Bus Drivers’ Working Hours

Jim Fitzpatrick Excerpts

Thursday 6th June 2019 Westminster Hall

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

It is a pleasure to see you presiding in the Chair this afternoon, Sir Graham. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington (Matt Western) on securing this important debate. I commend him not only for his excellent contribution, but for his campaigning on this issue, including his ten-minute rule Bill, which he introduced on 13 February, as he mentioned in his remarks.

I had hoped to welcome the new Minister of State, Department for Transport, the hon. Member for Northampton North (Michael Ellis), who has responsibility for road safety, to his place. I am never unhappy to see the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, the hon. Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Andrew Jones), but it would have been nice to be able to firmly welcome the new road safety Minister. As chair of the all-party group for transport safety, I was hoping to get an assurance from him that he would engage with the all-party group as much as his predecessor did, so I hope the Minister will take that message back to the hon. Member for Northampton North.

Will the Minister also pass on a message about the updated road safety statement, which he knows has been long awaited? I hope the reshuffle will not delay it, given the concern about how the road safety casualty figures on those who have been killed or seriously injured have stagnated over the past few years. It would be an impetus to getting those figures on a downward trend again, which we all want to see.

My hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington highlighted the crystal clear anomaly between the permitted hours of driving for HGV drivers, long-distance bus drivers and local bus drivers—a point also made by the RMT trade union in its briefing. I thank the union, the Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety and the Library for their information and briefings for this debate.

The Rowan Fitzgerald case cited by my hon. Friend graphically and tragically portrays the problem, and I offer my sincere condolences to the family. Long driving hours were a key cause of the death of seven-year-old Rowan. It is well documented that fatigue causes crashes. According to the Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety’s most recent figures, 62 people died in collisions where fatigue was recorded as a contributory factor and a further 509 were seriously injured, so fatigue is a major problem. Public sector staff have a responsibility for public safety. It is for local government and the Government to monitor how best to protect the public in these situations.

When one is driving a vehicle the size of a local bus, whether single or double-decker, regulations should protect passengers, other road users, pedestrians and the driver himself or herself. My hon. Friend put two cases: first, local bus drivers’ hours should be capped at 56 hours per week or 90 in a fortnight; and secondly, we should match European Union employment regulations. The fact that drivers are expected to drive for up to five and a half hours without a break under the existing regulations is absurd in this day and age.

I will not detail the specifics of the Coventry crash that killed Rowan and Mrs Dora Hancox; they have been well documented and the court has pronounced its verdict. Cause, effect, responsibility and blame are all indisputable. The financial penalty is significant, but, given the loss of life and serious injury caused, I am sure the victims and the families were not happy with just that outcome. A more significant conclusion would be for the Government to recognise that fatigue for that class of driver can be addressed and reduced so that we can prevent more deaths and serious injuries. It is within the gift of the Government to introduce the type of regulations that my hon. Friend mentioned.

The statistics on bus crashes, especially in London, my city, are very worrying. Fatigue is not responsible for every crash, but it is responsible for some, and it can be addressed and such instances reduced. I look forward to the Front-Bench responses, but especially the Minister’s, and hopefully we will see some progress in better protecting those who are at risk.

To conclude, a spokesperson for London Bus Watch, Tom Kearney, having spoken to many bus drivers across the country, said:

“Fatigue is their single biggest worry.”

If the drivers are worried, so should we be.

[Martyn Day (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Graham. I am delighted to take part in this interesting debate, introduced by the hon. Member for Warwick and Leamington (Matt Western). I pay tribute to his work on this issue, and I wish him every success with his private Member’s Bill.

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his account of the tragedy that took place in Coventry. The hours worked in that case were truly shocking. Perhaps even more shocking is that those hours are perfectly legal. I also thank him for raising the splitting of routes to avoid the 50 km long-distance requirements. That is unacceptable, and I am grateful to him for mentioning that today. The hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick) highlighted how fatigue causes crashes, and I could not agree more. I am grateful to him for the statistics he used to illustrate that point.

The Scottish National party has been a powerful advocate for fair working hours and working practices, so it will come as absolutely no surprise that I fully support the change being sought. A limit of 56 hours in a week or 90 hours over two weeks seems perfectly reasonable. In fact, I would not want to be driving for that many hours. I certainly would not want to see someone driving the hours they are driving now on local routes. I fail to see why any difference between the working hours of local bus drivers, long-distance bus drivers and HGV drivers should exist, other than it being an accidental mismatch from historical pieces of legislation. The average driver’s hours are 42 a week, which suggests that there would not be insurmountable problems for bus companies in facilitating a more respectable number of hours. It certainly would not put people out of work.

In saying that, I should point out that the SNP supports the full devolution of employment law to the Scottish Parliament. We do not have control over that, so the debate is particularly relevant for me, as it allows me to make these points. In Scotland, we have control over transport policy, and we have tried to prioritise the provision of quality bus services. In general, we believe that the current model for providing bus services, where public authorities have the power to intervene, including through subsidies, is generally the right one. However, we need to do more. That is why we are trying to strengthen the powers through our Transport (Scotland) Bill to allow transport authorities to run their own services in some cases, or to take over whole networks or parts of areas. In that melting pot, it would make great sense for Scotland to have control over the hours drivers may work. That would assist us in boosting public confidence in the safety of the service, which is a point I am happy to make here, as this Parliament has that power just now.

Another area of concern is that many of the protections and rights secured for our workers have flowed directly from our membership of the European Union. It is imperative that those are not put at risk by any Brexit race to the bottom. It is worth pointing out that the UK rules on drivers’ hours are slightly different from the EU’s. Under UK rules, after 5.5 hours of driving, a break of 30 minutes must be taken. Under the equivalent EU rules, a driving period of no more than 4.5 hours gives drivers a break of 45 minutes. I am not a professional driver or a professional transport person, but on the few occasions when I have had the misfortune of having to drive from my constituency to London—a journey that took me longer than 5.5 hours—I needed a considerably longer break. I say that as someone who is not regularly driving every day. While I may not be a professional driver, starting from a more relaxed position and coming out severely fatigued would worry me from my personal experience.

[Jim Fitzpatrick]

I just want to make the point that we would not go five and a half hours in this place without having a break, a cup of tea and a chat, and we are not driving vehicles the size of a bus.

[Martyn Day]

Absolutely. I thank the hon. Gentleman for making that excellent point. I could not agree more.

In conclusion, I hope the Minister will look favourably at addressing drivers’ hours and breaks. The hon. Member for Warwick and Leamington has highlighted a good issue. I support him and wish him every success. Can the Minister tell me what the rationale is for continuing to have different working hours for local and long-distance drivers? It certainly is not safety, and I fail to see any logic for it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Andrew Jones]

That is an important point. The traffic commissioner is the regulator and responsible for the licensing and regulation of public service vehicles, which includes enforcement and prosecution where appropriate. We also have the DVSA—the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency—which carries out monitoring and compliance checks. Those can include not only routine checks, but reactive or proactive checks where there is evidence that an operator is non-compliant or an issue has been reported.

There are methods in place, with checks and balances, to be reactive in response to information or proactive if necessary. Those checks can include looking at the logs of drivers’ rosters and considering the health and wellbeing of drivers. Those are the two methods through which the regulations can be enforced.

[Jim Fitzpatrick]

I am grateful to the Minister for that further explanation of the checks and balances in the system. Given the numbers of complaints that he catalogued that were recorded against this driver in the days, weeks and months preceding the tragic crash, is he reassured by the traffic commissioner and the other authorities that cases of drivers such as the one responsible, who got away with so much for so long, will not be able to be repeated because of the example of this case, where clearly the system did not work?

[Andrew Jones]

That is at the heart of what is happening. The system has not worked here, and the points about how we take that forward and improve the enforcement and vigour of the regulation are central to where we need to go. That is a point that I will be taking from this debate and taking to my hon. Friend the bus Minister in our meetings next week, when she is back from overseas.

It might be helpful if I updated the House on some of the data involving buses. We all need to see a continuation of the long-term trend of improving road safety in the UK. Colleagues in the House have made a significant contribution to that over a sustained period, and we all owe them a duty of thanks. It has led to the UK—along with, I think, Sweden—having the safest roads in the world. There are still significant areas where we need to make more progress, but we should look at that sustained cross-party initiative with some pride, although we recognise that there is no room for any complacency anywhere at all.

On that point, the hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse asked about the new Minister with responsibility for road safety. My hon. Friend the Minister of State, Department for Transport, is not here and I should be a little cautious about putting things in his diary, but I am absolutely confident that he will wish to engage strongly with the all-party group. I will also pass on to him the comments made about the updated road safety statement.

Fatal road accidents involving buses have been falling over time. The number of buses involved in fatal road accidents, per billion vehicle miles, has fallen by 36% in the last 10 years, so there is a positive downward trend and we want it to continue. It needs to be kept in mind that the GB domestic drivers’ hours rules set maximum limits, to give some flexibility to the bus industry, and do not reflect drivers’ normal working patterns. Figures from the Office for National Statistics show that, on average, in 2017 bus drivers worked 42 hours a week, which is within the 48 hours average limit allowed in the general working time rules. The bus Minister has promised to look into the robustness of these figures, and it is of course some of the outlying figures, rather than the average, that we need to focus on here. The average is perhaps not showing the entire picture, which is why that further work needs to be done.

Road Safety

Jim Fitzpatrick Excerpts

Monday 5th November 2018 Commons Chamber

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

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Chelmsford (Vicky Ford). I am grateful to various organisations for their briefings on this evening’s debate, including PACTS, Brake, Cycling UK, the Road Safety Foundation, Guide Dogs, Ageas and the Towards Zero Foundation. I have two main comments, one about language and one about why road safety is a constituency issue, as well as a national and international one.

First, we as politicians know that language is crucial, which is why we should, and the emergency services do, now speak of “road traffic crashes” and not “road traffic accidents.” We should know now, if we did not know before, that most incidents, and the consequent statistics of people killed or seriously injured, could have been avoided if humans had made positive decisions. They are not accidents; they are avoidable tragedies. If drivers had only observed the rules on speed, drink, drugs, mobile phone usage, seatbelts and the rest, those lives could have been spared.

I am also struck that Brake describes the failure to cut the number of deaths and serious injuries in recent years as figures that have “stagnated”. Many commentators, including me and the Minister, have used the word “plateau” but, on reflection, that suggests high ground and achievement. “Stagnated”, however, suggests something entirely different, negative and certainly not nice.

On the question of targets, as raised by a number of colleagues, in May the Department for Transport published an independent capacity review on road safety by Systra. Among its recommendations were:

“Set interim quantitative targets to 2030 to reduce the numbers of deaths and serious injuries”.

And:

“Set measurable interim targets to 2030 to reduce the numbers of deaths and serious injuries with supporting road safety performance objectives, as proposed for the national framework.”

As well as this independent review, deaths and serious injuries as a result of road traffic crashes have been recognised by the United Nations and the World Health Organisation as an international crisis—1.25 million dead and 20 million seriously injured every year—and they are now subject to two sustainable development goals. SDGs 3.6 and 11.2 recommend a target of halving the number of people killed or seriously injured by 2030. The Government signed up to those goals and published the Systra recommendations, so why will they not formally endorse targets as part of the weaponry to reduce the number of deaths and serious injuries?

The UK fire service has a proud record in international aid, including providing second-hand fire engines and other equipment, unused kit from brigades and supply chains, and training and advice. That has been happening for decades, and not just following disasters. The charity Fire Aid, which I chair, especially provides pillar 5 post-crash response. It is hugely frustrating that UK aid from the Department for International Development has billions of taxpayers’ pounds to distribute but cannot support small charities like Fire Aid, which is saving lives in 40 countries around the world and delivering soft diplomacy for UK plc.

I said at the beginning of my contribution that this is as much a local issue as a national or international one. In Poplar and Limehouse 190 people were killed or seriously injured between 2011 and 2016. Twenty-two were under the age of 16, and 78 were between 16 and 29. RTCs are the biggest killer of our young people nationally.

Investment in road safety not only saves lives but makes economic sense. Each year road crashes cost UK plc £35 billion, or 2% of our GDP. For every £1 invested, £4.40 of monetary value is created. This not only makes economic sense; it makes human sense, too.

