asked the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will take steps to equip traffic police with tape recorders, as an experiment for charging drunken drivers, with a view to facilitating convictions at courts as a result of the submission of the tape.

No, Sir, not at present, because meantime I think that better evidence can be obtained by existing methods.

Is the noble Lady aware that there are one or two authorities which cannot get a doctor to testify in court against a drunk driver because he is, in some cases, humiliated by Smart Alec lawyers looking for escape clauses in the law? Is she further aware that by playing the tape the sound of the voice could help the court to decide the condition of the person concerned, and would not it be a deterrent to drunken driving? Will she bear in mind that in other countries this experiment has proved quite a remarkable success and have another look at it?

I said "not at present" but there is a view that to take tape recordings of speech is not necessarily reliable evidence of, for example, slurred speech, and that existing methods are more satisfactory.