Road Safety Bill [HL]

We should think about this issue very carefully. We have attempted to table simple amendments. My county of Oxfordshire followed Suffolk along the 30 mph road, and there is a limit of 30 mph in all villages in Oxfordshire. The parish councils of each parish decided the boundaries of the village. Some are not what other people desire, but the decision on the boundaries at either end was made by the parish councils. Local decision-making applied. To get round the bureaucratic tangle to which my noble friend referred in her introduction, we should like the normal arrangement to be a 30 mph limit in villages unless a village decided otherwise. The village would opt out rather than opt in. The position is similar on the country lanes amendment. We have some experience in Oxfordshire, where we have introduced limits for quiet lanes. They are single carriageway roads—they are actually one-vehicle width roads with passing places—where 60 mph is a ridiculous speed because every so often you meet another vehicle coming the other way. There are many other similar roads that unfortunately are used as rat runs, much to the annoyance of the people who live on them. Again, we want to say to local authorities that the default limit is 40 mph, but if they consider that it should be 60 mph the simple expedient is to put a white line on the road because it is considered wide enough for vehicles to go at the faster speed. We want to start from a simple position and then allow a local authority, a parish or district council to depart from that standing. We want a simple answer to a lot of pressure, which I am sure all noble Lords have had from the Council for the Preservation of Rural England, which is alarmed at the speed at which people drive on rural roads and through villages. I could take noble Lords to many rural villages where there is huge pressure for the installation of speed cameras because those villages are being cut in half by the speed and volume of the traffic. It is not just a safety issue; it is a severance issue, caused by a growing volume of traffic. People see a speed camera as a means of restoring sanity in the village. They are not anxious to catch motorists, but they want them to slow down when passing through their village. The noble Earl, Lord Attlee, referred to 30 mph repeater signs. In a significant number of lit urban areas, there is a case for a repeater sign to be placed either on the road or on a lamp-post at the discretion and even at the expense of a local authority. I know of local authorities that are pleading to have a means of reminding people that even though they are outside a town they are still in a built-up area and still in a 30   mph limit area. I know of places where people are pleading for some relief from vehicles passing through their area at speeds of up to 60 miles per hour. I admit that perhaps neither of the new clauses on speed limits that we on the Liberal Democrat Benches propose is perfect. However, they point to a way forward, and one to which many noble Lords have referred. This is probably the only Road Safety Bill that we shall have in this Parliament. Is there no way in which some relief can be given to those who live in rural areas and on the outskirts of towns during our discussions on the Bill? I rest my case and await the Minister’s response.