Road safety should not be a party political issue. The Minister is held in high regard as a man of integrity. There is an opportunity here for him to reset our efforts, to give leadership and provide ambition and to reduce our KSI—killed or seriously injured—statistics. I look forward to him delivering, but I think he needs targets in his campaign.

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—]

Road Safety (Schools)

Jim Fitzpatrick Excerpts

Thursday 13th September 2018 Westminster Hall

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

It is a pleasure to see you presiding this afternoon, Mr Evans. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg) on securing this important debate. As he said, every road casualty is a tragedy, and the death of Bobby Colleran is no different. I join my hon. Friend in commending the campaign to remember Bobby, and I love the idea of Bobby zones. It is very personal and it makes the point.

When I was a Minister with responsibility for road safety, I had the privilege of meeting several families who were affected by a family member being killed and who channelled their grief and bereavement into campaigning for the safety of others and for road safety in general. Bobby’s is a powerful story, and we want to ensure that it is transmitted across the political spectrum. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response to the suggestion about Bobby zones and the progress that might be made.

I hope the Minister will also respond to the points of the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman) about school crossings, parking near schools, school travel plans and 20 mph zones. I know the hon. Gentleman talked about 30 mph zones, but, certainly in London, the big campaign is for schools to have 20 mph zones. Most of them are there, but enforcement is key.

I raised the issue of deaths of schoolchildren in an international context earlier this year, on 29 March and 24 April. The United Nations and the World Health Organisation estimate that about 500 children leave for school every day and do not return home. That is one reason why the sustainable development goals contain targets to cut the numbers killed and seriously injured on the world’s roads. At the moment, more than 1 million people die on the world’s roads every year, and 20 million are seriously injured.

In the UK, we are lucky, because we have one of the best road safety records in the world. In a variety of ways, we also help many countries that are more challenged. The charity Fire Aid, which I chair, delivers equipment and training from fire brigades and the fire sector across the country. It also trains fire brigades in developing countries, in particular, in post-crash response. In many countries across the world, apart from delivering that equipment and those techniques, it delivers the THINK! campaign’s road safety education programmes to get the message out in schools, as the Minister knows.

As has been mentioned, however, the domestic statistics do not make comfortable reading. A paper from the Department for Transport shows that, on average in 2013, which is when the last available data in the World Health Organisation’s global status report comes from, one child aged nought to 15 was killed and 37 were seriously injured every week in the UK. It also shows that most were killed or injured on their way home from school.

This year, the Department for Transport published a capacity review for the UK. It says:

“The removal of the ring-fenced Road Safety Grant and the substantial reductions in local highway investments and in traffic policing levels, experienced since 2010, have had visible impact on the level and quality of activity. Most local authorities are struggling to carry out and prioritise effective road safety activity in a time of budget cuts and growing demand in other areas, such as social care, without the impetus provided in the past from national measurable objectives”—

I will come back to that later. It goes on to say:

“Britain’s safety record for pedestrians and cyclists does not compare well to the leading road safety performers internationally.”

The latest Department for Transport figures for 2016 on child deaths and injuries show a jump compared with other figures, as has been mentioned. The number of child deaths in reported road traffic accidents in 2016 was 69, which is 15 more than the 54 child deaths that occurred in 2015. The 2016 figures are the highest since 2009. The Department for Transport’s factsheet on child casualties says:

“Children under the age of 16 are one of the most vulnerable road users”,

which I think we can all understand, adding that

“child pedestrians are not experienced and well educated about using the road…78%...involved in accidents failed to look properly”,

and

“38%...were careless, reckless or in a hurry.”

This is very much about education. Some 72% of the accidents that kill or seriously injure children on a school day happen between 8 o’clock and 9 o’clock or between 3 o’clock and 7 o’clock—clearly during the school run. That is despite the fact that the proportion of trips where children walk to school has fallen from 47% in 1997 to 42% in 2013.

To come back to my original point about measurability, in 2010, the coalition Government decided to break with the 30-year consensus on having targets to reduce the number of people killed and seriously injured on our roads. That decision was badly received by the whole road safety industry. The targets had been introduced by the Administration of Mrs Thatcher—later Baroness Thatcher—in 1986, when I think the hon. Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley) was the Minister with responsibility for road safety.

The coalition Government decided that they did not want to risk being accused of failure if the targets were not met, but the targets were never about providing an opportunity for party political point scoring. They were about creating an atmosphere for all involved and demonstrating the ambition that we wanted to do better and to have safer roads.

Perversely, the coalition Government, and now this one, have happily signed up to European Union targets and to the UN’s sustainable development goals, which also have targets. We are joining in on international targets, but we will not set a target in the United Kingdom. If the Government want to demonstrate some determination in this area, they need to announce that they will go back to killed or seriously injured—KSI—targets, which were started by a Conservative Government more than 30 years ago and which should be in position today.

All hon. Members hold the Minister in high regard, have great respect for him and do not doubt the integrity he brings to his position. We all wish him well, but we need a Department for Transport policy that reflects his personal commitment. I look forward to his response to the request of my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby about Bobby zones, and to other hon. Members’ exhortations about doing better for schools kids. I also look forward to the response of my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull East (Karl Turner).

Heathrow

Jim Fitzpatrick Excerpts

Thursday 7th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Jesse Norman]

Of course these statements were not purely in relation to Heathrow; there were several of them, as discussed, but two have fallen away. All this does is recap a perfectly well-established set of rights it has in law, and nothing has changed from that point of view. The point of the detailed and careful way in which this has been taken forward is to make absolutely clear that, when HAL makes a commitment, it can be held properly publicly accountable for it by due process of law and by agreement with the Government.

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

This was recommended in the 2003 aviation White Paper and confirmed by the consultation in 2008, so will the Minister confirm that, notwithstanding the question asked by the right hon. Member for Putney (Justine Greening), the Government will not be deflected from bringing forward an early vote, because it is quite clear that there is support across the House for this proposal?

[Jesse Norman]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his very constructive and positive comment, and of course we will not be deflected. That is why we have laid this national policy statement, and we will be inviting Parliament to vote on it in due course.

Global Road Deaths

Jim Fitzpatrick Excerpts

Tuesday 24th April 2018 Westminster Hall

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

I think that I have to challenge my hon. Friend. He said that if he mentioned the word “safety”, colleagues in the Chamber should stop him, so I am stopping him—because he has a very proud record on transport safety, in terms of seatbelts, his private Member’s Bill, the role that he played in setting up the Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety and his recent role, which I am sure he will come on to, leading the inter-country legislators committee at the United Nations. Safety is in his DNA, and he should not be embarrassed by that.

[Mr Sheerman]

I am very grateful to my hon. Friend, who has campaigned with me for many years on this topic. One thing that I am trying to highlight today is that too many of us in this field have been doing this work for a long time. We need fresh blood; we need new people coming in who will be as passionate as we have been. Certainly part of my role as chair of the Global Network for Road Safety Legislators will be trying to enthuse people in legislatures around the world to get involved—to understand that 1.3 million deaths a year is unacceptable to any civilised society.

When I was working in this area some years ago, a Swedish professor—a doctor—said to me, “We have to get the United Nations to take this seriously and then we can lift the profile of what is happening on our roads.” As Lord Robertson said in a presentation only recently, people forget that if road deaths carry on at the present level, more people will die in the 21st century on the roads than died in all the wars of the 20th century. I hope you agree, Mr Hollobone, that that is a chilling statistic.

I want to say a little about Britain. In 2016, 181,384 casualties on Britain’s roads were recorded. There were 1,792 fatalities—that is 1,792 knocks on the door. Please let us use that all the time—the knock on the door, the chilling moment when someone is told that a member of their family has died. The long-term trend in the numbers of people killed and injured in road accidents has been declining, but the decline has stalled since 2011, and in 2016 we actually had an increase. To those figures we should add the road deaths and injuries in Northern Ireland; otherwise the Minister, who understands these stats very well, would pick me up on that.

It is important that the United Nations now has road safety as one of its sustainable development goals. Why is that? It is because the United Nations knows that that is vital to taking on poverty worldwide. We know that the death of a member of a family in the developing world usually means that family unit lurching into poverty, or, if it is a long-term disability, it drags the family down because it affects their ability to live a decent life. These tragedies are not just about statistics; they affect real families.

In relation to the countries that we have knowledge of, we know that we probably have an underestimate of the numbers of people dying. I was in Beijing not many months ago, and an interesting fact is that, mysteriously, as soon as the United Nations introduced a 5% reduction target, a 5% reduction started appearing every year in the Chinese statistics. I am saying that the stats may be worse even than we are arguing today.

I have just come back from New York, where we had a General Assembly debate on road deaths. It was a very good debate indeed, and a motion was passed on an action programme that I think will be very useful if we take it seriously.

I am arguing today that the United Kingdom has great knowledge about transport safety and great expertise. We have quite a good record. It is not the best in the world—sometimes Sweden is better than us—but the fact is that we have a good record. As I said, we have enormous knowledge; we have research centres and research evidence. We know very well how to reduce the number of accidents on the road, and we do not do that by a lovely gesture.

I have been in this field long enough to know that someone has only to knock on the door of an insurance company and it will say, “I will give you this flashy little thing that you can put on your bicycle when it’s dark and it will illuminate you and prevent accidents.” Another company will say, “I’ll give you lots of money to have a brand-new version of the Tufty Club, where you train all children about road safety.” Neither of those things, according to the research evidence, has been very successful at all. They may be quite fun to do, but they are not the way in which we tackle these things.

I have worked very closely with the Safer Roads Foundation. It knows very well the efficacy—all the research shows this—of low-cost engineering schemes. We know where people are having accidents. We modify the landscape; we do something about a particular junction that is dangerous, and that low-cost engineering scheme provides the best return possible on our investment.

We have knowledge of the research across the world. I also chair the international committee for road safety research. That is an attempt to link all the researchers on this planet of ours to one another so that we know what each of us is doing. We have worked very closely with India, for example. It is a case of finding out which research can help and sharing the information. One nation will have done the research and can pass it on quickly to the others.

We did not have a millennium development goal for road safety, but the sustainable development goals adopted by the United Nations changed the whole framework. We are now being taken seriously and we need to work very hard indeed to ensure that we achieve something substantial.

In September 2015, at a UN Heads of Government summit, the UK accepted sustainable development goal target 3.6, to halve road deaths by 2020. That was welcomed, but it was rather paradoxical, as our Government have failed to adopt a target for the UK since 2010. The Minister and I get on very well. He knows that, in a debate like this, I will nudge him again on two things: first, to have targets in the UK and, secondly, to have a national centre for investigation of all road accidents, particularly road accidents involving a road death.

We know that we are holding back casualty reduction at home. Targets are not a solution, but they do indicate ambition and commitment, and they influence where we put the resources. When the Government have targets for issues such as reducing suicides, hospital waiting times and net migration, it is hard to see the logic for not having an accident death reduction goal as well.

[Jim Fitzpatrick]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful point and one that many of us have challenged the Government on since 2010. Does he agree that it is completely anomalous that the Government are signed up to the sustainable development goals for the reduction of road casualties, deaths and serious injuries internationally, and that they are signed up to the European Union’s targets for the reduction of road deaths and serious injuries, but that they will not sign up to targets for the reduction of deaths and serious injuries in the United Kingdom?

[Mr Sheerman]

I take that point. My hon. Friend is a great campaigning friend of mine. I did not know whether to apply for this debate under this Department or the Department for International Development. I hope that I am stimulating a relationship between the Department for Transport, which is very good—I will give it its due—and has a Minister who cares about this, and the International Development team, so that they make proposals.

Using our experience, research and knowledge to help people around the world is one of the best investments we can make in helping a developing country at the moment. Road crashes are the No.1 killer of young Africans aged between 15 and 29. Certain countries leap off the page, such as Tanzania and South Africa, because they are well above where they should be, given the size of their population, the nature of their roads, and the number of people driving cars and two-wheeled vehicles. Much of this has a heartbreaking real cost. Road crashes frequently kill or injure household breadwinners, causing loss of income, increased costs—such as those of caring for a disabled victim—and tipping people into deepest poverty.

The Overseas Development Institute report “Securing safe roads” contained in-depth analysis in three cities—Nairobi, Mumbai and Bogota. That analysis was led by the ODI and the World Resources Institute, which found that it is the poorest sections of society that bear the brunt of traffic-related injuries and deaths, and that politicians and the public tend to blame individual road users for collisions, rather than policy makers or planners.

