Road Safety Bill [HL]

I was coming to that. My noble friend has pre-empted the third part of my argument. I have indicated why I am not satisfied with the amendments tabled by the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, which relate solely to jamming and therefore narrow the scope of the Bill in relation to such equipment. I have also dealt with the well intentioned attempt of my noble friend Lord Berkeley to produce an amendment that would reduce the level of information about where fixed safety cameras are placed. I believe that their known positioning is to the benefit of road safety. That is why we make them so prominent. Those are two cardinal reasons why I reject the amendments. I come to the third point, which my noble friend Lady   Gibson raised. She asked whether, because we   were in favour of devices that informed road users of   the positioning of safety cameras, we were in favour of devices that go ““bleep”” whenever enforcement procedures are in place. They might not just go ““bleep””; they might have a more sophisticated device that whispers in the ear all kinds of injunctions on how to tackle the problem. Whatever the device does, it is there to warn. We do not want those. Our provisions are intended to control areas of detection. Where police officers are engaged in necessary activity to restrain dangerous driving—that is, speeding—we do not want a situation in which people are warned that that activity is being conducted. It does not relate to the use of speed cameras, but the police have decided that action is necessary to improve road behaviour in a certain area. In that area, they move from place to place, aware that they have problems with accident rates or have been witnesses to excessive speeding, near escapes and all the issues that cause our heavily stretched police forces to set up cameras to guarantee that people respect speed limits. We accept the point on the GPS systems but reject my noble friend’s idea that they should be available to drivers. However, we will not have available to people detection devices that tell them how police are operating in the area in which they are driving. That would interfere with the process of law enforcement, and it would do the very thing that my noble friend Lady Gibson was talking about. It is also the motive behind my noble friend Lord Berkeley’s amendment. Are we creating a situation where people can drive with impunity at speeds beyond the limit because they have a device that tells them when they are likely to be   caught? No, we seek to remove that, which is the basis of the legislation. That is why I want both groups of amendments to be rejected, while at the same time the Committee should recognise the principles on which the clause is founded.