Whitsun Recess

Mark Pawsey Excerpts

Thursday 24th May 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Thomas]

I am a huge supporter of my right hon. Friend on most things, as he knows, but I hope that on this occasion he will allow me to take a slightly more temperate view of the Rugby Football Union. In general, I think it does a good job and I hope that it will reconsider London Welsh’s application.

[Mark Pawsey (Rugby) (Con)]

As the Member of Parliament for Rugby and someone with great enthusiasm for the game of rugby, may I tell the hon. Gentleman that true rugby fans across the country will have enormous sympathy with the case he is making? The teams that do well deserve the right to be promoted.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mark Pawsey (Rugby) (Con)]

I am pleased to follow the hon. Member for Harrow West (Mr Thomas), who has raised some very important issues about a team with a wonderful heritage in the game of rugby. I am pleased to contribute to this debate and although I do not intend to go on at great length, it is an enormous pleasure to be able to speak in this place without having to race the clock or strike out paragraphs from a speech because of a time limit being reduced.

I want to speak about graduated driver licensing, with would involve a change in the licensing regime for new drivers to restrict them to driving only in low-risk environments. I am very keen to raise this issue from the viewpoint of a father of four children, three of whom are now drivers. Like most parents, I had real concerns about my children’s safety in the critical period just after they passed their driving test. I have seen the effect that a road traffic accident can have: when one of my teenage son’s great friends lost his life, it had an effect on the whole friendship group. I also speak as an observer at a local court where a young man was sentenced for causing by careless driving the death of his friend who was in the passenger seat.

The first case showed me the effect of the loss of a young life on the friends of the person. My hon. Friend the Member for Devizes (Claire Perry) spoke movingly about the effects of the loss of a young life. The second case showed me how the behaviour of a young driver, late at night and when there was certainly an element of showing off, also caused the loss of a life.

What is the extent of the problem? According to the Department for Transport, one in five newly qualified drivers, most of them under the age of 25, has a crash within six months of obtaining their licence. According to the AA, a young driver is 10 times more likely to be involved in a serious collision than a more experienced driver.

With that in mind, I draw the attention of the House to graduated driver licensing. Why is it necessary? A lot of research has been carried out by Dr Sarah Jones and Professor Stephen Palmer of Cardiff university, and they have put together a detailed report on the potential of graduated licensing to save lives. They draw attention to the driving conditions where risks are highest and note that they are exacerbated for new and young drivers: driving late at night, driving with passengers of a similar age and driving after drinking alcohol or taking drugs.

To save lives, those conditions need to be minimised, which is exactly what graduated driver licensing does. It reduces exposure to those conditions and builds on-road driving experience by providing an intermediate phase—where there is a degree of supervision and control—between being a learner and holding a full licence. The duration of the intermediate phase is a matter for consideration, so I shall not suggest a firm figure; some supporters have proposed between two and two and a half years.

In the intermediate phase, a driver has complete permission to drive, but not at certain times of night and not with passengers. A further factor that might be introduced could be a restriction on the cubic capacity or horsepower of the engine of the car that new drivers are allowed to drive.

I have already touched on alcohol consumption, which would be zero, and on drug-driving. Drug taking is more prevalent among young people; as a generalisation it is probably safe to say that a greater proportion of drug taking occurs in the evening, so the provisions of the graduated driver licence would mean that the prospect of young people driving after taking drugs would reduce. A consultation paper by the AA in 2008, “Learning to Drive,” said:

“The drug driving problem is not adequately quantified at present, and it is likely that its greatest impact is among the young. If the drug driving problem is as great as some reports suggest, it could be a major reason for accident levels among young drivers. A recent AA Populus poll of 17,500 members showed that 50% felt that drug driving was as big a problem as drink driving.”

I am, therefore, pleased that the Government are aware of the issue, and I welcome the legislation announced in the Queen’s Speech to create a specific offence of drug-driving.

Let us consider the difference between the present position and what would occur if graduated driver licensing were introduced. Currently, there is no restriction on a 17-year-old passing his or her test on one day and on the next driving a gang of mates in a powerful car with a 5 litre engine, capable of travelling at 150 mph. There is a problem that needs to be addressed. Research by Jones and Palmer into all accidents in Britain between 2000 and 2007 found that young people driving in certain conditions were more prone to accidents.

The key points are as follows: young drivers were involved in around 10% of all crashes; crashes involving older drivers decreased by 25% over the period, whereas those involving young drivers dropped by only 5%; a quarter of young driver crashes occurred between 9 pm and 6 am; a quarter of young driver crashes occurred when the young driver was carrying at least one other passenger aged between 15 and 24; half of young driver crash casualties, and 70% of the fatalities, occurred between 9 pm and 6 am and with at least one 15 to 24-year-old in the car; 50% of young driver fatalities occurred either between 10 pm and 5 am or with at least one 15 to 19-year-old in the car; and, perhaps most strikingly, they found that fatal crashes involving older drivers decreased by 15%, while those involving young drivers increased by 15%. The figures show that there is a real problem when it comes to young drivers.

The Government have a position on this. I raised the matter in the House during questions to the then Transport Secretary on 27 January 2011. I asked him for the Government’s view on graduated driver licensing. I understand that the Government are not in favour. He gave me two reasons for that. First, he said that other countries that have graduated driver licensing

“suffer worse safety records than the UK”.—[Official Report, 27 January 2011; Vol. 522, c. 437.]

That might be so, but I still think that the number of fatalities among our young people means that the matter should be considered properly. Secondly, he said, in defence of the existing situation, that introducing the system would reduce the mobility of young people and have a negative effect on their participation in the labour market and in higher education. What proportion of young drivers are participating in the labour market or higher education during the hours when graduated driver licensing would impose a restriction, bearing in mind that we are taking about late at night? I cannot see how that argument stands up in relation to a young person driving with his friends at 2 o’clock in the morning.

In 2008 the Government conducted a review of the learner driver process, “Learning to Drive”, and considered graduated driver licensing. They concluded that the reform of driver training and testing is a more appropriate and effective method of dealing with the problem. The Department for Transport said that graduated driver licensing

“would bring extensive social and economic costs”

With regard to costs, we know that there is economic value in saving a life. In 2003 the Health and Safety Executive formulated a cost-benefit analysis that put the cost of a life lost in a fatality at £1.3 million. Cardiff university has carried out some research on the value of preventing deaths in relation to two models of graduated driver licensing—either between 9 pm and 6 am or between 10 pm and 5 am. Under the stricter model, it calculated savings at £247 million a year, and under the less strict model it calculated them at £162 million. Therefore, in addition to reducing the distress we have already heard about today, there would be significant economic benefits from introducing graduated driver licensing.

Elsewhere in the world, graduated driver licensing was first used in New Zealand in 1987 and has since been implemented across the United States, Canada, Australia and parts of Europe. The programmes used in each of those countries vary, and I am not at this stage making a case for which system we should adopt, but the principle of restricting new drivers remains the same in all cases. The research from Cardiff university shows that the impacts will vary, but the best result that has been seen is in Ontario, where crash fatalities among young people decreased by 76% over two years.

The number of young driver crashes is clearly disproportionately high. The issue touches almost everybody: parents, relatives and friends of the young people involved. Action can be taken. I question whether the Government’s current position of looking for more training and testing will be sufficient. I firmly believe that an approach that decreases the risks to which young drivers expose themselves will help reduce the number of young driver incidents. I urge the Government to look again at the positive effects that a new system of licensing could have in achieving what we all wish to see: the young people of our country being safer on our roads and fewer people having to go through the kind of experience that my son and his friends went through.