Department for Transport written question – answered at on 24 February 2021.
Daniel Poulter
Conservative, Central Suffolk and North Ipswich
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what assessment his Department has made of the potential merits of a national speeding campaign to tackle speeding offences on rural roads.
Rachel Maclean
Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)
Road safety is a top priority for the Government, and the Department takes this very seriously. Road deaths and injuries can cause suffering, economic loss and life-changing misfortune, and reducing this on our roads is a key priority, including through reducing speeding.
One of the ways the Department does this is through the THINK! campaign, which currently targets young male drivers who are over-represented in deaths and serious injuries on our roads. THINK! is running a national speeding campaign targeted at this audience, following an uplift in the proportion of vehicles speeding in the first national lockdown. In 2019, speed-related factors contributed to almost half of road deaths and serious injuries among this audience and we know that young men are over-represented in industries where they still need to travel for work despite lockdown restrictions, such as manufacturing and essential retail. The campaign uses paid social media, broadcast radio, digital radio and Spotify advertising,, including messaging targeted specifically at young drivers travelling on rural roads.
Messaging on speeding and rural roads will also form part of an upcoming campaign due to launch in early summer which will also target high-risk young male drivers, and we will also use the Cabinet Office service to run radio advertising aimed at changing attitudes towards speeding among a broader audience, including a focus on rural roads.
Yes4 people think so
No2 people think not
Would you like to ask a question like this yourself? Use our Freedom of Information site.
Secretary of State was originally the title given to the two officials who conducted the Royal Correspondence under Elizabeth I. Now it is the title held by some of the more important Government Ministers, for example the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs.
The cabinet is the group of twenty or so (and no more than 22) senior government ministers who are responsible for running the departments of state and deciding government policy.
It is chaired by the prime minister.
The cabinet is bound by collective responsibility, which means that all its members must abide by and defend the decisions it takes, despite any private doubts that they might have.
Cabinet ministers are appointed by the prime minister and chosen from MPs or peers of the governing party.
However, during periods of national emergency, or when no single party gains a large enough majority to govern alone, coalition governments have been formed with cabinets containing members from more than one political party.
War cabinets have sometimes been formed with a much smaller membership than the full cabinet.
From time to time the prime minister will reorganise the cabinet in order to bring in new members, or to move existing members around. This reorganisation is known as a cabinet re-shuffle.
The cabinet normally meets once a week in the cabinet room at Downing Street.
