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Road Safety Bill [Lords]

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time. The House, or at least some Members of it, will no doubt recall that a Road Safety Bill was last presented to the House in November 2004, but unfortunately, it fell before the general election. Although this Bill essentially brings back the same measures, it has been improved in two significant ways. First, there are new offences of causing death by careless or inconsiderate driving and of causing death by driving while unlicensed, disqualified or uninsured. On Second Reading of the previous Bill, there was a lot of debate on those matters. Secondly, the Bill contains a new offence of keeping an uninsured vehicle and a power to immobilise vehicles that do not meet insurance requirements. The power will be used to stop the owners of cars and lorries driving them when it is clear that they are not properly insured. I shall return to those measures later. I should also point out that two measures in the previous Bill have now been enacted elsewhere. First, drink drive information may now be taken at the roadside, which avoids the need for the police to go back to the police station when they stop someone, and secondly, in order to bear down further on uninsured drivers, the police have been given new powers to use automatic number plate recognition cameras linked to the databases of insurance companies to spot uninsured vehicles. Across the country, police forces are now using ANPR cameras to stop cars, and they can tell whether they are licensed and insured. In the autumn I saw that being done in Birmingham, and it is highly effective. It was surprising how many people were caught in the hour or so that I saw the system being used. It is an important way of tackling uninsured drivers and will increase the likelihood of people who are driving on the road without being properly insured being caught.