The
Committee consisted of the following
Members:
Bellingham,
Mr. Henry (North-West Norfolk)
(Con)
Carmichael,
Mr. Alistair (Orkney and Shetland)
(LD)
Dobson,
Frank (Holborn and St. Pancras)
(Lab)
Henderson,
Mr. Doug (Newcastle upon Tyne, North)
(Lab)
Ladyman,
Dr. Stephen (Minister of State, Department for
Transport)Leech,
Mr. John (Manchester, Withington)
(LD)
MacDougall,
Mr. John (Glenrothes)
(Lab)
McGovern,
Mr. Jim (Dundee, West)
(Lab)
Meacher,
Mr. Michael (Oldham, West and Royton)
(Lab)
Morgan,
Julie (Cardiff, North)
(Lab)
Paterson,
Mr. Owen (North Shropshire)
(Con)
Roy,
Mr. Frank (Lord Commissioner of Her Majesty's
Treasury)
Slaughter,
Mr. Andrew (Ealing, Acton and Shepherd's Bush)
(Lab)
Taylor,
Mr. Ian (Esher and Walton)
(Con)
Turner,
Dr. Desmond (Brighton, Kemptown)
(Lab)
Vaizey,
Mr. Edward (Wantage)
(Con)
Viggers,
Peter (Gosport) (Con) Mark
Etherton, Committee Clerk
attended the Committee Fourth
Standing Committee on Delegated
LegislationWednesday 5
July
2006[Mr.
Mike Weir in the
Chair] Draft Motor Vehicles (Wearing of Seat Belts) (Amendment) Regulations 20062.30
pm
The
Minister of State, Department for Transport(Dr. Stephen
Ladyman): I beg to
move, That the
Committee has considered the draft Motor Vehicles (Wearing of Seat
Belts) (Amendment) Regulations
2006. These
regulations are about reducing casualties on our roads, especially
child casualties. They amend existing legislation and implement
European directive 2003/20/EC on the wearing of seat belts in different
types of motor vehicle. The regulations update an earlier directive
from 1991. Some of the new requirements already apply in the United
Kingdomfor example, we require seat belts to be worn in goods
vehicles of more than 3.5 tonnes. The changes to our existing
requirements may be considered in two parts. The first relates to
children travelling in cars, vans and goods vehicles and the second
relates to bus and coach passengers. I shall deal with each in
turn. I should explain
three points at the outset. First, the current requirement to wear seat
belts is in sections 14 and 15 of the Road Traffic Act 1988, as
amended, and in regulations made under those provisions. The
regulations before the House amend section 15 of the Act and also the
regulations made under sections 14 and 15. Secondly, child
restraint is the term used in the directive and regulations for
baby seats, child seats and booster seats and cushions. They are used
for children of different weights of up to 36 kg.
Thirdly, the Committee may have
noticed that the regulations deal only with children travelling in rear
seats and not front seats. Of course, children travelling in front
seats, as well as in rear seats, need to be provided for. That is
provided for now by section 15(1) of the 1988 Act. That Act was a
consolidation that brought together several different powers to make
regulations covering seat belts.
It is an historical curiosity
that the regulations for children in front seats are subject to the
negative procedure, but we need an affirmative resolution for the
others. Amending the regulations covering children in front seats will
be done separately, but the intention is to make the regulations
covering front seats come into force at the same time as the
regulations that we are discussing
today. It is important
that children should be a road safety priority, whether they are
walking, cycling or riding as passengers in vehicles. We have made
considerable and welcome advances in reducing child road casualties.
The regulations take us one step further. We have had seat-belt
legislation in this country for many years. It was controversial at the
outset, but is now almost universally accepted. Observed wearing rates
are high and the Department for Transport continually seeks to improve
them.
Seats belts have prevented many
fatalities in road accidents and estimates for the Department suggest a
figure of more than 2,000 a year. Bearing in mind that total road
fatalities are now down to some 3,200 a year, the impact of seat belts
is clear. Wearing rates are now high and are still rising slowly, but
we have some way to gofor example, with adults in rear seats
and in commercial vehicles. However, we must improve the record for
children. We have
just received a survey report from the Transport Research Laboratory which
looked at the way in which children travel in road vehicles. At first
sight, it looks good and only 2 per cent. of children sitting in a
front seat were unrestrained although, alarmingly, more under-fives
were observed being carried on a front-seat passengers lap,
which is dangerous as well as illegal.
