Ex-Minister pleads guilty in drink-drive case

Ex-Minister pleads guilty in drink-drive case

Ex-Minister pleads guilty in drink-drive case

The former Treasury Minister, Geoffrey Robinson, has pleaded guilty to failing to give a breath test.

He was banned from driving for one year and fined £1,000 at the Magistrate’s Court in Walsall today.

Mr Robinson, a former Paymaster General, was stopped by police on the A454 Black Country Route in Walsall on 14th December last year. The officers found Mr Robinson driving his Jaguar erratically and arrested him on suspicion of driving a vehicle while unfit through drink or drugs.

The former minister protested that he had only had two glasses of red wine and was submitted for a breathe test at the police station as the officers did not have a breathalyser on them at the time of the arrest.

The court was told that the officer in charge at the time believed that when Mr Robinson was asked to blow into the breathalyser, he appeared to have been pretending.

Mr Robinson changed his plea to guilty when the clerk read out the charges at the beginning of the case.