HL Deb 28 February 1997 vol 578 cc1418-22

11.35 a.m.

The Earl of Courtown rose to move, That the draft order laid before the House on 13th February be approved [13th Report from the Joint Committee].

The noble Earl said: My Lords, this order concerns an experimental scheme providing an incentive for drink-drive offenders to attend courses whose purpose is to persuade them not to re-offend. The incentive is that if they complete the course satisfactorily the court which referred them to it will reduce their period of disqualification from driving by up to 25 per cent. Only certain courts are involved in the experiment and able to make the referrals—a point I shall return to later—and the courses must be approved by the Secretary of State for Transport.

The effect of this order is very simple: the present powers for the experiment are due to lapse at the end of this year and the order will extend the duration of the experiment by two years until the end of 1999. Parliament will have a further opportunity before that date to decide whether to make the legislation permanent and remove the restrictions that apply to it while the experiment is under way.

Your Lordships may recall that the experimental powers were introduced by the Road Traffic Act 1991. These empower courts to make orders referring drink-drive offenders to courses and to specify a reduced period of disqualification if the course is successfully completed. Referrals are made at the discretion of the court and can be made only if the offender is willing to be referred and to pay the course fee. At the end of the course the organiser must either issue a certificate of completion, which the offender sends to the court, or a notice of non-completion which can be appealed against. The Secretary of State may issue guidance to course organisers on the conduct of courses.

Even before the legislation came into force there had been some experimentation in rehabilitating drink-drive offenders, notably by the Probation Service, with courts making referrals under the terms of probation orders. Some of these date back to the 1980s. The North review of road traffic law which reported in 1988 recognised their value as a constructive means of reforming attitudes or behaviour which might be inconsistent with a person's safety as a driver. The members of that committee were particularly impressed with courses run by the Hampshire Probation Service which served as a model for many subsequent ones. The North review therefore recommended that the courses should be established first on an experimental basis and should be carefully monitored and evaluated as a necessary precaution before making the heavy investment in time, skills and money that would be necessary to have the courses established on a permanent basis.

The Transport Research Laboratory has been monitoring the effectiveness of the courses and has been issuing regular progress reports. The latest of these provides evidence that course attenders are considerably less likely to re-offend than those who have not attended courses.

The current experiment relates to England, Wales and Scotland. A Northern Ireland order approved last year provides for a similar experiment in the Province but this still has to be set up. In mainland Great Britain around 500 courses have so far been run involving more than 5,000 offenders and 23 approved course organisers.

The question must arise: if the experiment has been so successful up to now, why is it necessary to extend it? Why can we not simply progress to a permanent and nationwide scheme which can benefit all drink-drive offenders? The main reason is fairly technical. The experiment intended to monitor two similar groups of people, one of which had taken the courses and the other of which had not. However, this assumed that virtually everyone who had agreed in court to attend a course and had been served an order would turn up and do so. These people could then be matched fairly accurately to a "control" group from another court. However, there was a much higher than predicted drop-out rate—people who agreed to an order being served but never took the trouble to attend the course. I am not talking about people who started a course but did not complete it—they form a relatively small group—but about those who did not even give it a try.

The problem for the researchers is that they know very little about those "drop-outs", but it is quite likely that their characteristics are rather different from those of the people who did participate. This makes it more difficult to interpret the data about the value of the courses, since it suggests that those who attended were self-selecting to a greater extent than we anticipated. These difficulties are not insuperable, but they do mean that we need a greater degree of confidence in the data we have got, and the most straightforward way of getting that is to monitor the effect of the courses for a little longer. If we track all the offenders in the experimental and control groups for a full three years from the date of the offence, we shall do better than if we just look at the position reached in the middle of 1997. This means extending the experiment by a further two years.

But extending the period will provide further opportunities too. We hope to use this next phase to extend the geographical spread of courses by designating further court areas, thus making the courses available to a larger number of drink-drive offenders and allowing further providers of courses to enter the field. A number of the existing providers of courses have the capacity to serve additional courts or expand to nearby towns, and an interest in doing so. We are looking for further opportunities to attract new interest in providing courses.

The rehabilitation scheme I have described can play an important part in the Government's continuing efforts to reduce drinking and driving by preventing people from re-offending, whether they be first time or repeat offenders. Drinking and driving is one of the most avoidable causes of road deaths. Certainly, we have made great progress in the past 10 years in reducing road deaths involving driving over the legal limit. But still around one in six of all road deaths is drink-drive related, so there must be no let up in the Government's measures to combat this problem.

Bearing in mind this and the encouraging initial results that I have mentioned, I commend this order to your Lordships and hope that you will give it your full support. I beg to move.

Moved, That the draft order laid before the House on 13th February be approved [13th Report from the Joint Committee].—(The Earl of Courtown.)

Lord McIntosh of Haringey

My Lords, the House will be grateful to the noble Earl for that comprehensive introduction. Let me say immediately that we welcome the provision of courses and the experiment which has been described. We shall therefore welcome the order itself. However, as a survey researcher, perhaps I may be forgiven one or two comments on the research issues which the noble Earl has discussed.

It is clearly right that there should be an experimental as well as a control group for the research. I also accept that the number of drop-outs before the course has even started seriously affects the credibility of the research design. I have two questions about that. First, why are the courses made available only to those who agree in court at the time of the imposition of the ban? Would it not have been possible to have approached those who were already banned to ask them whether they would be interested in taking part in the courses, with the obvious benefit of a reduction in the period of disqualification? That could have increased the number of cases studied in the experiment, and made it possible to reach a conclusion earlier than was originally intended.

