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Road Casualties
3.30 pm
Mr. Bernard Jenkin (North Essex) (by private notice): To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions if he will make a statement on the Government's new proposals to reduce deaths and injuries on our roads.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions (Mr. Keith Hill): We shall be publishing the road safety strategy tomorrow. To the best of our knowledge, there is no precedent for making a statement to the House about road safety policy, but I am happy to come here today to tell the House some of the measures that will be in our strategy. It will be a long document, so I shall not be able to cover all the details.
This country has, overall, a good road safety record, second only to Sweden in Europe, but our record on child pedestrian safety is not good. We have, historically, been near the bottom of the European league table for child pedestrian deaths. Although we had a better year in 1998, 103 child pedestrians were still killed.
The strategy will therefore include a major thrust on child safety, and a separate casualty reduction target for child deaths and serious injuries of 50 per cent. by 2010. We shall set a reduction target for all road deaths and serious injuries of 40 per cent. over the same period.
We do not, of course, disregard slight injuries. We have not been so successful in reducing those. They went up by 16 per cent. between 1981-85 and 1998. During that period, traffic increased by 55 per cent. We shall set a target to keep slight injuries well below the rate of traffic growth.
There will be new measures, and reinforcement of existing ones, to support those targets to improve road safety for all road users. Many of the measures will be aimed at increasing the safety of children, so we will strongly encourage local authorities to use their powers to create 20 mph zones--powers that we gave to them last summer--especially around schools and on the way to school. That fits in well with our policies to encourage walking and cycling to school, which will happen only if they are thought to be safe.
We have for the first time placed road safety in the national curriculum. We do not accept the proposition that we should not tell children about road dangers. We plan properly researched practical training for child pedestrians.
There will be a range of other measures in relation to speed, which is the greatest contributor to accidents. We must persuade drivers to slow down, and make speeding as socially unacceptable as drinking and driving. The speed review, published tomorrow, will demonstrate overwhelming evidence of the dangers.
However, such persuasion must be effective. It is no good just changing speed limits in the hope that they will be observed. We need to target our measures. Of course, limits have a part to play and we will give details of what we propose at greater length tomorrow. It will be a mixture of targeted changes in limits, appropriate safety engineering in vehicles and roads, and persuasion of drivers by presenting them with the facts and improved enforcement of limits.
We shall publish a range of measures to reduce the number of deaths and injuries in which new drivers are involved, in response to the helpful and timely report of the Select Committee on the Environment, Transport and Regional Affairs. We shall concentrate on improving the training that new drivers receive, and indeed, the training of all drivers.
We shall tackle the problems of irresponsible drivers--those who have had too much to drink, which is a continuing problem although much progress has been made. Most measures will tackle the worst offenders. Drug-driving has long been an offence, but we suspect that it is more prevalent now. We have proposals to provide effective means of controlling it, but we also need to know far more about it. That is why we shall continue to undertake ground-breaking research, especially on the effects of cannabis. We also need to give more publicity to the effects of tiredness on drivers. We now suspect that tiredness contributes to 10 per cent. of all accidents.
We shall propose measures to protect walkers and cyclists in line with our policies to encourage those activities. We are committed to reviewing the strategy and the targets every three years. We shall do better if we can.
We shall naturally set out the strategy in more detail in a written answer tomorrow. We had always intended to do that. Copies of the strategy and associated documents, including the review of speed policy, will be placed in the Library from 10 o'clock tomorrow morning.
Mr. Jenkin:
I welcome the broad thrust of the Minister's response. Conservative Members have always attached the highest priority to improving road safety. The Labour Government inherited an enviable record from the Conservative Administration--one of the best road safety records of any developed country.
However, I agree with the Minister that the number of road casualties remains intolerable. They are the equivalent of 100 Paddington disasters every year. We therefore welcome the Minister's intention to set new casualty reduction targets and I would be grateful if he could specify them to the House.
Given the supreme importance of road safety, where is the Secretary of State? Will the Minister confirm that, had we not tabled this private notice question, the Government would have given Parliament no information before the Minister for Transport delivered a speech elsewhere tomorrow? Is that the priority that the Government attach to road safety--no statement to Parliament and no Secretary of State?
Why were the Government so reluctant to address the House on the issue, when many hon. Members on both sides would wish to support their objective of reducing road casualties? Why have the Government taken so long to introduce their policies? The strategy was promised for last year.
