Road Traffic Accident Prevention

Debate between Barry Sheerman and Andrew Smith

Tuesday 6th December 2016 Westminster Hall

[Mr Sheerman]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right. I will not detain the Chamber for long with the rest of my speech, but I add that the UK is one of only five EU countries that does not legally require drivers to be tested by a medical or optical professional as part of their driving test, so she is absolutely right.

Another issue that is becomingly increasingly evident—with this I will upset the Minister—is the lack of police officers making sure that our roads are safe. The number of road traffic officers is down 23% from 2010. I raised this issue on Monday in Home Office questions, which you were there for, Mr Hollobone. The night before, I was coming back from Cambridge, with my wife driving, and on the M11 an enormous rescue van—a lorry—with another lorry on top was proceeding at over 65 mph where there was a 50 mph limit. The size and weight of that in an accident would have killed a lot of people. Road traffic technology is able to detect such drivers. There are those who drive—I said “like maniacs”, but perhaps that was a bit harsh—in a very dangerous fashion with no fear that there will be a flashing blue light and that they will be pulled over, and I have to say there is a relationship between proper policing on the roads and good detection. I go to many conferences on transport safety and have spoken at a number of big conferences this summer. I see wonderful technology there, but that will not replace the police—in cars and on motorbikes—on our roads. That point will probably upset the Minister most; he and I usually get on quite well.

The Government have said that they are serious about making our roads safer, but I will ask the Minister about another thing that will upset him—that is, targets. For some reason, both the coalition and the present Governments believed that targets are not the sort of thing that they should have. They do not like them, and there is a kind of ideological resistance to them. However, all the research across the world—he knows I believe in research—shows that if we do not have targets for road casualty reduction, we do not get the reduction. We have to have a road casualty reduction programme. That is a very important point. I do not know of any leading expert, in or out of the Government, who honestly disagrees with that view. We need targets in order to get a reduction.

I was taken by the people who got involved with us on Twitter yesterday and said that we need to have that wonderful, but perhaps unrealistic, target of zero casualties and zero deaths on our roads. That is visionary and optimistic, but we know that targets work. We all know that we do not get casualty reduction in any country, or any part of a country, without a partnership and a team that have passion and leadership and care about this useless waste of life.

Mr Hollobone, you know that I am passionate about this issue. I know that not enough of our colleagues in the House of Commons are still interested enough in transport safety. It is a bit unfashionable and not sexy enough for some, but it is vital to the people that we represent.

[Mr Andrew Smith (Oxford East) (Lab)]

I thought that my hon. Friend might be perorating towards a conclusion. [Interruption.] No, there is much more to come. I commend him for his passion and all his work over the years on this important subject. Will he say something about cyclists’ safety in particular? I am sure that a number of the tweets he mentioned would have referred to that. Does he agree that we all have an obligation, whether as cyclists or as motorists, to promote cycling safety? He referred to the Netherlands: do we not have a lot to learn from the success of its dedicated provision for cyclists in the interests of safety?

[Mr Sheerman]

My right hon. Friend makes a very fair point. I made a decision that I would not cover everything in this discussion but, yes, increasingly there are vulnerable road users including cyclists and pedestrians, both children and adults. There is also an increasing concern—I am sure the Minister is listening—about the number of really horrid, terrible, tragic accidents involving heavy goods vehicles. All the conferences and presentations I saw this summer mentioned the increasing relationship between horrible accidents in places such as London and HGVs. But, to be honest, I have to say—I am not a London MP, but a Yorkshire one—there has actually been more improvement in road safety standards and casualty reduction in London than in many places outside. We can get carried away by the passion and enthusiasm, but my message is that these are avoidable deaths, and we should use good science, good evidence and practical work done in other places to learn and improve.

Harold Wilson

Debate between Barry Sheerman and Andrew Smith

Wednesday 28th October 2015 Westminster Hall

[Mr Sheerman]

I fear my hon. Friend has stolen most of my thunder there, but I absolutely agree with him.