My second comment is less critical. I understand the need to continue the experimental period, and I welcome what the noble Earl said about the extension of the experimental programme into new court areas—either completely new areas or by extension from the existing experiment. We support the order.

The Viscount of Falkland

My Lords, I welcome the order to a good degree. I declare my interest as a deputy chairman of the all-party group on alcohol misuse. Our group follows carefully the measures which have been taken by the Government. I congratulate the Government on what they have done recently to address the difficult problem of those who, in particular, re-offend in the drinking and driving area.

Perhaps I may follow what the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh of Haringey, said. The problem arises principally with repeat offenders. There has been a change in our culture towards drinking and driving. When I was a young man—I readily confess it—the attitude towards drinking and driving was much less stringent than it is now. Most young men and young women were at some stage, I am afraid, in charge of a vehicle when they were clearly not in a position to be so. Nowadays that is rare.

There is no doubt of the deterrent effect of police activity in stopping young drivers, in particular—it is not young drivers, I might add, who are generally the main offenders nowadays—to give them a sharp lesson which they will never forget. Over 15 or 20 years, that has had the effect of reducing the incidence of first-time drinking and driving offenders. If they are sensible, people nowadays—one hopes that young people are sensible—will ensure that they do not drive cars when they go to parties and that someone who has not been drinking does so. That is generally the pattern nowadays, and that is to be welcomed.

The problem of course arises with people who have a drinking problem. Most people drive cars nowadays. I am afraid that people with drinking problems drive cars. When I say "drinking problems" I do not mean people who are, in the accepted sense, addicts—that is, alcoholics—but people who may well end up that way and who are not easily persuaded that they should not drink and drive. It is those people whom one must target, and who will be effectively targeted by the Government's measures. It is those that we welcome.

The noble Lord, Lord McIntosh of Haringey, mentioned the problem of people who may not agree to take the training at the court stage. Of course someone who has a drink problem, as with any other person who has an addiction problem, is often in what is termed a state of denial. It is often only people who are known by their relatives, who can bring pressure upon them, who might accept the possibility of having this kind of training.

Even so, the courses may not be effective, in which case that must be identified during the course. That is why we should watch the results carefully. I am delighted that there is to be this extension, because we need more information in order to target the people who are most likely to be at risk themselves and ultimately a risk to other road users.

This is a very important development. I welcome it more than I welcome the idea of being more severe with random tests on the roads, and so forth, which have been called for in many quarters. I do not agree with that. One needs now to give road users who have decided not to drink and drive something of a pat on the back rather than to make life more difficult for them. One needs to target, as the Government are doing here, those who, if they do not have an alcoholism problem, have a drinking and driving problem which requires proper treatment. I was delighted to hear the noble Earl say that there is an indication that these courses are reducing the number of offences. We shall monitor the matter carefully. I am sure that my congratulations to the Government on this morning in particular are welcome. I hope that in many, many years' time, perhaps, we shall have the occasion to congratulate the noble Earl's party again on this matter.

Lord Skelmersdale

My Lords, I had not intended to intervene in this short debate, but it is noticeable that both Front Bench speakers opposite, although I agree with every word they have said in support of the order, mentioned the likelihood that what my noble friend called the "drop-out rate"—in other words, the non-participation rate—will continue in the same way as it has heretofore. The noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, made suggestions on curing the problem which are dependent on a supposition, but what gives the Government the confidence that the continued experiment will be more successful?

Viscount Simon

My Lords, I wonder whether I am alone in thinking that the words "courses for drink-drive offenders" could be completely misinterpreted and should have been preceded by the word "rehabilitation"?

Nonetheless, I am delighted that the experimental' period is being extended. I am of the understanding that these courses have had some success in the West Country, have been adopted by at least one other police force and are under consideration by others which are looking at ways in which the legislation might possibly impinge upon the Road Traffic (New Drivers) Act 1995, funding for those unable to afford the course fee, and other matters, before making a decision. It should, of course, be recognised that what is successful in one part of the country will not necessarily be successful in another due to different local conditions. I am pleased that the Transport Research Laboratory is monitoring the results of the courses, as mentioned by the noble Earl, and I approve of the order.

The Earl of Courtown

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords for their support of the order. The noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, raised a point concerning the extension of the scheme to those part way through a ban. I understand that it is a direction of the courts that they enter into the scheme in the first place. The legislation does not allow people already disqualified to take the course. It is important that the court decides what the period of disqualification shall be, whether or not the course is taken.

A number of noble Lords mentioned the improvement in relation to re-offending. That is happening gradually. Furthermore, the drop-out rate is falling too.

In answer to the point made by the noble Viscount, Lord Simon, research will be completed in 1999 and the final report will then be published. However, we are already obtaining useful feedback. The latest evaluation shows that course attenders are considerably less likely to re-offend than those who have not attended the courses. Thirty months after sentencing, those who had attended courses were three times less likely to have re-offended than the "control group". Particularly encouraging results were achieved with offenders in the high-risk offender category who, because of the seriousness of their offences or repeat offences, are thought to present a particular danger to road safety.

After attending courses they were no more likely to re-offend than the low-level offenders who had attended. This is an important finding. There was some doubt about how suitable the courses would be for the high-risk offenders. There is also evidence from questionnaires completed by people who had attended the courses that the courses had helped to improve the offenders' knowledge of alcohol and its effects and of just how few drinks it takes in order for them to be over the legal drink-drive limit.

I hope that that and the other points that I have made have adequately demonstrated the value of continuing with this experiment. I commend the order to the House.

On Question, Motion agreed to.