High Speed 2

Debate between Andrea Leadsom and Richard Holden

Monday 18th September 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Holden]

I thank the right hon. Member for his thoughts; I will take them back to Government.

[Dame Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con)]

My constituents have been through absolute misery for 13 years now, ever since the hybrid Bill first started and they tried to defend their own area. Unfortunately, HS2 has not provided continuity of support, has not provided good customer liaison and has not provided proper compensation. People have been made miserable, and their mental health has been severely damaged by this project. They deserve the right answer: is this project going ahead or is it not? My constituency looks like an industrial site right now.

[Mr Holden]

I thank my right hon. Friend for her question. Spades are already in the ground for HS2, as she well knows, and we are focusing on its delivery. There are already over 350 active construction sites right across the country, including in her constituency. It is going ahead.

Improving Driver Safety

Debate between Andrea Leadsom and Richard Holden

Wednesday 11th January 2023 Westminster Hall

[Mr Holden]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. I grew up in a rural area myself with a job, like those that my right hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire mentioned, that finished after midnight and that I had to drive home from. I now represent a rural constituency, and this issue is a concern to my constituents. They want road safety—road traffic accidents are the biggest killer of young people in my constituency, as they probably are in everybody’s—but they also want the safe and sensible approach outlined by my right hon. Friend. As I move towards my concluding remarks, I will pick up on the details of what she and the family who are here today have proposed.

My hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Melton is right to point out that road safety is a particular issue in rural areas and we have to do more to make rural roads safer. That is why, as part of our consideration of the call for evidence on road traffic offences and their policing, we are considering testing all sorts of different proposals. One of them is about making not wearing a seat belt an endorsable offence, which should help to squeeze the very small number of people who do not wear seat belts. Given the potential for deaths and serious injuries, that is a major concern. It is especially a concern on some of our rural roads, where people think, “Well, there’s nobody else on the other side of the road, so I might be all right.”

Turning to the subject of the debate, we know that young drivers are massively over-represented in collisions, as my right hon. Friend made clear with the statistics. That is the case not just here in the UK, but around the world. Among OECD countries, road traffic crashes are the single greatest cause of death among 15 to 24-year-olds. As Members have mentioned, young drivers in the UK account for around 6% of licence holders, but around 22% of fatal and serious collisions—those statistics are from 2021. Fatalities among young drivers have fallen over the decades and are around half of what they were in 1990, but we are still seeing far too many young drivers killed—78 in 2021—and we have much more to do to address this issue.

Although the reductions are encouraging, we really are not complacent. A focus for the Government is to make roads safer for all users, but especially for new and novice drivers. This group was one of the four key road user groups outlined in the road safety statement in 2019, and it continues to be so. The Department’s broad aim for young road users is to improve road safety through technology, as my right hon. Friend mentioned, through the research that we are conducting at the moment and by developing better learning opportunities and targeted messaging for them.

We have made good progress with the actions set out in the road safety statement. We have commissioned research to explore the potential of the graduated learning scheme, which was awarded to the Driving Instructors Association. This is now a modular learning project that uses a comparative trial to assess whether a modular approach to learning is feasible to deliver, and whether it can improve novice driver competence and safety. The trial commenced in the spring of 2021, and the findings are expected later this year. I am sure that Members present will be very interested in the results.

[Dame Andrea Leadsom]

What form will the results of that survey take? Will there be a written ministerial statement? Will the Minister come to the House and tell people what the results are? Obviously, that is key to what action we take.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Holden]

My right hon. Friend asks a very good question. I will write to her on exactly what form we are expecting the results to take, but I would certainly be delighted to address the House on this issue, because it is something I am particularly interested in. I will write to her, and perhaps we could do another Westminster Hall debate after that if there is not going to be a formal statement on the Floor of the House.

The Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency continues to ensure that the practical driving test allows for the assessment of candidates’ ability to drive safely and responsibly, and the agency has reviewed its national standards to ensure that they reflect what is required of safer and responsible drivers and riders. Its “Learning to Drive” publication was refreshed and published alongside the online driving record in 2020. Last year, refreshed guidance to help approved driving instructors to conduct mock tests was also published.

The pinnacle of our work on improving driver safety for young and novice drivers is, of course, the Department’s £2 million research project, Driver2020. Around 16,000 new drivers and 12,000 novice drivers have taken part in the project, which began in 2019 and trialled five non-legislative measures to help understand what works best to improve learning and pre-test experiences for young drivers. That is a huge number of young people to reach out to, and so far we have research involving guardians, with mentor agreement; mutually agreed driving restrictions, if applicable; a log book, as my right hon. Friend mentioned, to record the amount of time in different learning situations, including driving at night or on motorways; and a telematics-based app, to record and coach driving behaviour. My right hon. Friend mentioned some of those in her speech.

We are also providing extra classroom-based tuition to enhance young drivers’ learning, and extra hazard protection training to help young drivers understand risky situations on our roads. Members have mentioned the first 1,000 miles. From my personal experience, I know that driving in one type of road condition can be very different from driving in a totally novel one, so this is particularly important for young drivers.

[Dame Andrea Leadsom]

May I press the Minister on driving in different conditions? Is that intended to become a prerequisite prior to drivers being let loose on the roads?

[Mr Holden]

We are looking at the evidence and the research. We will see what works best, and that is what we want to do. Some things could be superb and the best thing to do; others might not be as suitable. When the research is published, we will be able to see what is most effective. It will probably be a combination of measures, but I do not want to prejudge the report.