Clause 24 - Breach of requirements relating to children and seat belts
Road Safety Bill [Lords]
5:00 pm
Stephen Ladyman (Minister of State, Department for Transport; South Thanet, Labour)
This is one of those issues that reasonable people can dispute reasonably. There is no ethical or philosophical reason why the offence should not be endorseable, as the hon. Gentleman suggests, but it is my view and the Government’s view that the financial penalties are adequate. Faced with those penalties, people will want to obey the rules. The important thing is not so much that we make the offence endorseable, but that we continue to work with the police to encourage them to prosecute people who do not wear seat belts or who allow passengers not to wear them. I am pleased to say that in 2003, the police took action against 145,000 people for such offences, but we must keep up the pressure to achieve that.
Given that the hon. Gentleman is not going to convince me to make the offence endorseable, I hope that he will withdraw his amendment. In any event, it would have made carrying children without a seat belt an endorseable offence in the rear of the car, but not in the front, which I suspect is not what he intended when he drafted his probing amendment.