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28 Jan 2003 : Column 804—continued
Mr. Mark Lazarowicz (Edinburgh, North and Leith): Does my hon. Friend agree that a better use for the millions of pounds to which he refers would have been to employ more British transport police officers? One way to improve passenger safety in stations and on trains is to have more policemen and women on the beat. Would my hon. Friend like the extra strength and authority given to the British transport police in the Bill to be followed up by extra funds?
David Cairns: I agree, and I am sure that my hon. Friend will make those points if he is fortunate enough to catch your eye, Madam Deputy Speaker. Of course, I am speaking about safety connected with the fabric of the building, and not the endangerment of the public by criminal activity.
This matter is vital to my constituency. In the spurious guise of tackling safety considerations, Railtrack has squandered millions of pounds of public money propping up a Victorian white elephant and doing work to the sea wall beneath the station, which is completely unnecessary—it could not be justified by any independent assessor. However, as the issue showed up on Railtrack's radar as one of safety, we have no avenue of appeal.
The money has been spent, the contracts have been signed and a brilliant redevelopment opportunity in my constituency has been squandered. Although I am delighted that that terrible company, which was incapable of giving a straight answer and had a "now you see it, now you don't" attitude to funding, no longer exists, my constituency has lost out badly. I hope that Members of Parliament will be able to approach the new regulator and appeal such decisions before contracts are signed.
I turn briefly to part 4 on shipping and alcohol. As a Member of Parliament for what is still a busy port, although not as busy as it once was, I welcome the Government's plans to regulate alcohol consumption in the maritime industry. I have to confess that I was
slightly surprised that regulations, which apply to other modes of transport, do not already apply to shipping. People in charge of passenger ferries are every bit as liable on safety grounds as those who drive cars and buses, and they should be subject to the same breath test regime.Although the Secretary of State greatly helped me when he responded to my earlier intervention, I am still slightly confused as to the role of non-professional maritime activity in Scotland, as opposed to that in England and Wales.
Let us consider the example of someone who is operating a jet-ski on Loch Lomond while under the influence of alcohol—although one has to be rich to own a jet-ski, it is a very popular past-time on Loch Lomond—and whose behaviour prompts a call to the police on the suspicion that they are under the influence of alcohol, even though no accident occurs. Will the new regime apply to that person in the same way that it would apply if they were using a jet-ski on Lake Windermere? My right hon. Friend told me that if an accident occurred and the procurator fiscal was looking to bring a case against the person concerned for that reason, the fact that they were under the influence of alcohol could be taken into consideration in the procurator fiscal's contemplating the level of charge.
However, I am not talking about cases where an accident occurs. Many of the people who are done for drunk-driving have not in fact caused accidents; they are pulled over because they were weaving all over the road. If the new regime will not apply in Scotland, I should like some assurance—now, in writing or in Committee—as to the measures that law enforcement agencies in Scotland could pursue to ensure that the same tough and rigorous laws that apply south of the border are also applied north of the border.
I want to finish with a quick word on the London underground. The idea that what happens on the underground is of interest only to London Members of Parliament has always amused me: that is simply not the case. Many hundreds of thousands of people travel into London from outside the Greater London area and use the underground, and the underground and the vitality of the London economy are tremendously important to the rest of the UK. We are talking about taxpayers' money that is waiting to be invested in the underground, and it is as much money paid by my constituents as it is money paid by London constituents. I am very pleased that the Mayor of London is at last seeing the sense of allowing the Government to continue with their policy, but I am disappointed that it has taken so long. Reform of, and investment in, the London underground are vital not just for London but for the whole of the British economy. So I encourage my colleagues on the Front Bench to ensure that the investment that the Government have committed to the underground, but which has been held up by the Mayor of London's dogmatic attitude, is delivered into the system to make those improvements.
On that final, slightly controversial note, I welcome the Bill and I hope that it has a speedy passage through both Houses.
5.42 pm
Dr. Andrew Murrison (Westbury): It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Greenock and Inverclyde (David Cairns), and I am particularly pleased to see the Under-Secretary, the hon. Member for Plymouth, Devonport (Mr. Jamieson), in his place. Two weeks ago, he and I had a very profitable debate on transport safety in Wiltshire, and I intend to touch on that issue once or twice in the next few minutes.
I welcome the Bill, for which there has been a great deal of cross-party support. There are of course omissions, however, and I want to touch on them in my speech. I have a very fond recollection of the Health and Safety Executive. Before being elected to this place, I was involved in safety for one of the largest industrial complexes on the south coast, and I worked very closely with the HSE in that role. I grew to appreciate its expertise and dedication, and to know very well how under-resourced it was, and how difficult it was for it to carry out the functions required of it. Indeed, it was difficult for it to do anything more than the scratch the surface—a fact that left a great impression on me. I also learned that there was a slight lack of specialisation within the HSE, which it itself recognised. It is very difficult to spread the discipline of safety across the field. Certain areas have specific needs and specific quanta of expertise, and I imagine that that is why we have the air accidents investigation branch and the marine accident investigation branch. Rightly, we are now to have a rail accident investigation branch as well.
