Standards in Public Life
Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe Excerpts(5 years, 1 month ago)
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Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)
My Lords, like others, I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Blunkett for introducing this debate in such a magnificent way, based on his long experience in politics. It was a great blessing for us. I am grateful, too, to the Library for the briefing note that it provided, which reminded me to spend a little time looking at the seven principles.
In that context, it is interesting that the new Lord Speaker recently sent out a little reminder to us all about how we conduct ourselves and the courtesies that we show each other when we come into the Chamber. I think that that has been quite well received. It might be worthwhile if the seven principles were circulated among all of us, particularly for newcomers, who are coming into politics perhaps for the first time.
I was particularly taken by what my noble friend Lord Blunkett said in his introduction about the responsibility that we hold, given the privileges we hold, our ability to exercise power and how we do so. I would like to focus primarily on a narrow area, one that my noble friend Lord Griffiths picked up on: the way we conduct ourselves.
If we look at the seven principles, we see that I as an individual and we as the Lords are somewhat weak when it comes to accountability. Who are we accountable to? What is our principal job? I would say that scrutinising legislation is our principal role: legislation comes to us from the Commons, or we introduce it ourselves, and because it goes through the Commons, ultimately we are accountable to it, because it decides, yea or nay, whether our amendments will be taken. But there are many areas beyond that in which, when I look for accountability, there is a great big gaping hole. I am not really sure, in the context of this debate, whether I am asking questions of the Minister or of the House on how we conduct our business, because there is a Nolan principle up there, when we come to it.
I share a room with my good friend the noble Lord, Lord Young, who raised the issue of finance. We are not accountable to the Commons on finance. I do not know who we are accountable to on that. Is it the Government directly? We seem to run our own show in what we believe is the best way possible and acceptable. But as to a clear line of accountability, there is no stream there to be identified, and that is a weakness of this House that we should address.
Linked to that of course is the growth of the House. There are now 830-odd of us—it is far too big and we do not need that. We need change, and we have endeavoured to make that change ourselves. I put it to the Minister that the Government have a responsibility to say what they will do about the ever-growing size of this House, the way in which they conduct themselves in making appointments, and how we contain it and reduce the cost. We, in turn, still have further work to do in that area; we ran away from having an age of retirement, and I can see the arguments against that. But our basic function here is to vote. If people do not come here and stay to vote, they are not fulfilling the public duty that they have been given. If they are not fulfilling the full role given to them, as for a policeman, a nurse or others, they should not be Members of this House; they should exercise the principles and voluntarily leave. We should go back to our work in looking at the House and review whether we could do more to reduce our numbers.
We then come to the issue of accountability to the public. Deep down, we do not want any real change, because it threatens our positions. Whenever this has come up, we have found ways and means, as has the Commons, of avoiding elections to this Chamber. I do not want to get involved in that today, but we still have a gaping hole in our accountability to the public. I hope that we can open up and start to have a conversation in that area. I might suggest that a start would be to do some MORI-type work among the public at large on how they perceive us in the light of where we stand in 2021, particularly after Brexit. In 2016, we were well out of touch with the mood of the public, notwithstanding all our intelligence and expertise. We have to be close to the people and we need to find ways in which we can get closer to them than we are, for the betterment of ourselves, for the betterment of the public and for the betterment of public standards.
Emergency Covid Contracts
Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe Excerpts(5 years, 3 months ago)
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Lord True (Con)
My Lords, I said in my previous answer that I am not equipped, at this notice, to answer specific questions on specific meetings in another department about which allegations are being made. What I will say to the noble Baroness, and to everyone, is that an extraordinary effort was made, and was required of government by the country—and by opposition parties, as a matter of fact—to procure material that was needed to address the Covid crisis. While criticism is made of the alleged fast-track process of urgent procurement procedures, the absolute priority was to save lives, and those procedures were in line with procurement policy. There was extreme urgency, and indeed the Government’s case that emergency procurement regulations could be used because of the extreme urgency of the Covid-19 pandemic was upheld by a judge in the High Court in a recent case.
Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab) [V]
My Lords, I hope that the Government will seek to establish why there have been these administrative errors and give a full report to both Houses. I recognise that the Government had to act urgently in the circumstances in which they found themselves, but I see no reason why they needed to break existing rules. The previous Secretary of State used a personal mobile in a way that was in contravention of all the guidance given to him. There is no reason why he should not have used the official mobile. Can the Minister tell me whether the noble Lord, Lord Bethell, has been having private conversations on his mobile? Has this been investigated? If not, why not? The public need to know what is going on. If there is nothing to be worried about, let us bring it out into the open and the Government will be cleared—there will be a smell continuing if they will not investigate these issues.