Can I put this next point at the heart of my remarks? The fact is that, in many ways, cars have become much safer—like a cocoon. My wife recently changed her car because she wanted a hybrid car. It has automatic collision avoidance and 16 airbags. Cars are safer and getting safer still thanks to some of the great work that is being done on the new car assessment programme worldwide. The people in danger are the vulnerable road users—the pedestrians, cyclists and people on two-wheeled vehicles—across the world. Those are the people we really have to worry about.

In terms of other places, America is in fact slipping back on its success. There should be good laws and sensible research-based activity by Government, such as seatbelt legislation, as well as law enforcement, so that people are not let off, or able to pay bribes, because they do not want to be caught for speeding or drunk driving. In the United States, because the states have different rules and regulations, many of their cars do not have rear seatbelts or regulation on that. They are slipping behind. We need that mixture of wise laws, good science-based answers and ensuring that these laws are obeyed. How confident are the Government that their contribution to accident prevention overseas will be well spent?

There is a new United Nations trust, which we established last week. It has every possibility of being a good and substantial fund. The Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile put in the first £10 million, and some companies will put in. However, given my experience with the World Bank and the Global Road Safety Partnership, there is a danger that we put too much emphasis on the private sector. Individual Governments must come in. I hope the British Government will put money into the United Nations trust, but they must ensure that there are strings attached, so that we know that the money flows to evidence-based, good ends.

We need to support the development of a road accident strategy across the world. We need to highlight what the Overseas Development Institute report says. We need to reframe road safety in public debates, making connections with issues that people care about, such as the economy, equality and education, and to build alliances at all levels of government, including local, regional and national. We must also produce, in every country, a dedicated road safety plan with short, medium and long-term objectives.

I have had the privilege to work with some very good people on this. Etienne Krug at the World Health Organisation in Geneva has been inspirational in the work that I have done. David Ward and the team from his organisation produced the wonderful report “Manifesto #4roadsafety”for the Global Network for Road Safety Legislators—that comes out of the Towards Zero Foundation. There are some very good people in this area, but at the end of the day, we must ensure that we have, as the World Health Organisation says, a policy called “save lives” based on an integrated safe-systems approach. The WHO report recommends 22 priority interventions in six key areas: speed management, leadership, infrastructure, vehicle safety, enforcement and post-crash survival.

To conclude, we know the answers. We can stop these 1.3 million deaths. We can reduce them dramatically if we work together on the basis of good laws that are enforced fairly and squarely across every country that we work with. We have an enormous opportunity to save lives, communities and families. Let’s go for it!

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

It is a pleasure to see you in the chair, Mr Hollobone. I am pleased to follow my friend, the hon. Member for Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock (Bill Grant), and I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman) on securing the debate and on his excellent speech that laid out the issues.

My hon. Friend outlined the statistics of more than 1.25 million people dead and 20 million seriously injured across the world, and the international response, including the World Health Organisation’s and the United Nations’ sustainable development goals, of which two specifically target road crashes. I am delighted to see the Minister present, who is highly regarded, which is the upside. The downside is that because he is highly regarded, much is expected of him. We look forward to his contribution.

The UK is one of the world leaders in road safety. My hon. Friend the Member for Huddersfield attended the UN General Assembly, as he described, and I commend his activities in sponsoring the inter-parliamentary legislators group to share best practice. We can help other countries. We are doing so already through individuals and organisations such as His Royal Highness Prince Michael of Kent, the international patron of road safety; the FIA Foundation; the Towards Zero Foundation; the Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety; the Department for Transport; the THINK! campaign; Max Mosley; and Stop the Crash, chaired by David Ward and Lord Robertson and mentioned by my hon. Friend, to mention just a few.

In this Chamber, we recently debated the International Development Committee’s report on education for all. I made the point that it is all very well promoting education in developing countries, but we should also be teaching road safety in schools, because 500 kids leave for school every morning and do not return home. They die on the world’s roads. We need to get those kids to and from school safely.

I chair Fire Aid, which is the umbrella organisation for the UK fire service and fire industry that delivers post-crash response and training equipment to more than 30 countries. One of our founding partner organisations, the Eastern Alliance for Safe and Sustainable Transport, quotes the 2015 World Health Organisation report on road safety, which details that half a million lives could be saved each year through good post-crash care. That includes stunningly simple things, such as a single universal telephone number for an emergency service response—18 countries have no 999 number and 41 countries have multiple numbers. Our partnership organisations deliver equipment and training, and are saving lives.

The UK has a good road safety story. The THINK! brand of the Department for Transport is held in international regard. We have expertise across the piece that we can share with other countries, whether on legislation, regulations, equipment or training. That soft diplomacy could enhance UK plc’s reputation. We can save lives. We can prevent broken bodies. We can have the most positive economic impact in the countries that would benefit most.

We need a signal from Government that recognises not only the opportunities that the sustainable development goals provide but that we are in the best position to help so many countries, whom I hope would acknowledge our assistance. We should not do it just for geopolitical advantage, although that should not be lost on the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, but because it is the right thing to do. It is already being done by all those I mentioned earlier and others.

I am keen to hear how much the Government are doing, how much they recognise what is being delivered by those UK organisations and how much more they think we can do—not just through the Department for Transport, but through the Department for International Development too. I look forward to the Front-Bench responses from the SNP, from my hon. Friend the Member for Reading East (Matt Rodda) for the Opposition and from the Minister. This issue should demonstrate that there is no difference between any of the UK parties.

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[Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to see you in the chair, Mr Hollobone. I start by congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman) on securing this important debate and on his knowledgeable speech. He has been an impressive road safety campaigner for many years, and the debate is worthy of him. I also pay tribute to other hon. Members who have spoken today.

This is a very timely debate. Globally, about 1.3 million deaths as well as more than 50 million injuries are caused by road accidents each year, according to the latest estimates from the World Health Organisation. In the UK, we have a proud record and some of the safest roads in the world. There are an estimated 3.7 road traffic deaths per 100,000 people in the UK, meaning we have the safest roads in the world other than in Sweden. However, we must strive to be even better.

I am pleased that the last Labour Government supported global road safety. In 2009, Labour pledged to donate £1.5 million each year from the Department for International Development to a global road safety facility. However, under this Government, progress has somewhat stalled. The 2010 to 2015 coalition originally scrapped our 2009 pledge, before being forced into a U-turn by the International Development Committee in 2011. In our 2017 manifesto, we said that a future Labour Government will reset the UK’s road safety vision and ambitiously strive for a transport network with zero deaths, reintroducing road safety targets and setting out bold measures that will continuously improve road safety standards.

I ask the Minister why the Government scrapped the road safety targets that were introduced by Labour. The Government talk about road safety being a top priority, but Ministers have failed to reduce the number of those seriously injured or killed on our roads.

[Jim Fitzpatrick]

I know my hon. Friend has limited time, so I will just ask a quick question. We had a 30-year consensus on the reduction of deaths and serious injuries on roads, starting with the Conservative Administration in the ’80s under Mrs Thatcher—I think the hon. Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley) was Road Safety Minister at the time. Does my hon. Friend agree that it is very disappointing that the coalition Government moved away from targets? Does he hope, like I do, that the present Conservative Government would restore the targets that they started 40 years ago?

[Matt Rodda]

My hon. Friend puts it very well. I seek consensus on this issue and I hope the Minister will consider the points that my hon. Friend has made so eloquently. He did not mention the reductions in the police, but I should add that there is a link to that as well. I hope the Government will also reconsider their cuts to the police service.

It is worth bearing in mind that the road injury statistics are rising. A Department for Transport statistical table for the year to September 2017 showed that serious road injuries had increased by 7%. We should focus on that point and seek consensus. As I mentioned earlier, the Minister should seriously look at the UK taking a leading role in promoting road safety globally. What discussions has the Minister had with colleagues in the Department for International Development about global road safety? I also believe, in addition to domestic consensus, that there should be consensus between Departments. We should seek to work with our international partners.

In conclusion, although we have one of the safest road networks around, we should not be complacent. The Government should be doing much more to make our roads even safer. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s comments on some of the important points raised in today’s debate.

Road Traffic Law Enforcement

Jim Fitzpatrick Excerpts

Thursday 23rd February 2017 Westminster Hall

[Mrs Louise Ellman (Liverpool, Riverside) (Lab/Co-op)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the Second Report of the Transport Committee of Session 2015-16, Road traffic law enforcement, HC 518, and the Government response, HC 132.

Deaths on our roads have decreased over the past decade following sustained efforts to improve road safety. Nevertheless, in 2015, 1,730 people were killed on our roads and 22,144 seriously injured, many of them suffering life-changing consequences. That is the background against which the Select Committee on Transport carried out our inquiry into road traffic law enforcement. Our report was published in March 2016, and the Department responded in June.

There are three strands to road safety—education, engineering and enforcement—and they cut across Departments. Our report concentrates on enforcement, but inevitably touches on the other aspects. The National Police Chiefs Council told us that its task was to act in relation to the fatal four offences: inappropriate speed, drink and drug-driving, non-wearing of seat belts and driving while distracted, which mainly refers to the use of mobile phones but also involves other aspects.

Enforcement requires detection, which is implemented by a combination of specialist officers to apprehend offenders and the application of technology. Deterrence, which includes motorists’ perceptions of the likelihood of being caught, is an extremely important aspect of traffic law enforcement. Over the years, there has been greater reliance on technology than on specialist officers. We expressed great concern about the major reduction in specialised road policing officers, the number of whom fell from a full-time equivalent of 7,104 in 2005 to 4,356 by 2014. Between 2010 and 2014, there was a 23% decrease in their number. There are regional variations on those figures, reflecting the different decisions of the 43 separate police areas overseen by police and crime commissioners. They take their own individual decisions about what they think is operationally appropriate, but all of them do so in the context of deciding different priorities against a background of a reduction in spending. There is no Home Office guidance on the issue, so those decisions are taken in individual areas.

It is interesting to note that although overall detected traffic offences halved over that period, the number of offences related to causing death on the roads, which are always reported, did not fall. That leads to the question whether the reduction in reported offences means that driving standards have improved or that detection rates have fallen. It is an important question to ask. We ask that the Department assess the impact of that drastic reduction in specialist road police officers. It is an important matter that is often not recognised.

Speed can kill. Driving too fast for conditions was a contributory factor in 7,361 accidents in 2015, 167 of which were fatal and 1,380 of which caused serious injury. That represents 11% of all fatal accidents and 8% of serious accidents. Exceeding the speed limit was a contributory factor in 5,272 accidents, 222 of which were fatal, and 1,152 causing serious injury. That constitutes 15% of fatal accidents and 7% of serious accidents. Behind every one of those figures and each of those statistics lies a death or a life changed, perhaps forever.

Some 90% of fixed penalty notices imposed for breaking the speed limit were camera-detected. Speed cameras are frequently controversial. We listened to the experiences about speed cameras that have been put in different places, considered the various responses and concluded that it is important that cameras are placed where they can improve safety and that their financing is transparent, with excess revenues being invested in improving local road safety rather than financially benefiting the Exchequer or local councils. The financing for fixed speed cameras has changed in recent years. Recent changes have caused some local authorities and partnerships to remove such cameras, but they can be extremely important in improving safety, so there must be a proper assessment of where they are placed and how effective they are. We said that we felt the Road Safety Trust should review how the cameras are working and what is the most effective way to deploy them.

Motorists seem to regard penalties imposed for average speeds as fairer than those levied for speed at the moment when the camera flashes. We noted the growth of diversionary courses as an alternative to speeding penalties, with drivers paying for the courses. We asked a number of questions about those courses. We need to know much more about how effective they are. There should be more transparency about how they are financed, and more consistency in their availability across the country. Drivers pay to go on the courses, and they might pay different amounts in different areas; different courses are available in different policing and local authority areas, and it is not entirely clear how effective they are. We felt that a proper assessment should be made.

Although the Department told us that it was issuing guidance, and Highways England is also looking at the issue, it is not entirely clear what works best to make our roads safer. We felt that specialist officers should be deployed in areas where high speed causes fatalities, and that that should be combined with an educational campaign. In many areas, an educational campaign must go together with enforcement.

