Baroness Dianne Hayter calls for drink-drive action

Published: 25th November, 2010
by RICHARD OSLEY

A LABOUR peer has told the House of Lords how her mother was killed by a drink driver as she pressed for tougher rules on the road.

Baroness Dianne Hayter of Kentish Town told the Upper House she didn’t want more families to go through the same pain she and her family had suffered. She wants the alcohol limit for driving to be reduced and told peers that it was possible to prevent around 150 deaths a year.

Baroness Hayter called on the government to refuse “blandishments” from the drinks industry, which she said would be opposed to a change in the law.

In an exchange with the government’s transport spokesman in the Lords, Lord Attlee, she said: “I must declare an interest as a member of the campaign against drink-driving, my own mother having been killed by a drunken driver. Not a long-standing over-drinker. A normal drinker. 

“We could reduce drink driving from about 400 deaths a year by 150 deaths a year.”

Lord Attlee had spoken earlier in the debate of the difference be­tween “regulated drinkers” who knew how much they had drunk and were alarmed at the prospect of breaking the law and “unregulated drinkers” who drove without caring about how much they had consumed.

He said: “I have had no blandishments myself from the drinks industry and I am quite surprised at how little effort they are putting into lobbying the government.”

But Lord Attlee added in the debate heard earlier this month: “It is not clear to me how lowering the BAC (blood alcohol content) would have a significant impact on the regulated drinkers who have no intention whatsoever of not meeting their moral or legal obligations.”

The Labour government that lost power in May had commissioned a report by Sir Peter North which claimed a significant difference could be made by cutting the drink-drive limit.

Baroness Hayter, 60, joined the House of Lords in May through the working peer system. She has lived in Kentish Town for 24 years and is a former chairwoman of the Labour party.

“The announcement of my peerage was made on what would have been my late mother’s 99th birthday,” Baroness Hayter said earlier this year when she entered the House of Lords.

“Both she and my mother came from Wales. My grandfather was a miner, my father started out as a chauffeur and my mother was a nanny in ser­vice before they married.”