Clause 3 - Graduated fixed penalty points
Road Safety Bill
12:00 pm
Mr Christopher Chope (Shadow Minister, Environment and Transport; Christchurch, Conservative)
This has been an excellent debate, and it is great that, unlike on some Standing Committees on which I have served, everyone is joining in, with the exception of the Minister's Parliamentary Private Secretary, who I imagine has other responsibilities and does not wish to join in, and, of course the lady Whip, the hon. Member for Lincoln (Gillian Merron), although she has been given plenty of food for thought in listening to the potent comments of Government Members.
The debate has highlighted the fact that the Government are making a mistake in simply equating the gravity of a speeding offence with the extent to which the limit was exceeded. It is apparent to everyone who studied the subject that the circumstances in which the speeding takes place are what is important. That is why someone speeding over the 30 mph limit in a built-up area when there are vulnerable road users around is committing a more serious offence than somebody who does the same thing when there is nobody around apart from a few urban foxes.
Nothing in the graduated points system addresses that issue. It always used to be that one should drive at an appropriate speed in all circumstances. Enforcement became difficult and it was tiresome to assess each case on its circumstances, and so speed limits were brought in as a proxy for the proposition that one should keep one's driving at an appropriate speed.
We have now got to the situation where speed limits do not have flexibility, apart from on some motorways following the Road Traffic Act 1991, which I had the privilege of steering through the House. That introduced the power for variable speed limits. I want much more use of that power, particularly in urban areas, where there are widely differing circumstances. They depend, for example, on the time of day.
There should also be more scope for flexibility. The perfect speed limit is one that it is inappropriate to exceed in perfect conditions. That is what it should be. Most people now seem to think that it is perfectly all right to exceed the speed limit in good conditions, within the tolerance allowed by the police, and to keep roughly within the limit when conditions are not very good.
The importance of speed limits has been eroded because local authorities have often set speed limits that are inappropriate or that are not appropriate in all circumstances. Unfortunately, as the Minister has made clear, the rather rigid approach to variable penalties for speeding does not allow any scope for taking into account different circumstances. That is why the hon. Member for Liverpool, Riverside was on to a good point with the amendment.
The hon. Lady, like all of us, is concerned about the messages that are going out. The Government spend an enormous amount of taxpayers' money on trying to promote a clear road safety message. As politicians, we know that the message must be very straightforward for people to begin to understand it and that it must be repeated on many occasions for it to get home.
When I was the road safety Minister, we were banging on about the different consequences of a collision at 40 mph, 30 mph or 20 mph. Ten years later, the Government are still advertising and promoting that message. It is important that we, as a legislature, do not do anything that will undermine that message. However, at the same time, we must have regard to common sense.