Recently, there has been a great deal of publicity about the horrendous deaths caused by drivers using handheld mobile phones, which falls under the category of distraction in vehicle. A driver using a handheld mobile phone was recorded as a contributory factor in 440 accidents in 2015, 22 of which were fatal and 75 of which involved serious injury. The wider category of distraction in vehicle was a contributory factor in 2,920 accidents, 61 of which were fatal and 384 of which caused serious injuries.

It is of great concern that fixed penalty notices for using a handheld mobile phone while driving have decreased by 90% from 167,000 in 2006 to fewer than 17,000 in 2015. The Government now state that they are planning tougher penalties, which is welcome, but those penalties will be effective only if drivers believe that they will get caught for using their handheld phone.

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

I saw the statistics that my hon. Friend has just cited about the 90% reduction. Could the Committee identify what caused that reduction? When I read that, I could not believe it was an accurate figure.

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[Iain Stewart (Milton Keynes South) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gapes. It is also a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Mrs Ellman), who has chaired the Select Committee very well over the many years I have sat on it. I want to pick up on some of the points she has made in a very good summary of our work. I enjoyed taking part in our inquiry. We heard good evidence from road safety experts across the field. I agree with the general thrust of the report. The UK does have a good record on road safety, but there is absolutely no room for complacency. There are a few worrying trends on which we need to take action. I want to say a few words on drink-driving, cycling, using mobile phones, using technology to help, speed cameras, and the regional variations in enforcement policy among different police forces.

Statistics show that, in the past decade, we have made good improvements on drink-driving, but it is still an issue. The improvement is partly cultural. My father’s generation thought it acceptable to go out for a few pints and drive home. That was completely wrong, and the younger generation certainly seems to be much less tolerant of people who have a few drinks and then drive. It still happens too much, and this country has one of the highest drink-driving limits in Europe at 80 micrograms per 100 ml, whereas in most of Europe it is 50 micrograms. We noted in our inquiry that Scotland recently reduced its limit to 50 micrograms. It is probably a little too early properly to assess whether that has materially changed behaviour in Scotland, but it is certainly something we should look at.

I have always been somewhat sceptical about reducing the limit from 80 micrograms to 50 micrograms, something on which the Transport Committee in the previous Parliament conducted an inquiry. I have often felt that there is a risk of sending out mixed messages. At various times, including Christmas, the Department sensibly runs “Don’t drink and drive” campaigns telling people not to drink at all. Yet by reducing the level from 80 micrograms to 50 micrograms, we are saying it is still okay to have a little and drive. If we want to go down the road of lowering the limit, I think we should follow countries such as Finland where it is effectively zero. The limit there is 20 micrograms per 100 ml—there cannot be a zero limit because we all have alcohol in our systems for a range of reasons, such as from aftershave, perfume and deodorant, so 20 micrograms is agreed as the effective zero limit.

It was interesting to learn during the inquiry that statistics show very few people being caught for drink-driving related matters in the 50 microgram to 80 microgram range. Most people were way over the 80 microgram limit. I have a slight concern that it might not be best to focus campaign efforts against drink-driving on reducing the limit. I should like to consider wider measures for tackling it. However, I do not have a blinkered view and if, for example, evidence from Scotland were to show a marked difference we should clearly consider doing the same in England.

It is a concern that the number of cycling fatalities and serious injuries is increasing. That is probably due in part to the fact that more people now cycle, which is a good thing for health and wellbeing and environmental reasons, and for congestion. The Government are doing a lot to help promote cycling. It is not an entirely uncontroversial area, but the introduction of separate cycle lanes in London is making cycling better. However, there is an issue of enhanced law enforcement. Too many drivers pass cyclists without leaving sufficient room and are intolerant of them on the roads. That cuts both ways, however. I have seen plenty of cyclists who do not behave properly on the road. I should be interested to see better enforcement and education in both directions.

In Milton Keynes, we have a completely segregated cycle system. It was one of the design features—a system of “redways” right across the city, primarily to keep pedestrians and cyclists separate from the 60-mph grid roads. I find it incredibly frustrating that cyclists do not use them, and cause risk to themselves and other drivers by using the main grid roads. I should like slightly better education about how to behave. I did my cycling proficiency test at school. I do not know whether that is still a common feature—I understand it changed its name to Bikeability—but the Department for Transport could perhaps work with the Department for Education on promoting it. I should be interested to hear what cycling measures the Government propose.

The Select Committee Chair, the hon. Member for Liverpool, Riverside, was right to say that mobile phone use is a growing worry. It is becoming more of a menace. The idea of recording the number of cycling near-misses has been raised—the number of near-misses caused by drivers using mobile phones is quite high. I have observed it many times: a driver on his mobile phone suddenly pulls out into the fast lane, oblivious of the oncoming traffic. It has not always been an offence. A driver was shown using his phone in a film I saw the other week from the late ’80s, when there were big clunky car phones. We need mobile phone use by drivers to become more of a social taboo, as with drink-driving and not wearing a seatbelt. It should be made clear through increased penalties and enforcement that it is not acceptable, and that it is one of the growing causes of accidents.

I would widen that, too, because mobile phone use is not the only issue. Particularly at the top end of the market, the display panels of more and more cars, which used to have just the radio and the heating controls or whatever, have screens for choosing music. Some even have web access, so web pages can be displayed, which is incredibly distracting. There must be a role for working with manufacturers to ensure that technology is used safely. As an example, a company in my constituency called Two Trees Photonics has developed a system of holograms that projects the information—the car’s speed and similar things—over the end of the bonnet, so that the driver does not have to take his eyes off the road to look at things such as satnav information. I urge the Department to work more with manufacturers and, as the hon. Member for Liverpool, Riverside mentioned, to consider technology to block mobile phones when the car is in motion. To go back to the topic of drink-driving, I understand that there is also technology available that can sense the driver’s alcohol level through the hands. If it is over a certain limit, the ignition will not start. There is a big role for technology of that kind.

I want briefly to talk about speed cameras. I absolutely agree that fixed cameras have an important role to play, particularly at dangerous junctions. The Committee also considered average speed cameras. They can be valuable, but that there is a danger of overuse, and of confusion about the grace limit. Some people have said it is only 1 mph or 2 mph above the 50-mph average speed limit. Others say it is 10% plus 2 mph, so that people can go at almost 60 mph. There is a need for greater clarity about what is enforced. Average speed limits should not be used where there is no need for them. I agree that there are dangerous stretches of road where using average speed is very appropriate, even in normal circumstances. Certainly, it is absolutely right to use it to protect the workforce during motorway repair work. Too often, however, Highways England blocks off an enormous stretch of road—20 miles in some instances—when the work is happening in only a very small part of that. It increases driver frustration and the likelihood of risky behaviour. Some care should be used in deploying average speed technology.

[Jim Fitzpatrick]

I am interested in the hon. Gentleman’s suggestion. Notwithstanding the anomalies that he suggests exist with average speed cameras—between where it is 1 mph or 5 mph over 10% or whatever—with fixed speed cameras, we can see people slow down and immediately speeding up again when they go past them. They might go up to 70 mph, 80 mph, 90 mph, below 100 mph or whatever. With average speed, drivers do not go more than maybe 10% plus 2 mph, so they are far more effective in reducing the speeds of every driver, and motorists actually obey them, surely.

[Iain Stewart]

The hon. Gentleman makes a very good point and I agree with him. Fixed cameras have their role, for example where there is a dangerous junction, to get speeds down to 30 mph or whatever it is. That is an appropriate use of them. However, I am guilty of what he described—we slow down before the fixed camera and then accelerate once we are past it. I hold my hands up on that. Many motorists do that and I agree that average speed cameras are a better tool than fixed speed cameras to prevent that.

I do not want to detain Members much further. Lastly, there is the issue of enforcement practice around the country. The Chair of the Committee was absolutely correct to say it varies from police force to police force. In many ways, it is right that we have that local flexibility and that police and crime commissioners can adapt their policies and resources to the specific needs of their area. It also allows innovation to take place with new practices, new technology and the rest.

However, there must be a better system of collating best practice information and then sharing it with other authorities, so that the good new ideas can actually influence the whole country. The Department has a better role to play in doing that. I would not want to see everything absolutely set rigidly from the centre—it is appropriate to have some local discretion on how enforcement takes place—but, as I say, we should learn from the best. That is one of the benefits of a devolved system.

I hope this has been a helpful contribution. It was a very interesting inquiry. We are not trying to fix a dreadful problem, because this country has one of the best records in this area, but one death is too many and anything we can do to improve our safety record must be welcomed. Once again, I thank my fellow members of the Committee and the Chair for this work. It was very interesting and I look forward to hearing what the Minister says.

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

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this afternoon, Mr Gapes. There are at least two members of the Speakers’ Panel who Chair our meetings who are fellow West Ham United supporters. I know that confers no special privilege; if anything, it is probably a disadvantage. However, it is a pleasure to see you in the Chair this afternoon.

I am delighted to follow the hon. Member for Milton Keynes South (Iain Stewart)—[Interruption.] There you go; there’s fame for you. I am not in the main Chamber, as the annunciator says; I am here in Westminster Hall. Apparently I am in both at the same time. How does that work? Well, that might make a diary piece somewhere.

As I say, I am delighted to follow the hon. Gentleman and my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Mrs Ellman), who is the Chair of the Transport Committee, with whom I had the pleasure of serving on that Committee for a couple of years. I am very grateful for the Committee’s report. I should say that I am vice-chair of the Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety’s all-party group on road safety, and I am grateful to Katy Harrison for her briefing for this debate.

I begin by quoting from the opening paragraph of the summary of the Transport Committee’s report, which I think needs a little qualification. It says:

“The UK has a very good road safety record in global terms. However, the decline in fatalities in road accidents”—

I always challenge that questionable use of the word “accidents”. The hon. Member for Milton Keynes South said in his comments that people speeding and people on mobile phones cause “accidents”. They do not cause “accidents”; they cause crashes, because they are making decisions deliberately, selfishly and carelessly that lead to collisions. Therefore, these things are not “accidents”; they are deliberate human mistakes and they could be avoided. Calling them “accidents” gets people off the hook, because we all have accidents, such as spilling glasses of water and all the rest of it. Crashes are not “accidents”; they are deliberate human acts.

The Committee’s report goes on to say that the decline in road fatalities

“has slowed in recent years, and the most recent annual figures show a small increase in the number of road fatalities. The increase in injuries among pedal cyclists is of particular concern”

and that:

“While Education and Engineering are important, they cannot stand alone”—

as my hon. Friend the Chair of the Committee said. The report also states:

“Enforcement must be adequate and its methods designed to ensure safety in order to continue the trend in reducing road fatalities and injuries.”

The UK’s safety record may very well be in danger, because, as was mentioned by both the previous speakers, the figures are moving in the wrong direction and the number of road fatalities is slightly increasing. Perhaps the Minister, when he responds to the debate, can confirm that the number of people being killed or seriously injured—the KSI figures—in the last two or three years is going in the wrong direction.

As was mentioned by both previous speakers, our record in global terms is excellent—we need to say that. The Minister will know that I am chair of Fire Aid, which supports the UN’s sustainable development goals on KSI reductions, particularly in the area of post-crash response, which includes exporting the British fire service’s expertise and professionalism in extracting victims from vehicles and dealing with road collisions. We are working in 30 countries around the world and taking British expert advice, training and equipment out to those countries, which are in eastern Europe, Africa, Asia and elsewhere.

The Government signed up to the sustainable development goals, which apply to the United Kingdom and not just to other countries, to say that we want a 40% reduction in the 1.25 million people who are killed and the 20 million people who are seriously injured on the world’s roads every year. Those targets—those ambitions—apply to the UK and not just to other countries. The European Union also has KSI targets to which the Government have signed up.

That makes the decision in 2010 by the former Secretary of State for Transport to abandon the UK’s KSI reduction targets all the more disappointing. The Government’s abandonment of a clear commitment to save more lives and reduce serious injuries was not only a signal lack of ambition but a retreat from the 30-year consensus started by the Thatcher Administration in the 1980s, probably by the hon. Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley) when he was the Minister with responsibility for road safety. As I say, it commanded cross-party support for more than thirty years, but was abandoned because the former Secretary of State for Transport, it was reported, did not want to fail to meet the targets and consequently be accused of failure. However, not having targets basically said, “Well, we’re not really having any ambition,” which was very defeatist.