To set the scene, this very much neglected man was a great Prime Minister. People might remember the celebrations of Denis Healey’s life only two or three weeks ago. Denis Healey lived a vigorous life to a great old age and, in a sense, could look after and defend his record. He did that brilliantly right to the end of his life. I also knew Denis very well, as did some of my colleagues. Harold was cruelly struck down by a wicked onset of illness in his late 50s, when he was in his prime. He had to retire at the age of 60, stunning the political world and most people, who could not quite understand what was going on. He was a very ill man, and the nature of his illness was kept quiet out of respect for his wife, Mary, and his sons, Robin and Giles.

This is our opportunity, because 11 March 2016 will be the centenary of Harold Wilson’s birth. My colleague from the other side of the Pennines, my right hon. Friend the Member for Knowsley (Mr Howarth), is in his place. We share Harold Wilson between Yorkshire and Lancashire, because Harold was never a Yorkshire Member of Parliament. He was the Member for Parliament for Ormskirk, originally, and then for Huyton.

We have a unique opportunity next year to celebrate Harold Wilson’s life. A small committee of Members want to ensure that all parliamentarians are aware of that date and that we honour his memory in a significant way, not only through lectures or great events. Mr Nuttall, you might remember my campaign three years ago for there to be a proper statue of Harold Wilson in the precincts of Westminster. It failed, because the Speaker’s Art Fund turned us down. Let us do it again, because it is quite wrong that in the Members’ Lobby there is just a small head and shoulders of Harold Wilson. It is about time we honoured him with a full statue.

[Mr Andrew Smith (Oxford East) (Lab)]

I warmly congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate. I applaud and will support the work he is doing to commemorate this important centenary. Harold Wilson actually inspired my own lifelong devotion to the Labour party when I heard him speak at Reading town hall in the 1964 general election campaign. Does my hon. Friend agree that one of the many remarkable things about Harold Wilson was his combination of high intellect and political skill with the common touch and the ability to inspire the trust of working people?

[Mr Sheerman]

My right hon. Friend, like me, was very much influenced by hearing Harold on the stump when we were young men. He had great repartee. I will come to that in a moment, but first I must remind everyone what a brilliant young boy Harold was.

Harold’s father was a works chemist and his mother was a schoolteacher. He went to Royds Hall school. In fact, he had a severe illness when he was a child, which affected his education but did not prevent him from going on to be a brilliant young scholar at Oxford. He started off doing a history degree and switched to philosophy, politics and economics. He became the youngest Oxford don at the age of 21—what a remarkable career. In his first year at university, he was recruited into the Labour party by G. D. H. Cole, one of the great founders of the labour movement. Later on, as a brilliant young academic, Harold, like much of that generation, gets involved in the war effort and becomes a key civil servant in it. He worked in a number of Ministries, including as a researcher for William Beveridge, the founder of the welfare state in so many ways. Harold was working on unemployment and the trade cycle, and worked at the Ministry of Fuel and Power.

When I first joined the House, I tried to look up Harold’s maiden speech, but he never made one; he was a Minister on the day he was elected. He was the youngest Cabinet Minister of the 20th century when he became President of the Board of Trade—what a remarkable man. Then, of course, when Hugh Gaitskell died, which was a great tragedy because he was a relatively young man, Harold Wilson, from the left of the Labour party, became the leader of the Labour party.

In that very year, 1963, he makes the “white heat of technology” speech to the Scarborough Labour party conference that transforms how people think about the future of our country’s economy. He tells us how unskilled and semi-skilled jobs are going to go, and that the future of our country is in science and technology. He talks about understanding how the future is going to dramatically change and how we must prepare Britain to be a modern country. He says, “Why are only 5% of people going to university? Why shouldn’t it be 10%? Why is the country run by a few people who went to public school and posh universities? Why can’t everyone have the chance to go to university? Why don’t we have more scientists, people who know about stuff and good managers to run our country?” That reminds me of some of the arguments we are having today in the House.