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Chris Grayling: I am grateful to the hon. Lady, as she has steered me towards the second part of my argument. I do not want to rehearse this afternoon what should be a careful and thoughtful discussion in Committee. The fine detail of the definitions in the Bill is properly a matter for Committee. I am simply seeking to emphasise the fact that we are not comfortable with the idea of the offence of careless or inconsiderate driving being subject to a substantial penalty. We hope that there will be a constructive debate in Committee that will find a way forward, as I accept the principle behind the Government's proposals.

The main point that the hon. Lady made, however, is extremely important, and it reveals another weakness in those proposals. Why does the provision for heavier
 
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punishment apply only to accidents where there is a fatality? Someone may be found guilty of causing an accident in which the victim dies, and that may merit five years in prison. Why is that different from an accident in which someone is paralysed for life? There is no attempt in the Bill to make provision for such a case, so I would welcome an amendment to the new provision for heavier punishment to include people who drive while uninsured or disqualified and cause serious injury, such as a lifetime injury that prevents someone from working again. That is an omission on the Government's part. The hon. Lady is right. If someone who is driving without insurance or a licence and thus flouting the laws of the road runs someone over, disfiguring them for life, why should the penalty be any different from the penalty for causing a fatality? I hope that Ministers will give that due consideration in Committee.

I hope that we have a constructive debate in Committee and that everyone in the House accepts that we share their motivations, as well as the motivations of campaign groups, so that we secure justice for the victims of utterly unacceptable behaviour on our roads. However, we do not want to criminalise people who make a misjudgment. Whether we like it or not, people in our society make misjudgments which, with hindsight, they probably should not have made. However, there was no intent, and they made a mistake. I want to make sure that there is a key difference between making an horrendous mistake and doing something that is utterly unacceptable.

My second area of inquiry concerns the Government's plan to use alcohol interlock devices in cars to reduce a driver's disqualification period. I am sceptical about that: I appreciate that it has been piloted, and that there have been discussions with the insurance industry, but I want serial drink-drivers to be taken off the road and given long bans. They should not have the right significantly to reduce their disqualification periods simply by placing a piece of technology in their cars.

We do not know whether alcohol interlock devices are foolproof. Ideas are certainly in circulation about how one can get round them, and I have had a couple of conversations about that in the past week. I have no idea whether the devices can be circumvented, but I am not sure that I want to put that to the test, as history shows that people can be pretty ingenious when it comes to getting around technological barriers.

I see no compelling reason to go down that route, or to believe that society will reap huge benefits as a result. We will merely be introducing yet another system that has to be managed and organised, at a cost to the taxpayer. I appreciate that motorists will have to pay for the piece of kit, but public officials will have to organise its installation and the courts will have to have a follow-through process to make sure that it is installed. The proposal will cost the taxpayer, come what may, and who will administer and supervise the process? We should keep serial drink-drivers off the roads, and I am not convinced that alcohol interlock devices are the right way forward.

Secondly, I now have a better understanding of why the Government propose that motorists who offend should go on driving education courses and thus gain some remission of their penalties, but I hope that they will make it clearer in Committee how they envisage that
 
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the system will work. What must not happen is that a person facing a three-month disqualification for speeding can get back on the road quickly, simply by signing up for a day's course.

Thirdly, I was pleased by what the Secretary of State had to say about safety on level crossings, and I am glad that he is thinking positively about it. We thought that the measures added in the Lords were constructive, but we believe that they do not go far enough. The House should be clear that driving a car across a level crossing that is closed and has its warning lights flashing is an offence that should be treated with the utmost severity. Some horrendous railway accidents have been caused by cars on level crossings, and sometimes the circumstances mean that it is impossible for the law to do anything. There was a tragic incident near Newbury in 2004, when it is believed that a motorist sought to commit suicide by parking in front of a train. No new laws can prevent such acts, but we should take a very different view when a driver is intent simply on dodging the crossing and avoiding delay.