Let me turn to some of the specific recommendations in the Transport Committee’s report and the Government response. Recommendations 1 and 2 basically deal with the number of traffic police officers and the fact that their number is falling. My hon. Friend, the Chair of the Committee, said that the number of offences for causing death has not fallen, but the number of traffic offences being detected has fallen significantly.

The Government response to those recommendations says:

“The level of effective roads policing is not necessarily dependent solely on one factor, for example all police officers can enforce the law, including road traffic law, and there can be improved targeting of resources on particular problems.”

However, the Transport Committee’s report says:

“The National Police Chiefs Council…emphasised”—

in the evidence it gave to the Committee—

“that road policing is a specialist skill set and a highly technical specialism that cannot be replicated by a ‘regular front-line operational officer’.”

As my hon. Friend the Chair of the Committee said, the number of specialist road police officers has consistently fallen over the last decade and it is now down to about 4,300 from about 7,100. The report states:

“The total number of detected motoring offences has more than halved over the past decade”

between 2004 and 2015. The need for a skilled and adequate road policing presence remains, not least to protect vulnerable road users. My question to the Minister is this: have cuts to the number of specialised road policing officers led to fewer traffic offences being detected? Obviously, if they have, that needs to be examined.

I had a brief exchange with the hon. Member for Milton Keynes South on speed cameras. I was tickled, I must confess, by recommendation 4 in the report, which said:

“Further deployment of average speed cameras (ASC), which are generally better received by motorists”.

“Better received” is a euphemism. They are better obeyed by motorists. There are some motorists out there who do not think we should have speed cameras. We beg to differ on “better received”. I might have argued for a stronger word than “received”, because speed is clearly an issue, as both my colleagues have mentioned.

Recommendation 6 states:

“We recommend that the Government monitor the placement of speed cameras by local authorities to ensure that this is the case.”

I will come back to the strong point that the Chair of the Select Committee made on devolvement to local authorities and using their expertise and technology to enforce the laws. Does the Minister have up-to-date information on how wide the deployment is of civilians in communities trained by the police in using handheld speed radar guns? It empowers local communities that think they have a problem with speeding to take the matter into their own hands and deter people from making the roads where they live dangerous.

Recommendation 15 states:

“We recommend that the Department fund research into the development and effective deployment of technology to detect illegal mobile phone use while driving.”

That point was made by the Chair of the Select Committee. The Government’s response cites the statistic that only 1.6% of car drivers were observed using a handheld mobile phone. I would like to think that that is anecdotal, because certainly in London the percentage seems to be higher. Obviously, this is a study that the Government would have undertaken. Given the serious dangers that the hon. Member for Milton Keynes South pointed out, even 1.6% is an issue.

If I may, I say hello to our civil servants. The last sentence of this part of the Government’s response says:

“Ultimately, use of such a devise”.

There is a spelling mistake, and we rarely find those in Select Committee reports and Government responses. I do not know how that sneaked in.

Will the Government consider the Transport Select Committee’s recommendation to

“fund research into the development and effective deployment of technology to detect illegal mobile phone use while driving”?

That is of great interest to me and other road safety campaigners.

My second point on mobile phone use is that RAC research shows that most offenders are offered educational courses. With the welcome introduction of new penalties by the Government, they appear to be suggesting that courses will not be offered in future. Are they now discouraging the option of educational courses for illegal mobile phone use? The key issue here, as the Chair of the Select Committee said, is detection. People do not commit offences if they think they will be found out. If they think they will get away with it, they will commit the offence. With fewer road traffic police on our roads and less visibility, more people think they will get away with it and more people will offend.

Recommendation 16 talks about how the

“vulnerability of cyclists provides a particular road enforcement challenge.”

That is a huge issue for Members from all parts of the House. Central Government and local government are making great efforts to protect cyclists more, to promote cycling and to reduce the number of people who are vulnerable when they are cycling. I got a briefing from Cycling UK, and I must confess that I baulked at one of its responses to the Government’s response. It said:

“Cycling UK would suggest that the subsequent THINK! Campaign, urging cyclists to ‘hang back’ from lorries, merely added to the perception that cycling was dangerous, whilst also blaming victims.”

I think that is nonsensical. It is absolute rubbish. When I cycle from east London into Westminster, I travel down Lower Thames Street and the Embankment. Before we had cycle superhighway 3 and a dedicated lane, whenever I approached a junction or a traffic light and had an HGV in front of me, common sense would say to me, “Hang back.” It is basic common sense for the THINK! campaign to say to cyclists, “Hang back.” For Cycling UK to say that that is patronising or reinforces the fact that cycling is dangerous demeans the campaign for better cycling. I know what Cycling UK is trying to say, but when we undermine the solid messaging from the THINK! campaign on safer cycling, it does the promotion of cycling no good at all. We all want to see safer cycling, safer cyclists and more of us.

Recommendation 19 states:

“We recommend that the Home Office commission research on how collisions or near misses are handled by the police”.

The Chair of the Select Committee majored on that and outlined why the Committee thought that that was absolutely necessary.

My last reference is to recommendations 37 and 38. I agree entirely with the Committee that devolving powers could be a way forward. I understand the Government’s anxiety, especially given the abuses of unscrupulous parking companies levelling fines and massively increasing fines for people who are guilty of not paying the appropriate parking fee. Given the advances in technology, communities expect to be protected against unsocial and criminal elements. Speeding cars in urban environments, such as in my constituency—we have a rash of it in Wapping at present—should be tackled by the police and the council. CCTV, automatic number plate recognition cameras and other evidence-gathering technology should be deployed to protect communities against those who do not care about the rest of us. Given the support of local authorities, I reinforce the point that the Chair of the Select Committee made: I do not understand the Government’s reluctance to embrace local councils as allies in the fight against illegal, criminal and dangerous activity, especially in a climate of devolution where every level of government is devolving powers to local communities.

Our fellow citizens are more likely to come up against unacceptable behaviour and illegality on our roads than probably at any other time in their lives. Too many will die and far too many will suffer life-changing serious injuries. The report is important, and I commend the Committee and all its members for bringing it forward. The Government need to do more to reassure our communities.

I do not in any way challenge the Minister’s personal commitment to having safer roads. On a personal level, I know he is totally determined to do the right thing. It is the same for the THINK! campaign and all the civil servants within the Department who work overtime to try to ensure that are roads are safer. The Chair of the Select Committee made references to education and campaign activity. Can the Minister tell us how much money was deployed on the THINK! budget last year, and how much will be deployed this year and next year? With no disrespect to the Minister, he inherited a suite of policies and decisions that fundamentally point the Government in the wrong direction on road safety. The reduction in road police, the U-turn on the Green Paper on new and younger drivers, and the abolition of KSI reduction targets, are all fundamental policies that have taken the Government in the wrong direction. We are very keen to see the KSI statistics for 2014, 2015 and 2016. I think they will suggest the Government are going in the wrong direction, and they are the only people who can change that direction. I am keen to listen to the responses of the shadow road safety Minister—my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Northfield (Richard Burden)—and the Minister.

--- Later in debate ---

[Andrew Jones]

We look at all the ingredients that combine to influence road safety. On penalties for use of mobile phones, for example, it was highlighted that the number of penalties issued had fallen significantly—that is a fact—but during that time the number of people who have suddenly lost their lives in incidents in which handheld mobile phone use was considered a factor has remained exactly the same. The figure has been consistent. That tells us that mobile phone use is an ingredient, but that there is no direct causal link between one fact and another—a number of factors are in play. Do I think that enforcement matters, however? Yes, I do. I agree entirely with the principles of education, engineering and enforcement. Are we reviewing that? Yes, it is one of the many ingredients that we review constantly.

To go back to the big four, as the hon. Member for Liverpool, Riverside, the most common traffic offence is indeed speeding. We know that excessive speed kills, and I agree with the Select Committee that cameras are an important and effective technology in detecting speeding offences. We use technology in every other part of human life, so why on earth would we not use it in something as critically important as road safety? I occasionally get letters saying, “We need to remove cameras. They are an infringement of civil liberties”, or that we are unfairly targeting motorists. That is absolute nonsense. It is, however, for local authorities and local police forces to determine where cameras should be sited for their best effect.

The best effect lies, I agree, in getting drivers to respect the speed limits, not in simply generating revenue. Where a camera generates significant ongoing revenue, the local safety partnership should be asking why and whether, for example, the speed limits are clearly signed. The Government are not generally in favour of hypothecating tax revenues—we are no different from Governments of all colours over many years—but, having said that, we are working to hypothecate the vehicle excise duty to Highways England and the road investment strategy. There is not, however, a parallel between hypothecating speed fines and road safety.

I agree that there is a high level of compliance—the hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick) called it “obedience”, but it is compliance. That is the word we are looking for when we see the use of average speed cameras, because a marked change in driver behaviour results. That is a personal observation. He also asked if we had information from communities on local camera use and so on. I do not have that information, but I will see whether we can find some. If we can, I will share it with the hon. Gentleman.

Drink-driving is clearly a critical issue. We certainly take seriously the threat that all dangerous drivers, including drink and drug-drivers, pose to the safety of other road users. However, I must be up front and say that we have no plans to change the drink-drive limit. The rigorous enforcement of the limit and the serious penalties for drink-driving in this country are a more effective deterrent than changing the limit. We may have a higher drink-drive limit than other countries, but we also have a more successful culture of enforcement and of removing the issue than other countries.

It is also fair to recognise that we have made other changes. We changed drink-driving legislation in April 2015 to require high-risk offenders to undertake medical tests before they are allowed to drive again. We have also removed the so-called statutory option that allowed suspected drink-drivers the choice of an evidential breath test or a specimen of blood or urine, which afforded the potential for people to sober up during the time lag between the two. That option has now gone. My hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes South (Iain Stewart) is correct in saying that the average blood alcohol level for those stopped and convicted is not in the 50 to 80 mg category, which represents about 2% of those stopped. The average is in the 150 to 180 mg category. The people causing drink-drive problems pay absolutely no regard to drink-drive limits; they just do not think that the limits apply to them. The limits are not the issue here.

The Select Committee report did not explicitly consider drug-driving, but the Government’s response did, noting that drugs in a driver’s bloodstream can pose as much of a danger as alcohol. We have provided £1 million to police forces in England and Wales to support drug-driving enforcement. The evidence so far is that it has been highly successful, and for 2016 we are expecting an eightfold to tenfold increase over the previous year. When the data come out, we will be able to confirm that properly, but that is the indication thus far. We have some time to go before we get the final data, but it is clearly a successful policy.

The anecdotal feedback from police services around the country is that it has been a great addition to their toolkit, and that they have used the drug-driving laws to disrupt far more criminal activity, such as drug-dealing rings, tackling the drivers to take the rings out of circulation for a period. That is interesting. It is not exactly why we introduced the drug-driving rules, but it is a welcome side effect nevertheless. In March last year, just as the Select Committee report was being published, we launched a THINK! campaign to educate people about the dangers of drug-driving and send a clear message that it is unacceptable. A point was made about social unacceptability. We want drug-driving to be as socially unacceptable as drink-driving. We as a society are a little further back on that journey, but it is clearly the direction that we want to go in. I want everybody to know that the consequences for drug-driving will be serious.

We talked a little about mobile phone use, particularly under the heading of distractions. I know that the Select Committee welcomes the higher penalties that Parliament has approved for drivers who use their mobile phones. Whether they are calling, texting or using an app, motorists caught using a handheld device will receive a fixed penalty notice of £200 and six penalty points on their driving licence. The changes will come into effect next week, on 1 March, making it one of the toughest fixed penalties. Drivers risk losing their licence after two offences, totalling 12 points, and new drivers who reach six points in one offence will lose their licence right away and have to retake both theory and practical driving tests. Such penalties will be effective only if drivers believe that an offence will be detected.

The hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse asked whether fixed penalty notices were still appropriate. Our police service has operational independence. It is fair to say, though, that the Government would like more fixed penalty notices to be issued, particularly at the start of this major change to the penalty regime, so that the heavy penalties are understood and widely communicated and are used to effect behaviour change, because that is what this is about. If people see others losing their licences, it will effect a behaviour change.

