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Road Safety Bill [HL]

My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who have contributed to the debate. Of course I share the objectives of the noble Lord, Lord Swinfen, who moved the amendment, that we want to improve the safety of our young cyclists. That is exactly what we have been doing. Taking the period of 1994 to 1998 as a baseline, we have reduced deaths and serious injury for child cyclists by 49 per cent. So no one should underestimate the Government’s commitment to improving safety for our children. We intend to improve on that position. We are not complacent. I want to emphasise that of course this improvement in the statistics is a reflection of a whole plethora of measures that we have taken to improve child cyclists’ safety. Our programme includes the education of children and their carers, the education of drivers to take more care about child cyclists, publicity, better child cycle training and improved infrastructure to increase the opportunities for them to cycle safely on our roads and cycle paths. We include in that the promotion of the wearing of helmets because we are not going to contend with noble Lords the fact that the wearing of the helmet is a help to a cyclist if he has a serious accident and lands on his head. So we are at one with noble Lords in this respect. We know from regular monitoring of helmet wearing that there is a long way to go to increase such wearing. Boys are most reluctant to wear helmets. Set against a generally rising trend, the wearing rate for boys has gone down from 15 per cent in 1994 to 11 per cent in 2004. For girls, the wearing rate has risen to 26 per cent. Inevitably, a large proportion of those not wearing helmets are young adolescents who have accidents. That points to the nature of the difficulty: we start from a low base. I take on board the representations made by the noble Lord, Lord Monson, and the noble Earl, Lord Errol, on the question of personal responsibility; I shall also comment on their points about who is liable in a moment. The problem with the amendment is that we are starting from such a low base, but it would move us up to 100 per cent by law. We cannot safely promote legislation on that basis now. We are aware of the contribution that the wearing of cycle helmets can make to road safety, but to move from a position of low acceptance of that need to 100 per cent compulsion is a significant leap that we do not think is justified. We have reservations on the issue of liability. I heard the noble Lord, Lord Swinfen, say that he had listened to my remarks in Committee and I am grateful to him for having done that. I addressed the issue of liability. But the noble Lord, Lord Monson, is right: it is not easy to identify who is liable. It is not clear who, if anyone, will be responsible for the crucial offence of causing or permitting the offence from the range of persons listed in the amendment. Suppose that a child cycles home from school. Are the parents responsible or is the school responsible? Is the school responsible as the person who has custody or possession of the bike before the child rides home? What if the school has a rule that helmets must be worn but the child does not wear one? Where does responsibility lie? We honestly think that there are real problems about ambiguity and who will be responsible. That will always be a question of fact in the circumstances. They are overlapping responsibilities. It may not be clear whether the school or the parent is responsible in such cases. I recognise that noble Lords will be disappointed by my response. I know that others share their views. The measure was introduced in a Private Member’s Bill in the other place last year. The Government will not renege on our major commitment to improving child cycling safety, but we do not think that compulsion at this stage would produce the results that we want. We will keep a watchful and monitoring eye on the situation. I hope that the noble Lord will accept that the Government will not fail in our commitment to improve child cycling safety statistics and, on that basis, will feel able to withdraw his amendment.