My hon. Friend the Member for Wimbledon (Stephen Hammond) and I have watched the Network Rail presentation of CCTV footage of absurdly dangerous behaviour by motorists at level crossings, and I suspect that Ministers have done the same. I shall describe one example to the House. One CCTV excerpt showed a level crossing with a queue of cars. A clearly impatient driver pulled out of the queue and drove around the other cars to the crossing, which had a half barrier rather than a full one. The driver steered through the barrier, only realising at the last moment that a train was about to arrive. He braked hard and reversed quickly to get out of its way. The car missed the oncoming train by a matter of feet. Had the two collided, there might have been a multiple-fatality railway accident. Such driving can only be described as absurdly dangerous, with a wanton disregard for the safety of passengers on the train.

If that were an isolated incident we might not argue for change, but such driving is not rare. A couple of weeks ago, I received a written answer from the Minister of State to the effect that there are 20 or so collisions each year involving cars and trains at level crossings. Many more incidents go unreported, with vehicles coming close to collision or with drivers simply getting away with jumping the lights and the gates.

My hon. Friend the Member for North Shropshire (Mr. Paterson), who will wind up the debate for the Opposition, has told me that there have been 22 such incidents at one crossing in his constituency in the past year alone, and about 75 in all across the county of Shropshire. Therefore, we think that their lordships were right to say that the problem needed to be addressed, and the Government were wrong to question their arguments. I am delighted that Ministers have had a change of heart, and we look forward to the amendment that they will introduce.

The amendments tabled in the Lords contain a provision to issue six penalty points to drivers crossing a level crossing when its barriers are down, but that does not go far enough. Actions that so blatantly jeopardise other people's lives should incur a minimum penalty that includes a substantial period of disqualification
 
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from driving. In my view, it is as dangerous to drive across a level crossing when the gates are down as it is to drink and drive. There is no reason why there should be a noticeable difference in the punishments available for the two offences.

As has always been our intention, we will introduce in Committee our idea of how an amendment to that effect might work. However, given what the Secretary of State has said today, I hope that we can have a constructive debate and end up with a sensible basic measure to improve safety on level crossings that we can all agree on. If motorists behave in a way that is totally thoughtless and reckless, the consequences can be serious—for them, and for the many innocent people on trains that go through level crossings.

Finally, there is one big assumption behind the Bill that causes us anxiety and which we think will make it difficult to make its measures work. The Bill assumes that the police will deal with the problem of enforcing all the new penalties, and the Secretary of State said as much in his opening remarks. He mentioned the new force of traffic officers on our motorways, but he must realise that in many parts of the country, barely a handful of police are on duty at any one time. They have to cover large areas, and in too many places it is still very likely that people will get away with bad driving.

The fact is that in many parts of the country, there are too few officers to do the job, and that is why many of the root causes of danger on our roads go unaddressed. The same is true of untaxed vehicles: in many areas, the police simply do not have the time to follow up every report of untaxed vehicles on street corners or in driveways filled with scruffy cars. I know that from my own constituency experience, but on a Saturday night, those same cars might well be the ones that are used to ply the unlicensed taxi trade, or driven around by people with a reckless disregard for the law and for the safety of others.

That is why we must reform the way in which our police work. We need to make sure that they have the time to tackle problems such as I have described, and that they can do so systematically, not on an occasional basis. It is also why we need simple and achievable ways to tackle the problem posed by people who brazenly ignore the law. Once again, I believe that the Bill could have done much more in that regard.

For instance, the Bill could have proposed ways to highlight whether a car was insured, so that all uninsured cars could be easily and automatically impounded. I heard what the Secretary of State said about notification cameras, which can spot registration plates and check them off against insurance registers, but other countries have much simpler systems—for example, a disc on a windscreen—to show whether a vehicle is insured. The Department has not displayed enough in the way of ideas, innovation or smart thinking when it comes to ways to tackle that a serious problem.

The Bill could also have strengthened the sanctions available to police dealing with the problem of systematic offenders hiding behind false addresses and ignoring penalty notices. I hope that changes can be made to it in the later stages of its passage through the House that will tackle that problem. Moreover, the Bill
 
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says nothing about tackling vehicle cloning: that is a major problem for many people, and we have to deal with it.

The Bill is a patchwork of bits and pieces—some of them good, some less so. Sadly, that is the hallmark of a Government who have proved themselves to be very good at tinkering, but not always so good at setting out a clear and long-term vision and strategy for our transport system and for road safety in Britain. We will seek to change that as the Bill goes through Committee.

2.8 pm

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