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Road Safety

Certainly, we absolutely condemn anyone breaking the speed limits. I am talking about how we can effectively police those speed limits. I went to Bradford recently—I am not used to driving there—and saw a lot of cars slowing down to go past the cameras, but speeding up afterwards. Local people know where the cameras are. Hundreds of thousands of people have been caught by the cameras. We need a more intelligent approach to the issue, and we need to look carefully at where cameras are located. I am a big fan of time-over-distance, or average, cameras. Where they have been used in Scotland, they have been very effective. I say that because they have caught so few people, and surely that is the test of whether a camera system is effective. It is effective if it does not catch people speeding because it deters them from speeding. When such cameras are used on contraflows where there are motorway roadworks, they have worked very well at keeping speed down. Interestingly, on motorways where there are no roadworks, where time-over-distance cameras have been deployed, journey times have improved. If a person speeds down the fast lane of a motorway, causing other people to pull in, it often increases the journey time for many other people on the road. We have rejected the suggestions that Ministers made earlier in the year that there should be a blanket 50 mph speed limit on rural roads. Where lower speed limits are appropriate, they should be introduced. Similarly, 20 mph speed limits should be introduced where they are appropriate, but there should not necessarily be a blanket introduction over an area. I was interested to hear the hon. Member for Colchester talk about the warning signs that he had seen in Derbyshire outside a school. That system is used widely in New Zealand; head teachers can deploy signs that light up at important times of day, such as when children are arriving or leaving. We are looking closely at the system in Spain—I do not know whether the Minister has heard of it—where a reactive sign is placed just before a light-controlled pedestrian crossing. If a motorist triggers that sign, it deploys the red light on the pelican crossing, so that he has a "time out" there. Not only is he given the inconvenience of having to wait, but drivers in the cars behind him—and, more importantly, drivers coming in the other direction, who have eye contact with him—can show their disapproval. I thank the hon. Member for Liverpool, Riverside, again for presenting her report. There is much in it that is worthy of further action. Although I have been a little critical of the Government in one or two areas, the vast majority of what they are doing takes us in the right direction. If it was not, the figures would not be so good. However, I would like the Minister to look closely at the issues of the motorcycle test, better roadside drug-testing equipment and how we can clamp down on rogue drivers by cutting out all the bogus, counterfeit number plates around the country. One police officer told me that it was estimated that there were 20,000 cloned vehicles on our road.