Clause 21 - Using vehicle in dangerous condition etc.
Road Safety Bill
10:15 am
Mr David Wilshire (Assistant Chief Whip, Whips; Spelthorne, Conservative)
I support my right hon. Friend. I wanted to be clear that I understood this, because it conjures up the example of the Royal Mail delivery offices in my constituency, with a large number of vans outside every morning. There is a relatively random choice of which van a driver uses on a given day—it could be any one of 20, 30 or 40 Post Office vehicles in the yard—and he gets into one in all good faith, believing that the Royal Mail is a responsible employer. I make no suggestion that it is not, because I am sure that it takes the greatest of care over their vehicles. Something could go wrong, however. A driver goes out with his mail to deliver, gets into a vehicle and off he goes. Unknown to him, it is faulty. It is a bit of a lottery. We cannot simply say that, because it is a second occasion, the person must have a track record of not bothering, so we should hold him responsible. It is a total lottery, because the same person could be caught twice out of a range of people and a range of vehicles.
It seems grossly unfair that a person cannot say ''I had no reason to know that''. I would not have a clue how to check every part of my car to see whether it was roadworthy. That is why I get it serviced. One cannot expect every person working for the Royal Mail to be an expert at checking vehicles. Therefore, it is a total lottery, which I believe is unfair. The defence, ''I could not reasonably have known in the circumstances'' should be available to individuals.
Another thing that concerns me is that occasionally—how can I put it gently?—people who work for a firm like the opportunity to be difficult. We are handing people the opportunity to say, ''My job is to get into one of these vehicles, but I won't go out this morning until it has been checked over by somebody to guarantee to me, because I am not an expert, that it is roadworthy''. The net result is that we are providing an opportunity for industrial strife, if anybody is looking for one.
I know that both those issues are on the edge of what the Minister is trying to achieve. If a person were found to be blatantly doing something a second time, and it can be proved that they could and should have known and was being foolhardy at best, I should be with the Minister in saying that we must take serious steps to stop that. However, it can best be left to the court to decide whether it is somebody who is deliberately flouting the law or whose misfortune it was to get into the vehicle that morning, wholly unaware that it was not as unsafe as it turned out to be. I should be interested to hear what the Minister has to say.