Road Safety Bill [HL]

My Lords, the Government have an honourable record on road safety, which goes back to the days of Barbara Castle, who introduced the breathalyser, and pedestrian crossings. I think that the breathalyser did not get much support from the Prime Minister at the time, but nevertheless she got it through. I find it rather bizarre, but I may have to declare an interest in astronomy and horology because of the two questions that I will ask the Minister. They concern the earth’s rotation, the polar tilt, the seasonal changes, the equinoxes and the solstices. My first question relates to Clause 16, in particular the legality of speed assessment equipment. My second question concerns the summer-time period that seems to be excluded from the Bill, to which the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner of Worcester referred. First, we have come a long way from policemen lurking behind the bushes with a stopwatch to the so-called Gatso speed detection device. Some noble Lords will recall that this device is named after Maurice Gatsonides, the popular racing driver of the 1950s, on whose invention it is based. It takes two photographs half a second apart, from which the speed of the vehicle can be calculated and recorded. He invented the device to increase his speed going round corners on the race track. That led to my late friend Archie Scott-Brown being able to adopt the four-wheel drift, which means that you put the accelerator on when going round a corner while maintaining the curves. But in fact, Archie Scott-Brown could not get a driving licence because he was seriously disabled in that he had only one arm. That was a great tragedy because he was such a successful racing driver and could have shown people what can be overcome. However, I understand that all automatic law enforcement equipment on the roads must be based on the accurate timing of how and when an offence was committed. I suspect that split-second timing is required to give an accurate picture of a vehicle’s speed, and the clock used to undertake this task should also give the time and date of the alleged offence. The clocks and speed assessment devices will, I presume, take their time from the pips at Rugby, which is atomically-based time, known for short as UTC but known internationally as Co-ordinated Universal Time. That was also the title of a Bill I had the privilege of   steering through this House in 1997. It sought to co-ordinate the legal timescale of this country, as defined in the Interpretation Act 1978, with UTC time as transmitted by the pips from Rugby. That is the legal timescale of all the industrialised nations except the United Kingdom. The Bill passed through the House, but the Labour government of the day did not see fit to make it law. Indeed, some noble Lords may recall that during the Second Reading of the Bill, I anticipated that if different timescales were not harmonised, problems would arise in the law courts, where precise timing is an issue. I shall try to explain briefly the difference between the two timescales, one based mainly on the atomic timescale and the other on the rotational speed of the earth, which is the basis of our legal timescale. GMT is an earth rotation timescale that in the 1920s was renamed Universal Time. There is no such thing as GMT. UT was split into three different forms, with which I shall not weary the House. But GMT no longer has a formal definition. In fact, our legal timescale is Universal Time 1, but no clock in this country to which the civil population has access records UT1. The civil timescale, the pips from Rugby by which we all set our watches and clocks, is a hybrid based in part on the atomic timescale and in part on the rotation of the earth. Every year it is adjusted by what some people call the leap second. In 2007, because of the intricacies of GPS satellites and the forthcoming new Galileo satellite to be used for navigation purposes, it is quite possible that we will have to stop the leap second. That will mean that the legal timescale of this country will continue to become slower and more out of synch with the civil timescale by which we all set our clocks. I say again what I said in 1997. This issue could arise with the time-stamping of important mail, which has legal connotations and, indeed, in things like speed assessment devices. The devices use UTC, not the legal timescale. I feel that it is important for the Minister to say whether these devices are legal or illegal because they do not use the legal timescale of the country. I have tabled a Parliamentary Question for 22 June next in order to note that there is in fact a difference of seven seconds between the pips transmitted for digital radios and those transmitted for analogue radios. In relation to this Bill, where particular lengths of road are subject to timed systems so that at certain times a speed limit applies and at others it does not, if someone has a digital radio fitted in their car it will be seven seconds out. It is not fair for someone to be caught by an automatic system timed to the Rugby pips when in fact they would not have really broken the law. Some direction on that would be helpful. My next point concerns a matter raised by the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents, of which the Minister is a past president, and we have heard a very good speech from its current president. However, have they not read the parliamentary briefings that were distributed to myself and others on summer time? Having read the briefing, I went immediately to the Library in order to find out whether any reference is made to it in the Government paper, Tomorrow’s Roads: safer for everyone—the first three year review. I asked the staff to pick out the paragraph in which summer time would be covered so as to prepare for this debate. But I was told that it could not be found. I asked for the entire 51-page document to be printed out, and not one mention of summer time is made. I then asked about the first paper, Tomorrow’s Roads: safer for everyone 2000, again 51 pages long. How many noble Lords have read this stuff, I do not know. On going through that paper, I found in Chapter 5 some five lines which state:"““The conclusion was that this might save over 100 deaths per   year and taken together with serious injuries save well over 400 such casualties . . .  A saving of this magnitude is something we must take seriously””." How serious are five lines in all the bumf produced here? I do not call that serious at all. It states:"““But a change to SDST would have much wider ramifications which need to be considered””." What are we doing about this? How is it to be considered? I have raised the question about summer time on many occasions, as have other noble Lords. But it gets exactly the same answer as that of noble Lords on the other side of the House. Indeed, I think that the Liberal Democrats make the same link. They are dominated by their party managers. The party managers are advising the Government, Ministers and the parties opposite not to get involved with time change. We have before us a road safety Bill and they have avoided the question: only five lines among 75 pages of stuff on which the Bill has been based. Is this Bill about saving lives or not? I believe that it is. The detail of the Bill almost suggests setting roads tests for kids on tricycles. It goes right down the line, but it misses the point. Of course it has an answer for Scottish hill farmers. I have a declared interest as a Scottish hill farmer. My cows and sheep cannot read the hours on a clock. I have said that before. My shepherd does not mind an extra hour in bed. Anyway, most farming is now done indoors. People complain about buildings. Builders today work in plastic cocoons which are not affected by temperature and are supplied with plenty of internal light. It is a nonsense and it is for a purely political reason that this is not brought in. That is a disgrace. It ruins the whole of this well-intentioned Bill that is in the tradition of Labour’s efforts to improve road safety. When the Minister responds, I think that he must explain why the issue has been missed out this time. I just do not know. Will there be an amendment to the Bill? The motoring organisations, the AA Trust and the RAC Foundation, have both said that they would strongly recommend, along with RoSPA, the reintroduction of a trial period of continuous summer time. What on earth is wrong with that? The statistics we have to go on are years out of date. Why can they not be brought up to date? They are not brought up to date for political reasons. Tell the political managers to get lost and go back to road safety. I want to suggest that to the Minister. Will the Government incorporate an amendment or bring forward a separate Bill to introduce a trial period for lighter evenings similar to the one they threw out of the Commons only the other day, and similar to the experiment tried from 1968–71? If not, then on the last Saturday of this October, when we savour our extra hour in bed while we turn back the clocks, let us remember that we will be sentencing to death more than 100 unnamed men, women and children and consigning more than 400 unnamed children to hospital. Soon they will all have names, when they have been incorporated in an updated edition of the Government’s document Tomorrow’s Roads: safer for everyone on which the Road Safety Bill has been built.