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Road Safety Bill [HL]

My Lords, as my noble friend Lady Gardner of Parkes outlines very eloquently, this amendment would allow the Secretary of State to undertake a pilot scheme looking at the effectiveness of P-plates for new drivers. The Minister may allege that the experiment on P-plates has not worked in Northern Ireland, and thus infer that it should not be encouraged elsewhere within the United Kingdom. However, that argument, should he seek to advance it, is a weak one. Instead, there are a number of good reasons for welcoming my noble friend’s suggestion. First, it is a flexible power here proposed for the Secretary of State. He can carefully choose a particular area for experiment. The pilot is limited to that place, and is limited there in time. Secondly, evaluation of the scheme is required before its extension nationwide might become mandatory. Therefore, if evidence were to be inconclusive, as some would now wish to argue in the case of Northern Ireland, clearly application elsewhere would not become mandatory. Thirdly, there is the need to avoid a stick-in-the-mud approach. Let us suppose that the Northern Ireland scheme may not have worked particularly well. That does not however mean that a similar scheme for P-plates may not be able to work perfectly well elsewhere. For these reasons, I hope very much that the Minister will support my noble friend’s amendment.