I shall speak also to Amendment 118GA and shall not speak to Amendment 118G. I also wish to register my support for Amendment 118J, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee.
The aim of Amendment 118E is to clarify in law that Clause 29 is seeking to improve road safety and that whether a drug is controlled is irrelevant in this context. The Government aim to treat driving under the influence of drugs and alcohol on the same basis is to be applauded, but if it is irrelevant to road safety that alcohol is uncontrolled, why should it be relevant whether a stimulant or other drug is controlled? Surely the important point is whether the stimulant is affecting the driver’s safety behind the wheel.
I can illustrate the irrationality of the clause as it stands with an example. We know that when a controlled drug, such as ecstasy, is heavily contaminated, young people will switch to a similar, but uncontrolled drug, a powder, bought over the internet, probably from China. If there are two drivers, one driving dangerously because of the level of ecstasy in their body and the other driving dangerously because of the same level of the legal stimulant in their body, there is no difference in terms of traffic safety between the two drivers. Both are equally dangerous and surely should be charged, presumably for dangerous driving. I ask the Minister either to accept the amendment or to explain to the House why an intoxicated driver on a psychoactive substance, which the authorities simply have not yet had the time to ban—or perhaps they will never get around to it, as it takes them many years—should be treated more leniently than his friend on the same quantity of a controlled but no more intoxicating drug.
6.15 pm
Amendment 118GA deals with my second concern: that drivers should not be arbitrarily stopped and tested for drug use, any more than they should be for alcohol use, if there is no reason to believe that their driving is impaired. I am aware that Section 4 of the Road Traffic Act 1988 covers this point to some degree. However, we know from the expert technical panel advising the Government that:
“There is no universal agreement on how to measure impairment”.
Certainly impairment differs for different classes of drugs, for stimulants, depressants and hallucinogens, for example. I am concerned that if impairment is difficult to identify or measure, the assumption that evidence of impairment must be present before a driver can be stopped could be overridden by this legislation. I ask the Minister to make clear in his response that the intentions of Amendment 118GA will apply; that is, that the requirements before a driver is stopped are that the driver has been involved in a road traffic accident or in a moving traffic offence, or that he is in charge of a vehicle and the roadside evidence suggests that he is impaired due to alcohol or any drug. There is an issue about medicines, which we will come to.
I want to move on to the stage where a driver has been stopped, the required conditions, I hope, having been met. I refer to a recommendation in the Home Affairs Select Committee report in relation to the appropriate maximum permissible level of concentration
of a drug in a person’s blood or urine under Clause 29 of this Bill. The Home Affairs Select Committee says,
“the appropriate maximum permissible level of concentration in a person’s blood or urine … should be set to have the equivalent effect on safety as the legal alcohol limit”.
I understand that the Home Affairs Select Committee wants a level playing field between the treatment of those driving with alcohol or drugs and that a zero tolerance approach should be avoided for all these categories of driver. Will the Minister assure the House that the department will not abandon the concentration limits aligned with those for alcohol? If the expert panel concludes that it is too difficult to set such limits, what action do the Government propose to take? One of our difficulties in these debates is that the expert panel has not yet reported and we do not what its recommendations will be so, in a sense, we are having this debate without the key information that we need.
Another matter about which I would be grateful for clarification concerns the expert technical panel’s work. Is that panel considering psychoactive substances that are not medicines? On page nine of its presentation to parliamentarians, it refers to establishing the,
“level of use of illicit drugs and psychoactive medicines by driving population”.
There is no mention here of new psychoactive substances, albeit that more and more young people will be driving under the influences of those substances.
Another issue arising from Clause 29 concerns young people taking cannabis, perhaps weeks prior to being apprehended for driving when suspected of being under the influence of alcohol or drugs. The risk in these circumstances is that the young person will reveal cannabis in their body, yet be unimpaired. In a conversation with officials, I was given some assurance on this point. It was suggested that the testing equipment will be geared to testing the THC level rather than the level of cannabis in the body. I understand that THC remains in the body for a relatively short period, and this could substantially overcome the problem. Can the Minister reassure the House on these points? Will the technical equipment be able to identify the level of THC present and is the Minister aware of how long THC remains in the body?
I want to add my support to Amendment 118J, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, which seeks to give some protection to patients on long-term medication from the considerable stress of arrest, testing and potential prosecution. I hope that the Minister can agree to the noble Baroness’s amendment. I hope that the Minister can provide further assurance on the Floor of the House about patients with chronic illnesses who need medication long term. Napp Pharmaceuticals rightly points out that such patients should not be placed in the position of having to satisfy an onerous burden of proof that they are indeed safe to drive. I understand from Dr Wolff’s letter that the position is not straightforward, certainly with regard to benzodiazepines, that patients on these drugs are at an increased risk of an RTA when compared with drivers who are not under the influence of benzodiazepines, and that the risk is particularly increased when these
drugs are consumed in combination with alcohol. Clearly, patients need to be fully informed about those risks.
In relation to morphine, I understand that the panel is considering a limit which is significantly above the average concentrations of morphine in blood found in cancer patients receiving long-term steady-state doses of morphine. That is some reassurance, but again if the Minister can elaborate, it would be helpful. The point made by Napp Pharmaceuticals is that the defence in the legislation as it stands applies only once the case has progressed. It will not protect innocent patients on prescribed medications from the stress of arrest and further testing at the start of the process. Does the Minister agree that Clause 29 needs to be amended to cover drivers who are able to show that they have not taken alcohol and who can explain that they are on prescribed medication? Will the Minister consider bringing forward a government amendment to this effect at Third Reading? It would be helpful to be given some reassurance. A zero tolerance approach would be very serious for these chronic patients who need their medication and can drive safely while taking it. I beg to move.