[Jim Fitzpatrick]

Does that not reinforce the point that the Select Committee made about devolving some responsibility for fixed penalty notices to local authorities and other bodies, so that there can be allies in the field to detect and punish the people who breach the regulations that the Government want enforced?

[Andrew Jones]

I will come to the local enforcement of moving traffic offences, but the hon. Gentleman’s underlying point is correct. Do we need alliances? Progress on road safety issues is achieved by campaigners—they often lead the way—local government, national Government and various agencies, such as Highways England and High Speed 2, which have road safety budgets, all working together. That is how we have made progress as a country, and I see that as the way forward, too.

I certainly want to ensure that we get this message across, and there will be a strong THINK! campaign to warn drivers as part of the launch of the changes on 1 March. We are also working with the police on an enforcement campaign, but prevention is better than cure, and we have the opportunity through that advertising campaign to make clear the risk that drivers take. I want to make using a handheld mobile device at the wheel—including texting—as socially unacceptable as drink-driving. I am sure that the hon. Member for Liverpool, Riverside is absolutely correct that technology can help. Indeed, I will meet mobile phone companies next week and have already met other technology companies. Technology is moving pretty fast in this area. I am not normally at the cutting edge of technology, but I am happy to learn and I certainly see that technology can help here.

Seatbelts were mentioned. We recently had the 50th anniversary of seatbelt legislation, and I do not think any other single policy has generated a better return in terms of improving road safety than seatbelts. I am pleased that compliance with seatbelt wearing remains very high. The awareness-raising work that has been done over a long period has clearly struck home, and wearing a seatbelt is now automatic for the vast majority of us. However, we are not complacent, and we will conduct a roadside survey later this year to establish whether there has been any significant change from the last time we conducted a survey, which was 2014.

Many colleagues mentioned vulnerable road users. It is a tragedy that three cyclists were killed on London’s roads in just a week earlier this month—two of them in just 12 hours. I will come to that later, but the stories that one learns are truly tragic. All road users have a responsibility to those with whom they share the road. That responsibility is all the greater to road users whose mode makes them more vulnerable. London leads the way on cycling, ensuring that goods vehicles are properly equipped for seeing other road users and keeping them apart. We believe that decisions about restricting vehicle movement are best taken locally, although we recognise that having different standards in different places could be operationally quite difficult for road users.

The hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse highlighted the THINK! Hang Back campaign, which actually had two strands. He mentioned the strand for cyclists, but there was a further strand of communication targeted at HGV drivers, including through trade organisations. That campaign was developed because research revealed that around 30% of cyclists were unaware of the dangers of being on the inside of an HGV that might turn left. Given that so many people thought that was a safe space to be in, we were quite robust in some of our communication to get the message across. There was no suggestion of apportioning blame—that is obviously ridiculous. We are trying to make people aware and get them to take responsibility for themselves and other road users. I made the point earlier that people have a responsibility to those with whom they share the road.

On fixed penalty notices and diversionary courses, the Sentencing Council has announced that penalties for people found guilty of serious speeding offences will increase on 24 April. Most speeding is not wilfully over the posted limit, and in such cases a fixed penalty notice is often the best way to remind drivers of the need to monitor and control their speed. The last increase in fixed penalty fines for speeding was in 2013. We keep them under review. Where there is a clear case for change, as with mobile phones, we have acted and will continue to act.

Police officers have discretion to decide how to dispose of an offence. Where an officer believes that the driver will benefit, the offer of a diversionary course is an effective way to proceed. What we are seeking to do is to change behaviour. The police officer makes a call on how that might be best achieved and we want to maintain the operational independence of our police.

As the Committee noted, we are evaluating the national speed awareness course, the most widespread of the diversionary courses that are offered. We hope to complete that work later this year. The Committee recommended that the costs of diversionary courses be standardised. I have some sympathy with drivers faced with a range of different costs for the same course, without any explanation for the variation. However, I can also see that the cost of delivery will vary from place to place. Where courses are delivered by an external provider, contractual commitments may need to be taken into account. For the time being, therefore, we do not intend to mandate a single national charge for each type of course.

The Government’s response to the Committee’s report noted the objective of 188,000 vehicle compliance checks this year. So far, the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency has checked 167,555 vehicles at the roadside, so it is well on track to meet that target. It has also found just over 20,000 serious defects and offences, which is well ahead of where it expected to be at this point in the year. We are therefore confident that the agency will meet both targets by the end of this financial year. The London industrial HGV taskforce uses the combined powers of the two bodies to target those identified as at the biggest risk of non-compliance. That targeting is working well, but we have not yet been able to develop similar programmes in other parts of the country.

On the cross-border enforcement directive, in our response to the Committee report, we stated that we would attempt to influence the European Commission to amend the directive in the future. Quite a bit has happened in policy in this area over the last few months. The purpose of the directive was to support member states in the investigation of eight different kinds of offence committed by drivers when driving in other member states and the legislation mandates sharing information about vehicle keepers. However, the UK prosecutes only drivers for the offences in question—a point that was made by the hon. Member for Liverpool, Riverside. There is nothing in the directive that obliges member states to compel their citizens to admit liability or to name the driver.

Parliament has seen our explanatory memorandum on the European Commission’s review of the directive, which recognises that there is an issue for member states that have driver liability in place. We have some support from other member states on the topic and we continue to press for change.

My hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes South made an important point about sharing best practice. We feel that there is a role for the Department in sharing best practice. I have attended and spoken at roads policing conferences, which bring together enforcement leaders around the country. The sharing of best practice is not just carried out in this part of our departmental activity, but is spread much more widely.

We made clear in the Government’s response to the report that the devolution of parking enforcement has not been without considerable concerns from motorists—a point that was noted by the Committee in its 2013 report, which expressed concern about the way in which local authorities used CCTV for parking enforcement. There have been concerns about revenue raising, penalty levels and the number of penalty charge notices issued. In response to that, new legislation was enacted in March 2015 to restrict the use of CCTV for parking enforcement. I received a letter in the last few days from a councillor suggesting that the powers be granted so that they could use them precisely for revenue raising. That is not quite what we were seeking—this is about safety and behaviour change.

Against that backdrop, the Government remains to be convinced about the case for giving authorities the powers to enforce moving traffic contraventions. I am not keen to see local authorities installing a raft of new cameras on yellow box junctions and elsewhere, only to see penalty charge notices issued. Equally, I have seen freedom of information requests, often from the media, that indicate that some councils have made large sums of money from some specific box junctions. We therefore have no plans to change the current position to give local authorities outside London greater enforcement powers, and in that context we do not consider it appropriate to give London further powers either. However, I have met the Local Government Association to discuss the issue, and will continue to do so to see if we can find areas on which we agree.

I will highlight a few of the questions from hon. Members. Is this a matter for cross-departmental activity? Yes, of course it is. One only has to see the Treasury’s positive response to road safety issues, with a £175 million budget announced in the autumn statement to tackle the top 50 problem roads in the EuroRAP assessment, or the way the Ministry of Justice is consulting on increasing sentencing. Do we have a publication date for CWIS—the cycling and walking investment strategy? I cannot give the House a specific date yet, but I can say that it will be published very shortly.

I am aware that the Government have signed up to the sustainable development goals. I am actually very keen to see us share some of our expertise and insights to help other countries to learn from the journey that we have been on over many years. I have spoken at conferences with representatives from many countries around the world, and I have said repeatedly that, if somebody would like information from my Department, we will make it available. We are happy to help as they go on the journey that we have been on. Equally, I am also happy if we can steal ideas, too; I am acutely aware that not all ideas will come from this country. I do not really mind where the ideas come from, so long as we make some progress.

A number of points have been made on whether to have targets. If other countries wish to have targets, that is obviously fine, but frankly I do not think that we need them. I do not think that targets have a direct cause and effect on policy in quite the same way that some colleagues here do. I do not need a target to tell me that this is an important issue or to bring forward ideas and initiatives: I just do not think it is related. We are bringing forward ideas because this is an issue that matters. It is simply not the case that policy is as simple as publishing a target and then seeing a cause and effect like that. We have seen many other areas of Government policy in which targets have even had a perverse effect—most notably in health targeting. We have no plans to introduce targets, but we have plenty of plans to continue what we are doing to make our roads safer.

The Select Committee report noted that effective enforcement was one of the three E’s, and a necessary adjunct to the engineering and education initiatives that help to deliver our road safety initiatives. The report also noted that road users should know that infringements will be detected. I agree, and I hope that I have demonstrated to the House that the Government take road safety seriously. I am grateful for the comments about my personal commitment to the subject from colleagues across the House. It is actually the first policy area upon which I commissioned work when I became a Minister, which I hope gives an indication of my personal commitment to it.

I am acutely aware of the importance of this issue. Behind every statistic is a shattered life or a shattered family. I have met many such families, and those are hard meetings, but they spur me on to do more in this area. It is clear that we have taken and are taking action. We have some of the safest roads in the world, and I will work to make them ever safer.

UK Maritime Industry

Jim Fitzpatrick Excerpts

Thursday 12th January 2017 Westminster Hall

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

I am very pleased to see you in the Chair this afternoon, Mr Walker. I congratulate the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) on securing the debate. I am pleased to follow the Scottish National party’s Front-Bench spokesman, the hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey (Drew Hendry).

I have a number of shipping connections, although none are required to be included in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. However, it would probably be worth noting that I am a member of the Worshipful Company of Shipwrights and co-chair with Lord Greenway of the all-party maritime and ports group. I was Shipping Minister from 2007 to 2009 and am a younger brother at Trinity House, whose royal charter dates back 500 years and which has a statutory duty as the UK’s general lighthouse authority. It is ably led at present by the excellent Captain Ian McNaught, the deputy master.

I know that the Minister is visiting Harwich in February. Trinity House keenly anticipates his visit. The organisation is undertaking a fleet review process at the moment. The Minister knows how important it is to have proper assets around our shores to carry out not only the statutory work but the emergency work of the lighthouse authority, to mitigate the risk of disaster in our waters. The visit will be most welcome. I hope that it is locked into the Minister’s diary and that parliamentary business will not get in its way.

My final shipping connection—apart from having been born in the great shipbuilding city of Glasgow—is that my previous constituency of Poplar and Canning Town, as well as my present one of Poplar and Limehouse, contained the first purpose-built docks in London and were a key part of London’s docklands for centuries. Much of it is now occupied by the Canary Wharf estate, which is important to our modern economy as the docks used to be.

Apart from the importance of the role and wellbeing of the general lighthouse authority, I will make two points, neither of which will be of any surprise to the Minister. First, the UK Chamber of Shipping has set out in its “Blueprint for Growth” after Brexit—I am sure the Minister has read it—six key points that it believes are necessary to ensure a bright future for the UK’s shipping industry: preserving the existing ease of doing business—Dover is one port that has made representations about the problems and disruption that border controls and customs changes could have—ensuring business has access to the world’s brightest talent, as already mentioned by the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland; reforming domestic maritime policy to put the UK on the best possible footing; promoting the red ensign, and hence the UK register; ensuing a visa regime that works; and tonnage tax flexibility.

Part of the blueprint is the Chamber of Shipping’s campaign to help create thousands of jobs in shipping through the SMarT Plus scheme that the right hon. Gentleman mentioned, which is supported by Nautilus UK, the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers and others. The Minister knows that the industry trains around 800 cadets every year, although the Chamber estimates that that could be 1,200 if shipowners committed to employing cadets after training. Some, such as Shell and Carnival UK, have already done so.

The Chamber of Shipping’s figures make positive arguments. First, in the ‘90s SMarT money covered around 50% of training costs; it is now a third. Secondly, the economic value of a seafarer to the UK economy is about £58,000, which is up to £17,500 higher than the national average. Thirdly, it concludes that the Government’s £15 million investment delivers a £70 million annual yield that could be scaled up significantly; we have the candidates and the industry needs good-quality trainees. Increasing that investment would be a win-win for the UK and for shipping, both internationally and domestically.

Last year the former Lord Mayor of London, Lord Jeffrey Mountevans, championed all matters maritime, ports and shipping, given his personal and professional connection to the industry. I know the Minister attended many events with the Lord Mayor, so I need not remind him of those campaigns, but I would be grateful for his comments on them.

