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Road Safety Bill [HL]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Earl for moving the amendment, and the offer of a meeting from the noble Baroness of course delights me. I happen to be busy in London on Friday and therefore would be delighted to meet her and the noble Earl, Lord Dundee, at five o’clock in the afternoon if that is mutually convenient. If not, we will have to postpone it to a slightly later date, and I shall work towards an arrangement. I shall be happy to discuss these issues further but, as the House will recognise, my role today is to deal with the amendment. The noble Earl understands the principle in regard to these issues. I hope that I successfully adumbrated them in Committee; namely, that the Government want to ensure that graduated learning happens before the test. The amendment, as the noble Earl explained, is directed at the period before someone is issued with a provisional licence. That is a sticking point because it would require a new driver to pass an initial test of competence prior to driving on the road. I have to say to the noble Earl that we are in fundamental disagreement about the best way of equipping people to learn competence on the road. I am not sure what the test would seek to assess at such an early stage. It could not assess practical competence on the road because, by definition, the individual concerned would not have had any practical experience, and we believe that practical experience on the road is fundamental to the process of learning to drive. All research shows that those who have more practice do better and that there is nothing to match the experience of being behind the wheel—suitably supervised, of course, as all learner drivers must be. Let me say en passant that learner drivers do not comprise a high accident statistic. That should not come as a surprise to anyone in the House as we know that learner drivers drive under supervision. We do not have significant accident rates of people who are learning to drive under the supervision of a driving instructor—although most driving instructors will often indicate that they are somewhat surprised when things do not happen in the way the statistics indicate. I am not in favour of making people take the driving theory test or some other form of assessment before getting a provisional licence. As the noble Earl will recognise, our theory test has two elements to it; that is, knowledge and understanding of the Highway Code and other matters relating to safe driving; and a hazard perception skills test which uses film clips of real driving. I continually offer an open invitation to noble Lords to participate in that test. They will take it under my strict supervision—not that I am any authority on the test at all but I had the good fortune to sail through it with flying colours—and woe betide anyone who sits the test in my company and achieves a lower score. Nevertheless, everyone is very welcome to join me on that account. It would be an obvious problem to say to some people that they cannot have a provisional licence without taking a preliminary test when that is not the general rule. That is the problem with the pilot. The noble Baroness, Lady Gardner, has emphasised the virtue of pilots—that is fine—but the problem with a pilot in this area is that the people participating in it would be putting themselves at a lower stage than every other member of the community. That is why we have difficulty with the concept. Our approach is illustrated by the driver’s record, published by the Driving Standards Agency and issued with all provisional licences. It is a form of logbook. We know there are others, sometimes prepared by driving instructors. It is a simple tool to measure competence as people progress with their learning. The department wants to understand how the driver’s record is working and whether it can be improved. That is why we have invited tenders for research into this and intend to let a research contract on this issue next year. So we are being proactive in this area and I am sure the noble Earl, Lord Dundee, will welcome that. It is also very important that learning does not stop on passing the test. That is why newly qualified drivers have—as the noble Earl and the noble Baroness, Lady Gardner, have emphasised to me on many occasions—a higher risk of accident than more experienced drivers. It is scarcely surprising that this happens. We are running a very large-scale research project on this issue. Participants have been randomly selected in ““cohorts”” from those taking the practical test. The study looks at how they learned and how they performed in the driving test. For those who have passed the test, it also looks at their first three years as qualified drivers, including their accident record. It is too soon to discuss the results but it will be recognised in all parts of the House that this is valuable work. Finally, I draw attention to the importance of training for driving for work. There is more training and a further test for driving larger commercial vehicles, buses and coaches, as the House will be aware. I emphasise to the noble Earl that I cannot accept his amendment but I certainly accept his aspiration to improve the quality and standards of people as they go through the process of learning to drive. We have a series of strategies which are producing those results. On that basis, I hope he feels reassured enough to withdraw his amendment.