Road Safety Bill [HL]

We are not talking about the road safety budget at the moment. I am debating with the noble Lord not the allocation of resources but the process by which any such allocation should occur under Clause 1. The noble Lord’s amendments are tests of process. I agree that we could improve road safety by spending more money. On a range of extremely meritorious projects that are mentioned regularly in the House a case is made for additional expenditure, and the Government recognise that case frequently. However, we are confined by the limit of national resources that we can make available. Like many other demands for measures with benign effects on citizens, those for road safety resources are almost limitless. I am not talking about the desirability of spending more money. The noble Lord will find no keener advocate of that than me. We are talking about the process by which decisions should be reached. I was responding to the noble Lord’s amendments in that measure, indicating how the process by which decisions should be reached is envisaged in Clause 1. That process is entirely reasonable, although I recognise noble Lords’ right to press strongly on the matter. It would be unfair at this stage for me to become involved in great debate about the allocation of resources for road safety. My noble friends Lord Simon and Lord Berkeley, together with the noble Lord, Lord Hanningfield, spoke to Amendment No. 4, which would amend Clause 1 so that a national transport authority would be required to publish an annual report setting out certain information about road safety grants. I share their objective to have as much information as possible in the public domain. It helps everyone to judge the effectiveness of the resources devoted to road safety. The information requested in Amendment No. 4 is already available, so it would duplicate what we are already doing. Every year, the Government publish a breakdown of road safety Challenge Fund grants allocated and the purpose for which they are allocated on the Department for Transport’s website. Criteria for receiving that grant include outlining arrangements for proper monitoring and explaining the road safety outcomes expected. The Government provide grants to local authorities for road safety demonstration projects. Unlike the road safety Challenge Fund, those are longer-term projects and do not involve an annual bidding round. Details of grants received by authorities involved in our demonstration projects and the purpose of those projects are available on the website. The Government have let an evaluation contract for each project to monitor its effectiveness. One of the key aims of the projects is to disseminate good practice, so it is important that we have a robust understanding of their effectiveness. We intend to meet what I think is the thrust of the amendment: to make available as much information as possible. In the case of demonstration projects, which last more than a year, it is not always appropriate to feed back annually the information requested in the amendment. Definitive assessments of road safety evaluation often require the collection of information over a longer period—three years of accident data, for example—and rarely can the effectiveness of a road safety grant be evaluated in the same year in which it is made. I am sure that noble Lords will recognise the validity of that point. Full results evaluating the effectiveness of those projects will be published when they become available. Annual reporting lacks the responsiveness of the existing process for dissemination of information, which we put on the website. An annual report could provide information about grants up to 12 months later than under the existing system. So we maintain that we are open and more effective with our present arrangements. The road safety demonstration projects are covered in this year’s Department for Transport annual report. Given that information on current road safety grants is already available through the Department for Transport website annual report, I do not feel that a separate annual report on road safety grants is required. I hope that it will be recognised that we share with the supporters of the amendment the desire for openness. We are taking steps to achieve it. I am indicating the limitations of the concept of the annual report referred to   in Amendment No. 4. I hope that noble Lords will withdraw that amendment and not move the other amendments.