The Minister has a good standing within UK shipping. He was previously the Shipping Minister and knows the industry well—and the industry knows him. I know he is also aware of the various welfare organisations, such as Seafarers UK, the Mission to Seafarers, the Apostleship of the Sea and the International Seafarers Welfare and Assistance Network, among others. I hope that he will commit to continuing to work with and support their efforts in looking after seafarers.

If he is still Shipping Minister in September—I certainly hope he will be—it will be great to welcome the Minister to attend the Merchant Navy Day memorial service on 3 September at Tower Hill; I am not an organiser, but it is taking place in my constituency. The national memorial commemorates the tens of thousands of merchant mariners who died in the first and second world wars and the Falklands war. For their families, there are no graves to visit; that is their loved one’s resting place.

In conclusion, shipping moves 95% of the country’s international trade and supports 250,000 jobs. It is a vital industry that, because it is now mostly conducted at huge container ports on our coastline, is invisible to the majority of the population. That does not mean it is less important, but the opposite. The lack of public awareness means that Government recognition is absolutely essential. I look forward to the Minister confirming that it will continue to receive that recognition.

Oral Answers to Questions

Jim Fitzpatrick Excerpts

Thursday 17th November 2016 Commons Chamber

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

T1. If he will make a statement on his departmental responsibilities.

[The Secretary of State for Transport (Chris Grayling)]

In the wake of last week’s dreadful accident in Croydon, I would like to start this topical questions session by paying tribute to the British Transport police, for which I have ministerial responsibility, to all the emergency services and to the transport staff who worked so hard in the aftermath. I want to send all the good wishes of this House to those injured and our condolences to the families who tragically lost loved ones.

[Jim Fitzpatrick]

Recently published annual figures for those killed or seriously injured on our roads at the end of the second quarter of 2016 show a 3% increase on last year. For the third year running, deaths are higher than they were the year before and went up by 2% last year and this year. Thirty deaths may not sound that many out of 1,800, but for every grieving family, they are a tragedy. What is the Government’s plan to arrest and reverse this disturbing trend?

[Chris Grayling]

Of course every death on our roads is one death too many. It has to be said that our roads are among the safest in Europe and the world, but that is no reason for complacency. A trend in the wrong direction is an unwelcome one. The Under-Secretary of State for Transport, my hon. Friend the Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Andrew Jones), who is in his place alongside me, has responsibility for road safety. He is actively engaged, and will continue to be actively engaged, in looking at measures we could take that will improve things. We will look at different investment measures and different ways of educating motorists and those using the roads, and we will work with anyone who can come up with suggestions about how we can improve the situation.

Transport and Local Infrastructure

Jim Fitzpatrick Excerpts

Thursday 19th May 2016 Commons Chamber

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

I am grateful to be called to contribute to the debate on the Queen’s Speech and very pleased to follow the hon. Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Alan Brown).

I want to start by covering a few transport issues. It is good that the Government are taking action on drones, which are a nuisance and in danger of even becoming a menace to commercial aviation. However, the big absence in the Secretary of State’s speech was any reference to aviation expansion and the decision on the Airports Commission report which, as we all know, is long overdue. As such, it was mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood) and the hon. Members for Bath (Ben Howlett) and for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey (Drew Hendry).

It is 40 or 50 years since there has been any increase in airport capacity in the south-east. We have had the 2003 White Paper, the 2008 decision by the previous Labour Government, the withdrawal of support for the third runway at Heathrow in the 2010 Tory manifesto, the coalition decision stimulated by the Lib Dems, the U-turn in 2012, the Airports Commission in 2013, and the promise year on year that we will get a decision. We are still awaiting that decision, so we hope to see it sooner rather than later. My preference is for Heathrow, but I would not like Gatwick to be frustrated, because aviation is an important economic tool for the UK internationally, and it is important for parts of the UK that rely on international connections. It therefore would be good to see movement on this.

The hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey also mentioned shipping, to his credit. It was disappointing that the Secretary of State did not mention shipping in any sense, because it is important to the UK economy and still contributes billions of pounds. Notwithstanding the challenges to which the SNP’s spokesman referred, the Government have a fairly good record on supporting shipping, so I am surprised that they did not want to make more of that. Perhaps when the Housing and Planning Minister winds up the debate, he will say, “Shipping is important to the UK Government.”

As the shadow Secretary of State, my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham South, said, deregulation of buses outside London has not worked. The Secretary of State blamed Labour policy from 1999, which was a little time ago. Quality contracts have not worked, but privatisation and franchising have worked in London, because they have been regulated, so that should be done elsewhere. My hon. Friend the Member for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Gwynne) has said that the approach should not be restricted to those local authorities that have elected mayors; it should apply to all local authorities right around the country. I am grateful to the Guide Dogs for the Blind Association for its briefing, to which several colleague have referred, on how successful the talking buses campaign has been in London and why it should be replicated across the country.

I have another two points to make about transport before I move on to housing. On road safety, in 2010 the Government eliminated targets for reducing the number of people who are killed or seriously injured on our roads, because the then Secretary of State did not support any targets that the Government might not be able to meet and failure would give others the opportunity to criticise them. There has been consensus across the House for more than 30 years about the ambition to reduce deaths and serious injury on our roads.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Claire Perry)]

I would be delighted to listen further to the hon. Gentleman, but I just want to correct him on this point: targets are not the same as results. I am sure that he will celebrate with me the fact that British roads are safer than they have ever been. One death on our roads is too many, however, and we continue to work effectively to drive down both the number of road deaths and the causes of accidents.

[Jim Fitzpatrick]

I do not for a second underestimate the Government’s ambition to reduce deaths and serious injury; my point is that we need to demonstrate that ambition. We have had targets to reduce deaths and serious injury on our roads for more than 30 years. They started under Mrs Thatcher, when the hon. Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley) was the road safety Minister, and they have been successful. Basically, such targets say to people, “This year has been unacceptable, so next year we’re going to try to do this.” For the past 35 years, the numbers have been scaled down, but for the past six years they have plateaued, and in one instance increased. That is an indictment not of the Government, but of the fact that we have lost sight of ambition, so the Government should bring that back.

I have spoken about this to the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, the hon. Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Andrew Jones), who has responsibility for road safety, and the Secretary of State, and I know that they are sympathetic. The approach is contradictory, because the British Government sign up to European Union and United Nations targets while our roads are among the safest in the world. We should be proud of that and broadcast it, but the fact is that we are in denial.

[Drew Hendry]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his earlier comments. On road safety, does he agree that if one of the driving principles behind developing driverless technology in the UK is increased safety, it should apply across the length and breadth of the nations of the UK, not just in urban areas?

[Jim Fitzpatrick]

The hon. Gentleman is correct. Most people who listen to media reports might think, “There’s nobody in charge of driverless vehicles, so they’re more dangerous and riskier.” The reality, however, is that the technology now exists for automatic stop, electronic stability control and anti-skid brakes, which make the vehicles much safer. It is the human element—people who are on their mobile phones, who have been drinking or taking drugs, who are not wearing seatbelts, or who are speeding—that causes most crashes and deaths. If we take out the human element, we will see the number of road crashes tumble and a fall in deaths and serious injury. The hon. Gentleman is right to say that the proposal should be extended right across the piece.

My only other point on transport relates to air quality. Transport contributes to more than 20% of emissions. With the advent of new technology, there is real scope to reduce that figure. I hope that the Government will work with the new Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, on his commitment to address the issue more seriously than it has been for years.

On housing, the biggest issue in my constituency, London and the vast majority of the country is the need to build new homes. The Housing and Planning Minister has acknowledged that I do not think that the Housing and Planning Act 2016 will help. Selling off the most expensive properties in Tower Hamlets will not help our housing crisis, because it is the bigger homes that will be sold off and that will affect larger families. The imposition of market rents in and around Canary Wharf means that local people will not be able to afford them. On the sell-off of housing association homes, we need local replacements. A percentage of all new developments need to be affordable homes.

London needs people working in the city. For example, how do we expect Palace of Westminster staff to be able to get here 24/7, from all parts of London and the south-east, whether they be security officers, police officers, cooks, cleaners or involved in other duties, if they do not have somewhere affordable to stay in London? We are pricing them out of the market and making it more difficult for them to get in. London’s economic infrastructure will be negatively affected if we do not make sure that affordable housing is available.

Finally on housing, I want to refer to the speech that the hon. Member for Worthing West made on leasehold reform yesterday, which can be found at columns 71 to 75 of Hansard. I thank the Housing and Planning Minister for his interest in the matter. We have had several meetings with him and his civil servants on leasehold reform. The hon. Member for Worthing West has also been to No. 10. I hope we can make progress on leasehold reform, including the right to buy, retirement homes and private sector sales, which represent the vast majority of new properties. The sector is raising its own standards, but most of us believe that it requires regulation and statutory reform. The Leasehold Knowledge Partnership is working very hard to help people who are in a very difficult situation.

I am disappointed that there is nothing in the Queen’s Speech on banning the use of wild animals in circuses. On Tuesday I attended a photocall at No. 10 with kids from Devonshire Road Primary School in Bolton. This is a Government commitment, and the Prime Minister has made a personal commitment, that it will be in the legislative programme by 2020. I am sure that it will come, but it is disappointing that it is not happening now. It is not a major issue in general national politics, but it affects a lot of people around the country.

Business rate retention for local authorities is great news for my constituency in Tower Hamlets. We are on the City of London fringe, and Canary Wharf is at the heart of my constituency. Holding on to those business rates will result in us moving from being one of poorest to one of the richest boroughs in the country. Obviously, the Government will have a mechanism to equalise, which has always been the case. I am not clear on how that is going to work, so I look forward to hearing the Minister explain it later, if he has time.

During business questions this morning, the shadow Leader of the House, my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant), said that he welcomed the National Citizen Service being put on a statutory footing, but youth services have been cut right across the piece. There are some great organisations in my constituency, including 2nd East London scout group, 31 Tower Hamlets air cadet training corps, the Marine Society and Sea Cadets, and the Prince’s Trust, which has recently moved its London and south-east headquarters to Mile End. They are doing fantastic work and it is equally welcome to see an adult service being put on a statutory basis. Organisations such as Keep Britain Tidy will be very much in support of that.

On local government and planning, when we passed the Planning Act 2008, the shadow Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey), who is on the Front Bench and might speak later, led on the Bill for the Labour Government. We introduced an independent planning commission for nationally significant infrastructure projects. One of the first things the coalition did was repeal that Act, and five years later the Conservatives recognise that a fast-track planning procedure is needed for nationally significant infrastructure.

There is a real conflict for local councils that have the prospect of shale extraction and fracking. Notwithstanding the clamour from the environmental movement and the Greens for shale extraction not to be proceeded with, I think the vast majority of people in the country would much rather that we use our own natural resources than import gas from the US, Qatar or Russia. Shale extraction makes much more sense for our economic security, but the Government have to address the conflict between local communities being panicked and scaremongered into opposing shale extraction applications and the need for that national industry to be developed.

The measures on counter-extremism, anti-terrorism and security are all welcome. We are living in much more dangerous times, and getting the right balance between civil liberties and the opportunity for the security and intelligence forces to protect us is a real challenge. When the three girls from Bethnal Green went to Syria, people asked why the security forces and the police had not intervened, but exactly the same people objected when the Government tried to improve security, intelligence gathering and interception. I supported identity cards under the Labour Government. I thought it was wrong that we did not proceed with them, and it is wrong that the current Government are not doing so. They would be a simple mechanism and a positive step forward at a time when we are all carrying ID in the shape of credit cards, contactless payments cards or whatever.

I am grateful for the opportunity to contribute to the debate, Madam Deputy Speaker.

--- Later in debate ---

[John Healey (Wentworth and Dearne) (Lab)]

What an extraordinary waste of time! I counted 42 announcements in the Queen’s Speech and only four had not been announced before yesterday. This is a Queen’s Speech that risks being a waste of the Queen’s time, the people’s time and Parliament’s time. I cannot recall in 19 years in this House seeing a Queen’s Speech debate in which the speeches from the Government Back Benches numbered two and ran out before we got a third of the way into the debate, and those Benches were entirely empty for the rest of the debate.