Lord True (Con)
My Lords, the matter of the letting of contracts has been reviewed by many people and many reviews. The Boardman first review covered communications contracts, and 28 of its recommendations are complete, as of today. The Boardman second review covered areas of PPE, ventilators, vaccines, et cetera. Work is under way to implement those recommendations. The NAO found no irregularities or potential conflicts of interest involving Ministers in its report up to 31 July. I think the background is a little less perfervid than is described. As far as email is concerned, of course Ministers should have a care. All Ministers are aware of the guidance around email use. Government guidance is that official devices, email accounts and communication applications should be used for communicating classified information, but Ministers have other lives—parliamentary lives and so on—and other forms of communication may be used in conducting government business. As for my noble friend Lord Bethell, he spoke on this matter in the House on Tuesday, so I refer the noble Lord to his comments; obviously, he is best equipped to answer those kinds of charges.
Wellbeing of Future Generations Bill [HL]
Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe ExcerptsFriday 25th June 2021
(5 years, 3 months ago)
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Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab) [V]
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Bird, for presenting the Bill. He is a great, doughty fighter, and I very much support what is in the Bill.
I have listened carefully to the arguments advanced about what we can and cannot expect and how we can and cannot plan for the unexpected. We need to be very honest about politics, and we are not honest enough in politics. While I subscribe to much in this Bill, the reality is that when the Minister stands up, I expect he will use all the lovely words of comfort but will reject the Bill. The Government will reject this Bill at every stage. If it manages to get through the Lords, time will not be found for it in the Commons. That is my expectation, and that is very much the life that we encounter.
Right at the beginning, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, talked about difficulties in meeting the unexpected. We can recognise that in certain areas there are expectations that will not change, yet we ignore those expectations and often work against them. I am thinking here of the very important part of the Bill, to which I subscribe, on the environment. We are now going through Covid, an experience we have never had before. In the past five years since 2016, with Brexit, we have seen massive changes and government struggling day by day to cope with what is thrown at it—Covid being the ultimate. It was totally unexpected.
If we look at what we have been doing to the planet, is it unexpected that the planet itself, nature and the spirit behind nature will hit back against the human population to try to defend themselves? We have grown from 1.8 billion 100 years ago to 7.4 billion now, and we are projected to go to 10 billion. This is quite unsustainable. COP 26 is coming, but we are not talking about population. Faiths and science will not address the fundamental problem we have of too many people trying to inhabit this planet and damaging it. We will find that the planet in turn will care for itself, as it has always done, and come back at us. For the sake of our children, the one issue we must spend time focusing on, looking to the future and trying to work together, is what needs to be done about the environment and especially world population growth, where changes are needed. The faiths need to address that. If they want to protect God’s planet, they have to do the things that God needs on the planet.
Budget Statement
Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe Excerpts(5 years, 7 months ago)
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Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab) [V]
My Lords, climate change is the biggest threat to people’s security, so I welcome the Budget’s modest initiatives on this and wish them well. However, like the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, I think that much more is needed. I wish only that the Government would address the major driver behind climate change insecurity, which is of course the continuing world population growth. It is the elephant in the room—I know that it is sensitive, but it cannot continue to be dodged, as it is likely to be at the coming COP 26, where it is not seriously on the agenda.
There are rumours that His Holiness the Pope will visit the Glasgow summit and speak. If that is the case, I hope, and suggest to the Government, that discreet approaches should be made to His Holiness and that he should be encouraged to see how the circle can be squared between some of the policies of the Church and what needs to be done to save the Lord’s planet.
Secondly, I turn to the Budget and will say something about health and care. Can we have some new thinking on this, especially the costs that arise from issues such as obesity? This was mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord McColl. It is such a major contributor to the deaths that we had and the costs that, annually and in future, the NHS has to meet—due not just to things such as diabetes but also to other health problems.
Why have the Government failed to extend the sugar tax, which has proven so effective? Why are the Government still freezing taxes on alcohol, when that is a silent contributor to obesity? We need an approach from the Treasury that starts to take health costs into account in all its approaches; it needs to give more incentives and disincentives to those who damage people’s health.
Budget Statement
Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe Excerpts(6 years, 7 months ago)
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Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)
My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for introducing the debate and for what he had to say about growth, about which I will say a few words. To use his phrase, he felt that the Budget had seen beyond the immediate problems that face us.