The survey showed that most
children travel in rear seats and of those only 2 per cent. of
under-fives and8 per cent. of those aged five to nine were
unrestrained. However, a large number of children in front and rear
seats were using adult seat belts. Of those, 91 per cent. of five to
nine-year-olds were in front seats and 71 per cent. were in rear seats.
Those children should have been using a child restraint. If they use a
seat belt, the appropriate restraint can be easily fitted.
As I have shown, too many
children travel without wearing any restraint at all, even when the
vehicle has seat belts. Too many drivers, who may or may not use a seat
belt, have unprotected children as passengers. Clearly, if we are to
tackle those matters, we must specify the safe means of travel for
children of different sizes. Seat belts are designed for adults. An
adult belt or wrongly used child restraint may fail to hold a child on
impact and can cause serious internal injury.
Children are not little adults.
They have smaller and, crucially, less-developed frames. Babies and
children have been killed tragically or seriously injured in accidents
because the right restraint had not been used. Fortunately, such
tragedies are relatively rare, but properly fitted child restraints
avoid such dangers and ensure that our children receive the same full
benefit of the safety belt as
adults. Peter
Viggers (Gosport) (Con): I follow the thrust of the
Ministers argument and, as a proud grandparent, may I ask him
whether he is really convinced that it is necessary to have the full
weight of the law in respect of such issues, or does he consider that
it would be possible to have a code of conduct, similar to the highway
code, that gives guidance to drivers and occupants of vehicles? Is he
not satisfied that that would be
sufficient?
Dr.
Ladyman: No, I am not. I shall explain in a moment what
the directive and regulations are meant to achieve and say why that is
better than a code of practice. Frankly, the evidence is all too
obvious. Most parents know what they are supposed to do and those who
allow their children to travel wearing adult seat belts often know that
they are doing so at far too young an age. I put my own hands up to
that. I can remember my daughter pressuring me to allow her out of her
child seat so that she could wear an adult seat belt probably at far
too young an age. I do not believe that
a code of practice would deal with such a situation. If parents know
that the law says that children must be in their booster seat, at least
they do not look like the bad guys when insisting that children remain
in the booster
seat. Let me explain
the regulations. They require children of up to 135 cm in height, which
is 4 ft 5 in, to be secured with an appropriate child restraint in the
rear of motor vehicles, but they allow all children above that height
and all those aged 12 or more to wear an adult belt. We could have used
a higher limit of 150 cm or 4 ft 11 in, and it is good practice for
children to continue to use a booster seat until they reach that
height, so the code of practice suggested by the hon. Member for
Gosport (Peter Viggers) might deal with the situation of larger
children. However, the directive allows the lower 135 cm height limit
and, for practical reasons, we have chosen to use
that. We are creating
an offence and the case for doing so must be clear. We know that
parents will have a job persuading older children who now use an adult
seat belt to go back to a booster. I believe that we are right to be
realistic and use the lower limited allowed by the directive. The
safety benefits for older children who would otherwise use a belt are
small. Our estimates suggest that the lower limit will make little
difference to the anticipated casualty
savings. The new rules
will prohibit children under the age of three being carried in the
front or rear of a car, or goods vehicle, unless they are in the
correct child restraint. Fortunately, the majority of parents and
carers already understand the need for babies and very small children
to use a baby seat. The regulations will also prohibit the use of
rear-facing baby seats when there is an active frontal air bag. Air
bags are powerful devices and they help reduce casualties among
grown-ups, but they are designed to restrain an adult. A rear-facing
baby seat presents a different shape. Tests show that an air bag is
liable to tip up such a seat violently enough to force the baby out of
the straps and into the rear of the car. Parents might not realise that
danger, although vehicle and child seat manufactures, as well as the
Department, have publicised it for some years. The regulations
underline that advice with a
prohibition. The
regulations contain various exemptions designed to make the new rules
work in a practical way, and I shall summarise them. There would be a
considerable practical difficulty if it were a fixed rule that child
restraints had to be used in taxis. It is one thing to say that they
must be used if available, but another thing to insist that they are
provided. Taxi drivers cannot be expected to have the right seats for
every child passenger they pick up and their passengers cannot be
expected to have child seats with them, so there are exemptions.
Children over the age of three can ride in the rear seats of a taxi
using an adult belt if the appropriate child restraint is not
available. A child under the age of three can also ride in the rear
seat if an appropriate child restraint is not available, but it has
been considered ill-advised to make it a legal requirement for such
small children to wear adult belts
instead. There are
similar considerations for emergency vehicles. The emergency services
will, of course, provide the right equipment to carry children whenever
possible, but they are emergency services; they, too, cannot be expected
to have the right equipment at all times. For example, an ambulance
might be called to collect an injured parent and the crew must be able
to take an accompanying child with them without worrying about breaking
seat-belt laws. There
is also a provision in the regulations for an unexpected necessity to
take a child a short distance without the appropriate child restraint.
