In moving Amendment 43, I shall speak also to Amendments 44, 45, 46 and 102. The amendments make some small changes to the wording of various pieces of road traffic legislation. The aim is to enable and empower NHS ambulance services to respond to medical services and emergencies quickly and effectively. As far back as 1967, there have been statutory provisions which exempt vehicles from various rules contained in road traffic legislation when they are being used by the emergency services for fire, police and ambulance purposes. These provisions apply so that our vital services can reach an emergency in time whenever there is one. Therefore, the exemptions include matters that a member of the public could reasonably expect to be included, such as exemptions from rules relating to speed limits, traffic lights, road signs and the fitting and use of sirens and flashing lights.
The problem that we are faced with is that modern practice and technology has outgrown the current law which mainly uses the term “ambulance”. NHS ambulance services now use what are known as fast response units, including cars and motorbikes, to help provide quick response to the most critically ill patients where time is of the essence. They are also using larger vehicles to transport equipment to major incidents to ensure that clinicians are properly equipped.
These type of responses provide a vital part of NHS emergency healthcare. The definition of “ambulance” and “ambulance purposes” in a recent case concerning the use of blue lights and sirens was limited to those vehicles whose primary use is to convey the sick and disabled and did not include other vehicles such as motorbikes used by paramedics. These amendments provide certainty to NHS fast response teams that they can rely on exemptions from road traffic legislation to facilitate their speedy arrival in a crisis situation. They extend the stated exemptions to cover vehicles used,
“for the purpose of providing a response to an emergency at the request of an NHS ambulance service”.
This will then cover all fast response units dispatched by the NHS ambulance services. We will have removed an unnecessary, unfair and dangerous legal block in the work of surely one of our most crucial services.
Amendments 44 and 45 to Schedule 8 are simply consequential. Since the introduction of the Deregulation Bill, some of the legislation amended by Schedule 8 has been modified by subordinate legislation made earlier this year, namely the Combined Authorities (Consequential Amendments) Order 2014 and the West Yorkshire Combined Authority Order 2014. I beg to move.