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Road Safety Bill [Lords]

We have had an excellent debate. The Minister’s was a classic ““Yes, Minister”” response. As a former transport Minister, I congratulate his civil servants on having taken to heart his brief, which was to try to find an objection to every possible solution. Every Member recognises that there is a real problem that needs to be addressed. It is causing the loss of a great many lives on our roads, unnecessarily, every year. But the Minister has come up with a whole lot of trivial objections. For example, he says that we need to establish the correct level for illegal drugs, but why do we need a legal limit for illegal drugs? Surely any level of illegal drugs should be illegal and the law should deal with it. What sort of message does the Government’s talk on this matter send out to young people who may be tempted to get into the drugs scene? The Minister says that there is a large variability of effects for the same dose taken. Well, that is exactly the same argument that was used against the breathalyser law. Perhaps you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, can drink 10 pints without it having any effect on you, whereas some colleagues might drink one pint and be paralytic. What are the Government doing in resorting to that old, failed argument? From the way in which the Minister spoke about the difficulties of testing, anyone would think that we did not have drug testing in prisons, schools and in sport—all promoted by the Government. So why cannot we have drug testing at the roadside? That is what the new clause is about. My Front-Bench colleague was absolutely right to draw our attention to the statistics that show that the proportion of drivers detected and prosecuted for drug-driving in this country is far below that of other countries. That is not because we do not have drug-driving, but because the Government are not dealing with the problem. I believe in joined-up government, but what we have had from the Minister is a silo mentality, whereby drugs issues are viewed as nothing to do with his Department. I would like to see his Department deal with drug taking and drug use alongside the Home Office. One way of achieving that would be to make it an offence for anyone to be at the wheel of a car with illegal substances in their body. I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for North Shropshire (Mr. Paterson) for making it clear that the Opposition will support the new clause. I hope that many Government Members will join us, too. Question put, That the clause be read a Second time:— The House divided: Ayes 164, Noes 290.