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Road Safety Bill [Lords]

I rise to support my colleagues in their new clauses. In answering a point made by the hon. Member for Stroud (Mr. Drew), may I say that as somebody who has worked in road haulage for a number of years I am not aware of any lobbying from within the industry to prevent lorries, particularly new ones, from being fitted with reflective tape? I can understand why a haulier who owns 50 or 100 vehicles would baulk at paying what I think would be considerably more than £100 a time to have that fleet fitted with reflective tape retrospectively. But if this measure is to apply to new vehicles and if the cost is to be only £100 a time, it is a drop in the ocean for any haulage operator. Those who operate new vehicles tend to be the big boys anyway, and they are usually very keen to adopt any new safety procedures. The hon. Gentleman plaintively says, ““It’s a no-brainer. Where is the opposition coming from?”” It is clear that it is coming not from the industry but from Brussels or whoever it is within the bowels of the United Nations who decides what sort of reflective tape should go round a lorry. That is a decision that should be made in a sovereign nation. If we have signed up to legislation saying that somebody else should be making that decision, I say that we should unsign it and say that this is a matter that should be devolved. We are perfectly capable of deciding for ourselves in this country what sort of reflective, illuminated tape should go round our HGVs. Frankly, it was even more astounding that the Minister then went on to say that he has been responsible for taking action against states that have pressed ahead with the legislation before the UN or the EU has got around to it, because it is anti-competitive. I speak as somebody who knows a bit about the hardships faced by people in the haulage industry. If the Minister is worried about anti-competitive measures, why is he not looking at the fact that vehicle fines and tachograph procedures are not properly enforced on the drivers of foreign vehicles that come here? Why is he not looking at fuel duty? Every British haulier could tell him that we are paying far more in fuel duty than anywhere else in Europe, and that we have to pay to use roads on the continent, yet when continental drivers come over here, they do not have to pay for any of that. That is why so many of the very large operators are now registering their companies in the Netherlands and elsewhere—to get out of paying some of the taxes. As a result, British hauliers are going out of business. I particularly wanted to speak to new clause 21. This, too, is a bit of a no-brainer. I do not know whether the LGV test has changed significantly since I took it back in the early 1990s. At the time, it involved a minimum of two weeks’ training and at least 40 minutes was spent taking the test itself. We got those licences and took that training in a flat-bed vehicle with a tractor fitted with a rear window and a rear-view mirror, so it was relatively easy. As soon as one gets out on to the roads, one is normally driving either a box-type vehicle or a curtain-sider. Even if one is driving a flat-bed, obviously for much of the time it is fully loaded. I have driven many kinds of articulated vehicles both here and abroad, and my recollection is that very few of the cabs are fitted with a rear-view mirror. Even if there is a rear window it is quite distracting for the driver to look in a rear-view mirror because, most of the time, they will be driving a fully loaded vehicle and will be unable to see anything out of it. It is obvious that if the driver of a 40-ft, 40 tonne vehicle has only the driver-side mirror to look into when trying to move back across from the fast lane or, on a motorway that forks, to go into a left-hand lane, they are driving a death-trap. Driving on the continent, the danger is greatly magnified. So once again, we have a new clause that is a complete and utter no-brainer. In fact, it was news to me that someone could drive an articulated or goods vehicle without a mirror on the passenger side. I find that quite extraordinary. No responsible haulier would send a vehicle out like that, although I do know from experience that there are plenty of irresponsible ones around, so it would not surprise me if one or two do. I can add to the debate only by pointing out that a 3.5 tonne vehicle is still a dangerous one to be driving without a passenger-side mirror. Most people would think of such a vehicle as being a Ford transit, but there are larger vehicles that have a slightly lower payload but nevertheless can travel at 80 mph. I would not know that from experience of course, but many of them will be able to do that. Those vehicles will often be in the middle lane if not the fast lane of the motorway, and the idea that they could be changing lanes without a passenger mirror is absolutely frightening. We must bear it in mind that any sort of goods vehicle will often be loaded, and any loaded vehicle, whether it is a flat-bed or some sort of a box, will not allow a proper view out of the rear-view mirror. We should therefore not only be pushing for HGVs—anything over 3.5 tonnes—to have a passenger mirror as quickly as possible, but extending that to any kind of goods vehicle. I am totally anti-regulation, as a rule. I am completely against piling further unnecessary regulation on to the haulage industry because I have seen so many of my friends going bankrupt as a result of unnecessary regulation, but this is one bit of regulation that no responsible operator would want to avoid. It is one thing that we ought to do to increase safety on the roads and ensure that responsible hauliers are not operating at a disadvantage because the irresponsible cowboys are driving vehicles that should not be let loose on the road.