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Heavy Goods Vehicles (Seat Belts)

I am grateful to Mr. Speaker for the opportunity to have this debate on what may seem a small and somewhat arcane issue of fitting seat belts to heavy goods vehicles. However, on occasion small issues have large consequences and, in this case, it can be a matter of life or death. Normally, discussions about road safety and heavy goods vehicles focus on their role in accidents and fatalities involving pedestrians, cyclists or other motorists. Clearly, there are issues to be addressed in that respect and the Minister is well seized of those. But today I am focusing on a different matter: the dangers posed to the drivers of HGVs whose lorries have not been fitted with a seat belt. I have called this debate because in July 2007 a constituent of mine, Peter Williams, was killed when the 7-tonne lorry that he was driving crashed near the village of Wolsingham in County Durham. Peter was just 23 years old. According to evidence heard at the inquest into his death, the injuries that Peter sustained were mainly above the legs and on his chest, probably indicating that he had been thrown against the steering wheel before being thrown out of the cab as the lorry plunged down a bank and on to a railway line. The Calor Gas tanker that he was driving dated from 1995. It had not been fitted with seat belts. After Peter died his mum and dad, Jan and Mark Williams, who are also my constituents, came to see me as their local Member of Parliament. Understandably, they were deeply upset by Peter's death, but what impressed me then and what has continued to impress me over the two years that I have known them is their shared determination and their calm resolve to see some good come out of their family's terrible personal tragedy. At no point have they displayed any rancour or bitterness about what happened to their son. They are a quite remarkable family and I want to pay tribute to them today. Mr. and Mrs. Williams have worked tirelessly over the last two years campaigning to highlight the need for every HGV on Britain's roads to be fitted with seat belts so that no other family has to endure what they have endured or suffer the loss that they have suffered. I hope that this debate helps the Williams family and helps their campaign; I hope that it raises awareness about the lack of seat belt protection in too many lorries; and above all else I hope that it prompts the Government and the road haulage industry to take action together to save lives. After Mr. and Mrs. Williams first came to see me, I started looking into this issue and I was genuinely shocked to find that Peter Williams's lorry is not the only one on Britain's roads lacking that most basic safety protection—a seat belt. I had assumed, obviously naively, that every lorry on the roads had seat belts fitted. I guess that most Members of Parliament and members of the public would make the same assumption. By law all HGVs weighing more than 3,500 kg and registered for use after 1 October 2001 have to be fitted with a seat belt. That followed European legislation that we introduced in this place. The problem is with lorries that were registered before 1 October 2001. I tabled questions to my right hon. Friend the Minister's predecessor as a Transport Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Poplar and Canning Town (Jim Fitzpatrick), to gauge the extent of this problem, which is pretty big. My hon. Friend estimated that more than 250,000 vehicles were registered before 2001 and are still in use. Since that number includes many older vehicles, those are precisely the ones that are probably most prone to having safety problems. Of course, it is true that their numbers are falling year on year as they are scrapped and new lorries are introduced: the Road Haulage Association and the Department for Transport estimate that some 40,000 of these older lorries are disappearing year by year. Although there was no statutory requirement for manufacturers to fit seat belts in lorries registered prior to 2001, some manufacturers, such as Scania and Volvo, did so voluntarily because they were concerned about the safety implications if their cabs did not have them. So not every one of the 250,000 older lorries will be without seat belts, but many will. It is time to close that loophole. I know from helpful conversations with Ministers and officials in the Department of Transport, and from helpful communication that I have had with the RHA, that there are no reliable data to allow us to judge just how many lorries there are currently on the road and in daily use that do not have seat belts appropriately fitted. But it is highly likely that their numbers run into many thousands—perhaps tens of thousands. DFT figures suggest that in 1997 alone more than 400,000 lorries in use had been registered prior to that date. Of course, I understand that the cabs of those old lorries may be difficult to adapt to enable a seat belt to be fitted, but that will not be so in all of them. Indeed, when my hon. Friend the Member for Poplar and Canning Town kindly agreed to meet the Williams family and myself in this place more than a year ago, he informed us that he had discovered that more than 150,000 HGVs registered before 2001 have the necessary anchorage points already fitted in their cabs to enable seat belts to be easily installed. So the fittings are there, but the seat belts are not. I can see no excuse for that, and I believe it has to change. I am not alone in that presumption. In a letter to me dated 2 June last year, the chief executive of the RHA said that""fitment of belts to those vehicles not currently fitted should not cause too much of an engineering problem."" The DFT estimates the cost of installation to be some £110 per vehicle. The RHA said that the cost could be between £200 and £300. I have every sympathy for road hauliers, particularly in the current difficult economic circumstances, who are finding it difficult sometimes to make ends meet. But this will not cost the earth. A few hundred pounds seems an incredibly small price to pay for something that is potentially life-saving. We know from the experience of the last few decades that seat belts save lives. The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents estimates that in all vehicles—lorries, vans, cars, buses, etc.