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Road Safety Bill [Lords]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. I am not aware of the details of the organisation, but it is probably the sort of educational project of which we approve. We are in favour of the financial penalty deposits and the immobilisation and removal of vehicles. That would certainly help our haulage industry, which is up against fearsome competition following the huge increase in the number of foreign trucks on our roads—up from 671,000 a year in 1997 to 1,595,000 in 2004. We hope that those sensible measures will work. We approve of medical inquiries for high-risk offenders following disqualification and of some of the measures to try to prevent deaths by uninsured drivers, although we feel they do not go far enough. Similarly, we approve of the measures to keep vehicles that do not meet insurance requirements, although we would want to go further. We like the tightening up on registration plates and the regulation of vehicles modified to run on fuels stored under pressure. Overall, however, we felt that the Bill was a missed opportunity. As the Minister acknowledged, we did not take a partisan approach. We tried to table constructive amendments and new clauses that would help to save lives, but we are ultimately disappointed with the Bill. We will not oppose its Third Reading tonight, but it could have been so much better. Some of the measures were petty, such as the ban on detection devices which effectively give drivers an extra pair of eyes and ears. We were also disappointed by the Government’s continuing pigheadedness and pusillanimity about taking on the European Commission on safety issues on which other countries have already gone ahead. Those issues included retro-reflective tape, mirrors and alarms. We were disappointed on the issue of the inclusion of a rudimentary first aid element in driving tests. There is good evidence that if one can clear the airwaves of someone in an accident within four minutes they will live, but if not, they will die. We thought that such a provision would help to save lives, but we were turned down. The nearest we got to changing the Government’s mind was on motorbikes in bus lanes. We all but got the Minister to accept that there should be a presumption that motorbikes should be allowed in all bus lanes unless specifically excluded, perhaps outside schools, hospitals or fire stations, but the Minister did not even give in on that. We could not persuade the Government on other issues, including some of regulation. We proposed a regime for licensing limousines, the number of which has increased spectacularly from 3,000 in 2003 to more than 11,000 now. Those large vehicles are not properly regulated, but many people travel in them and we fear that there may be a horrible accident. We also proposed regulation of pedicabs. We tabled amendments, having consulted the businesses involved, but time and again we were rebuffed. The Bill failed to address two big areas. We consistently tabled amendments that would have toughened up—