HC Deb 28 June 1934 vol 291 cc1398-443

8.36 p.m.

Sir W. BRASS

I beg to move to leave out the Clause.

I move this Amendment because I feel that the Clause will cause endless trouble and create confusion in every part of the country where an attempt to enforce it is made. The Minister told us on the Second Beading that this question of a speed limit was not a party question at all. He said one could be a good Tory and agree with a test for drivers and a good Socialist and be in favour of a speed limit. I would, therefore, appeal to him to take the Whips off on this occasion and to allow us to have a free Vote in order that the House of Commons may record exactly what it feels. My own view is that this is a retrograde step. It is proposed that, whenever a motor driver enters an area where there happens to be a system of street lighting on one or both sides of the road, he shall immediately put his foot on the brake, look at his speedometer, and get down to 30 miles an hour regardless entirely of whether the road is wet or dry, whether he is a good or a bad driver, whether he has a light or a heavy car, and whether the brakes are in good order or in bad. He says to the driver, in effect, "Whenever you see a street lamp I do not trust you any longer," and you have immediately to consider reducing your speed and watching for the very happy time when you have got to the end of the street lighting and you can step on the gas and go as fast as you like.

I want to ask hon. Members to imagine themselves driving along a road and finding, as I found when I made a survey not long ago, that 50 per cent. of the length of the road on which they are driving is in a lamp-lit area. I have estimated, from figures given me by the Ministry of Transport, that about 50,000 miles of road will come under this speed limit. I think the Minister has to consider very carefully whether it is possible over such an area to enforce this speed limit. Mr. Morrison realised, and I think he himself realises, that the 20-mile speed limit was unenforceable, and I think the same thing would apply to this limit, because it is far too wide. The Minister has power under the 1930 Act to allow a local speed limit to be put on in any place where the local authority desires it, and, if he wishes to make an experiment, there is no reason why he should not do it under the present law, and there is no need to make it universal. The Minister has ignored altogether the recommendations of the Royal Commission, which recommended against the very thing which he now proposes should be made law. They were asked the specific question whether or not a speed limit should be imposed in a built-up area, and they gave two reasons for not recommending it. They said: We came to the conclusion that there would be great difficulty in defining built-up areas and, moreover, there are many points of danger on country roads where special caution and slow speed are necessary, but where no question of a built-up area arises. The Royal Automobile Club and the Automobile Association is against the speed limit. They have circulated a letter stating various reasons why they think it undesirable. I am afraid the Minister is thinking more of the London area than of the bigger and wider areas in the country. I think he would admit that the Department has made no survey of the so-called built-up areas and has no idea of the number of stretches of road which have a lighting system and then have a short period where there is no lighting system, then have another period of lighting system, and so on. I remember telling him in. Committee that I had made a survey of a part of the Brighton Road not far from London. It was worked out with a speedometer marked in tenths of a mile. There were, first of all, 18 miles in a lit-up area. Then there was.8 of a mile outside the lit-up area, after that.5 of a mile, that is, half-a-mile, inside the lit-up area, then.9 of a mile outside the lit-up area—all this was on the main road going from London to Brighton—then there was 4.7 of a mile inside the lit-up area, then two miles outside the lit-up area, then 2.1 miles inside the lit-up area, 2.3 miles outside, and 2.1 miles inside again.

What is going to be the result of all that? People will constantly be looking for street lamps. There are eight different changes from a built-up area to a non-built-up area within 16 miles and, if I had not been very careful in watching the lamps on that occasion, I should never have known whether I was or was not in what is termed in the Bill a built-up area. I assure the House that a very large portion of the road which had no lamps on it had buildings on it, and a large portion of the road which had lamps on it had no buildings on it at all. So that a built-up area is entirely a misnomer. It does not mean a place where there are any buildings. It merely means a place, as described in Clause 1, where there is a system of street lighting. I have also made a survey in my own constituency, and I find that in Lancashire the same sort of thing applies. Anybody driving through from Yorkshire to Lancashire will find that they are constantly going in and out, a mile here and a mile there, half-a-mile here and half-a-mile there, of what are to be termed built-up areas.

How can a driver know whether he is keeping the law or not? He is told that he is not allowed to go more than 30 miles an hour when he sees a street lamp or a system of street lighting. I know that the Minister's answer is that he can decontrol certain areas, but it is ridiculous to think that you can decontrol in 15 or 16 miles 15 or 16 different bits of road where you go into and out of a so-called built-up area. You can decontrol the great West Road for four or five miles if you like and some of the big by-pass roads round London. That you can do quite easily, but you cannot do it outside all the different cities in Lancashire. Directly he begins to try and decontrol these and to include something else my hon. Friend will have to spend his entire time in making arrangements with local authorities to put up small notice boards here and there to say that you are either in or out of a speed limit area. I do not know how he is going to describe it. Is he going to describe it by means of signs attached to a lamp post to say that you must not think it is a lamp post when you see it, or is he going to put some sort of sign on the side of the road with "Thirty miles an hour," or something else written on it, or is he going to step on the gas so that people may know that they have actually got within the 30-mile limit?

My hon. Friend was asked a little while ago it he could say how many villages there were. The Department has not the vaguest idea how many villages will come into the speed limit. It depends upon the local authorities as to whether they want to be included or not in a direction. He does not know how many there will be and how many notices will have to be put up in the villages. If we are to have a speed limit—I do not agree with speed limits—a speed limit in a village is far more important, certainly at even less than 30 miles an hour, than a speed limit over a wide area on a large, open trunk road with a system of street lighting along it. His difficulty is that his definition of a built-up area is really no definition at all. It does not coincide with buildings at all or with what is generally considered to be a built-up area. Consequently, he is going to create the most awful chaos all over the country. He mentioned during the Committee stage that since a speed limit had been intro- duced in Oxford—or he contended that it was the result of the speed limit—there had not been a single fatal accident in the City of Oxford. I have had a letter from somebody at Oxford whom I do not know, and I do not propose to publish his name, referring to the speed limit in that city. This is what he says: I should like to express the gratitude which I, along with thousands of others, feel to you for the fight which you have put up for a common sense solution of the problem presented by motor fatalities in Oxford. In Oxford, more than anywhere else, we have been subjected to a noisy handful of fanatics who have made every kind of misrepresentation in their arguments. It is suggested that the number of fatal accidents in Oxford has been reduced since the 30-mile limit has been in force, but what is not stated is the fact that in all the fatal accidents for years and years there has been no allegation of excessive speed. This information comes from the Oxford coroner (Mr. Galpin), who, speaking from memory, thinks that the greatest speed alleged by any hostile witness since the Road Traffic Act became law was 25 miles an hour. Since my hon. Friend made that particular point about the Oxford 30-mile speed limit—and it is the only 30-mile speed limit in the country at the present time, so it is a good example of what might happen in other places—I have asked him what happened in the year before in order that I might be able to see whether in fact the 30-mile speed limit had prevented accidents in Oxford. He told me that four fatal accidents had occurred during that particular period in the previous year. As a result of his information, I put down a question to the Home Office in order to find out whether any of these particular accidents which happened the year before could in fact have possibly been affected by a 30-mile speed limit, and I found that there was not a single one of them where the vehicle was travelling at 30 miles an hour. They were all travelling at less than 30 miles an hour, and two of them at 10 miles an hour in the rain. I think that that disposes of the suggestion that the 30-mile speed limit in Oxford has prevented any accidents at all.

Most of the accidents in built-up areas are not due to speed. That can easily be proved by looking at the statistics which my hon. Friend has published. Most of the accidents which take place in properly built-up areas, not lamp-lit areas, take place at speeds lower than 30 miles an hour. The majority of accidents take place at speeds between 10 and 20 miles an hour, and many are due to heavy vehicles, which are subjected already to a, speed limit. The Minister of Transport will no doubt say that the speed is always under-estimated, but in certainly 80 per cent. of the fatal accidents in built-up areas there are independent witnesses to give evidence as to what they see with their own eyes, and they are not likely to bring down the speed at which the accident is supposed to have happened. A great deal too much has been made of the suggestion that the estimates of speeds are wrong. The majority of accidents take place at low rates of speed.

My view is that this speed limit will bring the law into disrepute. For the police to pursue motorists in motor cars or on motor cycles is worse than hiding behind hedges, and far more dangerous; because two cars going at what is supposed to be an excessive speed is not helpful. If one is going too fast and there is another behind going at the same rate it means that two cars are going too fast instead of one. That particular form of trap is not good. I do not think that the Minister of Transport will reduce the number of accidents in built-up areas by this Clause, because the majority of accidents are now due to speeds of less than 30 miles an hour. Indeed, I do not think they are due to speed at all. Speed does enter into the matter in the open areas, and if people driving one from one place to another find that on 50 per cent. of the road they are reduced to a speed of 30 miles an hour, they are very likely to go too fast in other areas where they would usually go at a normal speed, having regard to existing conditions and being decent drivers. Consequently, instead of reducing the number of accidents, the Minister is definitely going to increase them, not in the built-up areas but in the non-built-up areas, because he is going to force people to go far too slowly in the built-up areas, where it is not necessary very often, and make them go faster in the areas where it is possible, but where it may be dangerous to do so.

Another thing which will happen is that a large number of people are going to be prosecuted. He is going to make hundreds and thousands of criminals every year. I made an estimate in Com- mittee of the number of people who may be prosecuted as a result of these activities. I took the Oxford case as the only example of a 30-mile limit in the country, and in four and a-half months 162 people were prosecuted for exceeding the speed limit. I then estimated the speed limit area as 48,000 miles, and multiplied it by 162, then divided it by 16, which is the extent of the speed limit area in Oxford, and as a result I found that 486,000 people might be prosecuted in the first four and a-half months of the year if the present activities in Oxford are continued in other parts of the country. I do not think it is a good thing for Parliament to start making a lot of criminals and prosecuting thousands upon thousands of people all over the country because they happen to go more than 30 miles an hour where there is street lighting. It is all nonsense. It will mean absolute chaos. It is a perfectly ridiculous suggestion. It will not do the slightest good; it will only annoy a large number of people and do a lot of harm in outside districts, quite apart from the harm it will do to the motor traffic. I appeal to the Minister to allow us to have a free vote on this Clause. It is not a political matter, it has nothing to do with the National Government, it is not a party question, and I appeal to him to take off the Whips and allow us to divide on this according to our conscience.