Will the Minister assure the House that he has given a full statement of all the Government's proposals that were due to be announced tomorrow? Does he accept that a successful road safety strategy depends on a combination of improvements in vehicle and road design, the right penalties--appropriately enforced--for dangerous driving, and better awareness among all road users of the risks and responsibilities of using the road?
Does the Minister agree that speed is only part of the equation? I welcome the fact that he has dropped plans to prosecute every minor speeding offence, which would have absorbed a huge amount of police time in pursuing largely law-abiding motorists.
I also welcome the Minister's confirmation that there are no plans for blanket reductions in speed limits, which would be an ineffective short cut rather than a proper review of speed limits with a formal timetable and a budget.
Will the Minister confirm that the Government have dropped their more extreme proposals, such as raising the driving test age to 18? I support retaining the current drink-drive limit, but urge the Government to target the small minority to which the Minister referred.
I also welcome the proposed initiative to pursue training for company car drivers. We read about that in the papers, but the Minister did not tell us about it today. Company car drivers represent only 10 per cent. of drivers. Nevertheless, if they are responsible for almost half of all accidents, it is sensible and imaginative of the Government to make the suggestions that they have outlined.
What are the Government doing through public education for the generality of drivers and pedestrians, who comprise half the casualties on our roads? If we are to create the same intolerance of dangerous driving as that of drink-driving, will the Minister commit the Government to the necessary public information campaigns that will achieve that?
How can we expect our courts to hand out stiffer penalties for dangerous driving in an atmosphere that is still too tolerant of bad driving and accidents on the roads?
Will the Minister also acknowledge that the savage cuts in the roads programme included cuts in many schemes that would have reduced deaths on the roads, according to the Government's own appraisal tables?
What measures will the Government introduce to deal with the increasing incidence of driving while under the influence of drugs? Is the Minister aware that the Transport Research Laboratory is merely repeating research that has already been undertaken in other countries, and that there are many who believe that the Government could act now on this issue?
I welcome the special target for child casualty reduction and the proposals for educating child pedestrians. What are the particular measures the Minister proposes to reduce the number of child casualties on our roads? If he plans to leave this entirely to local authorities, what figure will he put on the resources he will give them to achieve the 10-year child casualty reduction target?
Finally, will the Minister confirm that the way to reduce the number of casualties on our roads is not to demonise the car, but to work with car manufacturers and responsible representative organisations of all road users, including cyclists and pedestrians, and to increase public awareness of how many lives can be saved by working with the grain of people's common sense?
Mr. Hill:
I think that on the whole I can express my gratitude for the brief elements of welcome in the remarks of the hon. Member for North Essex (Mr. Jenkin) in
However, I do not want to be wholly churlish. Indeed, I fully accept the hon. Gentleman's remarks about the success of the road casualty reduction targets initiated by his Government. I go even further and pay particular tribute to the hon. Member for Worthing, West (Mr. Bottomley) who, as the junior Transport Minister, was responsible for setting those targets. The remarkable decrease in the level of deaths and serious casualties on our roads will be an abiding monument to his contribution to British public life.
I wish that I could pay tribute to the contribution of the hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells (Mr. Norman). The hon. Member for North Essex referred to the absence of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, but we are getting used to thinking of the hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells as the silent Member on the Conservative Front Bench.
I should like to pick up one or two of the specific points raised by the hon. Member for North Essex, who asked a wide range of questions. I shall not be able to answer all of them in detail, but I shall try to answer some.
On targets, I reiterate that our objective is a 40 per cent. reduction by 2010 in the number of people killed or seriously injured; a 10 per cent. reduction in the slight casualty rate; and a 50 per cent. reduction in the number of children killed or seriously injured.
The hon. Gentleman asked about public education. As I said in my statement, the Government are committed to a major programme of investment in a campaign to improve attitudes towards speeding. That is partly a matter of enforcement measures, but we have to effect a cultural change among drivers. Drivers must recognise that speeding is as socially unacceptable as drink-driving. We are committed to a major programme of public education.
The hon. Gentleman also asked about proposals with regard to those travelling for work. It is our intention to improve safety standards in work-related driving, and we are about to set up an inter-agency task group to examine the scale of the problem and how to manage it. We shall consider the development of an occupational highway code.
The hon. Gentleman asked about our proposals to improve the safety of children. That is central to our concerns. I have already mentioned our target for reducing the number of deaths and serious injuries. Within the terms of the local planning system, we shall be encouraging local authorities to create more 20 mph zones, to provide safe crossing facilities and to make enforcement more effective. As the House will recall, last year the Government announced the establishment of nine pilot home zone schemes in England next year: we hope that they will be a success, and that more can be created in due course.
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