Drink-drive limit in England will not be cut, Transport Secretary confirms because ministers do not want to penalise motorists having ‘a glass of wine at the pub’
Drivers should not be penalised for having one glass of wine, said Transport Secretary Chris Grayling
Mr Grayling said he wants police to focus on ‘serious’ drink-drivers
Scotland lowered its drink-drive limit in 2014, but England will not follow suit
Source: Daily Mail
By Jason Groves for the Daily Mail
6 December 2016
The drink limit will not be cut as ministers do not want to penalise motorists for simply having ‘a glass of wine at the pub’, Transport Secretary Chris Grayling said yesterday.
Ministers have been under pressure to act on drink-driving since Scotland cut its limit in 2014, resulting in a reported fall in road deaths.
A coalition of road safety organisations wrote to Mr Grayling in October calling for the Government to follow the lead of Scotland, where a single large glass of wine can be enough to put a driver over the limit.
But Mr Grayling yesterday said he was not interested in penalising drivers who have had ‘a glass of wine at the pub’. He said ministers wanted police to focus instead on dealing with the hard core of ‘serious’ drink-drivers who continue to pose a menace.
‘We have a drink-drive problem, but it’s not people who had a glass of wine at the pub, it’s people who systematically flout the law,’ he told London’s Evening Standard.
‘We have a fairly thinly stretched police force and we should concentrate on catching the serious offenders.’
In comments that will raise eyebrows among road safety campaigners, Mr Grayling also admitted he had used a mobile phone at the wheel – but said it was ‘many years ago’ before the dangers were fully understood.
He insisted he had never sent a text message at the wheel, describing the practice as ‘completely unacceptable’.
In February this year, Transport Minister Andrew Jones said he would discuss the impact of a cut in the drink-drive limit with counterparts in Scotland.
Speaking at the time, he said it was ‘important to base our decisions on evidence and the Scottish experience will be crucial to that before we consider any possible changes to the limits in England and Wales’.
But Mr Grayling’s comments yesterday suggest the issue is effectively dead.
His intervention will cheer many moderate drinkers and country pubs. But it will dismay road safety campaigners, who warn that England has made ‘no progress’ in reducing the damage caused by drink-driving since 2010.
Scotland broke away from the UK on drink-driving in December 2014 when it lowered its limit from 80mg of alcohol per 100ml of blood to 50mg.
The new limit north of the border is equal to about one small glass of wine for a woman or a large glass for a man.
Police figures suggest drink driving offences in Scotland fell by 12.5 per cent in the nine months after the new limit was imposed – although critics say it is too early to show definitively that the move has made a difference.
In October, a coalition of health campaigners, emergency services and road safety campaigners are to call on ministers to cut the drink-drive limit, which is set to be the highest in the EU if Malta presses ahead with plans for a reduction.
The group, which included the RAC Foundation, road safety group Brake, and the Police Federation, said there had been ‘no progress’ on reducing the impact of drink driving on the roads of England and Wales since 2010.
Alcohol-related road deaths have plateaued at about 240 a year in recent deaths, with a further 8,000 people injured in drink-driving incidents every year.
Katherine Brown, director of the Institute of Alcohol Studies, said: ‘Progress on drink-driving has ground to a halt. It’s time the Government looked at the evidence and what other countries are doing to save lives and make roads safer.
‘We need to make drink-driving a thing of the past, and to do this we need a lower drink-drive limit.’