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Road Safety Bill [Lords]

The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right; that is a perfectly fair point. However, I do not think that we should be quite so blasé about creating offences that would have enormous resource implications for the courts and for police time if the benefit to be derived from them were not proportionate. If we sought to prosecute everyone who was found to be driving with a trace of an illegal drug in their body, it would take up an enormous amount of court time—and to what effect? We are dealing with the Road Safety Bill, and it is entirely appropriate that we should have regard to the test that we have always had: that of a person’s fitness to drive being impaired through the use of drink or drugs. Drink and drugs are relevant to road safety because they impair a person’s fitness to drive, and once we move away from that simple test, we open up a whole range of conduct for examination. It would be very easy for someone to say that they did not know that there would still be a trace of drink or drugs in their bloodstream. The hon. Member for Christchurch referred to train drivers and pilots, but I cannot recall the existence of any criminal offence in that context. If he can enlighten me on that, I will be interested, but I cannot think of an instance in which a pilot or train driver would be guilty of a criminal offence merely by having a trace of drink or drugs in their body. If he or she were unfit to drive or fly through having used them, that would of course be a different matter. Pilots, train drivers and others who are found, through a work place testing scheme, to have a trace of an illegal drug in their system are often caught by their employer’s disciplinary procedures, but that does not involve a criminal offence. Once we start to blur the distinction between a criminal offence and a disciplinary offence under employment law, we will be going down a dangerous track. I should like to say a word or two in defence of the present approach in road traffic law, which places the emphasis on impairment and unfitness to drive. This point was also made by the hon. Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr. Burrowes), and I am sorry that he is no longer here, because, as a court practitioner, he has an important contribution to make to the debate. In practical terms, there is usually a reasonable ground for a driver to be stopped—normally that of erratic or defective driving. Thereafter, a breath test will almost certainly be carried out. If that test is negative, the police officer involved should surely look for another reason for the impairment. All sorts of other symptoms might be present, including dilated pupils or slurred speech, depending on the illegal substance in question. My recollection from my time as a criminal court solicitor and as a prosecutor is that a lengthy checklist is gone through, which would thereafter entitle the officer to arrest the person and take them back to the police station where the full impairment test could be undertaken. As the hon. Member for Christchurch rightly said, a number of much more sophisticated devices are now on the market, and I hope that they will be tested and, if appropriate, approved for use by the Department for Transport. All these factors will improve the workability of the present law on unfitness to drive as a result of the use of drink or drugs. I am not without sympathy for the hon. Gentleman’s proposal, and I certainly do not underestimate the scale of the difficulty facing us in relation to drug- driving, but I remain to be convinced that his new clause is the panacea that he suggests. It could create problems as well as solutions.