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Road Safety Bill [Lords]

The hon. Gentleman and I used to co-chair PACTS—I think he still does, but I do not—and I thank him for that constructive suggestion. He missed the speech of the hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling), the Conservative spokesman, who has some hesitation about the new offence. The approach that the hon. Gentleman suggests might have some appeal to his hon. Friend. Further piloting of the alcolock is a very good suggestion. It is a way for the law to address the offender’s specific problem before the courts. The more we can do that, the better in sentencing offenders in future. However, as well as those measures, I certainly agree with the hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell about the need for more effective road policing. I remind the House that the Department for Transport, the Home Office and the Association of Chief Police Officers jointly announced a road policing commitment in January last year, and the House needs to monitor the effectiveness of that announcement and ensure that we are getting the effective policing that we were then promised. I support more use of rehabilitation courses for drink-driving offenders, so I welcome the simplification of and extra incentives for those rehabilitation courses under clause 34. During debates in Committee on the previous Road Safety Bill in the last Parliament, I argued for further extensions of speed awareness and driving improvement courses for other road traffic offenders. Those courses help to address the offender’s specific problem and try to put it right for the future, rather than simply sentencing historically for an offence that has been committed previously. Those courses are constructed to look forward to try to ensure that the same behaviour does not occur again. I also support the proposal in the Bill for graduated penalty points. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said that when he first consulted on that idea more than a year ago the opinion of those who responded was quite closely balanced. More than a year later, the balance has shifted much more towards acceptance of graduated penalty points as part of sentencing procedure. However, the sticking point remains, as the Secretary of State well knows, the concern that many hon. Members have—I am very much one of them—that sending out the message that breaking 20 mph limits and 30 mph limits, even by quite a small amount, is less serious. Breaking the speed limit in precisely that way could have the greatest possible effect on other people. After all, as other hon. Members have said already, hit a child pedestrian at 20 mph, or even 30, and the child may survive, but drive at closer to 40 mph, and there will be less chance to take avoiding action and the injuries that occur will be probably fatal to the child. With a penalty of two points each time, it will take six offences, instead of the current four, over three years for drivers to tot up enough points to lose their driving licence. The idea that that message will incentivise them to be careful on roads with those speed limits is misplaced to say the least. On the proposed new offence of causing death by careless driving, I recognise the concerns of those, including the hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell, who say that punishment should be commensurate with the guilty act and not with its consequences, but to take a vehicle out on a road is to undertake a responsible activity. As I set out, it is foreseeable that hitting a person with a vehicle will cause injury—perhaps fatal injury—and that should be within the driver’s contemplation. The existence of the offence will underline the responsibility that we all assume when we get behind the wheel. Of course, imprisonment for committing the offence is not compulsory or obligatory but will be reserved for those who have clearly failed, by the greatest amount, to shoulder their responsibility. On specific aspects of driving that need attention, young drivers are most at risk of causing or being involved in road crashes. The insurance industry knows only too well about that preponderance. Some imaginative schemes exist, such as the offer by some insurance companies to reduce the premiums of those who go on to take pass plus as well as their driving test. Norwich Union has a novel pay-as-you-drive insurance, which encourages people to stay off the most dangerous roads or off the roads at the most dangerous times of the day. Coming along behind those measures—this has a slightly more general application—are technological solutions, such as intelligent speed adaptation. Imagine when it will not be possible for the driver to exceed the speed limit because of how the vehicle is controlled. That will allow us to throw away all the speed humps and speed cameras, which must surely be attractive to many people and worth giving up the joy of breaking the speed limit. Such technology goes wider than measures that affect just young drivers, but it is important that we are young driver-aware in education, publicity and policing. When we debate the Bill in Committee, I hope that we will give more attention to protecting cyclists, as seems likely from previous contributions. We want to promote cycling. It is a healthy activity, both for the cyclists and for the environment of the world that we all occupy. However, cycling on our congested roads is a dangerous activity. Let me give an example from my postbag. When my constituent, Alastair Semple, was knocked off his bike by a car at a roundabout, he found so little sympathy that the police were not even going to prosecute the car driver for careless driving until Alastair collected sufficient evidence, including photographic evidence, to persuade them that a prosecution was merited. We need more cycle lanes, stronger policing and better education for drivers and, I confess, for cyclists too. We need more publicity from the Department like the advert ““Think bike””, which relates to motorcycles and is, I think, successful. It has been estimated that around a third of road casualties occur as a consequence of people driving in the course of their work. We need to create a stronger focus, through the Bill, on employer responsibility for training and education, and, frankly, for not putting their workers under impossible time pressures. There are excellent examples of good employer practice, and we need to ensure that more employers, especially those in small and medium-sized enterprises, get the message and behave equally responsibly. The Bill goes with the grain of the national strategy for reducing casualties, and for that reason it should be supported. It has been improved as a result of consideration in the last Parliament, but it remains capable of further improvement in this one. I hope that in Committee we will have an opportunity to debate some possible improvements that can be made.