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Road Safety Bill [Lords]

I will resist that temptation because such a body would simply be another quango and would create more bureaucracy—I am not instinctively in favour of such developments. Additionally, given the number of accidents that take place, such an investigation unit would repeat its investigations each time that one occurred. On balance, such a publicly-funded and unelected quango would not achieve a great deal, but I look forward to hearing the hon. Gentleman’s arguments in Committee. When the Bill becomes an Act, its success will depend on the greater acceptance and use of speed cameras. I declare an interest at this point because I have six penalty points on my licence. I was clocked on the M6 in December 2003—I will not tell hon. Members the speed—and five months earlier, I was caught by a speed camera on the A9. Even though the offences were five months apart, I found out about both endorsements in December 2003 and thus went from having a completely clean licence to having a licence with six points on it in two weeks. I reveal this partly in case someone else reveals it first and, secondly, because it has made me think carefully whenever I drive. I need my car to do my job. After such a fright from getting six penalty points on my licence in such a period of time, I have driven more carefully since the end of 2003 than at any other time in my life, and I have speed cameras to thank for that. I did not enjoy being caught, but it is an inevitable argument that even where speed cameras do not save lives—for example, the stretch of motorway where I was caught is not a particular accident blackspot—getting caught has led directly to a change in my behaviour. That outcome should be welcomed as a direct result of the proliferation of speed cameras in this country. There is a huge amount of media outrage, and it was suggested earlier that some Opposition Members are not as enthusiastic about the proliferation of speed cameras as some Labour Members. We see evidence of the Daily Mail Big Brother agenda every time new speed cameras go up. The George Orwell analogy is so over-used that I wonder whether any of the sub-editors have read ““1984””. I do not remember Winston Smith being clocked for doing 80 mph on the M6. ““1984”” was about slightly more important freedoms than the freedom to break the law and endanger other people’s lives. I am not in favour of restrictions on individual freedoms. For example, I did not vote to support the 100 per cent. ban on smoking in public places, but there is no such thing as the right to break the law. That should not be tolerated by the House. If speed cameras can contribute to a change in the culture whereby speeding becomes unacceptable, in the same way as drink-driving has become unacceptable, speed cameras will be seen historically to have made a major contribution to the safety of our culture. It is often said by the anti-speed camera lobby that speed cameras turn ordinary law-abiding citizens into criminals. They do not. Law-abiding citizens turn themselves into criminals by choosing to break the law by speeding. That is an unpleasant message to give, but it is fact. I want to challenge my hon. Friend the Minister on part of clause 18, which outlaws speed assessment equipment detection devices. I know exactly the kind of devices to which that refers, but could there not be a wider interpretation of the word ““device””? Last year the AA published its new road map of Britain, which included the precise location of every stationary speed camera in the country. Whatever the protestations of the AA, the only reason for publishing the exact location of every speed camera in the country was in order to warn its members, the purchasers of that map, when they may get caught speeding. In other words, it was a device enabling people to break the speed limit on long stretches of road, and then to slow down when they were approaching a speed camera, in order to avoid prosecution. I hope that the clause will outlaw such a measure.