9.1 p.m.

Sir G. FOX

I beg to second the Amendment, which has been so ably moved by my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Clitheroe (Sir W. Brass). I think that a speed limit is absolutely unnecessary, partly because the Royal Commission recommended against it and partly because of the difficulties of defining what is a built-up area. The Minister has already got into difficulties on this matter and has had to recommit the Bill, because it is so difficult to put up notices all over the country to say where a speed limit is to start and where it is to end. During the last two or three years a number of towns have applied for a special speed limit of 30 miles an hour, but in every case except Oxford the application has been turned down.

Mr. STANLEY

Will the hon. Member say what towns, except Oxford, have applied for a 30-mile speed limit?

Sir G. FOX

I think that 11 applications have been made for a special speed limit.

Mr. STANLEY

The hon. Member said a 30-mile speed limit.

Sir G. FOX

I think that 11 applications have been made for a special speed limit and most of them were turned down. Suddenly, this Bill is introduced, and we find that there is to be a universal speed limit of 30 miles an hour over some 50,000 miles of road. The idea must have come to the Minister of Transport himself who, unfortunately, is not a practical motorist. I believe that if my hon. Friend was the driver of a motor car himself he would realise that this Clause is not going to solve the problem. It may be said that it will only take two or three minutes longer to go through Oxford, what does it matter? I agree that it is not very much, but if you have the same experience continuously for 30 miles all round London and along parts of our arterial roads it will slow down traffic a great deal. In 1896 there was a speed limit of 20 miles an hour and in 1934, 38 years later, we are going to have a uniform limit of 30 miles an hour.

To my mind, it is repressive legislation against motorists. We cannot, even if we wish, put the clock back. We have all seen the great advance of speed in the air and other methods of transport, yet to-day we find that we are asked to slow down the traffic on the roads. My hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Clitheroe said that many of these accidents do not take place at excessive speeds. I have part of the Report of the Royal Commission on Transport before me, and according to the figures supplied to the chairman of the London Traffic Advisory Committee 57 per cent. of the fetal accidents in London took place at speeds lower than 10 miles an hour. Motorists throughout the country feel that these big arterial roads and by-passes have been built at great cost—something like £35,000 a mile—and with money which has been found by taxing motorists, motor cars, and petrol, and people have gone in for a policy of ribbon building. I do not blame the Minister of Transport for that so much, because I think it is his predecessors who have allowed it to grow, who have caused a great deal of this trouble. It is, however, essential that this octapus of ribbon building should be stopped at the earliest possible moment One of the reasons why the number of road fatalities is increasing is the fact that more and more people are coming to live on the main roads throughout the country.

When we have a speed limit of 30 miles an hour, what will be the result? I think that many people when they are driving at 30 miles an hour will think it is perfectly safe and that they need not bother very much, and then, with people getting careless and not keeping a good lookout, we shall perhaps see many more accidents. It may be there will be the awful noise on the road from wireless sets in the cars and motorists going at 30 miles an hour. It is suggested that because you have a universal speed limit of 30 miles an hour, you will accelerate all traffic automatically, but I do not think this will be the case, because you will still have motor vehicles which will travel at 25 or 20 miles an hour, and it will take quite a lot of accelerating to pass them. If you are only allowed to go 30 miles an hour, it will mean greater efforts to overtake them before you get to the next standard, with the result that there will be great congestion and long lines of traffic in all built-up areas.

Again, we shall see everyone looking out for speed traps. We all know the ridiculous position of coming up behind a motor omnibus in a motor car and seeing the conductor ringing the bell to let the driver know that there is a car behind, and when he sees it is not a police car the omnibus goes on fast again. In the same way you will see motorists trying to watch if they are being trapped, whether there is a speed "cop" coming up behind or a trap on the side of the road, and perhaps a fellow swinging a stick with white paint at the end, and when it stops you have got into the beginning or end of a trap, I should like the Minister to say whether he is going to exempt roads like the Great West Road and other arterial roads around London. I have no doubt his answer will be, "I cannot do that, because I shall leave it to the local authorities to decide." I believe the local authorities will not dare to decontrol any of these roads, because the feeling may be such that if anyone is run over, it will be said that so-and-so voted for the decontrol of that road, and at the next local election many people will vote against him. I think this idea of a 30-miles speed limit is completely retrograde and will not solve the problem.

9.10 p.m.

Sir C. OMAN

At the risk of being considered by the hon. and gallant Member for Clitheroe (Sir W. Brass) one of a small gang of fanatics, I must explain the position of affairs in Oxford, of which he seems to be lamentably ignorant, though he has apparently been consulting certain people, who have obviously given him coloured information suitable to what he wished to prove.

Sir W. BRASS

I did not consult them at all. That letter was sent to me without any request whatsoever.

Sip C. OMAN

I thought the hon. and gallant Gentleman said he had been consulting Mr. Galpin.

Sir W. BRASS

No.

Sir C. OMAN

Then how was he able to quote him?

Sir W. BRASS

I did not. I quoted from a letter sent to me from Oxford without being asked for at all, which mentioned that particular gentleman's name in it.

Sir C. OMAN

Then it was secondhand hearsay information. The accidents in Oxford, with which I have been keeping very carefully in touch, being a resident in central Oxford, have, with one exception, all taken place on the broad roads coming down into the centre of the city, not in the congested centre itself, where, if any motorist were to move at the rate of 30 miles an hour, it would be only a question of whether he could be sent to Wormwood Scrubs or to Broadmoor, because, clearly, anybody who tries to go 30 miles an hour there must be either a criminal or a lunatic. There has been in the last few days for the first time since the new regulations came in a fatal accident in Oxford, and it was one of the kind that wrings one's heart. It was the case of a little girl going to school alone for the first time—her mother could not accompany her—who was run over in one of the outskirts of Oxford by a motor car, which was, apparently, not going at a very great pace. I give that to the hon. and gallant Member, that there has been a fatal accident since.

Sir W. BRASS

There is another one, if my hon. Friend likes to have it.

Sir C. OMAN

In the last few years our local accidents nearly all occurred on the outskirts of the place, and in circumstances which suggest to me that these broad roads, with hardly a refuge or an island in them, are very well scheduled under the 30 miles rule—I should like to have seen them under a 20 miles rule—numerous cases have occurred. For example, I am asked to believe that in the following cases the slayer was not going at any great pace. Take the case of an undergraduate who killed a policeman at the other end of the Cowley road and was next heard of at Aberystwyth, having covered the distance between the two points in an extraordinarily short time. Take the case of a party after a ball who ran at dawn over two carpenters coming into early work in Oxford. In those two case?, whatever evidence was brought to the contrary, do you believe they were crawling along at 10 miles an hour? I think it is in the highest degree improbable. Clearly, in both those cases, they were young and irresponsible people. Take the case of two elderly ladies run down in the outskirts of Oxford, trying to cross broad arterial roads with no island or refuge to help them.

Vice-Admiral TAYLOR

Are there no footpaths?

HON. MEMBERS

Not across the road.

Sir C. OMAN

You cannot cross the road by sticking to the footpaths, and the only occasion on which I ever remember a person attempting to do so was when an undergraduate got hold of the railings outside the Radcliffe Library and endeavoured to cross the road by sticking to the footpath and going round the library, but having engaged in that exercise for some time he found himself where he had started, the footpath being circular. The cases which I am quoting have all as I say occurred on the outskirts of Oxford and a considerable distance from the congested centre where nobody would think of travelling at 30 miles an hour. I cannot see how anybody can deny that there is a lot of reckless driving in the outskirts of towns. I have witnessed it myself. I think personally that 30 miles an hour is far too high a speed in such regions and that 20 miles an hour would be quite sufficient. However, that is neither here or there. The Minister in the Bill has fixed it at 30 miles an hour and I would rather have a rule of 30 miles an hour than a rule evolved in the brain of the individual motorist, the rule of what he would consider to be sensible and proper. That is what the proposer of this Amendment and his friends would like to see introduced as the governing principle in connection with this matter.

The greater number of motorists are very decent courteous people. I owe a great deal to the kindness of many of them. I am accustomed to go about in motors a good deal. But a certain proportion of the motoring fraternity are really enemies of society. I have been in personal danger and I have seen fatal accidents arising from what I can only describe as the abominable recklessness of certain motorists. In one case, a butcher boy driving a little motor vehicle, coming out of a village entry, charge into the motor in which I was travelling on an arterial road. In a second case two young ladies with their heads close together, doubtless discussing some secret, drove out of a private road leading from a large house and charged into the vehicle in which I was being conveyed. I happened to be carrying at that moment the Amesbury Psalter, one of the most famous manuscripts in Great Britain, the value of which is priceless, and I rather resented being run down by a pair of irresponsible girls who were chattering when they ought to have been looking at the road. What would have happened to that priceless book if they had succeeded in knocking me silly and sending the Psalter flying I do not know.

In a third case of which I was a witness, some idiotic young people who were apparently late for lunch tried to cut round a char-a-banc at a curve in the road. While their car and the char-a-banc were occupying three-quarters of the road, a large travelling car came round under the hedge, on its proper side, and knocked the other machine to pieces. The driver and the girl beside him were killed and the two people behind were badly shaken. There is a certain class of young and irresponsible motorists who are a public danger. There is a second class which constitutes a public danger, and that is the class of speed maniacs. One of these told me that there was nothing to compare with gliding on an aeroplane but rushing at 60 or 70 miles an hour down an arterial road. This motorist told me he had travelled from Lincoln to Oxford in an hour and a quarter. I can hardly believe it, but that is an example of the idea of speed which some of these people have. It is such people who have to be dealt with.

