Road Safety Bill [HL]

moved Amendment No. 1:"Page 1, line 6, at beginning insert ““Subject to subsection (3),””" The noble Lord said: Perhaps I may begin by saying what a pleasure it is to be before your Lordships’ House and, indeed, the Minister once again to discuss this important piece of legislation. An earlier form of the Bill was discussed in another place prior to the dissolution of Parliament. We now have a valuable opportunity to scrutinise it at some length in this House and to improve it whenever and wherever possible. Before I turn to the first set of amendments in this group, I declare an interest as the leader of Essex County Council, a local authority that, I can assure your Lordships, takes road safety very seriously. This set of amendments tries to probe the Government a little further on road safety grants. Amendment No. 1 is merely an enabling amendment that allows the following amendment in this group to be incorporated into Clause 1. Amendment No. 3 is a probing amendment that is designed to elicit from the   Minister how this clause will work in practice. Clause 1 enables the Secretary of State or the National Assembly of Wales to,"““make payments to any local authority or body for meeting the whole or part of the running costs of any measures for promoting road safety””." That extended fund replaces existing road traffic legislation provisions and will impact upon the work of local councils. There is no firm indication, as yet, as to the size of the grant, whether it will be top-sliced from existing funding sources, or how it will be delivered—whether it will be ring-fenced, for example. Local authorities are, therefore, keen to see further details of this grant and how it relates to routine funding of road safety infrastructure for local transport plans. Amendment No. 3 would, therefore, ensure that local councils were involved in the planning and implementation of any road safety-funded infrastructure on local road networks. Amendment No. 4, in the name of the noble Viscount, Lord Simon, would require the Secretary of State or the Welsh Assembly to report to Parliament on the grants given and any assessment that had been made as to their effectiveness. Again, we are trying to tease out how the grant would work in practice, what size it would be, and, particularly, how it would be measured and who would assess them. Finally, Amendment No. 5 would allow a national transport authority—the Secretary of State in England or the National Assembly for Wales—not to provide payments to any organisation that formed part of a safety camera partnership. In essence, we are seeking an explanation as to why the safety camera partnerships that have been set up in almost every area of the country—comprising local authorities, police authorities and others—would be unable to spend their resources on road safety in a manner in which the clause states that money can be spent. If the partnerships were able to spend money on road safety without constraint, there would be no need for this clause. The partnerships have a lot of money. One estimate suggests that they reap £60 million to £100 million per annum from speeding offences. It seems to me that that figure is increasing all the time. It was about £600,000 in 1966 and the current figure is about £4   million. The partnerships have an enormous income and many people might ask why some of that money cannot be reinvested in speed indicator signs so that people are warned that they are exceeding the speed limit. There is no penalty if one does not comply with the signs, but they have a good impact in improving road safety and ensuring that people reduce their speed. The trouble is that all these measures and signs cost money, and many local authorities say that they do not   have the resources for them. Therefore, this amendment makes certain that this money is diverted to road safety. The Government should reinvest the money from fines coming through safety camera partnerships into the area of road safety. It should not be sent to the Home Office. That is the purpose of this amendment. I beg to move.