MPs call for a cut in the drink-drive limit

JASON BENNETTO

Crime Correspondent

The amount motorists can drink and then drive should be reduced and the police should be allowed to carry out random breath tests, a committee of MPs recommended yesterday as part of a package of measures to reduce alcohol-related crimes.

The all-party group on alcohol misuse also called for a ban on people drinking from bottles in pubs and the introduction of toughened glasses to reduce injuries caused during drunken brawls. They suggested that magistrates should consider refusing to renew licences to pubs that run lower-priced "happy hours" because they encourage people to drink large amounts of alcohol quickly.

In their report Alcohol and Crime: Breaking the Link, the MPs urged the Government to introduce a national strategy to tackle alcohol abuse. They criticised the "low priority" the issue is given and concluded that "alcohol continues to be a marginalised factor, especially when compared with drugs".

They hope the report's 43 recommendations will help significantly reduce crimes and injuries. The British Medical Association, as part of the evidence the committee received during its four-month inquiry, estimate that two in three killings, three-quarters of all stabbings and half of all fights are associated with alcohol.

The MPs hope to prevent incidents such as the attack on Daniel Hodges, 23, son of the Labour MP Glenda Jackson, who lost his sight in one eye and was badly scarred when hit in the face with a beer glass after he tried to intervene in an argument in a south London pub in 1992.

Alan Milburn, chairman of the group, said: "This report calls for tough action on drink-related crime. While we regularly see new initiatives taken to tackle crime not one has ever made a serious attempt to address the role played by drink. This report says that the time has come to break the link between alcohol and crime."

Among the initiatives the MPs seek are greater education about the dangers of drinking. More treatment should be provided for offenders who regularly abuse alcohol and magistrates should make better use of rehabilitation facilities during sentencing.

Courts should also make greater use of powers to ban troublemakers from all pubs and clubs. The MPs recommend increasing the "drinking-up time" from 20 to 30 minutes and they want tougher enforcement of existing rules to prevent the sale of alcohol to under-aged drinkers.

The group - which heard evidence from police officers, magistrates, prison governors, probation officers and the drinks trade - also recommended that the legal limit of alcohol in the blood should be reduced by more than one-third, from 80 to 50mg per 100ml.

Alcohol Concern welcomed the report, and said that "urgent action is needed to tackle alcohol-related crime, which has always been a poor relation to drug- related crime".

The Portman Group, which represents the drinks industry, questioned the MPs' assumption that crime is directly caused by alcohol misuse. It pointed to the report Low in Alcohol, published recently, that said alcohol consumption has no direct connection with crime.