I have no indictment to make against the general fraternity of motorists, but I must say that I have always found them singularly deficient in what I would call natural indignation against the proportion of motorists who share with them the love of rapid motion and who indulge it recklessly. I have never heard from motorists generally a proper condemnation either of the class of young idiotic frivolous people or the class of speed maniacs. Indeed there seems to be a, certain amount of sympathy with the speed maniac, no doubt largely induced by the newspapers, who seem to regard it as a fine and laudable thing to go at ridiculous speeds. I blame the newspapers a great deal in connection with this matter. Any system that will deal with that portion of the motoring fraternity which is a public nuisance and a public danger I am ready to support, even though it should only impose the mildest form of control. This Bill does something, though not very much, to make it a little easier for the pedestrians to cross our roads in safety. Therefore I sincerely praise the Minister for what he has done. I only wish he had made his Bill a little more stringent.

9.22 p.m.

Lieut.-Colonel MOORE-BRABAZON

For many years the Minister of Transport resisted the granting of a speed limit to any town in the country. He eventually granted one of 30 miles an hour in Oxford. He granted it to protect the fossilised buildings—not the dons. It was entirely for the protection of the buildings, and, although it may have bad reactions which are interesting as regards the number of accidents, my hon. Friend the Member for Oxford University (Sir C. Oman) has told us to-night that accidents, in spite of the limit, have occurred on the open broad road. I cannot understand why he of all people should want this Bill. Under the old Act he has the benefit that he wants, and I think it is up to the Minister to prove to us why the old plan was never put into operation and why we want this new one. There was the power to impose a speed limit of 30 miles an hour or less where a case could be made out for it.

The reason why I do not like a general speed limit of this character is that whatever limit you choose must be wrong. My hon. Friend has said that the idea of going through the crowded parts of Oxford at 30 miles an hour is suicidal and ridiculous. Of course it is, but there are areas outside in which 30 miles an hour is dawdling, and there is just a narrow part where 30 miles an hour would be the correct speed. In London I do not suppose the ordinary motorist travels at more than 30 miles an hour for more than 1½ per cent. of the time. I must say that I should like the Minister to have gone step by step in this matter. It seems to me that we are being rushed into this business by a Press campaign as a result of which the Minister has said "We must do something." Then he introduces the 30-mile an hour limit, and we rush in where other countries fear to tread. When we come to deal with the question of accidents with all the sentimental capital that can be made out of it, the House of Commons "goes very groggy" on legislation. It is very weak when hon. Members quote a case of a little girl rushing into the road and being run over. There, besides the hon. Member for Bodmin (Mr. Isaac Foot), we have feet of clay.

I am sure that everybody will agree that we motorists are as law-abiding as most citizens. Yet we find that of the offences that come before the police courts of this country no less than 45 per cent. are motor offences. By the introduction of this Bill we shall add to that number enormously. It is not to the good of everybody to have nothing but a lot of small technical offences. The trouble with the old Act was not in the Act itself but in the administration of it. Never was a dangerous driver dealt with as severely as he should have been. The thing which hurts the casual cad driver is to take his licence away—nothing else. It does not matter fining him. For some unearthly reason there has been an extraordinary dislike up and down the country of taking licences away. If it be a paid driver with a lorry, there are always sentimental considerations, but I do not know why they do not take the licence away from a private man. It is upon the persons who drive dangerously that you should jump with all the severity of the law. Under this proposal, however, he is the very man who escapes, because he can drive fast in the crowded area of a town where it is quite impossible to trap, and yet be cunning enough to go slowly on the outskirts, whereas the ordinary motorist who is painstaking and considerate will have gone carefully through the middle of the town, and when he comes into the open, just as he is speeding up, if he does not look at his speedometer, he will be caught.

We are introducing another kind of law, and it will be a law which nobody will obey. It will be exactly like the old 20-mile-an-hour speed limit, in which you came before the court and were fined by the magistrate, and knew perfectly well that on his way back to his lunch he would break the same law. That is a bad type of thing to introduce as a law in these days.

I want to quote a figure or two, because I think that it would have been better from everybody's point of view had we had before the introduction of this Bill an opportunity of studying the Report on Fatal Road Accidents and arguing on it. Nevertheless, we have had the Second Reading, and we have actually passed this Clause upstairs, without our being able to see the report. That was not the Minister's fault, but it was unfortunate, for the report contains a strong case against this 30-mile-an-hour speed limit. Take the difference between the cars which are taxed as private cars and the goods vehicles, which already have a speed limit. There are 1,200,000 private cars against 440,000 goods vehicles—three times the number of private cars. Yet we find that the fatal accidents caused by the private cars are less than those caused by the vehicles which already have a speed limit. This fact does not justify us in rushing in and imposing a 30-mile-an-hour speed limit on a class of vehicles which is singularly free from accidents. I notice that no less than 62 per cent. of the total accidents occurred at under 20 miles an hour. That is so extraordinary that the report has to draw attention to the fact that in many cases the person who has been killed has been unable to give evidence. That is obvious; on the other hand, one has to remember that these accidents mostly occur in urban areas where there should be witnesses.

This is a point of logic which I cannot follow. For years before the introduction of the original Bill we had a speed limit of 20 miles an hour, a dangerous anachronism and one of the most ridiculous provisions that ever sullied our Statute Book. It was difficult to know what to do, and Mr. Morrison took it off. That was a very brave experimental measure, but what happened? Cars increased enormously in number, but the number of fatal accidents went down from the time he took the speed limit off until the present day. I cannot understand the logic which changes the law at the present day, not to 20 miles an hour but back to 30 miles an hour. I should have liked to see much tightening up of dangerous driving from the point of view of detection—a difficult thing to do—and from the point of view of offences. But the Minister has attacked the thing from the lazy point of view. We are not going to condemn the man for dangerous driving, which is the real offence, but to attack him on a perfectly technical ground, for speed and nothing else.

My hon. Friend the Minister said he was going to introduce a new Highway Code. That should be the law of England; that is what we want from a scientific point of view. Although the problem is difficult, we want a code which everybody can understand, motorists, pedestrians and everyone, and, if someone does not play the game, then he must be punished. It is, however, a difficult thing to do and not a thing which can be rushed or solved quickly. I object to this Clause. I do not believe it will save one single life. I cannot help believing that, if you say by a Statute that a motorist can go at 30 miles an hour, you create the impression among all motorists that it is legal to go at 30 miles an hour wherever they are. It is true that you can drive dangerously at 10 miles an hour, but on the open road you will go up to 30 miles an hour because you are allowed to do it. The limit will cause bitterness and that hatred between ordinary civilians and policemen which was growing up to such an alarming extent under the ridiculous trapping that went on under the old system.

This is a very retrograde step, and it disappoints me that such a Measure should be placed on the Statute Book by a Ministry and by a Minister for whom I have such affection. If it had not been for the hon. Gentleman and his own personal charm, he would have had a much worse time in Committee. Here, however, we have Conservative Minister, young, who we thought was full of promise, imagination, dash and grip, but when he comes up to face one of the great problems of the day, what does he do? He looks into the past for a solution, and instead of the old 20 miles an hour invented by our grandfathers, he has just added 10 miles an hour. Tell it in Gath, publish it in the streets of Ascalon that a cadet member of one of our great families has changed his motto to "Back, Stanley, back."

Mr. STANLEY

May I ask if the hon. and gallant Member has changed his motto to "Charge, Lanehester, charge?"

9.36 p.m.

Mr. ISAAC FOOT

I must congratulate the hon. and gallant Member for Wallasey (Lieut.-Colonel Moore-Braba-zon) on the moderation which was inspired by the charm of the Minister. I wonder what he would have said if there had been a Liberal in the position of Minister or an unfortunate Socialist representative? He says that in his belief if this Bill be passed and this speed limit is established, not a single life will be saved. I am sure he holds that view with sincerity. He speaks with a long experience. He has from the beginning been associated with road transport and has in that respect a very distinguished and conspicuous record. If this Clause stands and the limit of 30 miles an hour is put into force, and if his prophecy that there will be no reduction in the number of deaths and in the lamentable number of accidents on the road is realised, would he not agree that no one will support a continuance of this restriction and that there will be a demand for some other reforms?

Lieut.-Colonel MOORE-BRABAZON

The point was repeatedly made in Committee that we are including two pieces of legislation in this Bill, one to repress speed and the other to deal with the pedestrian, and it will be difficult to know which causes any amelioration that there may be. If there is an amelioration under this Bill, we shall not be able to tell whether it is due to the introduction of the speed limit or to the regulation of the pedestrian.

Mr. FOOT

I had not the advantage of being on the Committee upstairs. I sympathise a great deal with what the hon. and gallant Member says as to the necessity of checking dangerous driving whatever may be done under this Bill, which is not intended to be a substitute for that restriction. I hope that will be done by the magistrates and the courts throughout the country, whatever is done so far as the establishment of the speed limit is concerned. Is it suggested that simply because we are establishing a speed limit of 30 miles an hour in built-up areas, the magistrates will restrict their repression of dangerous driving? It is hoped that whatever they can do in that direction will be done, with the added and much more severe and hated penalty of removing licences. The whole purpose of this Clause is to reduce the speed of driving upon the roads of this country. Does the hon. and gallant Member suggest that it will not have—not immediately, perhaps, but very soon—an effect in a general reduction of speed generally?

I cannot get out of my mind that a very constantly recurring element in accidents is the speed of the cars. Since the last Debate my experience has been that of most other Members of knowing in our immediate neighbourhood of someone with whom we are in close acquaintance being killed as the result of a motor accident. I know that in these cases speed has been a constantly recurring factor. The hon. and gallant Member tells us that travelling at 30 miles an hour is dawdling, but what would he regard as being the ordinary speed upon the roads of this country if 30 miles an hour is dawdling? Hon. Members may say it depends on the car, but if a car is dawdling at 30 miles an hour and travelling at a reasonable speed at 40, I say there are big risks at travelling at that rate. I drive a car as much as most Members of the House. I am de-dendent on the use of a car when I am at home if I have to do the ordinary work of my profession. I have motored on the roads in practically all the counties of this country, so that I am not speaking simply from hearsay, but from knowledge as a driver myself. In travelling at what we are told now is to be regarded as a reasonable speed of 40 miles an hour, everyone knows that the driver is dependent upon any number of chances not only in his own driving but in accidents that may happen to others. A man may be going with extreme care and slowly, and there is the skid of another car over which he has no control, or there is the bursting of a tyre, or some mechanical defect.

