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Motor Vehicles (Wearing of Seat Belts) (Amendment) Regulations 2006

rose to move, That the draft regulations laid before the House on 14 June be approved [30th Report from the Joint Committee and 39th Report from the Merits Committee]. The noble Lord said: My Lords, these regulations amend existing legislation and implement a European Directive, 2003/20/EC on the wearing of seat belts in different types of motor vehicle. The directive updates an earlier one from 1991. Some of the new requirements already apply in the UK, for example, to goods vehicles. The changes to our existing requirements may be considered in two parts. The first part relates to children travelling in cars, vans and goods vehicles; the second relates to adults, older children—14 years old and over—and bus and coach passengers. I will deal with each of these in turn. I will also address the report from the Merits Committee, which draws attention to several matters of policy arising on these regulations. The committee has noted that we are late with implementation, which we regret, and expressed concern that we were not able to secure clearer wording in the directive. My officials strive constantly for wording in directives that can be readily transposed, but they are not always successful. It will be understood that we cannot impose particular wording in directives and we recognise the obvious fact that they obtain across a wide range of countries and, of course, languages which are using different traffic terms. I should explain three points at the outset. First, current seat-belt wearing requirements are in Sections 14 and 15 of the Road Traffic Act 1988, as amended, and in regulations made under those provisions. The regulations before the House amend Section 15 and the regulations made under Sections 14 and 15. Secondly, the term ““child restraint”” is used in the directive and the regulations to mean baby seats, child seats, booster seats and cushions. These are used for children of different weights up to 36 kilograms. Thirdly, these regulations deal only with the use of child restraints in the rear seats of cars, vans and goods vehicles. Of course, children in front seats of vehicles need to be provided for as well as those in rear seats. This is provided for now by Section 15(1) of the 1988 Act. That Act was a consolidation and it is a historical curiosity that regulations under this section are subject to negative resolution. So, amending the rules on children in front seats will be done separately, but the intention is that the front seat rules will be made to come into force at the same time as these regulations. The regulations before the House require children up to the height of 135 centimetres—4 feet 5 inches—to be secured with an appropriate child restraint in the rear of cars, vans and goods vehicles, but they allow all children above that height, and every child aged 12 or more, to wear an adult belt. Children under the age of three will have to be carried in the rear of a motor vehicle in an appropriate child restraint. The new rules will also prohibit the use of rear-facing child restraints where there is an active frontal air bag. This country has had seat-belt legislation for many years. Observed wearing rates are high and we seek continually to improve them. Seat belts have prevented many road accident fatalities; estimates suggest that around 2,000 lives are saved each year. Total road fatalities are now down to some 3,220 per year and the impact of seat belts is a clear contributory factor to that improvement. There are two main reasons for the provisions in the new regulations relating to children, the first of which is a practical one. The vast majority of five to nine year-olds just use a seat belt in spite of longstanding recommendations made by the department to use child restraints. Seat belts are designed for adults. An adult belt or a wrongly used child restraint may simply fail to hold a child in during an impact and could cause serious internal injury. Children are not little adults, they have smaller and less developed frames. Babies and children have been tragically killed in accidents because they were not properly restrained. Properly fitted child restraints avoid these dangers and provide children with the full benefit of the safety belt. The second reason for strengthening the law is that too many children travel without wearing any restraint at all. Our surveys have observed that 8 per cent of children travelling in rear seats are unrestrained; in other words, too many drivers who may or may not be using a seat belt themselves have unprotected children in their vehicles as passengers. Other small children travel on laps, a very dangerous practice that can lead to serious harm. If we are to tackle these matters, it is clear that we must specify the safest means of travel for children of different sizes. It may be a baby seat, a child seat or a booster cushion. We and the shops selling the equipment will make all this clear to parents. There are some specific exemptions and I shall highlight one to which the Merits Committee referred. The directive states that a child over the age of three who should use a child restraint may travel wearing an adult belt in the rear seat for occasional journeys over a short distance. We believe that that wording is too vague, so the regulations refer to an ““unexpected necessity”” which requires a child to be driven a short distance wearing an adult belt if there is no appropriate child restraint. The Merits Committee was concerned that even that is too imprecise and uncertain. We do not want to give a general dispensation for all short journeys, including planned and regular trips. If a child travels in the family car, the child seat should be available for any journey, short or long. The same applies to planned journeys in other people’s cars. But there has to be a little flexibility or we shall cause a good deal more trouble than we would want. We can all imagine unexpected circumstances where it would be absolutely absurd to leave a child behind because his or her child seat is unavoidably unavailable. The Merits Committee noted the difficulty of defining an ““unexpected necessity”” and what ““short”” is to mean. Of course, if something is unexpected it is by nature going to be hard to define, and we think it would be unwise to try to pin down in advance all the types of circumstance that might arise. However, I do not see a serious problem in the courts in applying these concepts to individual cases, as they do with so many other general legal concepts. Put simply, we do not want to be overly prescriptive in what is meant by ““short””. Our Explanatory Notes state that a short distance may well vary between town and country, and the courts would take this into account. Cases are likely to be prosecuted only if the facts are fairly clear cut, such as, for example, if it can be proved that a child has no car seat for a regular journey to school. The Government look to parents to use the exemption in this spirit. We will have to keep it under review to be sure that it is not overused. The regulations also extend the requirement to wear seat belts to adult passengers in buses and coaches in which they are fitted, together with older children, those aged 14 and over. Bus and coach operators will have to notify passengers of the requirement to wear a seat belt by means of an announcement, an audio-visual presentation or signing. These requirements do not apply to a bus providing a local service wholly in a built-up area or where standing is permitted and the bus is designed for it. Many buses are not fitted with seat belts. It is not logical to fit a bus with belts if it is designed to carry standing passengers. Bus and coach travel is very safe in this country and serious casualties are fortunately quite rare. But seat belts do offer passengers increased protection. The majority of minibuses and coaches, and now some buses, are fitted with them. The time has come to require passengers to use them when they are available. The Merits Committee also noted that at this time we have not extended the requirement to children below the age of 14 in buses and coaches. Our Explanatory Notes make it clear that we need to consult further about how any such requirement could be enforced, taking into account the practical difficulties of requiring bus and coach operators to ensure that children are adequately secured. Other member states are finding that they have the same problem, although they have all agreed that children should be covered by this rule. We have consulted on these new requirements and they are widely supported. We have used provisions in the directive to make appropriate, specific exemptions and we are implementing it in a practical way. Those whom we have consulted recognise this. The regulations will apply throughout Great Britain, while the Northern Ireland Department of the Environment is preparing separate regulations to implement the directive in the same way there. I beg to move. Moved, That the draft regulations laid before the House on 14 June be approved [30th Report from the Joint Committee and 39th Report from the Merits Committee].—(Lord Davies of Oldham.)