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Drug Driving (Specified Limits) (England and Wales) (Amendment) Regulations 2015

It is only part of the argument because that would be true for ADHD patients. We took the issues back to the expert panel, which clarified that the point at which driving risk becomes significant with amphetamine is 270 micrograms. We did not want to set a line at 270. We wanted to have a little bit of a margin. The medical community felt that doctors could safely prescribe within 250. With 270 defined by the expert panel as the level at which risk would significantly increase, the Government coalesced around the 250 number. Obviously many people looking at enforcement discourage the use of amphetamine at all, and that is one of the attractions of using the lower number. In the process of pursuing all this, we recognised that setting it at 50, which had been one of our early thoughts in this process, was too low. We were not gaining anything in terms of safety, other than the deterrent effect, and we were potentially encouraging wrong decisions by people who have ADHD and need to take medication. They might end up not taking it because of their concerns over the benchmark.

Going back to the expert panel that advised the Secretary of State took a significant amount of time. That is what brought us much closer to this deadline. With the law going into effect on 2 March, it is appropriate for us to come forward with the decision rather than go through a consultation that we have no reason to believe will yield any information that we have not already received in the course of the first two consultations and the informal work that has taken place.

I agree very much that that has been a complicated process. It is difficult to describe and sometimes frustrating to have to listen to, so I apologise for that.

I also have to say to the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, that—as always—he has picked up on a genuine typo and error within one of the explanatory memoranda, although I am now uncertain which one it is. We can confirm it later. He was talking about the percentage of convictions. The figure 72% applies to 2013—it is a typo in whichever document that said it was 2012. The figure 54% applied to 2012, so it was a failure to change the date from one document to the other. If he would like, I am happy to ask officials to write to him just to provide some clarification. This has been a very good lesson in the need to double check numbers although I have to say that, given the complexity of this, officials have done some brilliant work.

I have covered the key questions from the noble Lord, Lord Rosser. I now come to those from my noble friend Lord Dundee who raised the question of how to improve road safety standards here and internationally, with drug-driving as an element of that. In the Deregulation Bill we removed some loopholes around drug-driving and drink-driving provisions that allowed people to disregard roadside screening and insist on a blood test, during which time their levels could have changed. Loopholes like that have been removed within by Deregulation Bill.

I have spoken in debates in the House about whether we should be taking further actions to limit the circumstances in which young or new drivers can drive. It has also been a difficult balancing act because access to training, education and jobs frequently requires young people to drive. Indeed, we also want them to participate in the workplace more generally. The direction that we have chosen to go in is that rather than restricting the passengers they can carry or various other kinds of restrictions, we are looking at trialling work going on now with the insurance companies looking at the use of telematics. I can send the noble Lord all the details. As I have described in the House, telematics is a gizmo which sits in the vehicle and communicates with the insurance company to give an ongoing, running assessment of the quality of driving. Is it speeding, is it rough, is it erratic? All those kinds of behaviour can be fed back into the car itself. Anyone looking to purchase insurance and going on to the various insurance websites will find that if they permit telematics to be installed in their car they will in fact nearly always get a much cheaper insurance package. That looks to be the direction. We are trying to verify that there is a genuine relationship between the feedback from the telematics and safer driving. As we get the answers to that, that may well provide us with the direction to go so that we let young people have their freedom but yet have ways of ensuring that driving standards improve.