The House of Lords Select Committee on the Merits of Statutory
Instruments expressed concern that that exemption is insufficiently
precise and might cause difficulty for the courts. The directive allows
an exemption for occasional journeys over a short distance, but that
wording is too vague, so we have sought to express more clearly our
understanding of how the exemption is meant to work.
We do not want to create the
perception that there is a general dispensation for all short journeys,
including planned and regular trips. If a child travels in the family
car, for example, a child seat should be available for any journey,
short or long. But children travel in other peoples cars with
friends and other family members and on school and other trips. If
those trips are planned, or regular, arrangements should be made for
child restraints to be available. It cannot be right to have a lower
general standard when a child is travelling in someone elses
car than would apply in his or her parents car, but there must
be a little flexibility or it will cause more trouble than we hope it
will save. We can all
imagine unexpected circumstances in which, for example, a mother has
planned to meet a child from school and at the last minute has to ask
somebody else to do so. It would be absurd to leave the child waiting
at school because his or her seat is not available. I am sure the
police and the courts can be relied upon to handle any offences
sensibly. I do not foresee a serious problem applying these concepts to
individual cases any more than with many other general legal concepts
that the courts deal with. Similarly, we do not want to be
over-prescriptive about what is meant by short. As the
explanatory memorandum states, short may vary between
town and country, and we would expect the courts to take that into
account. I hope that parents will use the exemption in the spirit in
which it has been created. We will have to keep it under
review. The
regulations extend the requirement to wear available front and rear
seat belts to all categories of vehicle, so they must be used where
available by passengers in buses and coaches. The regulations require
bus and coach operators to ensure that passengers are made aware of the
requirement to wear a seat belt by means of an announcement, an
audio-visual presentation or by signing. Those requirements do not
apply where the bus provides a local service wholly in a built-up area
or where standing is permitted and the bus is designed for
it. Many buses and
coaches are not fitted with seat belts. In some cases, such as the
London buses that pass the House, it is not technically possible to fit
seat belts and it is not logical to require them to be fitted in a
vehicle designed for passengers to stand. Bus and coach travel is very
safe in this country, and deaths and serious injuries are fortunately
relatively rare, but seat belts offer passengers increased
protection.
The majority of minibuses and
coaches are fitted with seat belts and so are some buses. The time has
come to require passengers to use them when they are available. We are
doing so in a practical way; we recognise that wearing a seat belt is
not appropriate for passengers on a local service in a built-up area in
the unlikely event that such buses have seat belts.
The directive envisages that
the new rules on buses and coaches will apply to every passenger over
the age of three. We have not at this time extended the legal
requirement to use seat belts to children under 14 on buses and
coaches. There is a difficulty about enforcement; the general rule in
section 15 of the Road Traffic Act 1988 is that it is a drivers
duty to ensure that child passengers under 14 years of age wear seat
belts. Those aged 14 and over are treated like adults and are
responsible for themselves.
The consultation document
published in 2004 recognised the practical difficulties of making bus
and coach drivers responsible for ensuring that children under 14 are
wearing seat belts. However, no other practical way has been identified
of enforcing the requirement in the directive in relation to children
on a bus or coach. It will be necessary to re-consult on how to enforce
the requirement; the Department will issue a further consultation
document about it as soon as possible and will prepare additional
regulations reflecting the decision following consultation to ensure
that children under 14 years are required to use seat
belts. The Merits
Committee in another place has expressed concern that the problem has
not been resolved already, and suggests that we might have tried harder
to obtain clear wording in the directive. We always try to get the
clearest possible wording in directives, but we cannot impose our view
on other member states. They all agreed that children should be
included in the rules for buses and coaches, but we have been told that
none has so far been more successful than we have been in solving the
question of
enforcement. We have
consulted on the new requirements, and they are widely supported. We
have taken advantage of provisions in the directive to make
appropriate, specific exemptions and to implement it practically. Those
whom we have consulted recognise that, and we estimate that up to 2,000
child casualties can be saved each year.
The regulations will apply
throughout Great Britain, and the Department of the Environment in
Northern Ireland is preparing separate regulations to implement the
directive there. I commend the regulations to the
Committee. 2.45
pm Mr.
