Road Safety Bill [HL]

My Lords, I certainly echo that last sentiment. This has been a very interesting afternoon. I wish that I had at my disposal an hour or an hour and a half to reply—so many points have been raised, all of them salient—but I am restricted in time. I hope the House will recognise that if I do not cover every point. There is the obvious long-stop that this is Second Reading and we will investigate many of the points at some length in Committee, though I am not sure of the degree of enthusiasm with which we will do so. The noble Earl, Lord Attlee, asked whether I would be enthusiastic about additions to the Bill. The answer is ““No””. Governments always introduce Bills that are perfect but then have their imperfections identified to them. We never engage in amendments with any enthusiasm. But I shall put a best face on it. I am reconciled to the obvious fact that the Bill will be subject to considerable scrutiny in Committee—as we would expect. I should first welcome the new opposition Front-Bench transport team. I am not sure whether they regard their new positions as promotion, but they can join me, a glorified amateur, among a considerable range of specialists and experts in the Chamber who contribute to our transport debates, from which we all benefit. I welcome them aboard these debates. I am sure that we will have interesting times in working out how best together to promote the issues of transport and—particularly in this Bill—safety. Let me deal with one or two points that have been brought to the House’s attention by several Members. The noble Lord, Lord Hanningfield, and the noble Earls, Lord Peel and Lord Mar and Kellie, asked what the question of detection equipment was all about. What are we seeking to ban? In simple vernacular, we are seeking to ban jamming. We are not seeking to ban detection or devices that can be spotted by GPS systems or anything else. We want our cameras to be visible. That is why they are painted bright yellow. People need to know where speed restrictions are imposed. But we need to deal with the development of sophisticated devices in cars which enable people to jam cameras and even devices in a following police car which are seeking to measure the vehicle’s speed. So there is nothing obscure or malign about this. It is straightforward issue: we need to protect law enforcement. I am sure that the House would recognise the importance of that. The second issue—raised by the noble Lord, Lord   Hanningfield, who was supported by the noble Baroness, Lady Hanham—was about resources. Enforcement is of course crucial to road safety, and that relates to the resources available to the police. I should point out that a strategy on roads policy has been jointly agreed by the Home Office, Department for Transport and the Association of Chief Police Officers. We have committed ourselves to ensuring that there is a highly visible police presence on the roads. It is not just for catching those who have committed offences; it acts as a deterrent to ensure that people do obey the law. As we all recognise, our most effective guarantee of road safety is good behaviour on the road. I subscribe to the comments of all noble Lords—including those of the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, who has made them many times before—who emphasised that the real problem in road safety is behaviour rather than vehicle maintenance or other technical aspects of   road safety. The issue is how we behave on the road. By far the largest element in accidents is, unfortunately, driver error or driver malfeasance in committing offences and taking risks with their own and other people’s lives. The noble Lord, Lord Hanningfield, raised two issues on speed limits. I know that the party opposite managed to drag one or two small points on speed limits into their   manifesto—about extending the speed limit on motorways, because cars are so much safer these days. But motorways are a good deal more crowded these days, too. One runs into the back of slow-moving traffic on motorways a jolly site more quickly than one would   like almost all of the time on almost all of our motorways. So despite the improvements to cars—no one underestimates improvements in stopping distances—we need to protect safety on our motorways and 70 mph is quite fast enough. Increasing that speed would, in our view, lead to greater danger. The same argument applies to heavy goods vehicles. The noble Earl, Lord Attlee, said that they have greater visibility and that their stopping distances are increased by the fact that the driver sees a problem earlier. It might also be added that the driver is a professional and, therefore, might have sharper reactions. But the simple fact is that a greater number of accidents involve heavy goods vehicles than cars. Secondly, heavy goods vehicles travelling at 50 mph cannot stop as fast as cars doing 60   mph. That is why we have not moved towards increasing the limit on HGVs on single highways beyond 40 mph, due to the stopping distance. Noble Lords raised the question of where cameras were placed. The greatest canard running through all circles—certainly in political circles, because it has been placed there firmly by those who canvassed this line of argument—is that the cameras are there as revenue-raisers, that there is a lot of money being made from them and that they are nothing to do with safety. That is not so. Cameras can be placed only on the basis of partnership and agreement. It is not only the police who place cameras. They are not revenue-raisers. The resources raised by cameras must be devoted to safety procedures. Therefore, the suggestion that we have increased numbers of cameras on our roads in order to produce another ““stealth tax””—the only phrase that I can drag up—just will not do. Cameras are there because the roads on which they are placed have a clear history of safety problems. We will continue with that policy and will continue as assertively as we can to deny the concept that cameras are there for purposes other than to safeguard against bad driving on our roads. A number of noble Lords raised the issue of making first aid part of the driving test. In fact, I cannot remember a noble Lord who did not raise it. It is an attractive proposition. The indication from the Red Cross lobby is undeniable: giving immediate expert or competent attention to an individual hurt in a road accident can save a life. Failure to do so sometimes causes people to suffer greater injuries or even death. The problem is that we are constrained with regard to the driving test. We cannot reduce great sections of the driving test because, first, in our experience it has been built up to include measures that actually improve driving standards. Secondly, we are governed by European legislation in certain aspects of the test. The problem with first aid is obvious: it would add a substantial component to the driving test. There is also a problem with disabled drivers. Will they have to be able to administer first aid? What about those who are just squeamish? I had a friend who was a wonderful sportsman. He once came with me to the theatre to see ““This Sporting Life””. He collapsed into the aisle of the theatre because blood of any kind, even stage blood, had an instant effect on him. Are he and his like—I do not think that he is unique in this country—to be denied the ability to drive a motorcar because they could not cope with first aid requirements? This is a concept that has some merit. I have no doubt that we will examine it thoroughly in Committee, but we must be careful about the driving test. The test is there to ensure that people can safely enjoy the freedom and privilege of driving a motorcar. We have to tread with care if we are to inhibit that freedom. There are worries about that aspect of the first aid suggestion. The noble Earl, Lord Peel, raised the issue of motorcycles with great assertiveness. I have every sympathy with the point that he made. As he knows, there are several roads in Britain where bikers go to test their vehicles to the limit on the public road. The roads are nearly all in the north of England, largely because roads in southern England are more boring and do not have the same inclines, hills, sweeps and bends to produce the excitement that the bikers are seeking. We are aware of the issue. We do not need anything in the Bill to deal with it. We need effective policing. That is not easy because these bikers do not announce that they are going to do this. After a time, intelligence comes through that certain roads have become the focal point of such activity. We want to see a crackdown on it, but that is a question of resources rather than legislation. The police have all the powers they need to deal with lawless driving of that kind, particularly as, as has rightly been hinted, some of the bikers exceed the speed limits by a substantial margin.