I have watched with personal care since the last Debate, when the hon. and gallant Member was inclined to deride a remark I made that almost every journey involves touch and go. Since that time, I was going from the station to my home in Cornwall one day when I passed a pony on the road, and my attention was called to it. I read in the paper next day that an hour later a driver of a motor cycle with someone riding on the pillion collided at that point with a stray pony and one man was injured and another killed. Such are the possibilities on the road. I have no doubt that the motor cyclist was driving with care, but in that very accident, which happened after I was derided in this House the element of speed entered, as it has done in one case after another since the last Debate. For instance, in my own county only a week or two ago a man carrying on his work in making a white line under the direction of the county council to mark a dangerous road, with a flag up a short distance away as a warning of danger, was killed by a motor lorry which came along at too high a speed in the circumstances.

Sir W. BRASS

Lorries are subject to a speed limit.

Mr. FOOT

Whether that is so or not, my point is that speed enters too frequently into the causes of accidents.

Several HON. MEMBERS

rose—

Mr. FOOT

I understand that when the French Congress was established a rule was set up that no more than four Members should address the House at the same time. Those of us who use the roads know the temptation of a fast car. If a car can go easily at 40 or 50 miles an hour there is a temptation, I use a faster car than formerly, and it becomes a temptation. It may be an inconvenience to drivers of a car to go more slowly, but they should allow themselves more time. If we have an engagement in the north of England and have to come back to the south, we must reckon whether we ought to take more time for the journey. That is an inconvenience which ought not to be suffered if it is not going to advantage human life, and if after this restriction in speed there are still 20 people being killed every day and so many-hundreds being injured—well, we have gone on the process of trial and error, and some other course may have to be adopted. But there are many in the House and in the country, just as sincere as the hon. and gallant Member, who believe that lives will be saved—not many perhaps, but some lives—and that we shall not put upon the community the colossal economic burden arising from people having to live the rest of their lives maimed and dependent upon their relatives and upon the attention of their neighbours and the relief that can be given them by the community. If this Clause means that only a few lives are saved and there is a reduction of a few scores every week in the number of those maimed it will have been an experiment well worth making. But we are not legislating for all time, and if the hon. and gallant Member is right in his predictions we can reverse our policy. But there are some of us who will stake our reputations upon the fact that there will be a reduction. He will stake his reputation the other way. We have to see how things work.

Mr. MACQUISTEN

That is gambling.

Mr. FOOT

Let hon. Members watch what is happening in their neighbourhoods and see how often speed is a factor in what happens. We cannot accept what the man involved in an accident says about his speed. It has become a matter for derision in the courts that a man always under-estimates the speed at which he is travelling. No county court judge accepts the statements as to speed made by the two parties in a motoring case. I have had some experience of these cases. Everyone knows that the plaintiff in a motor car accident case puts the speed of the car too high and the defendant puts it too low. The difficulty of arriving at the true speed at which a car was travelling is a matter of derisive comment by every county court judge.

I think this Measure has the approval of the country generally. There was criticism after it was introduced and on Second Reading, but, generally speaking, I think it has the approval of the country. It has the approval of the great pedestrian population. The hon. and gallant Member spoke of the danger of bitter-feeling arising between the police and the motorist. Has he thought of the other real danger—of a bitter feeling arising between the pedestrian and the motorist? Take the case of a man who has had brought upon his family the highest calamity which can befall it, through the carelessness of a motorist. I sometimes wonder that in those circumstances the people of this country have taken things as gently as they have done. If it had not been that people generally have now become motorists, through riding in char-a-bancs, there would have been something like a serious social outcry, a very bitter outcry, on the part of those who belong to families which have suffered these losses. Let us avoid that bitterness between the motorist and the pedestrian. Let us give this Measure a fair trial, over not too long a period, but a reasonable period.

Let hon. Members watch what is happening in their own areas and see whether the reduced speed does not save a few lives during the week, and also save a few people from being maimed. If the prophecies upon which the Minister has relied in introducing his proposals are falsified I think he will be the first to acknowledge the fact, and the hon. and gallant Member will be able to come to this House and say, "I told you so!" If this method fails then we must find some other way, because I suppose we are all agreed that the present losses cannot be tolerated. All the advantages of transport are not worth the loss. We have been able to conquer the air and we live in a generation which is, I suppose, the most wonderful generation in history as regards the application of science to industry, but the advantages of transport which we enjoy, if put on one side of the scale, do not compensate for the misery, the wretchedness and the suffering which have arisen from the deaths and maimings that go on from day to day and will go on to-morrow, and the day after to-morrow, and the day after that, and every day while our Debates are taking place. Some means must be found to deal with the situation. I think this is an honest experiment. Naturally we are divided upon it. It is not a popular thing for any Minister to do, but he has brought in this Measure in pursuance of his desire to secure an improvement, and I think he is entitled to support against this Amendment. If he is wrong let it be shown by experience.

In one further word I would like to express my complete agreement with the hon. and gallant Member about the responsibility that rests upon those who have to administer the law in the courts. Even in what may seem to the man in the street to be the most glaring cases one cannot in these days get a manslaughter verdict. The police do not prefer a charge of manslaughter unless they think the case is very clear. They are influenced by what is happening in the courts. Any lawyer will say that there is extreme difficulty in getting a conviction, even in circumstances which would ordinarily point to manslaughter. Juries are very reluctant to convict, because of the hardship that a conviction involves. In many cases magistrates will not impose the penalty that ought to be imposed, because they do not like to sentence a man to unemployment. I hope that what has been said to-night will show that it is the opinion of this House that a responsibility rests upon all who have to administer the law in the courts, making them realise that while being lenient to a man they may be unjust to the community. The man who is left with his licence and his car when he has shown himself indifferent to the rules that must be established if our roads are to be safe is left with the possibility of maiming other people who are entitled to exercise their liberty. I ask the House to support the Minister in an unpopular step but in a step which, I think, is essential if we are to get rid of this scandal of allowing, day after day, a great number of our fellow sub- jects to have these cruel wrongs inflicted upon them.

9.54 p.m.

Mr. J. REID

I have no liking for this particular Clause, but, nevertheless, I am not going to support the Amendment. It is quite clear that any plan put forward can be riddled in argument. I have not yet heard of a single plan that cannot be shown to be unlikely to succeed. On the other hand, something has got to be done. The public will not tolerate the continuance of the present situation, and rightly so, and therefore I say that if the Minister comes forward, with the authority of the Government, and says that his Department thinks that this is the best plan, though I may not altogether agree, I say, "Let this plan have a chance, let it have a run for a year or two years." If it turns out to do some good I am sure that even those who are most strongly in favour of this Amendment will be glad that they were defeated to-night. If, on the other hand, it turns out not to be any good, then I am certain that the Minister will have sufficient courage to come forward next year and say: "I tried this because I thought it was the best. It has not worked, and we have to do something else." It is on that basis I think the Bill should go through in its present form.

I do not think that this experiment by itself will succeed. More is necessary. Two more things are necessary, at least. One is the enforcement not only of the speed limit but of the existing law in regard to dangerous driving. The second is that pedestrians must learn that they also have their duties as road users. Until these things are done I feel certain that this experiment will prove to be abortive, but if the speed limit gets a fair trial on the lines I have suggested and if pedestrians also have to suffer inconvenience, just as the motorists have, in the common interests of safety, I think there is a very fair chance of very considerable results being achieved within a comparatively short space of time.

The real crux of all these plans is not drawing out an ideal plan, but how you are going to enforce it? It is there that I have the most doubt about the present proposals. I think we are all agreed, even the hon. and gallant Member for Clitheroe (Sir W. Brass), will agree, that if this Bill can be enforced it is well worth a trial. Perhaps some hon. Members may not agree with that view, but I think the great bulk of the House will. The question is, can it be enforced? In my view it cannot be enforced by traps, and for this reason that the trap will not work unless you have a comparatively short piece of road and comparatively little traffic on it. One always found in the old days that traps were put in the safest possible places. What we want to do is to trap the man who is going along twisty roads, among a lot of traffic, at over 30 miles an hour. That can only be done by mobile police. I think that the crux of the whole question is whether the Minister has funds and experienced people and can appoint large corps of traffic police who will travel in speedy vehicles, preferably in plain clothes.

One has only to go about in London or any other city to see at a glance the man who is the dangerous driver. It is true that very often juries will not convict in the case of an accident, and the reason is that very often the piece of driving which causes the accident is not the really dangerous piece of driving. The really dangerous driver does not always happen to cause an accident on the occasion when he is observed. What we want is not necessarily to charge the man who has been involved in an accident. Far better let that go for the moment and charge the man who has been observed in an act of dangerous driving, whether he has caused an accident or not. If that is going to be done it is essential that you shall have policemen who are primarily motorists and only secondarily policemen. It is essential not that you shall get a policeman and give him a few weeks training in motoring and then turn him on to the roads as a traffic policeman, but that you shall get a motorist, put him through a few weeks training as a policeman and then put him on to the roads as a mobile traffic policeman and as a specialist in traffic. If you can enlist such a corps, and it should be a national corps, of policemen, who are really experienced and in whom the public will have confidence, and if you put them in plain clothes, and in fast cars, you will get results.

You have only to go a couple of miles along any street in London and you will see the dangerous driver, generally driving a secondhand American car. These people go in and out among traffic. Sometimes they have to go slow, but on the least provocation, because they have good acceleration, they are up to 45 miles an hour before you know where you are. That speed may only last 50 yards before they have to slow down, but it is that short spurt which is dangerous in nine cases out of 10. It is then that we observe the cutting in by the driver who trusts that the other man will put on his brake and that he will not need to do so. If that type of man could learn by experience that the car behind him may be a police car, although he does not know it, and if he is caught once or twice and fined stiffly he will either stop it or his licence can be taken away. It is that type of enforcement that we need. Sometimes you will get him for dangerous driving and sometimes for exceeding the speed limit in a place where he ought not to do it.

I hope that this speed limit will only be enforced in cases where to exceed 30 miles an hour is dangerous. If you enforce it in the safest piece of road you will bring the speed limit into disrepute. If you make a charge of dangerous driving when you know that the man has done something which is dangerous, the public will support you and you will achieve good results, but it obviously needs very careful and tactful handling. You have to have the right type of enforcement and the right man to enforce it. Given those two things and given also that the pedestrians should learn that they have their duties, then the Bill, with this Clause, will turn out to be an exceedingly good Measure.

