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Road Safety [HL]

My Lords, I will not detain your Lordships for any longer than I strictly have to. Suffice to say, we know the arguments well. Sadly, we have been unable to reach any sort of agreement on the merits or suitability of this provision. It is of some concern given, as I said previously, that this is very much the most contentious part of the legislation, which we generally all support because we all support road safety. As my noble and learned friend Lord Lyell of Markyate said so well in his letter today in the Times, to which the Minister referred, we run the risk of criminalising individuals for a momentary lapse of concentration. With your Lordships’ permission, I thank my noble friend for all the help and legal expertise that he has given me over the past months. Of course, we have the utmost sympathy and respect for victims’ families, who have lost loved ones. We all know and understand the emotion that causes, and we had some debate on that in this House. That is not the issue. The issue in this House is that Parliament should not be in the business of passing bad legislation. It pains me to say that we are on the verge of doing so, and we genuinely believe that. Your Lordships’ House has rejected this legislation twice. The Minister said that it was not a very big majority the first time, but it certainly was quite a large majority the second time. Indeed, it is the overwhelming view of this House and of the wider legal profession that this legislation simply will not work. When one has a collective legal expertise such as we are fortunate to have in this House, one tends to listen to and respect those views, yet the Government have chosen not to listen. We have cautioned against this clause time and again, yet the Government have chosen not to take any note. This is our right in this House. The Minister has given his arguments, and we still do not accept them. We will not be voting on this today, but we will watch this legislation as it moves onto the statute book and becomes operational. If we feel that it has unfortunate consequences, we shall look for some future opportunity to reverse it and create more suitable legislation.