Angel v Chief Constable of South Yorkshire

For the purposes of Road Traffic Act 1988, section 73(c), the relevant condition is the suspect’s condition at the time of the alleged driving offence. The medical practitioner is not confined to observations made at the police station. He or she may consider all relevant information about the suspect’s earlier condition, including facts reported by police officers. The statutory advice concerns whether that earlier condition might be due to a drug. A requirement to provide a blood specimen is therefore lawful where the practitioner reaches the necessary view from the suspect’s condition and relevant earlier information.

The claimant appealed by case stated against his conviction by South Yorkshire Justices for failing, without reasonable excuse, to provide a blood specimen. He had been stopped after a police officer detected the smell of cannabis and a preliminary impairment test indicated impairment. At the police station, the police surgeon was told about the earlier events and advised that the claimant’s earlier condition might be due to drugs, although she found no medical explanation from his condition at the station.

The central issue was whether section 73(c) of the Road Traffic Act 1988 permitted the medical practitioner to consider the suspect’s condition at the time of the alleged offence and information about it, or required consideration only of the condition observed at the police station.

1. Appeal dismissed. The requirement to provide a blood specimen was lawful.
2. Section 73(c) of the Road Traffic Act 1988 concerns the suspect’s condition at the time of the alleged offence. That is the condition for which the suspect was arrested and investigated, and to which the specimen of blood would be relevant.
3. The medical practitioner may consider all relevant information relating to the suspect’s earlier condition. The practitioner is not restricted to the results of the examination at the police station. In an appropriate case, the condition observed at the station may itself be sufficient, but it is not the exclusive source of information.
4. The court regarded this approach as consistent with common sense and supported by section 15 of the Road Traffic Offenders Act 1988, which provides the relevant statutory assumption concerning the proportion of alcohol or drugs in a specimen.
5. Cole v Director of Public Prosecutions [1988] RTR 224 did not determine the issue arising in the present appeal. Its wording was not sufficiently clear to confine the medical practitioner’s assessment to the condition observed at the police station.
6. The court answered the justices’ questions by holding that the relevant condition was the condition at the time of the alleged offence, that MG DD/B paragraph 22 was relevantly correct, and that the claimant had been lawfully required to provide a blood specimen. The appropriate order was also made under section 11 of the Access to Justice Act.

• South Yorkshire Justices: convicted the claimant of failing, without reasonable excuse, to provide a blood specimen.
• High Court (Administrative Court): on appeal by case stated, dismissed the appeal and upheld the lawfulness of the specimen requirement.