10.1 p.m.

Mrs. TATE

It is rather startling that the hon. Member for Stirling and Falkirk (Mr. J. Reid) has just made a speech in support of the Clause which is far better than any speech I can hope to make against it, because almost every one of his arguments has gone to prove that 30 miles an hour speed limit is not what is wanted to ensure safety on our roads. The hon. Member for Bodmin (Mr. Isaac Foot) also made a speech of exactly the same type. As we all know, the hon. Member for Bodmin always believes in repressive legislation. Therefore, it is not surprising to find him supporting this Bill, which is seeking to deal with a modern problem in a perfectly obsolete manner. Not only do I think that we are dealing with a modern problem by obsolete methods, but I think that we are doing something that is extraordinarily dangerous. We have always been considered a law-abiding people, but nothing has been more certainly proved in this world than this, that if you pass into law legislation which the bulk of the people have no regard for, you are going to cease to have a law-abiding people. That has been proved in the United States of America, and I venture to think that it is now going to be proved here by two Bills that have been before the House this week.

The hon. Member for Bodmin said that he hoped that dangerous driving would be noticed and would be punished by the magistrates. That is exactly what will not be done when we pass this Clause into law, because to many magistrates dangerous driving is fast driving, and they have no other idea of dangerous driving. The hon. Member for Oxford University (Sir C. Oman) very clearly illustrated the fact that in his opinion speed in itself was dangerous, but the experienced motorist knows that it is not speed in itself that is dangerous but it is speed in the hands of the wrong person, in the wrong type of car, in the wrong place and in the wrong circumstances. That is not going to be dealt with by the loose, slipshod, lazy method of putting on a speed limit of 30 miles an hour for vast areas of this country, which are extraordinarily badly defined and which will with great difficulty be understood by the general public.

The hon. Member for Bodmin and the hon. Member for Stirling and Falkirk have said that this should be put forward as an experiment. Personally I consider the toll of the roads far too serious a problem to be played with by experiment. We ought to have brought forward legislation that would do some good instead of slipshod and stupid methods which have been tried before and found perfectly futile. One of the things that has made the roads dangerous is not mere speed, but the mixing up of all sorts and kinds of vehicles on roads which were never built to carry them. The extraordinary thing is that it has been perfectly brought out in the report on fatal accidents that it is not, the private motorist, the driver of the light car, who causes the vast proportion of accidents. The accidents are heavier, not on the day when there is the largest number of private motorists on the road. Sunday, when there are more light cars on the road than on any other day, is the day on which the number of accidents is less. What causes accidents is heavy congestion, and the mixture of heavy vehicles that ought never to have been put on the reads; bicycles, driven very often without the proper kind of light or when too many of them are ridden abreast; and the putting into the hands of men who are not qualified to drive them cars capable of very high speed.

The Minister has at present every power that he can require for putting on a speed limit in areas where it has been proved that a limit would be of benefit, and he has not used that power. We have a right to demand that large sums of money should have been spent on making our roads safer. That could have been done if we had in every place insisted on large and adequate footpaths, on special tracks for cyclists, and on preventing the wrong type of man having a car which is capable of high speed. That is what we want. We want to keep off the roads the dangerous driver. The hon. Member for Falkirk also said that what he believed would lead to safety would be a large force of experienced motor police. Every motorist will bear out that statement. But there is nothing in Clause 1 to ensure that we are to have that, not a word. That is what we want. Everyone of us knows that in the courts at the present time you cannot get sufficient conviction for dangerous driving unless there has been an accident. Why? Because you have not got the right type of police dealing with motoring cases, or the type of magistrates judging them who really understand what are the problems of the motorist.

I think it is a tragedy that the House of Commons should sit in this year of Grace 1934 and pass a piece of legislation that is absolutely obsolete, that will never deal with the problem with which it ought to deal. No one is keener on speed limits being imposed in certain places than I am, but I would never impose a 30 miles an hour limit in dangerous places. That speed is far too high. We are passing a Bill which is futile and stupid, and a Bill which is not going to lead to safety. The hon. Member for Bodmin says, "Make the experiment, and if it fails do something else." What an hon. Member with the type of mind of the hon. Member for Bodmin would do he fails to say, unless it is to have a speed limit of 10 miles an hour or to abolish motor cars altogether. One good thing is coming out of this Bill, and that is that it will make every sane person take to the air.

10.10 p.m.

Mr. RADFORD

I am not a great user of the roads, but during 25 years' experience as a motorist I have found that accidents are not due so much to cars going at over 30 miles an hour on reasonably wide roads as to motorists cutting in and cutting across corners and taking corners too fast. All those offences are offences against the present motoring law. As an hon. Friend said, with the use of additional mobile police in plain clothes and with more active prosecutions, those offences could be cut down. There is one effect that the 30 miles an hour limit in the so-called built-up areas will have, and it has not been much considered by the House. I do not do as much motoring as my hon. Friend the Member for Clitheroe (Sir W. Brass). The road I am most familiar with is one in the Manchester area, where I live, 14 miles out. I will take that as an example to show that this 30-miles limit in the built-up areas may do as much harm as good. If one goes out from Manchester on the road that I traverse the first six or eight miles constitute a genuinely built-up area, and no one would contemplate going more than 30 miles an hour at any point. Twenty miles an hour would be quite fast enough.

My hon. Friend the Member for Macclesfield (Mr. Remer) happens to be beside me. The road I speak of is the road to Macclesfield. One passes through a village known as Cheadle, and then one travels along a stretch of wide safe highway, the main highway to the South. It is as safe a highway for motoring as it is possible to conceive. It is not one of the new arterial roads; it is the old main road to the South. On one side there is a wide footpath and on the other side a wide grass verge. There are no houses along the road, but there is street lighting along it, and that therefore makes it a built-up area. The whole of the way out for 14 miles to where I live constitutes a built-up area. At a point between Wilmslow and Macclesfield the street lighting ends. From there, on the main highway between those two old towns, the road is unlit. There will be no speed limit on this part, which is an infinitely more dangerous part of the road.

It is a road which makes a nice circular tour for motorists on summer evenings. I can assure the House that even a really cautious motorist, one who would be dear to the heart of the hon. Member for Bodmin (Mr. Isaac Foot), would drive faster on the so-called built-up area than he would on that stretch of road from Wilmslow to Macclesfield, which is without any speed limit. There it is a much narrower road and a winding road. There are farm labourers' cottages here and there, and there are farms opening on to the road, and it is a road where motorists with any regard for decency would drive slowly and with caution. But what will happen under Clause 1? The motorists will come out on summer evenings and at the weekends. They will be compelled to keep down to a maximum speed of 30 miles an hour through the safe broad highway, and they will at last come to the point where they will say, "Oh, now we are clear of the street lighting." Then, freed from the restraint which they have suffered, they will probably let themselves go, on a road which is infinitely less fit for fast motoring than the road where their speed was definitely limited to 30 miles an hour.

I was astounded to hear the statistics quoted by the hon. and gallant Member for Clitheroe relative to the speed at which accidents have happened. It seems that most of them took place at 10 miles an hour. Those motor cars must have been run into from the back, because they were going so slowly. I am sure that the Minister is anxious to do anything that lies in his power to reduce accidents, but 30 miles an hour in built-up areas will have to be subjected to so many exceptions at the request of individual localities as to cause tremendous confusion. I would like to ask the Minister whether I am right in assuming that it is under Section 46 of the Road Traffic Act, 1930, that, with his permission, localities can secure special speed limits for their areas?

Mr. STANLEY

indicated assent.

Mr. RADFORD

If that is so, has he not already got the necessary powers in his hands, upon application by county councils, county boroughs or cities who know their own local requirements? Surely, with the powers that already exist under the Road Traffic Act, 1930, the whole country could be dealt with seriatim; each area could make its request to the Minister, and he, through his officials, could investigate the requests. All that can already be done under the provisions of the 1930 Act.

10.17 p.m.

Mr. STANLEY

In replying to the discussion on the one really controversial point in the Bill, I would ask hon. Members to remember that Clause 1 is not the whole of the Bill, and that even those who take the strongest objection to Clause 1 find in the rest of the Bill a good deal that may help in this problem. I never expected for one moment that it would be possible to introduce a Measure of this kind without receiving a good deal of criticism. As I expected, that criticism has divided itself into two entirely distinct kinds. There is the kind which is made by a certain number of motorists, motoring organisations, and motoring papers, and which are based, quite frankly, on the feeling that nothing whatsoever ought to be done to inconvenience or in any way to hamper the motorists.

I do not know if hon. Members saw in one of the newspapers the other day a letter which was a supreme example, compressed into a very short space, of every fallacy that it is possible to use in opposition to this Clause. The first statement was that it was a well-known fact that the real danger to pedestrians was slow-moving traffic. That is like saying that the Australians cannot play slow bowling. Apparently, pedestrians are unable to cope with slow-moving traffic, and that what they appreciate, from the point of view of their own security, is the utmost speed. The next fallacy—one which I am sure no hon. Member would ever use—is that you must not do this because it is going to hamper the sale of motor cars. I am sure that no hon. Member who thought that this was a remedy for our terrible problem would be deterred by the effect that it would have on the manufacture and sale of motors. The fact is that although since the end of March the motoring public have known what to expect in this way, there has been no falling off in the enormous increase in the sale of cars. As the third fallacy, having said that it was for him to drive very fast, he went on to say that there were a very great number of drivers who ought not to be on the road at all. That one document, I think, contains all the fallacies of which the interested motorist could make use in attacking this Bill.

On the other hand, there is a different kind of criticism—the criticism of the motorist who quite sincerely wishes to see something done to solve this problem, and who is perfectly prepared to submit himself to a certain amount of inconvenience if he sees that it is going to lead to a reduction in the number of these accidents. Probably every Member of the House has received a copy of a paper circulated by a body called, I think, the Motor Legislation Committee, setting out its reasons against the Bill; and as I thought that the other document was the perfect example of the kind of criticism which one is entitled to ignore, so I thought that this was a good example of the kind of criticism which one has got to meet and to answer. I feel that every speech made in the House to-night against the Clause has been animated by that kind of critical sense, and not by a desire simply as motorists, which most of us are, to evade any restriction which may be inconvenient, but with a real doubt as to whether the result of this Clause is going to be for the benefit of road users, and a perfect readiness to accept whatever inconvenience it may entail if once they are assured that benefit will flow from it.

