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Road Safety Bill [Lords]

I must take issue with the hon. Member for Poole (Mr. Syms) about the figure for road deaths being stuck at about 3,200. If he looks at the figures for the last two or three years, he will see that they are again on a downward trend. Of course, once a number of road deaths is reached—albeit one that is still way to high; I acknowledge that immediately—that is, compared with the distances travelled, the lowest in the world, it becomes increasingly difficult to reduce the figure. We must expect that, and we must expect the rate of improvement to slow. Nevertheless, we still have that rate of improvement, and the hon. Gentleman is right in saying that messages about drugs and about drug taking and driving will play a key part. The hon. Gentleman said that we need to do more to get the message across. I say to him that, to get the message over on drug-driving, we try to target those who are most likely to be drug-drivers. I might be wrong, but I do not think that Conservative Members of Parliament are a target group for that message, but young people are, so we target it on the radio channels that young people listen to, pop concerts and other places where young people congregate. Our evidence suggests that we are pretty good at targeting those messages, and we hit that target group, but does that go far enough? No, it does not. So, let me say to the hon. Member for Christchurch (Mr. Chope) that I entirely agree with the sentiments that he has put to us tonight. If I was in a position to tell the House that there is a robust method of detection and that there is agreement that there is a correlation between the level of a drug in someone’s system and the level of impairment when driving, I would be here with a Government proposal to introduce the measures to the House. However, we do not have that robust system of detection and we do not have that agreement on what is an appropriate level of drug taking to indicate impairment. We are somewhat stuck over a way to move forward. The hon. Gentleman, in introducing the new clause, essentially told the House, ““Look, we don’t have agreement on what an appropriate level is, so let’s just say it’s any level. If it’s any level, you’re breaking the law.”” That is entirely inconsistent with existing legislation, which requires a level of impairment. In a moment, I shall come on to the problems of detecting the amount of drugs in somebody’s system, but I also suggest that a key problem with detection is exactly what is being detected. The active ingredient of cannabis spends only a short period in the blood. Detection systems therefore tend not to detect the active ingredient that would impair driving. Detection systems detect a metabolite of cannabis that stays in the blood for a long time. The presence of that metabolite in someone’s system does not, however, mean that their driving performance would be impaired; it simply means that they have used cannabis at some time in the previous few days. If one is trying to devise a detection system for an employer who wants to make sure that none of his employees has ever used drugs, it is a perfectly acceptable test. The presence of the metabolite allows one to say that the person has used drugs, although one does not know whether they used them yesterday or last week. Therefore, if an employer has a policy not to employ those who use drugs, he can say that he will no longer employ that person. If one is trying to test whether someone’s ability to drive a car is impaired, however, testing for that metabolite is not reasonable. That is one of the key problems with detection.