Road Safety

Jim Fitzpatrick Excerpts

Tuesday 16th October 2018 Westminster Hall

[Jim Fitzpatrick (Poplar and Limehouse) (Lab)]

I am pleased to see you presiding over our proceedings, Mrs Moon. I congratulate the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Jack Brereton) on securing this important debate. I will do my best to be brief, given how many hon. Members want to contribute.

I chair Fire Aid, an international charity that delivers pillar 5 post-crash response to 40 countries using staff and equipment from the UK fire and rescue service and its supply chain. Our constituent members also use the Department for Transport’s excellent THINK! road safety education material and are grateful for it. I thank the Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety, Anderson Etika and David Davies; Cycling UK, especially Roger Geffen; and the all-party parliamentary group on cycling and Adam Coffman for their briefings for the debate, which I am sure hon. Members found extremely useful.

There is a concern, which I am sure the Minister shares, that casualty reductions have plateaued in recent years. PACTS writes that its members are particularly interested to hear more about the refreshed road safety statement and two-year action plan, which was trailed as being due out in October. I hope the Minister can tell us when that will actually be seen.

I have raised the issue of targets with the Minister before. As he knows, PACTS and many others would like the Government to adopt casualty reduction targets. There is some encouragement, which perhaps the Minister can say more about, in the fact that the Department appears to be reconsidering their advantages. There is a recognition that targets are not a magic bullet, but the absence of a UK target badly undermines our claim to be an international leader in road safety. In the UK, we have a plethora of targets set by various bodies with different dates, baselines and definitions, including one set by the Department for Transport for Highways England, and we endorse United Nations and EU casualty reduction targets, but do not have our own.

Targets can be aspirational, and the Government have adopted them in a range of public policy areas such as NHS waiting times, reducing suicide, vehicle emissions and greenhouse gases. Given that road crashes are the largest cause of death and injury for young people and many of us in our daily lives, surely they deserve equal priority.

If possible, I would like the Minister to say something about 20 mph zones. Everybody supports them and they have appeared all over the country, but we all recognise that without physical restraints or technological equipment, just putting up signs that say 20 mph does not achieve anything.

I would also be grateful if the Minister commented on the number of traffic police and enforcement officers. There have been massive reductions in the number of police officers around the country, which would suggest that the number of traffic police has also been significantly reduced. If he could say something about that, and about the last time that he discussed the numbers with his ministerial counterpart at the Home Office, that would be helpful.

The cycling community has expressed angst about the Minister’s review of dangerous cycling. As a cyclist, I see far too many fellow cyclists going through red lights and pedestrian crossings, and the tragic incidents that have taken place warrant a review of dangerous cycling. The cycling community says that there also needs to be a review of dangerous driving, however, and that the Government need to show an approach to both rather than just focusing on cycling.

Cycling UK makes reference to the fact that convicted drivers routinely evade driving bans by claiming that it could cause exceptional hardship. As of June 2017, more than 10,000 drivers in Britain were still permitted to drive despite having more than 12 points on their licence. Perhaps the Minister will comment on that and the question raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Heywood and Middleton (Liz McInnes) about convictions and the punishment fitting the crime—the Government have been promising to make a statement on that for some time.

This ought not to be a party political issue, as the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent South, whom I congratulate again on securing this important debate, and the number of hon. Members from both sides of the House who want to speak demonstrate, but the Government have to recognise that there is disappointment. To go back to targets, there was a 30-year consensus. Targets were introduced by the Thatcher Administration in the ’80s and parties of both colours kept to them for all that time. They were effective in reducing the numbers of people being killed and seriously injured on our roads. I am keen to hear whether the Minister has any news on that.

As a former Road Safety Minister, I know that the issue presents huge challenges, but the Minister is highly regarded and trusted so he has an opportunity to restore the confidence of road safety campaign organisations and hon. Members present. We hope that his refreshed road safety strategy and two-year action plan does just that.

[Several hon. Members rose—]