A great deal of play has been made with the fact that the Royal Commission on Transport decided against the proposal in this Clause. I notice, however, that no hon. Member who refers to that decision adds at the same time the additional fact that the chairman of the Royal Commission has altered his views, and made a statement in the Press the other day that he was in favour of a speed limit. Apart from that, I would point out to hon. Members that the decision of the Royal Commission was not taken on the ground that it would not be a good thing if motor cars could be made to go no more than 30 miles an hour in a built-up area. Their refusal of this particular remedy was based upon the practical difficulties of its enforcement, and I do not disguise for a minute that I feel that its enforcement is difficult, that the definition is difficult; but I feel that the difficulties are not insuperable, and I do not think we ought to allow difficulties of that kind to stand in the way of a proposal if we sincerely think that it is going to result in a reduction of the loss of life. Let me deal first of all, therefore, with the difficulties of practical enforcement.

Naturally, hon. Members who are opposed to this Clause exaggerate, as they are quite entitled to exaggerate, the area in which such difficulties are going to occur. My hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Clitheroe (Sir W. Brass), who moved the Amendment, referred to the 40,000 miles, I think it is, of built-up roads, and then he went on to detail the difficulties which may arise, as if those are difficulties applicable to the whole of that immense area. Of course they are not. The difficulties are all fringe difficulties. If you take the great area of London, as my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Wallasey (Lieut.-Colonel Moore-Brabazon) said, all through the middle nobody is in any doubt as to whether they are in a built-up area or not. There can be no question whatsoever of the motorist not knowing whether he is subject to the speed limit or whether he is not. My hon. and gallant Friend shakes his head even at that mild statement, but I would suggest that even he, when driving down Piccadilly, would not really have very much difficulty in realising that he was in an area where the speed was restricted by this Clause. The difficulties—and they are admitted difficulties—are fringe difficulties. One cannot ignore the fact that over great masses of these built-up areas no such difficulties will arise at all.

One argument put up against this to which I do not attach a very great deal of importance is a psychological one. It is said, first of all, that it will never be possible to enforce this, because it will irritate the motorist so much that he will deliberately disobey the law. I do not believe that some hon. Members who have spoken to-night on those lines are not representative of the 3,000,000 who have driving licences and presumably, therefore, at some time drive cars on the road. They are representative of a small class of owners of powerful, well-looked-after cars of great braking capacity, experienced drivers who have very much more opportunity of driving than the great majority and who are, therefore, prepared, and I think able, to take greater risks than the majority. If they tell me that the majority of these 3,000,000 people are really going to think it is an impossible hardship upon them that they must not drive more than 30 miles an hour in a built-up area, I would ask them to go down to any of the main arterial roads around London and drive the whole time at 35 miles an hour and see what a very large proportion of cars they will pass even at that speed. The idea that the type of driver who forms the great majority, the man who probably only takes his car out at the week-end, and then only for a short distance, is going to feel it an intolerable hardship to be restrained to 30 miles an hour in a built-up area, is based on their own experience and is not really representative of motorists on the whole.

Quite false, too, is any comparison of the speed limit introduced by this Clause and the late speed limit which my hon. and gallant Friend tried to enforce for so many years when he was at the Ministry of Transport. That was a general speed limit of 20 miles an hour all over the country, and I quite admit that there was not anyone who got into a car to go from one place to another who did not know when he started that he was going to break the law. But it is quite different now. Taking an ordinary journey, which is not always confined, as one might believe from listening to some hon. Members who have spoken, to industrial areas and the fringe of great cities but quite often cuts a line across country, an ordinary man who starts off on 100 miles North to South or East to West across England is going to be subjected to this limit of 30 miles an hour for only a small percentage of the miles that he is going to do. I cannot believe that there is anyone who really attaches so much importance to speed that he will set out on a journey of this kind feeling that, if there are out of the 100 miles five or 10 where he is asked to reduce his speed to 30 miles an hour, that is a hardship which he will be unable to bear. I do not think upon psychological grounds this argument really holds water.

Much more important are the considerations advanced by my hon. Friend the Member for Stirling and Falkirk (Mr. Reid) as to the way a provision of this kind is going to be enforced by the police. I was very glad to hear him say exactly the opposite of that said by my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Clitheroe. He hoped that the enforcement of the Clause by the police would depend in future as largely as possible, not upon traps, but upon the mobile police with a speedometer. I was surprised to hear my hon. and gallant Friend say he hoped it would be done by traps.

Sir W. BRASS

I did not say I hoped it would be done by traps. I said I thought the police cop was very dangerous because they run into the back of cars.

Mr. STANLEY

From what I gathered from my hon. and gallant Friend during the Committee stage, it would require a fast police car to run into His back. I think the general sense of the House will be in favour of the enforcement of this as far as possible, not by a trap, but by the mobile police. If you are to depend upon the trap, you must put the trap in a place which may well not be the real place where you want to check the speed limit. As far as the Metropolitan Police were concerned, I was able to give the Committee upstairs the assurance, which I can repeat now, that as far as possible they intend to use the mobile police instead of the trap as a means of reform. I agree very thoroughly with all that has been said about the possibilities of the mobile police. In their hands to a large extent is going to lie not only the success of the provisions of this Clause, but the success of a great many of the provisions which Parliament has passed for ensuring safety upon the road. I ventured, like a sort of Daniel in the lions' den, the other day at a meeting of chief constables to suggest that a motor policeman was not just a policeman who had a motor car, and that it was essential that the police should set such a standard of driving knowledge and skill upon the road, that the person who was checked by them should feel that he was being checked by men of rare experience and really superior knowledge.

The next difficulty of importance is that of definition and of knowing exactly what the limit of the speed area is to be. I have met with a goodly number of questions from my personal friends upon this matter. I find that a good deal of the opposition to this Clause is based upon a complete misunderstanding of its scope. There are very few people outside the House, and, it may be, not many inside this House, who have realised the extent of the exclusion and inclusion which under the machinery of this Clause it is possible to adopt. When people criticise this scheme, and say that it cannot work, they always end by saying, "How can you expect me to go 30 miles an hour down the Great West Road," and none of them know that there are powers under this Clause to exclude areas, and that the whole object of those powers is to exclude that kind of road. I generally find that when I am able to explain that fact to them a great deal of their dissatisfaction disappears. I think that that is the answer to my hon. Friend representing one of the divisions of Manchester. He quoted one particular example. Although I am not entirely unfamiliar with that neighbourhood, that particular road is not one which I know, but from the account which he gave of it, it is exactly the kind of road where I foresaw the difficulties might occur, and to meet them I inserted these particular provisions in the Bill.

I should like to take this opportunity of explaining to hon. Members my intentions with regard to inclusions and exclusions. It is not my intention to bring a speed limit into force and then allow local authorities, piecemeal, to suggest that this area should be taken out or that area brought in. I intend to circularise local authorities at the earliest possible moment and ask them to submit general schemes for their areas, and I have no intention of bringing the Clause into force until I have most of these general schemes before me so that I am able to ensure uniformity of inclusions and exclusions throughout the country and, above all, make certain that satisfactory arrangements are made for the guidance of motorists. I make this present to hon. Members who oppose the Clause. I feel that their criticism during the Committee stage was extremely valuable and, although it has not changed in the least my opinion as to the principle embodied in the Clause, they nevertheless put to me certain practical difficulties about its enforcement which since then I have endeavoured to meet.

It is not necessary for me to detain the House on the question of the principle underlying the Clause. We are told by many people that speed has nothing to do with accidents. Hon. Members have an experience of the roads in this country just as extensive as mine. On the question of speed they must have made up their minds one way or the other. I wonder whether there is any hon. Member who, putting aside any dialectic argument will say that speed has nothing to do with accidents, that there is no ratio between the speed of vehicles and the accidents that are caused. As a matter of fact, the best defence for the Clause I ever heard was made by the hon. and gallant Member for Wallasey last night. My hon. and gallant Friend has been very fierce but extremely courteous in his opposition. He is fortunate in having a simple philosophy of life. He divides everybody into two classes, the people who agree with him and those who do not; and he calls one modern and the other reactionary.

Last night we were discussing a system of pedestrian crossings in London, and I was reproached by my hon. and gallant Friend for not having been quick enough in introducing them and for not having introduced them in sufficient numbers. He went on to say that he attached the utmost importance to having these pedestrian crossings all over London, and his reason was that they would check speed. Why does the hon. and gallant Member want to check speed in London if it is not because he knows that in built-up areas speed is, and must be, a factor in accidents? I am not going to labour that point. We are not dealing with some mechanical subject or some scientific or economic doctrine; we are dealing with things which people can see for themselves every day in the week. I ask hon. Members is there anyone who in his heart of hearts does not know that if you can enforce the provisions of this Clause, if I was imbued with some super human power, so that by a wave of the wand I could ensure that within the areas we have defined it would be impossible for any car to exceed 30 miles an hour—is there anyone in this House who would deny that, in those circum- stances, the roads in the built-up areas would be safer and the fatal accidents which occur upon them would be fewer? My hon. Friend made one very profound remark. He said there is not one single remedy to deal with this problem of fatal accidents that cannot be criticised by somebody and shown by dialectics to be impossible of success. Even in regard to the question of the greater enforcement of the existing law, hon. Members join in their desire to see the dangerous, careless driver more rigorously prosecuted and more severely punished.

Mrs. TATE

Hear, hear.

Mr. STANLEY

Quite so, and it is of course only a coincidence that if ever I do propose anything which has the effect of making more efficient the enforcement of those provisions which are already on the Statute Book it meets with immediate opposition from the hon. Lady and other hon. Members. [HON. MEMBERS: "No."] It is possible to make a dialectical case against any proposals of this kind. I believe however that if we can enforce it—and I believe we can enforce it—it will result in a substantial reduction in the number of accidents upon the roads. I agree that it is experimental in its nature as it must be. It is not returning to the past, because never in the past has there been a speed limit of 30 miles an hour and never in the past has there been a speed limit confined to built-up areas. I have recognised its experimental nature by providing that it will come to an end at a certain period and that the Minister of Transport of the day will have to justify to the House its continuance, not upon arguments which can be turned one way or the other, but upon the actual results achieved. It is in the confident belief that when that time comes, the Minister of Transport, whoever he may be, who stands at this Box will have behind him solid facts to justify the continuance of the system that I ask the House now for its initiation.

