of control and monitoring.”
Although it admits that this is a problem in all societies, it thinks that rehabilitation and other measures are more important.
That finding is confirmed by a survey conducted on behalf of the European Union by the Belgian Institute for Road Safety, which had a project running from December 2003 to December 2005 that came up in some cases with no answers. On relevance—how the project objective is linked to the programme objective—the answer is:
“This can however not be assessed yet.”
On effectiveness, and whether the project has reached its objective, it says:
“No project results were available for the evaluation.”
There is a blank, rather than an answer to the question about whether the results support the programme objectives. On utility, the answer to whether the project includes a baseline and a potential impact assessment is a blank, and for sustainability—whether the project results will last after the project has been completed—there is another blank.
These are early days. The system has been extensively used in the States, where the evidence is that these gadgets, or machines, work only as long as they are in place. It would, in some ways, be irresponsible to install them, because they have not reduced the rate of recidivism and offenders seem to go back to their bad ways afterwards.
That is confirmed by the final report that I should like to call in aid—which goes right across the board, on alcohol as a problem with motoring—by Dr. James Nichols of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and H. Lawrence Ross of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism at the university of New Mexico. Their report touches on our earlier debate; they
“feel that swift and sure license actions provide the greatest potential on both counts”
on reducing drink-driving and alcohol-related crashes. Their
“model system would provide for mandatory minimum fines ... and mandatory minimum hard license suspensions of no less than 90 days, followed by a probationary or restricted license period”,
after which, there would be
“alcohol education, assessment, and referral programs.”
They say:
“To make license actions more effective, greater emphasis would be placed on keeping suspended and revoked drivers from driving during their license withdrawal period.”
The conclusion is that taking licences away for longer periods has a more beneficial impact.
It seems to me, having rattled through some research papers, that work on this measure is a bit premature. We are all in favour of and open to new ideas, but I think that this system should be kept at the trial stage in limited numbers and not be written into the Bill as a major part of the Government’s alcohol programme. I particularly do not like the idea of
“a lesser period of disqualification (“the reduced period”)”,
in clause 14(3), which may be given if an offender is prepared to take on one of these gadgets. It appears that the effect lasts only as long as the gadget is in the car and, from the evidence that I have quoted showing that people sadly revert afterwards, taking people’s licences away seems to have a bigger impact. Actually, the biggest shock is a brief period of imprisonment.
All credit must go to the Government for looking at new ideas, but this system is in the very early stages in Europe and we should see how other countries get on. By all means let us have some small trials in this country, but I do not think that it is appropriate to build this initiative into the Bill as it stands.