January 8, 2026 - 7:00am
On the day that he became Prime Minister, only 18 months ago, Keir Starmer promised his government would “tread more lightly” on our lives. Those of us who were skeptical of that promise have since been vindicated in spades. The new infringements on liberty have come thick and fast, from the imposition of VAT on private school fees to the endless stories of people being investigated and punished for speech crimes.
Labour’s latest idea is to tighten the law on drink-driving, bringing the limit down from 80 milligrams of alcohol per 100 milliliters of blood to 50mg per 100ml. This would radically alter the “one pint or one glass of wine and you’re all right” calculation under which many people still operate. It is part of the government’s wider road safety strategy, which aims to reduce deaths and serious injuries by 65% within a decade. This is a good and reasonable goal, but there are always trade-offs in public policy; there are always unintended consequences. We are entitled to question whether the costs of this approach — encroachment on individual liberty, the possible effects on pubs already reeling from tax hikes and rises in energy costs — are worth the likely benefits.
Britain’s roads are already very safe by comparison with most places in the world. Road deaths here have been in long-term decline for half a century. They have almost halved since 2005, although the fall has bottomed out somewhat in the last decade. Within Europe, Britain has a better road safety record, measured by deaths per million inhabitants, than Germany, Italy, France and Spain. All four of those countries set their blood alcohol limit at the 50mg mark, suggesting there is no straightforward relationship between strict drink-driving laws and reduced deaths. Czechia and Romania have a zero tolerance approach to drink-driving and yet have much higher per capita rates of traffic fatalities. Closer to home, two important studies have found no impact on road deaths from Scotland’s reduction of the drink-drive limit (in fairness, other countries report that reductions in legal limits did reduce fatalities).
Many, including public health experts, will regard all this as mere quibbling. How could anyone not want to move to a culture of zero tolerance for drink-driving? After all, don’t even small amounts of alcohol affect driving ability? In this view, the purported trade-off is trivial if not illusory, because obviously the possibility of saving lives is much more important than either a supposed right to enjoy a drink with your dinner, or the bottom line of rural pubs.
It is not easy to rebut this kind of argument, because any response to it is liable to appear callous. But it is simply not true that we should automatically favor any measure that could plausibly save lives, regardless of any other consideration. There are goods in life other than aggregate benefit. It is important that people be allowed to socialize together, and that they be able to make decisions about their own day-to-day behavior free from government interference. It is important that pubs continue to exist as places of conviviality, community and enjoyment.
We might also note that in terms of promoting road safety, one absolutely glaring problem at present is the weak sentencing regime for drivers who kill and maim. The great majority of people approach the issue of drinking and driving sensibly, within the existing rules. Perhaps the Government should try, just for once, clamping down on wrongdoers rather than punishing everyone.
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