10.43 p.m.

Mr. TURTON

The Minister in the course of his speech made a declaration—[HON. MEMBERS: "Divide"]—which is of importance. He said he would not bring Clause 1 into force until he had schemes from all local authorities.

Mr. STANLEY

No, I thought I had made that clear. I said in Committee that I could not commit myself to having schemes from all local authorities, because one minor local authority by refusing or delaying to send in a scheme might hold up the whole thing. What I said was that until I had sufficient to ensure uniformity I should not bring the Clause into force.

Mr. TURTON

It is because there is going to be this delay that I think the (House ought to reconsider the definition of a built-up area in the Bill. According to the present definition a built-up area is a lit-up area, and that is a definition which will cover suburban areas but not rural districts. The suggestion which I want the Minister to consider is that he should take out Sub-section (1, a) containing this definition about lighting. Throughout the rural districts there is grave dissatisfaction with this definition. I have recently been through Durham and Yorkshire. I have covered 800 miles, and nearly every village I went through in Durham had street lamps, because it had a colliery, and nearly every village I went through in Yorkshire had no street lamps, because there was no industry there. If this definition is to carry weight at all, it will mean that those villages with street amps will be built-up areas and those without street lamps will not be built-up

areas. It is a matter of considerable urgency, and the Minister admitted that he had toyed with the idea of defining built-up areas by the number of buildings alongside the road. The reason why he dismissed that idea is, he admitted on Second Reading, because it would mean that you would have to put up signposts-throughout the rural districts showing where the speed limit began and ended, but that is the very thing that he is doing by the new Amendment which he has introduced. Surely, therefore, it would be far better to get a new definition of a built-up area. I am not going to argue against the hon. and gallant Member for Wallasey (Lieut.-Colonel Moore-Brabazon), who believes that speed does not cause accidents, but last year, under the present regulations, 1,100 children under 15 were called, and of those, 50O were killed by running into the roadway. No enforcement of dangerous driving regulations would ever prevent those children being killed, but you would get it by a limitation of speed in built-up areas; and, therefore, I think this Clause should remain in the Bill.

Question put, "That the words proposed to be left out, to 'a.m.' in line 11, stand part of the Bill."

The House divided: Ayes, 187: Noes, 30.

Division No. 311.] AYES. [10.48 p.m.
Acland-Troyte, Lieut.-Colonel Croom-Johnson, R. P. Guest, Capt. Rt. Hon. F. E.
Adams, D. M. (Poplar, South) Crossley, A. C. Gunston, Captain D. W.
Agnew, Lieut.-Com. P. G. Cruddas, Lieut.-Colonel Bernard Guy, J. C. Morrison
Albery, Irving James Daggar, George Hall, George H. (Merthyr Tydvil)
Allen, William (Stoke-on-Trent) Davies, Edward C. (Montgomery) Hamilton, Sir R. W. (Orkney & Zetl'nd)
Anstruther-Gray, W. J. Davies, Maj. Geo. F. (Somerset, Yeovil) Headlam, Lieut.-Col. Cuthbert M.
Apsley, Lord Denman, Hon. R. D. Hellgers, Captain F. F. A.
Atholl, Duchess of Dickie, John P. Hepworth, Joseph
Attlee, Clement Richard Dobbie, William Herbert, Major J. A. (Monmouth)
Barrie, Sir Charles Coupar Drewe, Cedric Holdsworth, Herbert
Batey, Joseph Drummond-Wolff, H. M. C. Hope, Capt. Hon. A. O. J. (Aston)
Beaumont, Hon. R. E. B. (Portsm'th, C) Edmondson, Major Sir James Horsbrugh, Florence
Bernays, Robert Edwards, Charles Hudson, Capt. A. U. M. (Hackney, N.)
Boulton, W. W. Ellis, Sir R. Geoffrey Hunter, Dr. Joseph (Dumfries)
Bowyer, Capt. Sir George E. W. Elliston, Captain George Sampson James, Wing.-Com. A. W. H.
Boyce, H. Les[...]e Evans, David Owen (Cardigan) Janner, Barnett
Boyd-Carpenter, Sir Archibald Foot, Dingle (Dundee) Jenkins, Sir William
Brown, Ernest (Leith) Foot, Isaac (Cornwall, Bodmin) Jones, Sir G. W. H. (Stoke New'gton)
Buchan-Hepburn, P. G. T. Fraser, Captain Sir Ian Ker, J. Campbell
Burgin, Dr. Edward Leslie Fremantle, Sir Francis Kimball, Lawrence
Cadogan, Hon. Edward Fuller, Captain A. G. Knight, Holford
Cazalet, Thelma (Islington, E.) Ganzoni, Sir John Law Sir Alfred
Chapman, Col. R.(Houghton-le-Spring) Gardner, Benjamin Walter Law, Richard K. (Hull, S. W.)
Cobb, Sir Cyril George, Major G. Lloyd (Pembroke) Lawson, John James
Cocks, Frederick Seymour George, Megan A. Lloyd (Anglesea) Leech, Dr. J. W.
Colfox, Major William Philip Gilmour, Lt.-Col. Rt. Hon. Sir John Leighton, Major B. E. P.
Colville, Lieut.-Colonel J. Goff, Sir Park Little, Graham-, Sir Ernest
Cook, Thomas A. Goldie, Noel B. Llewellyn-Jones, Frederick
Cooks, Douglas Grattan-Doyle, Sir Nicholas Logan, David Gilbert
Copeland, Ida Grenfell, David Rees (Glamorgan) Lunn, William
Cripps, Sir Stafford Grimths, T. (Monmouth, Pontypool) Mabane, William
Croft, Brigadier-General Sir H. Groves, Thomas E. MacAndraw, Lt-Col. C. G. (Partick)
MacAndrew, Capt. J. O. (Ayr) Raikes, Henry V. A. M. Somervell, Sir Donald
McCorquodale, M. S. Ramsay, Alexander (W. Bromwich) Spens, William Patrick
McEntee, Valentine L. Ramsay, T. B. W. (Western Isles) Stanley, Rt. Hon. Lord (Fylde)
McKie, John Hamilton Ramsbotham, Herwald Stanley, Hon. O. F. G. (Westmorland)
McLean, Major Sir Alan Ramsden, Sir Eugene Stevenson, James
Macmillan, Maurice Harold Rankin, Robert Stones, James
Magnay, Thomas Rathbone, Eleanor Strauss, Edward A.
Mallalieu, Edward Lancelot Rea, Walter Russell Sugden, Sir Wilfrid Hart
Mander, Geoffrey le M. Reed, Arthur C. (Exeter) Sutcliffe, Harold
Margesson, Capt. Rt. Hon. H. D. R. Reid, Capt. A. Cunningham- Thomas, James P. L. (Hereford)
Mayhew, Lieut.-Colonel John Field, David D. (County Down) Thomson, Sir Frederick Charles
Mills, Major J. D. (New Forest) Reid, James S. C. (Stirling) Tinker, John Joseph
Milne, Charles Reid, William Allan (Derby) Touche, Gordon Cosmo
Milner, Major James Rickards, George William Turton, Robert Hugh
Mitchell, Harold P.(Br'tt'd & Chisw'k) Roberts, Aled (Wrexham) Wallace, John (Dunfermline)
Morgan, Robert H. Roberts, Sir Samuel (Ecclesall) Ward, Lt.-Col. Sir A. L. (Hull)
Morris-Jones, Dr. J. H. (Denbigh) Rosbotham, Sir Thomas Ward, Irene Mary Bewick (Wallsend)
Nation, Brigadier-General J. J. H. Ross Taylor, Walter (Woodbridge) Warrender, Sir Victor A. G.
Nicholson, Godfrey (Morpeth) Rothschild, James A. de White, Henry Graham
Nicholson, Rt. Hn. W. G. (Petersf'ld) Runge, Norah Cecil Whyte, Jardine Bell
O'Connor, Terence James Russell, Alexander West (Tynemouth) Williams, Edward John (Ogmore)
Oman, Sir Charles William C. Russell, Hamer Field (Sheffield, B'tside) Williams, Thomas (York. Don Valley)
O'Neill, Rt. Hon. Sir Hugh Salter, Dr. Alfred Windsor-Clive, Lieut.-Colonel George
Palmer, Francis Noel Sandeman, Sir A. N. Stewart Wise, Alfred R.
Patrick, Colin M. Savery, Samuel Servington Womersley, Sir Walter
Pearson, William G. Selley, Harry R. Worthington, Dr. John V.
Peat, Charles U. Shaw, Helen B. (Lanark, Bothwell) Young, Rt. Hon. Sir Hilton (S'v'noaks)
Penny, Sir George Simmonds, Oliver Edwin
Peto, Geoffrey K.(W'verh'pt'n, Bliston) Skelton, Archibald Noel TELLERS FOR THE AYES.—
Pownall, Sir Assheton Smith, Bracewell (Dulwich) Mr. Blindell and Commander
Procter, Major Henry Adam Smith. Tom (Normanton) Southby.
Pybus, Sir Percy John Smithers, Sir Waldron
NOES.
Astbury, Lieut.-Com. Frederick Wolfe Hales, Harold K. Sanderson, Sir Frank Barnard
Balfour, George (Hampstead) Lees-Jones, John Somerville, Annesley A. (Windsor)
Bower, Commander Robert Tatton Llewellin, Major John J. Storey, Samuel
Broadbent, Colonel John Manningham-Buller, Lt.-Col. Sir M. Strickland, Captain W. F.
Brocklebank, C. E. R. Moore-Brabazon, Lieut.-Col. J. T. C. Summersby, Charles H.
Carver, Major William H. Moreing, Adrian C. Tate, Mavis Constance
Culverwell, Cyril Tom Nail-Cain, Hon. Ronald Taylor, Vice-Admiral E. A. (P'dd'gt'n, S.)
Dlxey, Arthur C. N. Rawson, Sir Cooper Wilson, Clyde T. (West Toxteth)
Gault, Lieut.-Col. A. Hamilton Remer, John R.
Gluckstein, Louis Halle Rutherford, John (Edmonton) TELLERS FOR THE NOES.—
Greene, William P. C Salmon, Sir Isldore Sir William Brass and Sir Gifford Fox.

