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Road Safety Bill [HL]

My Lords, that response sounds delightfully plausible. The Minister has quoted some statistics, but whenever I have raised this subject in the past, he has said: ““That’s the trouble. There are no statistics””. That is why I propose the pilot. Unless we collect some actual, real statistics, we do not know what we are talking about. The Chief Constable of Northern Ireland certainly has always supported this proposal. There is probably a new man in the post now but I am sure he would equally support it. The Minister has said to me in the past that the Australian figures are worse than here. That may be so, but how do we know they would not be worse still without the use of these driving plates? This is the whole point. We are proposing a controlled experiment whereby an identified group driving on this basis is compared with a group that had, for example, gone through in the previous three months. You would have a controlled experiment. The Minister said, ““We do not think all these young people are breaking the law””. I am not suggesting they are, but the Red Cross must have obtained these facts and figures from somewhere. As I said, my brief refers to ““many times”” but my noble friend Lord Hanningfield said that 17 to 20 year-olds are six times more likely to be involved in an accident. Someone is producing these figures from somewhere. I am going to hound the Minister between now and the next stage of the Bill because I do not think it should be up to me to bring this matter forward. I have been fortunate to have someone very clever to help me work out the wording of the amendment. But, in the past, if I have had a good idea in an amendment, the Government of whatever colour have taken it away, perhaps altered a capital letter or whatever, and brought it back as a government amendment. It always has to come back as a government amendment and I would be very happy to have it as a government amendment. That is what I shall be talking to the Minister about between now and the next stage of the Bill. The amendment does not demand that the Minister should introduce the scheme but it enables him to do so. The power to order a pilot scheme would be on the face of the Bill and would enable the Minister to introduce it at whatever time he decided that that should be done. It is an indisputably good system. It is late at night and I do not have other noble Lords here, but I will be coming back to the issue at Third Reading unless I can persuade the Minister to bring something forward himself. In the mean time, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.