Road Safety Bill [HL]

moved Amendment No. 103:"Page 25, line 7, leave out ““seven”” and insert ““three””" The noble Lord said: This series of amendments, as my noble friend Lord Attlee said, follow on from his amendment. In moving Amendment No. 103, I shall speak also to Amendments Nos. 104 and 107, which are all probing. The clause enables the courts to offer offenders convicted of certain specified offences the opportunity to undertake a retraining course, which would give them a remission of penalty points. The clause inserts into the Road Traffic Offenders Act 1988 new Sections 30A, 30B, 30C and 30D, which enable a court to offer persons convicted of offences of careless and inconsiderate driving, failing to comply with traffic signs or speeding, the opportunity to pay for and undertake a retraining course in circumstances where the driver is not to be disqualified but his licence endorsed with penalty points, which is rather different from the discussion we have just had. As the Bill currently stands, those circumstances are that at least seven and no more than 11 points are to be taken into account at the time of the sentence, which leads me on to the first amendment in this series. Amendment No. 103 is designed to elicit from the Minister the reasoning behind why the benchmark of seven penalty points was set as the starting point where a driver could apply to carry out one of these courses. It appears to me that surely we should be encouraging all individuals to be responsible road users and to have the opportunity to attend a retraining course along the lines of the debate we have just had if they are allocated any number of points. Surely it would benefit someone who has three points as much as it would someone with seven. Indeed, I would have thought that it would be advantageous for us to try and nip this irresponsible behaviour in the bud well before anyone gets close to amassing seven penalty points. I would therefore be most grateful if the Minister could shed some light on this reasoning. Amendments Nos. 104 and 107 both have a similar intent. Amendment No. 104 is designed to tease out what other offences the Government have in mind that could either be added or removed in relation to the qualification for attendance on these courses. Also I would have thought it was sensible to have a period of evaluation to see whether the scheme is actually working. I hate to answer my own questions, but presumably such a period would then be useful to see if further offences could be included or removed under paragraph 2. Finally, Amendment No. 107 is simply designed to probe the Minister as to what conditions specified by the national authority would the course have to meet before it was approved. Presumably the nature of the courses would differ between the different jurisdictions of, say, England and Wales. Again I should be grateful if the Minister would comment on how he sees such differences emerging and whether there would be any concerns over difficulties of interpretation as a result of these divergences. Along the lines of the previous debate, I can see that there must be an expansion of these clauses. The Minister suggested that there are not enough trainers, so, whatever we do, there will have to be some expansion of these courses to enable these provisions to act. Therefore, I beg to move the amendment.