My Lords, can I intervene on myself? I totally understand what noble Lords are saying. I am not trying to compare us to other countries but to demonstrate that where there is a combination of factors, such as enforcement and type of penalty regime, different results are thrown up. It is not just the drink-drive limit that has an effect, albeit that we have, of course, reduced ours—our enforcement is also very strong. I hope I have made it clear that it is not just the limit that is important but other factors, too. I am now going to provide a bit more detail, which noble Lords will be relieved to hear.
The Department for Transport collects coroners’ data. Of drivers killed on the road, over 72% have little or no alcohol in their systems—and I am talking here about 0 to 9 milligrams of alcohol, which must be less than a sip of a glass of red wine. So, the vast majority of drivers killed on the road have no or little alcohol in their system; I will leave noble Lords to conclude why. Just over 3% have a blood alcohol content between 20 and 50 milligrams per 100 millilitres of blood, while a similar proportion, just under 3%, were found to have between 50 and 80 milligrams. However, the proportion of drivers killed jumps significantly to 17% for those with above 80 milligrams in their systems.
This is the evidence that shows us where the risk lies and therefore where we should target our efforts. But I emphasise that statistic about drivers killed on the road who have virtually no alcohol in their system—perhaps their deaths are a result of being elderly or less able to react to what is happening around them, but noble Lords will reach their own conclusions.
We do not, however, tolerate drug-impaired driving, which I think the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, asked about. That is why we introduced the new drug-driving offence in March 2015, setting specified limits for 17 drugs. The police are having success in taking these dangerous drivers off our roads and we are on target to convict over 7,000 drug drivers in 2016 compared to 879 in 2014. Indeed, 20% of drug-drivers convicted between 2009 and 2014 had previous drink-driving convictions. Our evaluation of the new drug-driving law has also highlighted just how dangerous these drivers are: 63% of those convicted in 2015 under the new Section 5A law had a previous conviction; 22% were serial offenders with more than 11 offences to their name. It means that we will be taking more than 1,500 drug- driving offenders who are also serial offenders off our roads this year.
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We think that the drink-driving limit for England and Wales strikes an important balance between safety and personal freedom. By retaining the present drink-driving limit, we are not criminalising those who drink a small amount a long time before driving, but targeting the most dangerous individuals. Meanwhile, our advice remains unchanged: do not take the risk by driving after you have had a drink.
My noble friend Lady Berridge talked about the report on whether lowering the limit will change the behaviour of all drivers. The report showed that opinion is split on whether a lower limit would actually deter drink-drivers. Indeed, the majority of those who would like the limit to be lowered—66%—think that it would not have an impact anyway because a change in the law is unlikely to deter habitual drink-drivers. We therefore consider it a much better use of resource to prioritise enforcement efforts to identify and deal with those dangerous individuals.
The noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe, and the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, asked about Scotland. The law in Scotland was not changed until the very end of 2014 and the stats from 2015 will become available in the summer of 2017. There was also a question—I am sorry that I cannot remember which noble Lord asked it—on whether the real reason to maintain the higher limit is not that the Government are putting the pub trade before saving lives. That is not the case at all. It would, however, have been helpful if the Scottish Government had carried out a full assessment and evaluation of the wider impacts, as a lot of noble Lords have asked for today, which would be required before we changed the law in England and Wales. We are aware that some of the Scottish media and some stakeholders have pointed to sports clubs seeing a 70% reduction in bar takings but the timing of the evaluation is a matter for the Scottish Government.
I think we share a common objective, especially in the run-up to Christmas, of wanting to see a reduction in the number of people killed and injured on our roads as a result of drink-driving. However, I put it to noble Lords that the most effective way to achieve this is not through this amendment but through the continued robust enforcement of the current law.