Road Safety Bill [HL]

I support the broad thrust of these amendments. Your Lordships will have read in the past few weeks of a case in the West Midlands—Shropshire, I think—where police cars were being tested at up to 83   miles per hour in urban areas and well over 120 miles per hour on the open road, in the small hours of the morning. I am not too concerned about what happens on the open road because there will be little traffic on the motorways at that time, but urban areas are different. It might not have been so bad a few years ago, when 99.9 per cent of the population was safely tucked up in bed at three or four in the morning. However, now the Government have, in their wisdom, permitted pubs and clubs to remain open 24 hours a day under the provisions of the Licensing Act 2003, it is a very different matter. You have a lethal combination of speeding police cars and drunken pedestrians. I tabled a Question for Written Answer on this subject a couple of weeks ago and do not want to pre-empt the Answer, which I have yet to receive, but it is a dangerous state of affairs. It would be interesting to discuss the issue this afternoon.