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Road Safety Bill [HL]

My Lords, I have put my name to this amendment. I strongly support what the noble Lord, Lord Swinfen, said. Her Majesty’s Government are encouraging children and young people to cycle through their Safer Routes to Schools initiative and their advice to local authorities. They wish more children to cycle, for understandable reasons. But with that encouragement comes a responsibility for the Government to take all reasonable measures to protect children from harm. Yesterday, I spoke with a paediatric nurse who is caring for a 13 year-old who fell from his bike, smashed the front of his head and damaged his frontal lobes. He is now unable to manage his emotions and is subject to outbreaks of rage. A friend of mine at school, who I used to cycle with, came off his bicycle. He called me to the hospital, and when I arrived, he had forgotten that he had called me. He experience concussion. His personality changed following his injury. Some years later, he developed a bipolar emotional disorder—manic depression—that may be associated with that trauma. The overwhelming case is that helmets protect individuals from injury to the brain and that they are particularly effective in protecting children from brain injury. As the noble Lord, Lord Swinfen, said, we are all concerned that children should take more exercise. I believe that obesity in children has increased by one-fifth in the past 10 years. The evidence about whether the introduction of cycle helmets in other countries has discouraged or encouraged children and adults to cycle is not clear either way. I remember visiting a Halfords store this summer and seeing a child with his mother. She was speaking to his father on her mobile phone, asking whether they should buy the larger bike. The message from the father was that they should get the larger bike. The boy was jumping up and down with joy at the prospect of buying a new bicycle. When I look in the park and observe children, I have to say, as the noble Lord, Lord Swinfen, said, that bicycles are so attractive to children that it seems very unlikely that a significant number of them will be put off simply because they have to wear a helmet. On the question of enforcement, when the Home Office was discussing this, a two-year plan was proposed. The first year would focus heavily on education, promoting bicycle safety and the wearing of cycle helmets. The second year would involve law enforcement officers. When they saw groups of children, they would warn them that in a year’s time, it would be against the law for them not to wear a cycle helmet. Then, once the law was put in place, letters would be sent to parents asking them to purchase a helmet and send a receipt to the office to prove it, or else they would receive other warnings. Twenty states in the United States, Norway, Sweden, Australia, New Zealand and Canada, as well as several other countries, have introduced these laws. The Government are actively encouraging children and young people to cycle more. For understandable reasons, we have a low usage of cycles in this country. We have a responsibility to take reasonable measures to protect children from harm. When parents and children are consulted about this, they favour a law to make cycle helmets mandatory. The Bill will provide that careless drivers who kill with no intention to do so can be sentenced to a maximum of five years’ imprisonment. The Government have set aside 150 prison spaces to cater for them. Those people are harming adults and children unwittingly so, with the greatest respect to the Minister, it seems somewhat ironic that the Government are encouraging children and young people on to the streets on bicycles without taking all reasonable precautions to keep them from harm. I look forward to the Minister’s response.