Owen Paterson (North Shropshire) (Con): Thank you, Mr.
Weir. It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this
afternoon. I thank the Minister for his opening statement.
I think you would agree, Mr.
Weir, that the aim of the directive is wholly admirable: to reduce
injuries and deaths among children travelling on our roads. The problem
is implementation. The Minister began by
commenting on the benefits that seat belts have brought. The difference
is that seat belts are obviously visible, and it is clearly
identifiable who is responsible for wearing or not wearing
onethe person visible to the
policeman. I start
with the bus directive. The explanatory notes say that the consultation
exercise did not identify who was responsible. They go on to
say: The
Department has not yet resolved this practical difficulty and is
intending to consult further as soon as possible over how to implement
the requirement. It is
interesting that we are passing a piece of legislation when it is not
clear who will be legally obliged to impose its conditions when it
comes into force in September. I should be grateful if the Minister
could respond to that question
immediately. Will the
Minister clarify the status of service buses? I have talked to bus
operators and I understand that service buses will be exempt, but
contractors to schools, for instance, who run a regular service will be
obliged to adhere to the conditions of the directive, which might be
quite onerous. Will he clarify that point? The danger is that those who
contract to schools will simply get out of that
market. There is a
real problem. Contractors who take small children to school or sports
events might have to equip themselves with many booster seats to
conform to the directive, and it is questionable whether some of them
will do so. I talked about the issue to the general manager of a very
good company in my constituency, Lakeside Coaches in Ellesmere. His
company runs 15 coaches a day to schools, and he says quite bluntly
that if child restraints were made compulsory, the company would not
buy them. The company would just get out of the childrens
market and it would expect the council to provide restraints and
booster seats and to put escorts on buses to ensure that the
regulations were enforced. Under other legislation, drivers are not
allowed to touch children and so are not allowed to enforce the wearing
of seat belts. We have
a serious problem. The regulations might threaten the operation of
school buses, which in an area such as mine, which is 50 miles long by
25 miles deep, is a massive issue. The majority of school children are
taken to school in buses. If bus companies drop out of the business, it
might be taken up by service buses, many of which are not required to
have seat belts. Will the Minister explain where we are on
that? I take issue
with the Ministers point in paragraph 8.2 of the explanatory
memorandum, which
says: The only
adverse impact on the public sector will be the cost to the
Department of publicity.
I do not think that it will be. There could be a serious impact on
local education authorities and county councils, who would have to fund
monitors, as the bus company suggested, and to buy equipment. Will he
clarify whether he consulted education authorities on the matter? I am
concerned that the bus directive might be seriously
counter-productive.
The Minister mentioned that we
would save 2,000 lives and serious injuries. If that came about, that
would be splendid. The figures that I have are that 166 children were
killed and 3,739 were seriously injured in road accidents last year.
Would he tell us how many of
those were in buses and how many in cars? How many of those were in cars
with incorrectly fitted child
restraints? Moving on
to the case of cars, we are glibly told that enforcement will be down
to the police and the courts. However, we are increasingly seeing fewer
traffic police on our roads. Will the Highways Agency or Vehicle and
Operator Services Agency inspectors have any role at all in that? He
touched on taxis. Where do minicabs stand in the directive? As I read
it, minicab operators would be obliged to buy equipment if they had
customers with small children.
The costs are probably
underestimated. The Minister cites the cost of the actual equipment but
suggestsin a complacent mannerthat some families,
namely large ones, are going to have to buy a second vehicle or drop
the standard saloon car and buy a people carrier. We
are happily told that those vehicles have been available for several
years and are available second hand. How many families does he think
are going to be affected by that? Given that that is in direct
contravention of the Governments aim to drive down congestion,
have the implications of large numbers of families going on holiday in
two cars been thought through by the Department?
Obviously, there are the
environmental implications, which are contrary to the
Governments aims. Another sad impact might be on the
Governments drive on obesity if fewer children are going to be
transported around.
It would be helpful if the
Minister would clarifyI think he did; I think that I was
reassuredthe point about short and occasional journeys. There
are going to be times, as we have heard from the hon. Member for
Gosport, when grandparents, uncles, aunts or other relations might be
called in to do a short journey when a parent is ill or has an
interview and they might not have the necessary equipment. Will the
Minister guarantee on the record that there will be flexibility in the
manner in which the regulation will be enforced? It is not practical to
expect every car to have the correct equipment on every single
occasion. As he said, it would not be good if the law was flouted, but
it would be good if adults knew that there would be some flexibility
and common sense. I
come to the question of enforcement. I am concerned as to the way in
which the police are going to enforce this. For a start, it would be
helpful if all public notices were put in imperial measurements. I had
to get my secretary to work out that 135 cm is 4 ft 5 in. I am not
being a metric-imperial bore but, in this country, most peoples
heights are recognised in feet and inches. It would be sensible if
measurements were cited in those terms.
