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Road Safety Bill [Lords]

I am disappointed at not having secured debates on the amendments in my name on seat belt wearing and court presentation officers, but despite those minor disappointments, this is a good Bill. I am disappointed that my hon. Friend the Minister and I cannot see eye to eye about the legal limit for drinking and driving, but let there be no doubt that my opinion of him is that he is a very good Minister indeed for road safety in the United Kingdom. No one could doubt his personal commitment to high standards of road safety and driving down still further the casualties that occur day in, day out on our roads. My hon. Friend was able to publish some good news recently, with the 2005 statistics for casualties on our roads, with reductions in deaths, serious injuries and total injuries. That is a good picture which he can feel some pride in. However, there was one worrying blip in those statistics—the number of cyclists killed in the last 12 months of the period covered by the statistics. I am sure my hon. Friend and his excellent team will want to evaluate what has gone wrong over the past 12 months and what we can do through further measures of education, enforcement of the existing laws and engineering measures to bring down the number of deaths of some of the most vulnerable road users. Generally, the trend has been downward over a number of years. My hon. Friend can say that the Government are well on target to meet their casualty reductions for 2010. Some measures in the Bill will help towards those aims. In addition to the list that my hon. Friend provided, I draw attention to the promotion of a greater use of rehabilitation and driver improvement courses. They will prove to be significant over time. Quite properly, the House is taking seriously the matter of death on our roads. There are a number of measures to do with death in the Bill, such as causing death by careless driving and causing death when driving illegally. Equally significant will be the alternative verdict permitted in a manslaughter case, which I hope will encourage prosecutors to be a little braver in charging people with manslaughter in appropriate cases—the most serious ones. So all in all, this is a good Bill, which I hope will continue to promote the Government’s ambition, and the House’s wish, that the number of casualties on our roads will continue to decrease. I wish it well in the other place.