My Lords, perhaps I may respond first to the noble Viscount, Lord Simon. Currently, there is not a side impact test; that now comes in with the new regulations. The dummies will be designed so that they demonstrate the damage that comes with a side impact test. If there is further information on the dummies that I have not mentioned, I will gladly write to him and let him know.
On the point of the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, essentially about why the new seat is not mandatory or why we do not have a date for its becoming mandatory, it is possible that the documentation has not been clear. Part of the new standard does not fit in to the car by use of a seat-belt. It requires an Isofix point to be built in, which is deemed to be a safer way for a seat to be anchored. That standard became mandatory for new cars from 2012. It would have been seen in many new cars built from around 2006 and even in some from before then, but obviously many cars that parents own date from an earlier period and therefore do not have an Isofix anchor embedded in them. If we were to make this mandatory today, we would effectively be
requiring parents to go out and purchase a new car when they simply want to purchase a car seat. That really is an unacceptable burden.
There will be demand from parents who have older cars or cars which do not have the Isofix fitting to purchase a seat for their child. We are satisfied that the current standard is very safe. That does not mean that we do not want to pursue opportunities to increase the measure of safety. I described earlier the side-impact benefit and the noble Viscount, Lord Simon, followed up on it. We recognise that existing car seats provide a great deal of safety for children, so we do not feel that it is necessary to tell parents that they have to buy a new car in order to buy a seat that meets the new standard.
We accept that over time, as they replace their cars and their car seats, parents will follow the new standards, but this means that there is a period of time when we need to have both standards operating in parallel. To put in a date would in fact be artificial. It is sensible to do all we can to encourage the take-up of the new car seats in vehicles which can take the fitting. It will be a matter of parent choice, but the majority of parents want the car seat that provides their child with the greatest protection. It is also true to say that as the volume of sales of the new car seats goes up—they are currently more expensive than the current car seats—the price will inevitably come down as economies of scale kick in.
I think that we will see a very good take-up of these new car seats, but to make it mandatory would place a burden on some families for whom the purchase of a new car would be exceedingly difficult. What we do not want is for anybody to be tempted not to use a car seat because the only one that they can legally purchase cannot be fitted into the car they already have. I think that the noble Lord will recognise that. Over time, we can see what is happening with the turnover of cars; that is not something that is ideally predictable. It will be possible at some point to remove the earlier standard and simply go with the new standard because there will have been sufficient turnover in the car fleet. I hope, with that understanding that this is a sensible way that does not place an extraordinary burden on families—