Road Safety Bill [HL]

I am grateful for the chance to intrude on the conversation. I congratulate the noble Lords on conducting a mini debate which has helped to elucidate the issues. Perhaps I may say how much I respect the intentions of the noble Lord, Lord Swinfen, and the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, in moving and speaking to the amendment. They are right to focus on accident rates for children. We are all concerned with any deaths but in particular to young people. I was grateful to my noble friend Lord Berkeley for putting the issue into context. I wish to emphasise how well we are doing on cycling. Cycling deaths are quite a low proportion of total road accidents. We have seen deaths and serious injuries for child cyclists reduced by 47 per cent compared with our baseline which was the average of 1994–98.