I think the Government are doing their best in difficult circumstances, and I wish to support them as best I can. There are areas either that they have overlooked or where they have made mistakes, but they seem to be moving quickly enough to speedily resolve some of those difficulties. For example, on rentals it immediately hit people that we needed some movement there, and it will be very interesting to see what they come up with.
It is important that politicians try to come together if they can. This is probably the most difficult time that any of us have experienced where the nation has been faced with such grave challenges. I know people who are virtually having meltdowns through fear and having panic attacks about what is happening. It is therefore important that we as the leadership should endeavour to speak sensibly and calmly and reassure people, rather than frightening them by constantly engaging in attack.
No one knows all the answers; the Government do not have them, nor, I suspect, do my friends in the Green Party, although I must say I agree with an overwhelming amount of what they are saying. It is important that we take our time over this issue and have a look to see just where we are. This House is particularly able to do that. We had three quite important debates last week that made us look to the future: a debate on the green economy, a debate on well-being and the debate of the noble Lord, Lord Bird, about relationships with the younger generation, on which I think we should be spending more and more of our time. So we had that run last week and now we have this debate today.
It is important that we look at some of the fundamentals behind this issue. Why do we have it now? Are the Chinese to blame, or is this something that is happening around the earth for which we all, in different ways, have some responsibility? We are already talking about getting back to our pursuit of ever more non-stop growth as quickly as we can, but we really are at a point where we have to start questioning the nature of the growth that we have. Perhaps we need some growth but in a different direction entirely from that which we have produced in the past. I hear from friends in business that the factories in China are now back and waiting for orders, waiting to start producing the trash and rubbish, much of it, which we have been calling on them to produce at low prices and which we then discard so quickly, harming the planet in the process.
We all have to accept a degree of responsibility for where we are. What faces us at the moment is part of a piece of what we have witnessed over the last two to three years, with the famines, fires, flooding and the list gets ever longer about the pestilences that come our way. We need to start realising that we are relatively powerless. In spite of the size of our brains and intellects, we are powerless when we come up against the real power in the world—the power of nature and of the Almighty behind that. This is not the kind of thing that people talk about easily these days—it embarrasses people—but that is the reality we face at the moment. It is a very different set of circumstances to anything we have seen for a very long time. There is an opportunity for positive change within this. The important thing is that we have to work together to get that change.
I was disappointed that the Budget did not look far enough down the line. I pick up the point from the noble Lord, Lord Skidelsky: this will have to be paid for in future. It is wrong that it is again the young who will have to pick up the tab rather than the older in society, who in many ways are responsible for some of the problems we currently face. I hope we can look to start now with some changes. Why did we not reimpose the regulator, the duty RPI link, on fuel? We have seen that the price of fuel has collapsed with the fight between the Saudis and Russians; it has dropped down from £1.35 to £1.26 or £1.27. It is the perfect opportunity to reintroduce the escalator, which we need. The Conservatives know that prices count and that people’s behaviour is changed and governed by pricing, so I ask the Government to look again at the decision they took last week to fail to move on it.
I will not mention what the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Rochester said about duty on alcohol; people have heard me go on about this before. We have so many ill people, and here we are reducing the price of alcohol so that they will become ill. This is the kind of living we are talking about—living longer, yes, but living unwell. We must seek to effect changes there. Underneath all that is the sugar tax, which was not even mentioned. We have major problems in our society with obesity and its costs. We should look at the sugar tax and see whether it should be extended and widened beyond what it is already operated on.
There are things we can do to make sure that in the long term we are preparing for a different, better society than the one we have. I hope the Minister will take some of those points away and maybe respond in his reply.
Ministers: Training
Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe Excerpts(6 years, 7 months ago)
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Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what training and guidance is provided to their Ministers on (1) bullying and harassment, (2) diversity and inclusion and (3) staff management; and how many current Ministers have completed any such training.
The Minister of State, Cabinet Office (Lord True) (Con)
My Lords, the Ministerial Code provides advice and guidance to Ministers on the standards of conduct that they are expected to uphold and the way in which they should discharge their duties. Obviously, Ministers are also traditionally able to seek further advice and guidance within the departments. The Government do not hold central records of training undertaken by Ministers.
Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)
I welcome the noble Lord to his first performance on the Front Bench and congratulate him on his appointment.
I hope that, on reflection, the noble Lord may go back to the department and see whether it can be a little more precise in trying to follow this through. In Parliament, we now have a programme for training on abuse, harassment and so on. We should seek to apply that similarly at the highest levels where people have privilege and power, which is at ministerial level. I hope the noble Lord might reflect on whether something more formal could be established.
