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Road Safety Bill [HL]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, has moved an interesting amendment with which I have some sympathy. The amendment provides that the board does not apportion blame. A disadvantage with the current arrangements, which are police-led investigations, is that motorists involved in accidents are very reluctant to be completely frank. It is a little late in the progress of the Bill to look at this issue in detail, but some form of confidentiality arrangements may be beneficial. At an earlier stage, the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, and I tabled amendments about black boxes. They would also be helpful in working out what actually went wrong in an accident. My noble friend Lord Renton suggested that the Minister already has the necessary powers. The difficulty is that any activity by the department, by central government, would be confrontational—there would be a worry on the part of the motorist—whereas if a motorist involved in an accident knew that he was dealing with an impartial organisation that would not use his frank contributions to the investigation in a prosecution, he would inevitably be much more frank. My noble friend also said that the proposed arrangements were unnecessary. If he is right, then the Marine Accident Investigation Branch and the Air Accidents Investigation Branch are also unnecessary, but I do not think anyone would want to scrap them. However, it is a little late in the Bill to look in detail at this.