Question put, and agreed to.

Amendments made: In page I, line 11, leave out "a.m. and twelve," and insert "in the morning and."

In line 16, leave out "at distances."—[Mr. Stanley.]

10.58 p.m.

Mr. STEVENSON

I beg to move, in page 2, line 4, at the end, to insert, and shall be liable on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding twenty pounds, and in the case of a second or subsequent conviction to a fine not exceeding fifty pounds. The object of the Amendment is to eliminate imprisonment as one of the penalties which may be enforced on a driver who breaks the speed limit. I want to make it clear at the outset that we are dealing here with the technical breach of the speed limit, and that the offence will still remain where the speed limit is broken in conjunction with dangerous or careless driving. I am asking the House to agree that where a person breaks the speed limit he should be convicted without being liable to the penalty of imprisonment. I can best explain to the House how these words affect this purpose by referring to the Act of 1930. Sub-section (2) of Clause 1 states that if a person should contravene this Section he shall be guilty of an offence under Section 10 of the Road Traffic Act of 1930. That Section deals with a breach of the speed limit of heavy motor vehicles, and it provides that a driver of such a vehicle shall be guilty of an offence under the Act. No penalty is specified in the Section with reference to a breach of that speed limit. We have therefore to turn to Section 113 of the 1930 Act, and we find a provision that where in a Section of the Act which creates an offence there is no specified penalty, the penalty for an offence under the Act shall be a fine not exceeding £20 for the first offence and a fine not exceeding £50, or imprisonment, for a second offence.

Therefore, unless we have a special penalty attached to this Clause, imprisonment may be imposed for a second offence. I would also remind the House that in addition to imprisonment there is a further penalty which may be inflicted by the court, which under Section 6 of the Road Traffic Act is empowered either to cancel or suspend a driving licence. Therefore, for the technical offence of breaking the speed limit, the penalty on a second conviction may be a fine not exceeding £50 or imprisonment, and the person convicted may have his licence suspended. I ask the House to consider for a moment the advisability of making imprisonment a penalty for this offence. For the technical offence of breaking a speed limit of 3C miles an hour, without furious driving or dangerous driving, imprisonment, I suggest, is a very unsuitable penalty. Let the House consider how easily the offence may be committed. We all know how difficult it is to judge the speed of a motor car to within about 10 miles an hour, particularly after one has been going along in the open country and drops down from a higher speed. People may say, "Look at the speedometer"; but I suppose most people have had the experience of finding that the speedometer is not working.

I think the very best reason for putting forward this Amendment is found in the words used by the Minister with reference to road signs. Some hon. Members said there must be signs on the roadway itself, or motorists would not see them, and others suggested that the signs should be at the side of the road, and in replying to them the Minister said, "It is going to be no defence for a motorist to say that he did not see a sign or that the sign was not there." Where a motorist may not see a sign, or where there may not be a sign, it is going a little too far to suggest that the motorist should stand a chance of being imprisoned. There is another reason in support of my Amendment, and a rather important one. In Scotland, in any case where imprisonment is a possible penalty for an offence any person who is charged with that offence must attend before the court. Hon. Members must imagine an Englishman spending a holiday in Scotland and being charged with this offence and his conviction—if he is convicted—being his second conviction. He must go to Scotland to attend the court; if he fails to do so he will be arrested and taken before the court. That will be a considerable inconvenience; and exactly the same inconvenience will be suffered by people in various parts of Scotland. A wage-earner may not only be liable to a fine but to a loss of several days pay, and I suggest that is far too harsh a penalty for anyone who is guilty of what may be a technical offence.

Mr. JOHN WALLACE

I beg to second the Amendment. After the full explanation given by my hon. Friend, I will content myself with formally seconding the Amendment.

11.5 p.m.

Mr. STANLEY

My hon. Friend has explained the matter so clearly and cogently that I should like to assure him that if I had not already told him that I was in favour of it, his speech would certainly have converted me. I think he is right when he says that it is an anachronism that, even as a dead letter, the possibility of the penalty of imprisonment for a breach of the speed law should remain. He has also shown that it is not entirely a dead letter, because it may have inconvenient repercussions in Scotland. It is obviously not right that that sort of offence should be punished with imprisonment, and I am certainly glad to accept the principle of the Amendment. Some alteration will have to be made in the Amendment, because it is not right that the possible penalty of imprisonment should be abolished in the case of a private motor ear while it still remains in the original Act of 1930 in respect of other motor vehicles. We shall have to make necessary changes in the form of words to make certain that the drivers of commercial vehicles are also relieved from the possibility of imprisonment. With that reservation, I am prepared to accept the Amendment.

Amendment agreed to.

11.8 p.m.

Sir W. BRASS

I beg to move, in page 2, line 4, at the end, to insert: Provided that no person shall be convicted of an offence of exceeding the limits of speed to be observed under this section on the uncorroborated evidence of one person alone as to the alleged rate of speed. The corroborative evidence of a speedometer shall not be deemed to be sufficient unless witnessed by more than one person at the time of the alleged offence. I think the Amendment speaks for itself. It is necessary if a speedometer is to be used, as was suggested by the Minister, for enforcing the speed limit two people should be in the vehicle during the time that the speedometer is being used for that purpose. It is dangerous that a single person, looking at a speedometer a motor bicycle, for instance, should be expected to give evidence by himself, simply with the corroboration of the speedometer, and should get a conviction in that way. There was a case quite recently where a motor bicycle was pursuing a car, with the object of finding out at what speed the vehicle was travelling. The car stopped rather suddenly, and the policeman who was driving the motor bicycle, looking at the speedometer to see how fast the car was going and not looking where he was going, ran into the back of the car which he was pursuing. That is one reason why I think it necessary to have two people present on such an occasion. Apart from that, it is necessary to have the corroborative evidence of two individuals to say at what speed the vehicle was going. It is extremely difficult if one is behind another car to know how fast the care in front is travelling. I have often been in my car and as I have approached another car from the back I have come to the conclusion that it was going a good deal faster than it really was going. The reason was that I did not notice that I was approaching at perhaps five or 10 miles an hour faster speed. It is quite easy to do that without noticing it from behind.

It really is necessary that we should have the corroborative evidence of two people on such occasions. I feel sure that the Minister will give careful consideration to this point. In the original Act, Section 10, Sub-section (3), the evidence of one witness is not enough as to the rate of speed. But it says nothing about the speedometer. Speedometer corroboration, I believe, has been taken in court as evidence. I want to see corroborative evidence available as well as speedometer evidence.

11.11 p.m.

Sir G. FOX

I beg to second the Amendment.

I have seen recently in one of the newspapers a statement that the Ministry of Transport is testing a new form of speed trap. Two invisible beams are thrown across the road in the way that these things are used for checking races. When the motor breaks the first beam it automatically sets mechanism in motion, and if the car passes over the second beam too quickly it is automatically recorded in a chart and a concealed camera takes a picture of the car and its number. If any such form of machine is used it is necessary that there should be two witnesses watching to see that the motor car which breaks the first and second rays is the motor car in question, and then there will be no doubt about getting the right car when the police call in the evening to collect the recording machine.

11.12 p.m.

Mr. STANLEY

The Amendment resolves itself into two parts. One requires corroborative evidence and the second says that the speedometer shall not be taken as corroborative evidence. With regard to the first part, I am advised that the position is already covered, and that this Clause has to be read in conjunction with the Sub-section to which my hon. and gallant Friend has referred, Section 10, Sub-section (3). I am not wholly happy on the point, and I am certainly not quite happy as to the position under any speed limit which is imposed under Section 46 of the 1930 Act. It is obviously desirable that all speed limits under whatever Act should be subject to the same procedure, and I intend to look at the position again before another place.

With regard to the second point, it has been held by the courts that a speedometer can be taken as corroborative evidence and I am not prepared to upset that decision. The example which the hon. Member used, is, I regret to say, a very strong argument against the adoption of his Amendment. Provided that the Clause stands, without his Amendment, if you have a police car, with one man driving and another man watching the speedometer, the driver keeps his eyes on the road because the evidence of the man who is with him will be enough. If this Amendment were passed you might have two men in the car but both watching the speedometer and neither of them keeping his eyes on the road. I am con- vinced that the corroboration of the speedometer is at any rate sufficient to establish a prima facie case, and I do not think the motorist is likely to suffer any injustice from it.

Sir W. BRASS

I was thinking of the factor of safety. Could not the Minister devise a way by which where two police officers were concerned, one could watch the speedometer while the other was driving the car? I agree that my Amendment might, and probably would, mean that both would be watching the speedometer and neither watching the road. I wanted to point out the danger of an officer, driving a car alone, or driving a motor-bicycle, simply watching his speedometer and running into the hack of the other car. If the Minister could undertake that two people should be there, although one was driving, the other could be watching the speedometer.

Mr. STANLEY

I cannot give the hon. and gallant Gentleman an undertaking, but I will look into the point. I can give the additional information that, as far as London is concerned, it is extremely unlikely that the sort of thing the hon. and gallant Gentleman has in mind will ever occur, that is, a single person both watching the speedometer and driving.

Sir W. BRASS

In view of the Minister's explanation, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Amendments made:

In page 2, line 23, after "after," insert "giving."

In line 24, leave out "thereof," and insert "of their intention to make an order under this sub-section."

In line 29, after the first "after," insert "giving."

Leave out "thereof," and insert "of their intention to make an order under this sub-section."—[Mr. Stanley.]

In page 3, line 35, at tike end, insert: Provided that on the expiration of this section sub-section (2) of section thirty-eight of the Interpretation Act, 1889, shall apply as if this section had been repealed by another enactment taking effect at the time of the expiration thereof."—[Lieut.-Colonel Headlam.]