Secondly, given that we now have the freedom and have taken our power, we have an opportunity to have laws in this land better than those in Europe. As we have an employment Bill in prospect, will the noble Lord reflect on whether we could take the principles behind the Question on this Order Paper and see whether they could be applied to employment opportunities in general for people who have problems with abuse of power in general employment, so that we end up with a law that is better in this respect than that in Europe?
Referendums
Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe Excerpts(7 years, 4 months ago)
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Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)
I am also grateful to my noble friend Lord Soley for introducing this debate. It is a great pity we have so little time. One of the reasons for that is that we do not organise business democratically in this House. Maybe others will have the guts to try to turn it over, and maybe we will use a form of referendum to determine what we should be talking about, our priorities, on which days we should speak on them and for how long. If we can do that for ourselves, we should then be prepared to trust the people out there and do it for them. Much wisdom was spoken by my noble friend Lord Parekh about what we need to do.
The first big change we should make for any future referendum comes back to the accountability of individuals; they should be required to show publicly how they voted, as we do here. That would be a major move towards getting people to start acting responsibly and playing a part. We have to move on this because, make no mistake, this was not the last referendum. There will be many more demands for other ways to be involved in parliamentary activities, and we should not be afraid of this.
Representative democracy itself is at risk, because so many MPs now act like delegates rather than the representatives they used to be. If they are doing that, they are not playing their former roles. Instead, we should be looking for a participative democracy, because we now have the technology, which is being used in many different ways and will develop even further. The public out there will use it. Millions vote every Saturday evening in entertainment programmes. We may not be involved, but they are doing it; they want their say.
Some 6 million people signed a petition to revoke Article 50 and we have totally ignored it, yet they were moved to do it. A host of changes are being made to how people participate in society and through social media. Parliamentarians and the parties are way behind. People should look at what Tony Blair said on this recently, as he is on the cusp of the coming change. If we do not move with it, we will be swept away by it. The people will take it and then we will have real trouble.
Verify: Digital Identity System
Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe Excerpts(7 years, 10 months ago)
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Lord Young of Cookham
The noble Lord knows much more about this than I do. It is the case that HMRC has its own service, the Government Gateway. Since it developed that service, Verify has come along. Obviously one would like to migrate from Government Gateway to Verify and encourage other departments so to do. I am not wholly convinced that we need legislation to do that—I will go back to my department in the light of what the noble Lord said—but we need to win the hearts and minds of government departments and persuade them to make more services available on Verify. That impetus is, I hope, gathering momentum.
Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)
My Lords, can the noble Lord explain what Verify will do to make our borders safe after Brexit? Will he now review his position on compulsory and voluntary ID and agree that the only way for us to have safe borders is by a compulsory form of recognition?
Lord Young of Cookham
I am not convinced that compulsory ID cards would stop the illegal entry into this country of a whole range of people. The noble Lord will know that in 2010, legislation was passed to scrap the ID legislation introduced by the previous Labour Government. We have no plans to reintroduce such legislation.
Meetings with Ministers
Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe Excerpts(8 years, 7 months ago)
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Lord Young of Cookham
There will be due scrutiny of those who bid for the prizes. These are meetings that do not involve government property or government business but are undertaken by Ministers in their capacity as members of a political party, so my understanding is that they will not be official meetings with civil servants present.
Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)
My Lords, in 2013 the now noble Lord, Lord Lansley, introduced the lobbying Bill in the other place. It does not extend to activities such as those that the Minister just mentioned. Is that a satisfactory state of affairs? Should we not amend the lobbying Act to cover more of the activities now being revealed by the press?
Lord Young of Cookham
The Government are genuinely open to discussions about how we improve accountability and transparency in our political process. I am very happy to look at those proposals. In the past it has not been possible to achieve the sort of consensus one would like on these sensitive matters of political issue.
Policing and Crime Bill
Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe ExcerptsWednesday 7th December 2016
(9 years, 10 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: HL Bill 72-II(Rev) Revised second marshalled list for Report (PDF, 324KB) - (6 Dec 2016)
“( ) In that Act, after section 191(1)(i) insert—“(j) powdered or vaping alcohol.”( ) In the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971, in Schedule 2 (controlled drugs), Part III (class C drugs), after paragraph 1(e) insert—“(f) powdered or vaping alcohol.””
Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)
My Lords, in Committee I endeavoured to remove the Government’s redefinition of “alcohol” in the Licensing Act 2003 to cover alcohol “in any state”. I was worried that that covered powdered and vaping alcohol and I sought to remove them from the redefinition. The Minister argued that we really needed to establish the legal status of powdered and vaping alcohol and that if my amendment was accepted, it would have left us still in an unclear position about the legal status of those products, and we needed clarity. I accepted her argument and suggested that the difficulty might be overcome if we decided to class powdered or vaping alcohol as class C substances under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 or prohibit their production, supply, import or export by an amendment to the Psychoactive Substances Act 2016. Either course of action would resolve the legal status and leave beyond any doubt where these two substances stood. Accordingly, I asked the Minister to remove Clause 117, which sought to cover alcohol in all forms, but she was not prepared to do that at that stage.
Today I have returned to the subject and have tabled an amendment which would no longer allow powdered or vaping alcohol to be classed under the 2003 Act; instead, they would fall under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971. I will not repeat all the arguments I made at Second Reading and in Committee, in the light of what has been happening in America, where the number of states that have banned these substances has gone up from the 26 I mentioned when we discussed this subject previously to 32. Of particular interest is that they have now been banned in California. Governor Jerry Brown signed a Bill into law on 28 September. Of course, this is a state which on 8 November voted to legalise recreational marijuana. So California is prepared to legalise marijuana but will not permit powdered alcohol to be sold in the way that our Government will permit, if this clause remains.
How have we got to this position? As I understand it, there was a consultation in the summer in which the Home Office spoke primarily to representatives of the drinks industry, it pondered what it should do with these technological developments as they come along, and it was decided that it was better that they should be legalised for sale. For all the reasons I have advanced previously—you can take powdered alcohol anywhere, you can mix it with existing drinks, you can take it into prisons very easily, and so on—I urge the Government to think again before they move forward in this way. I ask the Minister to consider accepting the solution that the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, and I are offering. It is straightforward and very much in line with what is happening in the States and elsewhere.
Given all the problems we have with liquid alcohol and with drugs in prison, it is quite wrong to be legalising the sale of these substances. I believe the public would share that view. If they knew what we were debating today, they would be absolutely outraged that we are about to legalise these substances so that in due course people can be vaping alcohol and using the powder. In the hope that I have been as reasonable as I could be in trying to see the Minister’s point of view and have endeavoured to help her as best I can, I beg to move.
Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)
My Lords, it might help the House if I explain why the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, and I view this as quite such a dangerous substance and why it is quite different from alcohol in a liquid form, which one drinks. The reason is that powdered alcohol can be snorted, as can vaping alcohol. The problem is that it is then absorbed through the sinuses, directly through the blood-brain barrier, so that you get an immediate hit. You can get a very high hit in the brain with a very low blood-alcohol level because it has a direct route. If you drink a drink, as many of your Lordships probably will this evening, you will absorb it through the gut and it will go through the liver, where an enzyme called alcohol dehydrogenase partly metabolises it—it burns it up. It then goes into your bloodstream and then to your brain, so the amount getting to your brain will be reflected in a peripheral blood sample, which is where blood-alcohol levels are measured for driving and so on.
However, this powdered or vaping mechanism completely bypasses that. The problem is also that it is extremely difficult to detect, but the rapid high is much higher and faster than one would get even with a schnapps-type drink that might be downed quickly. That effect is particularly dangerous. In an important study done in the US, more than 1,800 undergraduate students were interviewed and 23% indicated that they would use the product if available. Of those, 62%—that is, just about two-thirds—also indicated a likelihood of misusing the product; that misuse was higher among Caucasian students and those who were already hazardous drinkers, who were significantly more likely to use it. We have tabled this amendment because we think this formulation is particularly dangerous and acts like a dangerous drug.
Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen
I thank the noble Baroness for that question. Home Office officials have discussed powdered alcohol with the Department of Health and Public Health England and are very much keeping it under review. They may well have to do things at a later date but, for now, they are just keeping a watchful eye on it.
Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe
I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, for her support and expertise, and to my noble friend Lord Kennedy for weighing in from my Front Bench with support for the amendment. As noble Lords might expect, I am disappointed with the Minister’s response. The Government have consulted —they consulted the drinks industry—but if they had consulted over a wider area, and particularly the committee to which the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, referred, I think they might have got an entirely different view in reaching their judgment on this classification.
