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Road Safety Bill [HL]

My Lords, I am extremely grateful for that response from the Minister. He has acknowledged that there are some difficulties and he has done so in a more helpful way than I had anticipated. But I think he does not quite appreciate one of the changes that has taken place in recent years. In days of old, the police headquarters would ring up a garage on the rota. No one used to have to pay to be on that rota, at least not legally. Today, however, they are often managed by commercial concerns which take a big cut for themselves, funded by the motorist. The Minister has given a guarded acknowledgment of the difficulties here. I want to sound a word of caution regarding the insurance industry, because it is part of the problem. If a vehicle of very low value is involved in a write-off collision, the recovery operator still has to keep the vehicle in a secure compound for some time. Insurance assessors are very poor at getting to the recovery firm to assess such vehicles and declaring them as write-offs. That links in with problems I discussed in relation to the Vehicles (Crime) Bill where vehicles are not declared to be write-offs fast enough. So the insurance industry itself has something of a case to answer. I have no intention of returning to this issue. I am grateful for the Minister’s response and I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment, by leave, withdrawn. Clause 44 [Minor corrections]: [Amendment No. 63 not moved.]