New Clause 23

Part of Road Safety Bill [Lords] – in a Public Bill Committee at 2:00 pm on 20 April 2006.

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Photo of Stephen Hammond Stephen Hammond Shadow Minister (Transport) 2:00, 20 April 2006

It is good to see you back in the Chair, Sir Nicholas. You missed the Minister describe himself as demob happy—[Interruption.] Well, shall we say that he agreed that he was demob happy? It was probably why he maligned Conservatives as pro-European and anti-market, which is about as accurate as describing his party as socialist.

The principle behind new clause 23 is one that we support. The idea of a graduation after completion of a driving test to encourage continued and increasing competency should be supported. The idea of a graduation from provisional through probationary to full, and perhaps even to an advanced licence, would be an extremely useful approach to road safety. We have no problem with the principle behind the new clause.

The substance of the clause itself causes us a number of problems and they have been adequately described. The hon. Members for Wolverhampton, South-East (Mr. McFadden) and for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch, East (Rosemary McKenna) talked about the problem of age. I will not reiterate their points. The second area where we take issue is alcohol. We would need a much greater discussion about what would be appropriate. The Committee has already had some serious discussions about some and none at all. We have also debated whether it is just over or just under which is causing the problem as opposed to being a long way over.

We have discussed the problem of serial offenders. We have also talked about how the reduction in the number of police officers on our roads has made  detection of drink-driving and enforcement of the law more difficult. That would render subsection (7) pretty much unenforceable. Although we would support the principle of a graduation in licence, we certainly could not support the new clause.