I know quite a lot about the four objectives that govern the Licensing Act and, quite frankly, they are totally inappropriate in trying to deal with this. They were drawn up in the context of liquid alcohol, and there was a list of all the forms in which it is produced, but this is quite different. This is a move in an entirely different direction. I feel that, rather than take a serious look at this, the Government are simply applying the existing legislation as best they can, but they will not be able to implement it.
I will take the Minister’s arguments away, have a look at them and decide whether to come back again at Third Reading. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Hollins (CB)
My Lords, I will speak briefly to the evidence. An analysis was done in Switzerland comparing both novice and experienced drivers who had been fatally or seriously injured, and whether they had been drinking alcohol. The analysis compared two time periods, before and after reducing the legal limits, for 2011 to 2013 and 2014-15. In between-time, the limits in Switzerland were reduced to 20 milligrams for novices and 50 milligrams for others. The study found a larger reduction of serious alcohol-related accidents in both groups of drivers than of accidents without alcohol between the two time periods.
Early trends from Scotland with respect to the impact on fatal accidents of reducing the drink-driving blood alcohol levels to the same levels in December 2014 are also very promising. In 2010, the North report published by the Government reviewed drink and drug-driving laws, and modelled that a lower limit of 50 milligrams of alcohol in 100 millilitres of blood would save a significant number of lives. Applying those models to Scotland suggested that between three and 17 fewer deaths per year could be expected. The good news is that there seems to be a trend of that happening. In 2015, the first full year in which the reduced limit was in place, there were 24 fewer fatal accidents, a 13% reduction, and 98 fewer accidents involving serious injury—a 5% reduction.
As the noble Baroness said, it is difficult to attribute causation conclusively. However, is there really any reason why the results found in other countries should not also apply here? I strongly support a reduction in these limits to the same levels that apply in other UK jurisdictions. We must not forget that in May this year, your Lordships’ House also voted to support this reduction, anticipating that this could save as many as 100 lives a year. The measure is supported by a significant majority of the public.
Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe
My Lords, I am pleased to add my support to the two amendments of the noble Baroness, Lady Berridge. As she did, I express gratitude to the Minister for arranging the meeting we had with Andrew Jones, and for producing an evidence-based specialist to give us his views—which were very interesting but not totally conclusive. The House previously adopted a Private Member’s Bill opting to go down to 50 milligrams and got that through earlier in the year. We have not moved any further forward and the conversations yesterday did not seem to indicate much change in prospect. So where can we make some progress? Where is progress needed?
The man who spoke to us yesterday, Paul Williams, said that we really need to focus—I am sure the Minister will say this—on the hardened drinkers and drivers who persist and will not take any notice no matter what we do in changing the limit. He said that in his opinion people fall into two categories: they are either entirely selfish, which is what he was talking about with mainly males who do this; or they are sick. Yet if we look at the number of accidents on the roads where there is a link to alcohol, the disproportionate bulk is among young people. This is where Amendment 175 needs closer attention in future.
Young people are killing themselves on the roads for a whole variety of reasons. Some of them are drinking as well. It was quite disturbing to hear yesterday the Secretary of State say that it is perfectly all right for drivers to drink a glass of wine. For adults, maybe, yes, but it is quite unacceptable for young people—the ones suffering most in these accidents—to hear that. A lot of the accidents arise through their inexperience but they have almost been given encouragement to drink by the Secretary of State. I hope the Minister will take that message back. There is a problem here about younger people that must be focused on.
The Minister suggested that we should look at his report produced in December last year on improving safety on roads. I always take the advice of the Front Bench and looked at that last night, particularly the sections relating to young people. One area he mentioned in the course of the discussion was that young people will be permitted to drive on motorways with an experienced driver with dual controls. That is a good thing and it is in the report.
The other point the report makes is that £2 million is going to be spent on learner and probationary drivers, trying to get better-quality performances from them and to help them in a whole range of ways. I do not know why the Government are going to spend £2 million on this. The Department for Transport has had two previous reviews undertaken by the Transport Research Laboratory—the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, probably knows more about this than I do—focusing on the problems we have with younger drivers and deaths and accidents. It has come up with a range of suggestions, many of which have not been implemented, which might lead to a reduction in the number of people killed. In particular, it has said that we should try early on to get younger people not to drink. It has opted for 50. Amendment 175, which is modest and tries to address the big problem with young people, should not be so lightly dismissed in the way I rather sensed yesterday that we were being dismissed. We were told that there would be a continuing review but no specific review on Scotland. I hope I misunderstood the Minister and she will be able to say to the noble Baroness, Lady Berridge, that there will be a formal review of that. I particularly hope that she will say something more about young drivers.