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

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lords who contributed to the debate, although the regulations have not received quite the enthusiastic response that I might have wished for. I will do my best to meet the objections that have been raised. Let me deal with the question raised by the noble Lords, Lord Hanningfield and Lord Bradshaw, as well as by other speakers, about the difficulty of enforcement. We know that seat belts are not worn as frequently as we would wish. The noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, mentioned mobile phones, and we have all seen people who continue to use them while driving. But that does not alter the fact that seat belts save lives and an awful lot of people obey the law by wearing them. Banning the use of mobile phones by drivers also means that far fewer people use them today than was the case before the law was changed. Of course we cannot have a 100 per cent response—we do not expect that. But, over time, things gradually become part of the normal operation of people driving cars. The vast majority of people may not be assiduously concerned about safety, but they certainly do not want to be in an accident in which they or anyone close to them gets hurt. As for enforcement by police, of course we cannot expect police officers to go around in patrol cars peering into every other car to see whether seat belts are effectively fixed, and the noble Lord, Lord Hanningfield, is also right that we cannot expect the police to appear at every junior school to tell parents what is required. But we can expect the police to act in their normal judicious and intelligent way. Any person involved in an incident of any kind knows that failure to comply with the law will put them in increased jeopardy. Gradually, people will begin to realise that it does not do to defy the law. I heard what the noble Lords, Lord Monson and Lord Cobbold, said about the nanny state; it is usually the nanny international state when we are talking about Brussels directives. However, let us leave Brussels out of the issue on this occasion. These regulations derive from a Brussels directive, but noble Lords will recognise that Britain is at the forefront of road safety measures because we are proud that we have a better safety record than almost any other state in Europe. It will not do for us to blame our continental partners about this. We are prepared to take initiatives because we think that they save lives and reduce injury. The noble Lord, Lord Monson, asked whether the Government had taken cognisance of the fact that the wrong size child in a badly fitted seat belt could come to mishap. That is exactly so. We talked about necessary child restraints and proper seats for children because an ordinary seat belt will not meet the requirement for a child. A small child popped into the back of the car and given an adult seat belt may be marginally better off than without a seat belt at all, but in certain circumstances that seat belt might occasion the very injury that we seek to avoid. That is why the regulations consider children as a special category. We have enough scientific evidence for this and we are not alone in our view—all other European countries also recognise this—that seat belts contribute to safety, as, indeed, do airbags. A feature of the past decade or so has been the improvement in accident rates because of better designed motor vehicles and particularly because of the introduction of airbags. The noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, said that he could not deactivate his airbag. He is not alone in that—a large number cannot be deactivated. I think that mine can, but I have never done so. However, the point is that, if the airbag cannot be deactivated and therefore is in use, we must not use a rear-facing child restraint or seat because we know that that can create more danger to the child. I recognise the anxieties about these regulations. I frankly and accurately reflected the anxieties of the Merits Committee. We have difficulty in interpreting Brussels directives. The noble Lord, Lord Monson, made great fun of the differing measurements in use. I do not blame him for that, because I find it the source of the most incredible irritation when we are used to one measurement and someone comes along with another. He will have seen that I scrupulously translated centimetres into feet and inches for the purpose of this debate, because I share exactly those concerns. However, despite the difficulties of interpreting and fitting the regulations in with British law, we can see a way of reducing the number of accidents and deaths. The noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, mentioned Northern Ireland and the penalty points system. If he advocates that system, he will lay himself open to even more criticism from the noble Lords, Lord Cobbold and Lord Monson, because the penalties are even greater for infraction of the law under the Northern Ireland example that he gave. Northern Ireland has the right to make its judgments in this area. It makes them separately from the rest of Great Britain. This order relates only to Great Britain. I hope that I have assuaged some anxieties.