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Driving Instruction (Suspension and Exemption Powers) Bill

I, too, congratulate the hon. Member for Dunfermline and West Fife (Willie Rennie) on introducing this Bill. It does what private Members' Bills do best—it addresses a specific, narrowly defined wrong with a clearly defined remedy. I also want to pay tribute to his brave constituent, Lesley Anne. I should perhaps declare an interest in that I have a son who is going through his driving lessons. As he is a large, rugby playing medical student, I do not think that he is especially vulnerable, but I have another son who has just passed his test and another who will come up for it very shortly, so I am heavily focused on driving tests. It was quite right for the hon. Gentleman to remind us what an important profession driving instruction is. The 40,000 driving instructors in this country have played a large role in the way in which successive Governments have pushed down the accident rate. Having been responsible for a fatal accident on the roads, I take a close interest in these matters. The way in which the death toll on the roads in this country goes steadily down and down, year on year, is very encouraging. Indeed, it compares favourably with that in many comparable countries. The hon. Gentleman has produced a very sensible, balanced little measure. He has sensibly built in a 75-day time limit, so that an unfortunate driver against whom a malicious or unfair allegation has been made is clear about the period involved. He has also, quite rightly, included the appeal and compensation mechanisms. Clearly, this is too small an issue for long-term statistics to be collected, but it would be interesting if, after the first couple of years for which the Bill is in operation, a small written statement was issued to say how often its terms had been applied and whether there had been any successful appeals. There is a slight danger, thinking back to what the hon. Member for North Southwark and Bermondsey (Simon Hughes) said about the fact that driving lessons are almost always one-on-one, that if word got around, a disgruntled pupil, for example, might use the measure in completely the wrong way against a driving instructor. I hope that that will not happen but it will be interesting to see, after the first year or two, what the statistics show and whether there have been a number of successful appeals, because we might need to fine-tune the legislation.