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

My Lords, we have certainly travelled a long way since those relaxed, carefree, politically incorrect days when the great challenge was to cram as many people as possible into a Mini Minor and drive around London, arms and legs sticking out everywhere. For 99 per cent of the time, the police did not give a damn. Rather more seriously, a few years later, in order to save both petrol and wear and tear on parents, two, three or four families—mine included—would get together and share the school run, taking it in turn to carry half a dozen or more children in the back of an estate car, albeit with arms and legs safely tucked inside. Never once did I hear of anyone coming to the slightest harm in consequence, although, no doubt on very rare occasions, it did happen. Nevertheless, one has to accept that the younger generation, among whom I include the thirtysomethings and fortysomethings, is more jittery—I have tried to use as neutral a word as possible—than ours was. Hence, they willingly accept restrictions on carrying children in cars that our generation would have considered neurotically over the top. Even so, the first part of the regulations is open to some criticism. First, most normal people in this country do not measure their height in centimetres, and never will, any more than they will describe to friends and family the weight of their newly arrived baby in kilograms. If a new James Bond were to appear on our screens—they seem to do so every two or three years—he would be likely to be described in the media as tanned, muscular and 6 feet 2 inches tall, not 187.96 centimetres tall. When I revisited India recently after a gap of many years, despite many decades of compulsory metrification, and although miles had succumbed to kilometres on road signs, I was delighted to see that in every other respect user-friendly imperial measurements—inches, feet, yards, pounds—were still used in everyday life and in business. In Bangalore, for example, hoardings advertised luxury apartments measuring 900 square feet. At least let the words ““approximately 4 feet 5 inches”” be used as a supplementary indicator to the 135 centimetres requirement so that parents can know what is expected of them. Incidentally, halfway down page 2 of the draft statutory instrument, reference is made to, "““a maximum design speed exceeding 25 kilometres per hour””." Legal limits in this country are still expressed in miles per hour. Curiously enough, one paragraph in the Explanatory Memorandum contains a wonderful jumble of metric and imperial, referring to, "““street lights no more than 200 yards apart in England and Wales or 175 metres apart in Scotland””—" politically correct Scotland. It continues: "““These are roads for which the normal speed is 30 m.p.h.””." Better some imperial measurement than none at all. More worrying is the second part of the regulations—I refer not to the measurements but the substance. Children who are 135 centimetres tall, or just over 4 feet 5 inches, will in many, if not most, cases find the diagonal strap of a seat belt running across their neck. If there is a sudden stop, not necessarily occasioned by a collision, they could be very seriously injured, possibly even killed. Have the Government taken any detailed medical advice on the possible harm that can come from a strap tightening across a child’s neck? My main objection is to the second part of the regulations, which introduces seat belt compulsion in buses although, strangely, not in trains. My noble friend Lord Erroll has said that he will support me in this. On average, no more than three people a year are killed in buses and some of these will be in urban buses, which will not be subject to the regulations. We are talking about a possible maximum of one life saved per annum. That is assuming that most people will obey the regulations, which of course they will not; there is no way of enforcing them, especially on double-decker buses, such as the Oxford Tube, which I use from time to time. Moreover, more and more long-distance buses nowadays have lavatories. Will passengers now be forbidden to use those lavatories, or will the bus operating companies be compelled to remove them? This seems a typical piece of nonsense, emanating from the overpaid, paternalist control freaks in Brussels, aided and abetted by the paternalist control freaks in this country. As the Minister will know, every American state, every Canadian province and every Australian state can decide its own seat belt laws. Why cannot the ancient nation states of Europe be allowed to do the same? Harmonising seat belt and other road traffic laws has nothing whatever to do with completing a single market. I suppose that I will be told that it was the previous Conservative Government who sold the pass. That may well be so, in which case this Administration cannot be blamed for this particular piece of Euro-nonsense. However, I hope—doubtless in vain—that they might in due course press for greater subsidiarity in this and similar matters.