Road Safety Strategy

Lord Roborough Excerpts

Monday 18th December 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Jordan (Lab)]

I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper and declare an interest as life president of RoSPA.

[Lord Roborough (Con)]

My Lords, the Department for Transport constantly looks at how road safety can be improved. We have already intervened to update the Highway Code to protect the most vulnerable road users, invested in improvements for high-risk roads through the safer roads fund and changed the law to strengthen sentences for the most dangerous motoring offences. This demonstrates the importance of road safety to this Government.

[Lord Jordan (Lab)]

My Lords, England’s previous road safety strategy elapsed in 2019, meaning that we are now the only country in mainland Britain and G7 not to have a published road safety strategy. England, once a global beacon for road safety, has seen countries such as Finland and Sweden overtaking us. The Government’s failure to act meant that in Britain last year almost 30,000 people were killed or seriously injured on our roads, and the overwhelming majority of them were in England. This is unacceptable. Will the Government commit to publishing a new road safety strategy and national casualty reduction targets now and, having published them, act on them?

[Lord Roborough (Con)]

My Lords, priorities change. Road safety is not just about strategy documents—it is about making continuing improvements. Our recent 2022 statistics show a 2% reduction in fatalities compared with 2019, with traffic levels returning to pre-pandemic levels. This is why the Government are proud of ranking Britain fifth out of 38 countries with available data for the lowest number of road fatalities per million population.

[Lord Trefgarne (Con)]

My Lords, is not it the case that the poor standard of road safety in some of our areas is caused by the large number of potholes in the roads, which need to be fixed and are very numerous? What can be done?

[Lord Roborough (Con)]

We are investing more than £5 billion from 2020-21 to 2024-25 to maintain local roads, with an extra £200 million announced in the Budget in March 2023. This funding is enabling councils up and down the country to fill millions of potholes, repair dozens of bridges and resurface roads. In Network North, we announced £8.3 billion of new funding to fix the blight of potholes over a 10-year period, using funding released from HS2.

[Baroness Jolly (LD)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as a president of RoSPA. Would the Minister confirm who was consulted on making this decision on the road safety strategy and when the Government intend to implement the strategy?

[Lord Roborough (Con)]

I am afraid that I have not been briefed on that and I shall have to write to the noble Baroness.

[Lord Birt (CB)]

My Lords, one night last week at a complex five-road junction in south London, I encountered e-bikers coming at me from every single direction, all without helmets, some on the pavement and many without lights. Many were running red lights, and many were travelling well in excess of the 15.5 miles per hour limit. E-bikers are turning our city streets into high-risk environments for pedestrians. Is not it time to bring them under a tighter legal framework?

[Lord Roborough (Con)]

My Lords, I think we all share the noble Lord’s concern over e-bikes, but the law is clear that electrically assisted pedal cycles are legal up to 15.5 miles per hour. Beyond that speed, they become motorcycles and are governed as such. It is up to the police to enforce these laws.

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

My Lords, I welcome the noble Lord, Lord Roborough, to his position on the Front Bench and hope he survives his first ordeal of Question Time. He says that road safety is an evolving process. One of the things that is unfortunately evolving is a very big increase in the number of rural road deaths, which I think now account for some 59% of all road deaths. Will the Minister commit that, in the department’s thinking, a greater emphasis will be put on rural road safety? Can he explain now to the House what steps the department is taking in this direction?

[Lord Roborough (Con)]

I think it is well known that rural roads are the most dangerous in the UK highway network. On 6 April 2023, the Government announced an additional £48 million investment in safer roads, on top of £100 million that had already been provided. There are now 83 roads funded, and it is expected that the safer roads fund will save 2,210 lives over the next 20 years.

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

My Lords, when I was Defence Minister, I had the privilege in March this year of launching the defence road safety strategy. Our imperative to do that was because we discovered that more Armed Forces personnel were being killed on the roads than were being killed on operational deployments. Would it be helpful to my noble friend, because I imagine that the principles of the strategy are pretty similar, whether it is the MoD or the Department of Transport, to engage with the MoD, which I am sure would be prepared, as ever, to assist?

[Lord Roborough (Con)]

The short answer is yes. The Department for Transport conducts many calls for evidence and consultations with interested parties and would always welcome input that improves road safety. I thank my noble friend for highlighting the defence road safety strategy and the opportunities to learn from it.

[Lord Stirrup (CB)]

My Lords, has the Minister noticed that those areas where the 20 miles per hour speed limit makes the least sense—for example, multi-lane main thoroughfares—are where motorists are most likely to receive fines for speeding; whereas in areas where the limit makes most sense, for example narrow residential streets with parked cars and children, enforcement is almost non-existent? Is there some logic behind this bizarre situation?

[Lord Roborough (Con)]

The noble and gallant Lord makes an excellent point. The power to impose 20 miles per hour speed limits rests with the local traffic authority and I emphasise that the Government support 20 miles per hour limits in the right places. However, the Government do not support 20 miles per hour limits being set indiscriminately on all roads, without due regard to the safety case and local support.

[Lord McLoughlin (Con)]

My Lords, I did not quite recognise the figures given by the noble Lord, Lord Jordan. The fact is that I believe the United Kingdom has a fairly good road safety record when compared with countries with similar industrial bases. But will my noble friend look at the practice, which I think has grown quite substantially, of undertaking on motorways? This is something that I always thought was against the Highway Code, but I am told that it is actually not. I think that the growth in undertaking has led to a number of accidents on motorways.

[Lord Roborough (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for the question. I believe that in certain circumstances, it is an offence, and as such, it is up to the police to enforce.

[Lord Whitty (Lab)]

My Lords, I welcome the Minister to his post, but he will need, in his brief, to learn from history. The 1990s Conservative Government, with Peter Bottomley as Road Safety Minister, produced a road safety strategy, and they cut deaths by 40% during that period. The first Blair Government had a Road Safety Minister—whom modesty forbids me to mention—and we also had a 10-year road strategy, and again cut deaths by 40%. Progress since then has slowed. We need to integrate road design, vehicle design, driver behaviour and many other aspects in a clear strategy that is pursued for a length of time. Will the Minister please take that back and ask his officials to again draw up such a strategy?

[Lord Roborough (Con)]

I will of course take the noble Lord’s comments back to the department, but the Government continue to invest in safety on the roads and to improve enforcement of motoring offence by, for example, closing loopholes around driving while using a mobile phone, increasing maximum custodial sentences for causing death by dangerous driving, and creating a new offence of causing serious injury by careless or inconsiderate driving.

[Baroness Scott of Needham Market (LD)]

My Lords, has the Minister seen the research from RoSPA which shows that pedestrian safety is measurably worse in areas of deprivation? It holds true for all age groups, but particularly for children. Would he not agree that this demonstrates the need for the sort of approach just outlined by the noble Lord, Lord Whitty?

[Lord Roborough (Con)]

I am afraid I have not seen that research. The Government continue to improve to Highway Code, for example improving road safety for people walking, cycling and riding horses. Changes aim to initiate a positive shift in road-user behaviour by making road users aware of their responsibility to use roads safely and to reduce the danger they may pose to others.