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Road Safety Bill [HL]

My Lords, I have been remiss in not arranging that meeting, although the noble Earl will recognise that there were one or two quite significant issues with the Bill which inevitably had priority and which directly concern officials in my department. He is right that the meeting that he wants involves Home Office officials. Let me assure the noble Earl that of course I will arrange such a meeting. I will let him know as soon as I have done so. We hope to achieve that possibly in the new year rather than at this stage. My priority now is to deal with the passage of this Bill, which I had hoped we might complete before Christmas. But it may be a new year’s present rather than the Christmas present that we all desired. I understand the points that the noble Earl has made, some of which are very valid. But they are points of detail about the way in which things are done. We do not think that the amendment is necessary. After all, the police have been removing vehicles as necessary under the Act for more than 20 years and have not felt that the lack of regulations relating to their contractual arrangements affect their efficiency in any way. We do not see why we need to increase the regulatory burden without a proven and obvious need. I do not think that the noble Lord has made out his case in those terms, although he has identified certain weaknesses which we intend to address. But we do not think that we need statutory change in order to do that. A great deal of work is under way in the context of the Highways Agency that will lead to its traffic officers, where appropriate and authorised—the noble Lord will know that that comes into force under legislation that has been passed only recently—arranging removals on the strategic road network and adjoining roads. The agency will need its own contracts for this purpose, but the police will retain their powers on the network and continue to be responsible for removals on other roads, so their contractual arrangements will also continue. Obviously we want consistency between the two groups of operators, if I can define them in those terms, and to that end we see the necessity for effective collaboration. The agency, the Home Office, the Association of Chief Police Officers, the insurance industry and the operators are engaged in discussion at regular meetings and, recently, at a workshop which was deemed by most as very successful. I recognise the concerns underlying the noble Earl’s amendment, and if I thought they were not being addressed I would be less confident about asking him to withdraw it. He has identified where additional work needs to be done. I can assure him that we are doing that work and that we do not need to change the law in order to effect improvement. On that basis, I hope he will feel able to withdraw the amendment.