I do not want to deal principally with rail but rather to address one of the major omissions that my right hon. Friend the Member for North-West Hampshire (Sir George Young) alluded to, and which relates to roads. Shortly after I was elected, I was present at the scene of a road traffic accident on the A36. A police constable—the constable with whom I was supposed to be visiting areas in my constituency that suffer from petty criminality—was summoned to the scene, and it rapidly became apparent that this was a major incident. It transpired that a family of four had lost their lives when a lorry crossed on to the wrong side of the road. That was deeply traumatic for all concerned, not least the emergency services who attended. My regard for them, already high, went up by leaps and bounds.
I mention that because we need a sense of proportion when considering accidents that occur on our transport network. As other right hon. and hon. Members have said, the accident rate on our roads vastly exceeds that on other forms of public and private transport. At Potters Bar, seven people tragically lost their lives, and 31 people died at Ladbroke Grove. However, day in, day out, 10 people a day lose their lives on our roads. Since 1997, there have been 136 rail deaths, but well over 17,000 deaths on our roads. Clearly, one's chances of sustaining a serious injury or dying on our roads greatly exceed one's chances of suffering a similar catastrophe on other forms of transport. We need to get that across, not least because we do not want people to desert public transport to use the roads and paradoxically, as other Members have said, drive up the sum total of road deaths.
Mr. Greg Knight (East Yorkshire): My hon. Friend is making a good point; we need to keep a sense of proportion. Does he accept that the Health and Safety
Executive has not always exercised a light touch on the railways? For example, I understand that if the speaker system does not work in one carriage in a train, it is grounded and cannot run until the public announcement system is replaced. Does he think that a heavy-handed approach?
Dr. Murrison: My right hon. Friend has made a good point. Indeed, that may be one of the drivers behind the creation of a rail accident investigation branch, which would take over many of the HSE's functions. I feel very strongly, however, that there should be no latitude on safety on public transport. We all know of near misses—many hon. Members have referred to near misses in various guises this afternoon—where things have developed from apparently trivial slips or omissions. I therefore counsel caution before trivialising cases of the sort to which my right hon. Friend referred.
Rob Gifford of the Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety—PACTS—corresponds with most hon. Members and has said:
- "Someone needs to do some hard thinking and ask why we are prepared to invest so heavily in rail safety and so little in road safety, which offers much better value for money per life saved."
In 1997, the Government established a ministerial responsibility for public health. I have argued elsewhere that the post has not been a great success, particularly in driving down the number of casualties on our transport system. However, that area, I respectfully suggest, is of legitimate concern to a public health Minister with cross-cutting responsibility who is surely tasked with driving down mortality and morbidity. I fear, however, that the intervention of the relevant Minister has not produced that result, which is a pity. I am disappointed that the Bill does not mention road safety, given the emphasis on safety in other forms of transport. I very much hope that Ministers will address that omission in Committee.
I represent a rural area, and it is incumbent on me to mention the problems of the countryside. In the rural White Paper, the Government rightly said:
- "Public concern about road safety in rural areas is growing. Levels of traffic are increasing faster on rural roads than on urban roads . . . Road accidents on rural roads are more likely to be fatal, for all types of road users, than in towns."
- "We are therefore proposing to develop a new hierarchy of roads defined by their function and quality, which would combine flexibility at local level with consistency nationally."
It is a great pity that Ministers have not acted on the Transport Committee's criticism of the Government's lack of urgency in introducing a rural road hierarchy. That criticism was made in June 2001. Here we are in January 2003, yet we have heard nothing beyond
blandishments and the promise of things to come. I hope that the Minister will be able to correct me if that is a misapprehension.The grim reaper is particularly fond of inappropriate speed as an immediate way of dispatching people on rural roads, but speed acts in more subtle ways than that. It intimidates walkers, cyclists and horse riders, and generally degrades the enjoyment of the countryside for those who live there or visit it for leisure purposes. The Government's failure to incorporate their hierarchy of roads into the Bill, where it would fit very well, is a missed public health opportunity.
In dealing with accidents on roads, it is important to deal only with the evidence. A firm evidence base is essential because there are many paradoxes in transport safety, and paradoxes lead to the potential for political opportunism. The Minister will remember that we discussed examples of that in a lighter moment during the debate two weeks ago. One paradox concerns the removal of white lines on roads where one would intuitively imagine that that would make them more dangerous, not safer. In fact, the early evidence in Wiltshire suggests that that is not the case. A great deal in this field is surprisingly counter-intuitive.
A road accident investigation branch would help to introduce some rigour into the investigation of road traffic accidents, both collectively and individually, and could make suggestions on how they can be prevented. For example, the 54 per cent. reduction, from the 1981 to 1985 baseline, in those killed or seriously injured in accidents on roads in Wiltshire, compared with a 47 per cent. reduction nationwide, requires explanation. It should be the function of a road accident investigation branch to shed light on that and determine how best practice, if that is what it is, in Wiltshire can be applied more generally.
Clearly, the Bill will involve costs. The regulatory impact assessment identifies a staffing level of 22 for the rail accident investigation branch. There is some controversy as to the exact number, but we can agree that it will be fairly small. A staff of 22 is pretty lean and mean. An equivalent body for roads, given the unremitting nature of road accidents, day in, day out, would not be able to do anything with that number of staff. The cost of road traffic accidents runs into many billions of pounds a year, and the potential savings to the public purse and to others would dwarf any outlay.
I warmly welcome the Bill, but I regret the omission of the promised hierarchy of rural roads and of a road accident investigation branch, which would complement the rail accident investigation branch extremely well. I urge the Minister to think again.
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