Road Safety Bill [HL]

I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Tanlaw, for the way in which he introduced the debate and for the discussion he has provoked. However, the discussion answers one of his major questions. There is not universal support for the proposition. It is not party managers who in dark corners are perpetrating anti-democratic sentiments and imposing decisions on the rest of the nation—one has only to look at the Conservative Front Bench and the Liberal Democrat Front Bench. I will also be expressing from this Front Bench some reservations about this proposal. Of course, we are reflecting opinion. I concede straightforwardly that the noble Lord is right when he brings this issue forward in a Road Safety Bill and extols its merit in terms of road safety. The noble Lord, Lord Montagu, is absolutely right too. It would be a major contribution to road safety if this change were effected. We know the statistics, and no one is better qualified than my noble friend Lady Gibson in her role as president of RoSPA to identify the figures which show the number of road deaths that would be prevented if we adopted this proposal. So I am not going to gainsay that argument; far from it, I accept the position entirely. Why is it that the Conservative and Liberal Democrat Front Benches and indeed our own Front Bench have reservations about the proposal? It is because the road safety issue, important though it is, is not the only issue. There are wider interests at stake. We are obliged to take those wider interests into account. One could produce maximum levels of road safety if one suspended a whole range of commercial operations in this country that are greatly to the advantage of us all in producing our wealth and happiness, but which are extremely dangerous because they entail moving people around and people can be injured or even killed by transport. So road safety and safety issues cannot be the dominant matter, although in this Bill they are the issue before us. I accept the noble Lord’s statistics and arguments on the contribution to road safety. I am afraid that he is obliged to recognise that we genuinely are taking wider interests into account. I cannot answer the noble Lord any better than that. However, I can answer one factual point. I will put him out of his misery in trying to find out which department is responsible for this. As he will know, this is a Government without seams. We are so interconnected that there is no question of separating one department from another. Therefore we are all equally responsible for the good things and no one is culpable for the bad. However, I will enlighten him on this point. The department responsible for summer time—and I think he probably did telephone the right department—is the Department of Trade and Industry, which regrettably is not represented here this evening. However, I do not think that it would present the case any differently from how I did. It may not put quite the same emphasis on road safety as I can—as I have learnt at the Dispatch Box from the wisdom of the Benches behind me and opposite. The department would also attest to the fact that there are wider interests to take into account, which is why we are still unpersuaded of the case. Nevertheless, I do not doubt that there is increasing pressure for it. We would be blind if we did not recognise how many more people argue for it this decade than 10 years ago. The noble Lord, Lord Montagu, alluded to that. I wish the noble Lord well in his endeavours. He has not persuaded us sufficiently this evening. I cannot accept his amendment but I accept his statistics.