Headline measures in legislation for this year are little more than a middle manager’s task list for the next month: more control over budgets for prison governors; stop radical preachers from taking jobs in elderly care homes; longer school days; more NHS charging for non-EU citizens; money for school sport from a levy on fizzy drinks. I ask you, Mr Deputy Speaker! This is the “So what?” Queen’s Speech—minimal, managerial, marking time; minor policy changes hugely overblown and hugely over-briefed to the Minister.

What was not a waste of time was the speech from the shadow Transport Secretary, my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood), and many of the speeches made this afternoon by hon. Members on both sides. My hon. Friend warned the Secretary of State for Transport, who is again not in his place on the Treasury Bench, about the gap between what this Government do and what this Government say. She welcomed the buses Bill, which has received wide support in the House this afternoon, including from the hon. Member for Bath (Ben Howlett), my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts) and the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon)—who also referred to this as the sci-fi Queen’s Speech.

My hon. Friend the Member for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Gwynne) also talked about how valuable the buses Bill is, and I think the hon. Member for Hazel Grove (William Wragg), who is no longer here, might have said that, too. Although they welcomed the Bill, my hon. Friends the Member for Nottingham South and for Denton and Reddish both questioned why it was only for areas with elected mayors. We want other mayors to get the same powers in the same way as the Bill goes through this House.

My hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham South took the Government to task for the lack of response to the Law Commission’s report and the lack of a taxi licensing Bill. We want the system to be tightened up so that drivers who are rightly and properly rejected for a licence in their own area cannot sidestep the bar by getting a licence in another area. Above all, my hon. Friend took the Secretary of State to task for the continuing delay regarding any decision on airport expansion, particularly on the runway at Heathrow.

My hon. Friend was strongly backed by my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Mrs Ellman), with the authority that she brings as the Chair of the Transport Committee, by the hon. Members for Bath, for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey (Drew Hendry) and for Strangford, and by my hon. Friend the Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick), who said that the big absence from the Queen’s Speech was any announcement on airports and on Heathrow. He described such an announcement as long overdue and rightly reminded the Government of all the groundwork done by the Labour Government—a White Paper on aviation in 2003 and the decision in 2008 on the expansion of Heathrow, but nothing since.

My hon. Friend the Member for Poplar and Limehouse went on to talk about housing and the damage that the Housing and Planning Act 2016, which has just reached the statute book, will bring—

[Jim Fitzpatrick]

Will my right hon. Friend give way?

[John Healey]

Let me finish my comments on my hon. Friend’s speech, then I will give way to him.

My hon. Friend went on to speak about leasehold reform. He is one of the champions of leasehold reform in the House. I was glad to hear that the Minister for Housing and Planning is now taking an interest. For too long, under Governments of both parties, leasehold reform has been put in the “too difficult to do” box. To the extent that the Minister is willing to act on leasehold reform, we are willing to support him where we can.

[Jim Fitzpatrick]

Because of time constraints, I was not able to point out our belief that the Government’s housing record is not very good. Notwithstanding the claim that they have a better house building record than we had when we were in power, they are taking credit for things that we paid for and put in the planning process before they even came to office.

[John Healey]

It will not surprise my hon. Friend to know that I will come on to that. He is right. We sometimes hear the Government say that they have built more social homes than we did, but 90% of the social homes built by this Government were commissioned by the Labour Government and largely funded by the Labour Government. I should know—I was the Minister who did it.

My hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby (Melanie Onn) made a strong case for lower tolls on the Humber bridge. Existing tolls, she said, were a barrier not just to work and to trade, but to leisure. I am pleased to see the Secretary of State for Transport on the Front Bench. My hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby asked whether he would be prepared to meet her and other MPs from the area to discuss how the barriers that transport creates—especially barriers to leisure for young and older people, as well as to their work and trade—could be overcome. The Secretary of State is nodding, which is a good sign. I look forward to hearing from my hon. Friend that that meeting will go ahead shortly.

One thing that my hon. Friend the Member for Denton and Reddish always brings to debate is passion and principle. I love the way he speaks. He rightly said that intentions were well and good, but it is on actions that people will judge this Government. It is fine to talk of social justice, increased life chances and reducing inequality, but we look to the actions for proof that the Government mean what they say and do as they say. As my hon. Friend said, when we look at the scrapping of the education maintenance allowance, the introduction of the bedroom tax, and the cutting of benefit support to disabled people and to people working hard on low incomes, all the signs from the past six years point in the opposite direction.

My hon. Friend described this Queen’s Speech as a missed opportunity. I thought he made an interesting argument, which he could perhaps take up with the Procedure Committee, about whether, as one of the consistent systematic checks that this House applies to any new legislation, we could assess its impact on national health and wellbeing.

Over the years that I have known her there has been no more consistent, forceful or better champion of older people than my hon. Friend the Member for Worsley and Eccles South (Barbara Keeley). She gave the House the extraordinary statistic that one in three carers now has to wait six months to get an assessment of their needs, never mind get those needs met. As she rightly said, the £4.6 billion cuts to adult social care since 2010 are a big part of that story, and there is nothing in this Queen’s Speech to reassure people concerned about this that the essential funding is in place. She also noted that there is no pensions Bill to deal with the problems of the 2.6 million older women who have been hit so hard by the recent pension changes.

The hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Roger Mullin), who has left the Chamber, argued that it might be helpful to adopt the Scottish model—or, as my hon. Friend the Member for Worsley and Eccles South pointed out, the London model—for concessionary travel.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bradford South (Judith Cummins) rightly reminded the House that business demands better infrastructure. A city as big as Bradford, as rich in business history and business innovation, as it now is, is being badly let down by the quality of the investment and transport infrastructure to support it. As she said, grand rhetoric is what we get from Government while real change, real investment and real improvement falls so far short of that, and people in her city, businesses and residents alike, will find little comfort in the Queen’s Speech announcements.

I liked the argument that my hon. Friend the Member for City of Chester (Christian Matheson) made when he reminded the House and Ministers that we require intellectual infrastructure as well as hard building and capital projects. He urged a training and certification programme for, for instance, engineers involved in the development of electric vehicles and in the electric infrastructure to support those vehicles. He expressed a fear shared by me and many colleagues in Yorkshire and Humber that HS2 will simply mean faster rail journeys between London and Birmingham, and the north-west will be left out. The Secretary of State said nothing to reassure the House about the plans or promises on HS2 being delivered in full.

The Secretary of State talked about UK infrastructure and, with a flourish, picked two dates, he said, at random—1997 and 2010. In 2010, Labour’s last year in government, public sector net investment—or infrastructure investment from Government—was 3.4% of GDP. One year later, in the first year of the previous Parliament, after the Chancellor made his cuts, it was down to 2.8%. By the end of that Parliament, it was 1.9% of GDP. This year, it is 1.9%. By the end of this Parliament, it will be 1.5%. That is the reality between the great rhetoric that my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford South talked about and the actions, investment and long-term commitments we see from this Government. Housing investment—part of the picture—was slashed by 60% in 2010, the first year of the previous Government. In the same year, roads investment was slashed by £4 billion. The renewables obligation—Labour’s renewables obligation, which was creating the funding to invest in green energy—was removed entirely. That is the reality of what happens when the Government do, rather than talk about, infrastructure.

My hon. Friend the Member for Sedgefield (Phil Wilson) spoke about why this sort of investment is so important—why it is more than simply figures and argy-bargy in this House. He talked about Hitachi in his constituency, and the huge number of jobs and a big boost to growth in that region because of the investment in our rail system and in the rolling stock required to upgrade it.

It is that sort of impact, on all parts of the country, that makes infrastructure investment more than simply a matter of political and policy debate. It has a real impact when we get it right in areas all across the country. Instead of that investment in Britain’s future, the Chancellor and Conservative Ministers have, from 2010 onwards, cut investment that would secure our place in the world, stronger long-term growth and the future welfare of our citizens.

The Transport Secretary told us at the beginning of the debate—I have checked this—that yesterday’s Queen’s Speech was “all about building a stronger, more resilient, more modern economy”. I have to say, however, that after six years of failure, it is clear that the Government are doing no such thing. It is clear that the Chancellor did not fix our economic foundations after the global crash. Any right wing, hard-line Finance Minister can cut public spending, but he is dodging the really tough decisions that he himself promised to take in 2010.

Rather than helping British businesses to sell to the world, our UK trade gap was a record £96 billion in the red last year, which is the biggest ever deficit since records began in 1948. Rather than reforming the finance sector and rebuilding our production base, the number of manufacturing jobs in this country is still almost 10% below that before the global crisis and crash. Rather than rebalancing the economy away from borrowing, debt and household consumption, it is now forecast that household debt will top pre-crash levels and reach 160% of income by the end of this Parliament.

The six years of failure on the economy will be unaffected by many of the measures in the Queen’s Speech. There have also been six years of failure on housing. After 2 million more homes were built and 1 million more households became homeowners under Labour, we have seen failure on all fronts since 2010. When this Queen’s Speech needed direction on housing and planning, we got more of the same.

The effects of six years of failure include 200,000 fewer homeowners in this country. A third of a million fewer under-35s—young people—are able to own their own home than when the Prime Minister took over in 2010. The number of families accepted as homeless has risen by a third in the past six years. Rough sleeping has doubled and is up by a third in the past year alone. Last year, as my hon. Friend the Member for Poplar and Limehouse said, fewer affordable homes were built than at any time in more than two decades, and the housing benefit bill rose by £2 billion in real terms over the course of the last Parliament.

My hon. Friend the Chair of the Communities and Local Government Committee took the Housing and Planning Minister to task over his target of 1 million homes. He made the strong argument—this was echoed by the hon. Member for Strangford—that social housing, new social housing and affordable housing to rent as well as to buy must be part of the picture. The hon. Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Alan Brown)—he is not in the Chamber, so I will not mention him again—made a similar point.

Yesterday the sovereign said in the other place:

“My Government will support aspiration and promote home ownership through its commitment to build a million new homes.”

The Housing and Planning Minister sometimes plays fast and loose with the figures. It is not possible to house people in planning permissions or to live in a start. It is building new homes that counts, and if he is to build 1 million new homes in this Parliament, he will have to do a great deal better than what we have seen over the past six years.

There were fewer new homes built in the last Parliament than under any peacetime Government since the 1920s. Even in the latest full year, 2015, the number of new homes built was still far below where it needs to be—a total of just 143,000. By the way, that is still 24% below the peak during Labour’s 13 years in office. Because growth in new house building has been so sluggish under this Government—astonishingly, it has been only 2% on average since 2010—if they do not improve that run rate, they will not hit their target until 2033.

Some of the best policies are bigger than party politics and capable of commanding a broad consensus, such as Bank of England independence, the national planning Act for major infrastructure projects and the localisation of council housing finance. Under the neighbourhood planning and infrastructure Bill, there is a welcome commitment to put the National Infrastructure Commission on a statutory footing. Like the commission itself, that was a recommendation made in Labour’s Armitt review in the previous Parliament, so we are pleased that the Government have taken it up. We look forward to seeing what further compulsory purchase powers the Government introduce in that Bill. Labour’s Lyons review in the previous Parliament recommended updating legislation on compulsory purchase orders to streamline and simplify the relevant powers and to enable CPOs to be secured at closer to existing use value. I hope that those suggestions will be in the Bill, because they will be among the tests that we use in considering it.

We will, however, oppose the privatisation of the public Land Registry, which will undermine the trust of homeowners, mortgage lenders and solicitors, and put at risk the essential neutrality, quality and transparency that the Land Registry offers. It will be a gift to tax evaders and avoiders. I remind the House that the Land Registry returned a profit of £100 million to the taxpayer in 2012-13 and has delivered a surplus to the taxpayer and the Treasury in 19 of the past 20 years. It is a public asset that makes money for the public purse, and we should keep it that way.

The deeper truth about this Queen’s Speech is a Conservative party riven over Europe and too divided to prepare a serious legislative programme that even tries to get to grips with the country’s problems. It is a Queen’s Speech for a quiet life in No. 10 Downing Street. It confirms a Prime Minister past his sell-by date. As the former Work and Pensions Secretary said when he walked out of the Government, policies are

“distinctly political rather than in the national economic interest.”

This is a Government who worry more about political message than policy substance, and who are more concerned to fix headlines than the housing crisis, the elderly care crisis, the crisis in wages for working people, or the crisis of low investment, productivity, skills and exports. Never mind one nation; this is a Government and a Queen’s Speech that are failing the nation.