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Road Safety Bill [HL]

My Lords, I support the amendment. My noble friend’s summary of the scale of the problem astonished me. I never realised—I have no reason to doubt the figures—that one-fifth of drivers driving on our roads can suffer from OSA. Furthermore, from what my noble friend said and the briefing that I have received, it appears that this is a long-term condition. Once you have it, you have it until you are treated. I have not heard how you treat it, but it is treatable. As my noble friend said, the statistic of one in five drivers, especially HGV drivers, who could lose their job if diagnosed and who would then have to go through the DVLA to get approval, is frightening. Given that we are short of HGV drivers, to lose one-fifth of them would make the shortage worse. That applies not just to HGV drivers but to car and bus drivers, all of whom have a safety role. My noble friend has done extremely good service to the road safety industry by describing that issue to us and tabling an amendment asking the Government to take the matter more seriously. We all need to take it more seriously and some action will be required, but how do you get a driver to admit it voluntarily—to go to a doctor and say, ““I think that I have this and, by the way, if you confirm it, I will lose my job””? That will be a real challenge but, if it is not done, the road accident statistics will get worse and worse. There is a lot of work to be done here. I congratulate my noble friend and the Working Group on Sleep Disorders for the work that has been done, but there is a great deal more to do and I look forward to hearing from my noble friend the Minister how that will be taken forward.