Government could ‘look at’ drink-drive laws amid rising deaths, says minister

Laws on drink and drug-driving could be reviewed amid concern about rising deaths on the roads, the Transport Secretary has suggested.

Heidi Alexander said it “might be time to have a look at those (laws)” as part of a wider effort to improve road safety, including new awareness campaigns.

Describing it as a “priority” for her, she told LBC on Friday: “This is a conversation that I’ve been having with officials in the first couple of weeks that I’ve been in post.

“I was appointed three weeks ago and one of the first things I said to do was to get the team in who are working on a new road safety strategy that my predecessor committed to. I think she was entirely right to do that.”

Her comments came two days after 19-year-old Thomas Johnson was jailed for nine years and four months for causing the deaths of three of his friends in a car crash in Oxfordshire last year.

Johnson had been inhaling laughing gas behind the wheel and driving at speeds of more than 100mph before losing control of his car and crashing into a lamppost and a tree.

But while Ms Alexander said she was in favour of more action on drink and drug-driving, she did not back calls for younger drivers to be banned from carrying passengers.

Drink-driving deaths reached a 13-year high in 2022, the latest year for which figures are available, with an estimated 300 people dying in crashes where at least one of the drivers was over the limit.

The drink-drive limit in England, Wales and Northern Ireland is 80mg of alcohol in 100ml of blood, but nowhere else in Europe has a limit above 50mg/100ml.

The Scottish Government reduced its limit to that level in 2014.

AA president Edmund King said: “We need more awareness campaigns and sustained police action to reduce this carnage.

“The Government is right to address drink and drug driving but we also feel there is merit in looking how Australia and New Zealand have reduced new driver and passenger fatalities by limiting the number of passengers for at least six months after passing their test.”