How are the police going to
identify a problem? They will see a car pass by with children in the
back, but how are they going to work out whether the child is small and
whether the child is sitting on a booster seat? It is going to be
difficult for the police. Are they going to do spot checks at schools
and get a measuring stick and check children? I am serious about that.
Is that the way that it is going to work?
There is also a massive
misunderstanding of child and adolescent psychology. How is a bus
driver going to get a small 13-year-old to sit on a booster seat when
his larger peers, who have outgrown him, are not? I do not understand
how he will do that. There will be real problems with brothers and
sisters. Sisters tend to grow faster than their brothers. How is the
larger sister going to be treated by the elder, but smaller, brother
who has not grown yet? There is going to be serious family controversy
about that. Hon. Members are laughing but there is a practical problem
for parents. For the elder, but sadly smaller, child, there is going to
be utter humiliation if they are made to sit on the child
seat.
Why does the directive focus
only on height? The Minister does not like me looking at websites but
if he looks at www.childcarseats.org.uk, he will see that the weight of
a child is the first feature that it picks up on. It says that child
restraints are designed for children with specific weight ranges. They
are concerned that children are frequently put in inappropriate
equipment, but they do not mention height. They immediately go for
weight as a criterion, as does Buckinghamshire county council, for
instance. The councils website shows that whether a child
should be put in a baby seat, child seat or booster seat depends on
their weight. I wonder why that has not been considered. Weight seems
to be the criterion used by county councils when giving public safety
advice at the moment, but I could not find it mentioned in the
substantial bundle of notes accompanying the
regulations. I have
real fears about the issue, so would the Minister be willing to review
it in a couple of years time? We on the Conservative Benches
totally support the aims of the directive, but the drafting of it will
make proper enforcement incredibly hard. What I should really like is a
promise that there will be a serious review of how it operates.
Identifying seat belts offences is easy, because one can spot the
driver who is not wearing one and one can spot adults in the front
seat. We know who is responsible, but this case is different. In the
case of buses, we have not even decided who is responsible, and, in the
case of cars, it will be very difficult to decide whether someone in
the back seat is a small child or an under-age child. Are the police
really going to have the time for spot
checks? The Opposition
are loth to oppose any measure that improves child safety, but I should
like to hear exactly what the Minister has to say on the issues that I
have mentioned. They are serious, practical questions and I am not sure
that they have been addressed by the drafters of the
directive.
2.56
pm Mr.
Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD): I welcome
you to the Chair, Mr. Weir. It is the first occasion on which I have
had the pleasure of serving under your chairmanship, although we
entered the House at the same time, so having known you since then, I
am sure that the experience will be a mutually rewarding
one. I must confess
that I had not read the provisions on buses in the same way as the hon.
Member for North Shropshire (Mr. Paterson). However, he has asked the
questions and I shall listen to the Ministers answers with
care. As the father of a five-year-old and a nine-year-old, my heart is
gladdened by the regulations, not least becauseas the Minister
indicated to the hon. Member for Gosportthey seem to be as much
about protecting parents as about protecting children. When squabbles
start in the Carmichael household
about who has to sit in which car seat with the appropriate restraints,
and why, the clincher is to say, Well, thats because
the police say so. It is one of the few trump cards that
parents have left, and I am delighted that the Minister has
strengthened their
hand. The
Minister mentioned the requirement for further consultation, which is
sensible. During the consideration of the Road Safety Bill, which was
debated in Committee many weeks ago and of which we have not heard
since, we discussed penalties that are enforceable for the
contravention of seat belt requirements, particularly those that relate
to children. I asked the Minister then whether he would consider
penalty points as the penalty with respect to child
restraints. My
recollection is that an adult who chooses not to wear a seat belt is
liable to a financial penalty, normally in the form of a fixed penalty
notice. However, it has always struck me that an adult who has
responsibility for a child in his or her care is in a rather greater
position of responsibility. If an adult wishes to be reckless with his
own safety that is one thing, but to be reckless with the safety of a
child is something of greater gravity, which should be reflected in the
available penalties. When the Minister is consulted on other matters, I
wonder whether he might consider using that consultation to deal with
that point
too. 2.59
pm
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