—over the last 25 years some 50,000 lives will have been saved as a result of people wearing seat belts. In 1997 a report specifically looking at the consequences of fitting HGVs with seat belts indicated that some 130 deaths and serious injuries could be prevented if all truck drivers wore a seat belt. A further study conducted for the DFT in 2001, prior to the legislation being introduced, concluded that three deaths and 35 serious injuries could be prevented if seat belts were fitted to HGVs. Of course, even when seat belts are fitted they are not always worn. A decade ago, when the Government were thinking about introducing the legislation, it was estimated that only one in 10 truck drivers regularly wore a seat belt when fitted. That low level of usage remains a problem today, and I know that the Minister and his colleague are anxious to address the problem, and rightly so. It is welcome that both the DFT and the organisations representing the road hauliers, most notably the RHA, are actively encouraging drivers to wear a seat belt when one is fitted. Sadly, Peter Williams did not have that option. If he had wanted to wear a seat belt, he could not have done so because his lorry was one of perhaps many thousands that did not have one installed. No one will ever know whether, if Peter's lorry had been fitted with a seat belt, he would still be with us, but I hope that most sensible people believe, as I do, that it is not unreasonable for lorry drivers, regardless of the age of the lorry that they are driving, to be afforded basic protection from death or serious injury in the event of an accident. We are all rightly concerned, here and in wider society, about drivers of cars and lorries not wearing seat belts when they are fitted. I am no great fan of the nanny state approach to public policy, but when research consistently shows that one third of car occupants who received fatal injuries were not wearing seat belts, society, the Government and the law have a responsibility to act. Most people would agree with that. My question is a simple one: should we not extend our concerns from drivers not wearing their seat belts to vehicles that do not have seat belts fitted? Those are two sides of the same coin. They are both road safety issues, and they need to be addressed. I know from conversations with the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, my hon. Friend the Member for Gillingham (Paul Clark), that he is worried about the current loophole. My hon. Friend, like his predecessor, my hon. Friend the Member for Poplar and Canning Town, has taken an active interest in the Williams campaign, and I thank him for that. In essence, its plea is simple. It is urging haulage companies to fit seat belts to all commercial vehicles on the roads that do not have them. More than 10,000 people, many from my constituency, have already pledged support for the campaign, and they are not alone. Mr. Andrew Tweddle, the Durham and Darlington coroner, who presided over the inquest into Peter's death, has called for the current law to be reviewed. When I approached the RHA, I was pleased to receive its support for a campaign that focuses on the operators of older vehicles that have anchorages fitted but no belts installed. Similarly, when I contacted the Health and Safety Executive, it offered to assist in disseminating messages about the fitting of safety belts in lorries. Such a campaign is long overdue. I hope that today my right hon. Friend the Minister will pledge his Department's support for that campaign and, more than that, I hope that he will actively work with the various organisations representing road hauliers to make that campaign a priority for the new year. The aim should be to win the hearts and minds of the firms operating older lorries to fit seat belts to every single one of them. It is far better for the loophole in the current law to be addressed by voluntary action than by the sometimes arduous and often long process of legislative change. For one thing, that action, if the will exists to make it happen, can make progress quickly. Equally, however, if that campaign does not happen or does not succeed in persuading road hauliers to install seat belts, I hope that the Minister will at least keep open the option of amending the law to make such a change mandatory. I hope that common sense will prevail, and that we do not have to contemplate moving down the legislative route. More than that, however, I hope that common human decency will prevail. Without seat belts, older lorries can become death traps for drivers who are unfortunate enough to be involved in an accident. We know that from what happened to Peter Williams. Nothing can bring Peter back, but I hope that lessons will be learned from his untimely death. My plea to my right hon. Friend the Minister is straightforward. Let us not wait for another preventable death before action is taken. Now is the time to take action, and I hope that he will pledge that he and his Department will take the lead in making that happen.