Written question asked by Maria Eagle (Labour) on Wednesday, 14 December 2011, in the House of Commons. It was due for an answer on Monday, 19 December 2011. It was answered by Mike Penning (Conservative) on Tuesday, 20 December 2011 on behalf of the Department for Transport.

Roads: Safety

Question: To ask the Secretary of State for Transport with reference to section 30 of the Coalition Agreement, what progress she has made in bringing forward proposals to promote road safety.

Answer: By transferring the road safety grant to the revenue support grant, we have given local authorities greater flexibility to implement the local transport and road safety measures they and their local communities consider are needed. Most local authorities have published information about speed cameras, to improve transparency, following a Government announcement in June 2011.We are switching to more effective ways of making our roads safer, having published a strategic framework for road safety in May 2011. This includes action to enable better enforcement against careless and drunk drivers, improvements to education and more training.The authorisation of drug screening technology depends on the type approval of individual devices by the Secretary of State for the Home Department. This is given only following operational and laboratory tests of the devices against the type approval specification. Operational tests have been completed. New arrangements are required for the laboratory tests and the Home Office is putting these into place as quickly as technically possible.

Secondary information