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Road Safety Bill [Lords]

I rise to draw the House’s attention to my new clause 27, which would require all motorcycles used on a public highway to display dipped headlight beams continuously and a red light during daylight hours, with an exemption for historic motorcycles. Any motorcycle failing to comply with that requirement would be guilty of an offence. It is not a radical innovation. Careful motorcyclists in this country have already developed the practice of using their headlights at all times. Why? Because it increases their visibility and safety, so it is to be welcomed. The practice has been given official sanction. The highway code advises all motorcyclists to use their lights during day-time hours. It even includes a cartoon with a caption pointing out that it is wrong to drive a motorcycle without lights, so there is official blessing for the contents of new clause 27 in the highway code. The new clause would merely enshrine good practice in legislation. Personally, I am against unnecessary legislation, so if the Minister can tell me that the current position, with the recommendation in the highway code, is an effective practice to which most motorcyclists adhere, I should probably be content and would not wish to push new clause 27 to a vote. But I have a second purpose in speaking to the new clause: I should like to tease out from the Minister his wider view, which I hope is that the provision should not be extended to cover all motor vehicles at all times on our roads. I hope that his support will extend only to motorcyclists, because somewhere deep in the heart of Brussels there is a regulation-ridden, form-filling, pen-pushing nincompoop of a Eurocrat who feels that the one-size-fits-all policy, which we see all too often in the EU, should be applied to day-time running lights and every EU member state should have compulsory day-time running lights on all motor vehicles, and further that such a provision should be retrospective and should thus apply to existing vehicles on our roads. I hope that the Minister, while indicating his support for the aims of new clause 27, will also be able to tell the House that he does not support the proposal currently being debated in Brussels to make every motor vehicle on the road use day-time running lights. There are a number of reasons why new clause 27 is good, but to go further would be bad—clutter, to start with. One benefit for motorcyclists in having their headlights on is that it makes them more visible to other road users. If every motor vehicle on the road was obliged by EU law to run with headlights or day-time running lights, we should have visual clutter and light pollution. Motorcyclists would be less visible because we would not be able to identify them from other vehicles. Such a law would remove the current safety benefits for motorcyclists. The one-size-fits-all view is also wrong when we consider the climate and the number of daylight hours of EU member countries. Some European countries have few daylight hours; indeed, in the depths of winter some have no daylight. What might be right for them is not right for the UK. In some EU countries it is not light until 9.30 or 10 in the morning and it is dark again by 2.30 or 3 o’clock. In this country, there are many periods of good, bright weather in winter, so to say that motorists should have their headlights on at all times is inappropriate. It is the heavy hand of the nanny state. If such a provision came into force, there would be a side-effect as it could affect the use of historic motor vehicles. At this point I declare an interest as the owner of several historic vehicles and as chairman of the all-party historic vehicles group. As the Minister knows, it is a technical issue; some early motor vehicles use gas lighting and the majority of historic and classic motor vehicles use a generator rather than an alternator to recharge their battery. The generator is—