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Mr. Kidney: It is a pleasure, Mr. Pike, to serve on a Committee that you chair, with all your experience and fair-mindedness to guide us. I declare that I co-chair the Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety, but all I shall say is my own contribution.
I support the desire of my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Riverside to defend the importance of the 30 mph speed limit. As she said in her powerful speech, there is currently a hard-hitting Government advertising campaign reinforcing the 30 mph limit, and the graphic television advertisement ends with the slogan, ''It's 30 for a reason''. We all ought to pause and remember that, in the areas where there is a 30 mph limit, there is most likely to be the greatest interaction between motorists, cyclists and pedestrians. Of course, among the cyclists and pedestrians, there will be a high proportion of children.
Although we have a good record of reducing casualties in comparison with many countries, we do not do as well in terms of child casualties. However, the statistics show our international reputation: we do better than most countries and we have a very good record. However, the statistics show that, last year, there were 3,508 fatalities on our roads, 33,707 serious injuries and more than 253,000 slight injuries.
All of us have probably met someone who has been touched by a tragedy caused by deaths on the road, so we can all appreciate most vividly the human effects of those deaths, and serious and slight injuries on our
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roads. That should be enough to make us determined to drive those figures down still further. However, dare I say that there is also an economic cost? The latest figures, from 2002, show an economic cost of each fatality to the public purse of £1,447,490, £168,260 for each serious injury and £16,750 for each slight injury. As guardians of the public purse, we should also want to drive down the number of casualties on our roads in order to save money too.
Most people agree that speed is a contributing factor to about a third of the casualties on our roads. There are more than 1,000 deaths on our roads a year because of excessive speed. That is why it is important to get people to reduce speed: it will reduce casualties on our roads.
I have explained that most of the danger is in built-up areas where the speed limit is 30 mph. As the law makers in this country, if we are satisfied that that is the right speed limit, we should expect all citizens to stick to it. When the hon. Member for Christchurch tells us about huge non-compliance, that should concern us and we should want to do something about it. I would not have thought that we would conclude that the best way to secure better compliance was to reduce the penalties for the offence. We should want to do something about matters such as the enforcement of the law, education and engineering measures to force vehicles to stick to the speed limit.
On the same day as Second Reading, the Secretary of State published a written statement about the responses that he had received to the discussion notes that he published on 1 September. He gives a helpful breakdown of what people said about his proposals. I would like to mention what he said about our activities. He points out that the Bill proposes that there must be statutory consultation on any fixed proposals that the Secretary of State might wish to make. He says:
''I believe that the Bill should provide for the possibility of a lower penalty in the appropriate circumstances.''
He adds that when he issues his proposals, there will be consultation and, of course, he says that he will consider
''all comments that hon. Members may have on graduated fixed speeding penalties, in discussions on the Bill.''—[Official Report, House of Commons, 11 January 2005; Vol. 429, c. 16WS.]
I would like to give my views for the Secretary of State to consider. I suggest that reducing the penalty from three points to two points in 30 mph speed limit areas would give a dangerous signal to people at a time when we are trying to give them the message that they should obey the law. If they do not, people will suffer serious injuries and death. Giving the alternative message would be very dangerous.
Mr. Wayne David (Caerphilly) (Lab): My hon. Friend obviously has great knowledge and experience of these issues. Will he tell the Committee, objectively, whether he is aware of any evidence to suggest that lowering the penalty for excessive speed will in any circumstances improve road safety?
Mr. Kidney: Of course, my hon. Friend anticipates that I will not be able to give any such evidence. He is right: I cannot. I entirely agree with him.
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It is sad to talk about individual deaths, but I have been looking briefly for a recent example of somebody who died when they were struck in a 30 mph area by somebody travelling at just over 30 mph. On 30 November last year, a headline in the Daily Mirror read: ''Speeder in killing is freed''. A 15-year-old girl had been struck by somebody travelling at 36 mph and killed. As it happens, the man was not convicted of dangerous driving. That is just one of many examples.
I want to move on to the point made by the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (John Thurso) about the cumulative effects of penalty point endorsements on one's licence. On Second Reading—the hon. Member for Christchurch is quite right; I have got the Hansard with me—the Secretary of State was challenged about giving the wrong message by reducing the penalty points from three to two in 30 to 40 mph areas. He posed the question:
''Is it right to impose a two-point penalty and a 30 to 40 mph speed limit?''
He went on to answer:
''Having considered that question for some weeks, the matter turns on whether people believe that a two-point penalty, as opposed to a three-point penalty, means that someone will be more likely to speed—in other words, the difference is one point.''—[Official Report, 11 January 2005; Vol. 429, c. 218.]
I think that he was picking up on a briefing for Second Reading that we all received from the RAC Foundation, in which it said that it did not believe that there was any lessening of the deterrent effect by having a penalty of two points, rather than three.
I fundamentally disagree that a reduction does not amount to a lessening of the deterrent, but I would also like to bring in the point about cumulative effects. In this country, for many decades, we have espoused the principle that, although one speeding offence might not be enough for somebody to lose their licence, if they keep offending eventually they must get the message in a more severe way: by losing their licence. Initially, we had a general rule that somebody with three endorsements on three separate occasions in three years would, on the third occasion, in addition to the penalty for that offence, lose their licence. That was for speeding and other motoring offences. In 1981, the Conservative Government decided that that was too crude a system and they introduced penalty points. They attributed three penalty points for speeding and said that it would take a cumulation of 12 penalty points in three years to lose one's licence. So, instead of three speeding offences in three years to lose a licence, it was four. It could be argued that that was a lessening of the measure, but it was a new, more sophisticated system. It bedded down well and it has stood the test of time. I would caution against trying to revisit it.
Let us bear in mind somebody who keeps speeding in 30 mph areas at up to 40 mph. They would keep getting two points and they would have to be caught and punished six times in three years for breaking the speed limit—and running the risk of killing somebody—before they lost their licence. That would take quite some doing. Therefore, reducing the risk that totting up will lead to a compulsory disqualification is a second lessening of the deterrent.
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I have a great deal of respect for the RAC Foundation and do not dismiss its arguments lightly. I support its proposal of more educational courses for people who we catch committing offences, which is a better route for us to choose than the one proposed. In this case, that would mean speed awareness courses, which are not yet universal across the country. Staffordshire recently joined the scheme and has been running courses for a year. I hope that we can catch more speeders and either require them or make it worth their while to undergo such a course.
I look back to the interdepartmental working party on road traffic law of the Department of Transport and the Home Office in 1981, just before the Transport Act 1981. Even then it was suggested that further consideration should be given to the introduction of compulsory remedial training schemes for offenders. It is time that we made that old idea a reality.
I tabled amendments Nos. 3, 4 and 5, which provide a range of options that would not involve going under three penalty points. Amendments Nos. 3 and 4 taken together would mean that under no circumstances would a motorist be able to pick up just two penalty points for a speeding offence. Amendment No. 4 on its own would mean that only on motorways and trunk roads would somebody pick up only two points for a speeding offence.
On amendment No. 5, something was lost in the translation. I had intended to table an amendment with the exact wording of amendment No. 37, to which the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross spoke. It would have the effect that nobody driving under 40 mph would be able to receive a two-point penalty.
That great range of choices leads me to conclude that the Minister is right that there is still work to be done and consultation to be had before a final system is chosen from all the different options. I give the Minister the benefit of the doubt, but I hold the Secretary of State to his word that he is listening to what Members of Parliament say.
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