HC Deb 24 April 1953 vol 514 cc1638-42

11.45 a.m.

Colonel J. H. Harrison

I beg to move, in page 2, to leave out line 45, and to insert: October, nineteen hundred and fifty-four. When drafting a Bill, it is always difficult to know the right date to insert for its coming into force. I originally inserted 1st January, 1955. During the Committee stage my hon. Friend the Member for Huntingdon (Mr. Renton) said that a date in the middle of winter was a bad one and suggested that we should make it 1st October, 1954, so that during the summer people could make the necessary adjustments to their vehicles and bicycles to conform with the Bill.

I did not like to give a definite assurance without consulting the trade and the Minister, who has to make the regulations. Also, it is only after the regulations have been made that some of the necessary reflectors can be manufactured and fitted to the vehicles, and there was the question of allowing sufficient time. However, everyone is agreed that the date which is now proposed will give sufficient time.

We have done our utmost to ensure that no great expenditure will have to be incurred by citizens. I am informed that the cost to cyclists and vehicle owners will be anything from about 1s. 6d. to 15s. We hope that we shall have their willing co-operation during the holiday months in fitting their bicycles and vehicles to make them conform with the regulations.

Mr. Renton

I beg to second the Amendment.

Mr. G. Wilson

I do not know whether I have fully appreciated the point of the Amendment. It seems to me that it brings the whole of Clause 1 into earlier operation, and if that is so, I should like to make a few general observations about the Clause as it applies to public service vehicles.

Hitherto, in my many speeches in this House on transport matters of one sort or another, I have always avoided reference to public service vehicles, because I was never sure whether I had an interest in such vehicles which I ought to declare. As is very well known, I was for 19 years a solicitor in the legal department of the Great Western Railway and for one year after that with British Railways before I resigned for political reasons. There is no doubt that the old Great Western Railway had considerable interests in public service vehicles, originally as operators and later by having financial control of or interests in operations of that sort.

Since I resigned I have had no connection at all with the railway interests, but I maintained my practising certificate as a solicitor, and I have a few clients— not as many as my bank manager would like—some of whom, not unnaturally, have some interest in transport and some have an interest in public service vehicles. My observations this morning are derived not from anything that I have received from any instructions from clients, but just from common sense and the general knowledge of transport matters which comes to me in connection with the great interest that I have taken in these matters as honorary secretary of the Conservative Party Transport Committee.

In the matter of rear lighting, the public service vehicle is in a somewhat different position from that of the lorry or even the private car. The interior of the public service vehicle is lit and there is usually a rear window which makes the light clearly visible to anyone following. What is more, in many cases there is an illuminated notice board giving the name of coach or the destination of the bus. Also, some types of public service vehicle, particularly in London, have various schemes of lighting of their own. I am not quite sure why, but some of them appear to be their own inventions and to have no relation to the law. It is well known that omnibuses in London have an amber light at the rear which indicates when the vehicle is about to stop.

Everyone deplores the appalling number of accidents on the roads and also the point brought out by my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Eye (Colonel J. H. Harrison) during the Committee stage, that accidents arising from vehicles being run into from the rear are four times as numerous at night as they are by day, but I am not sure that investigations would not show that accidents of that sort do not arise with public service vehicles.

I hope that when the regulations are drawn up the special case of the public service vehicle will be borne in mind and that the obligation to place two reflectors at the rear of the vehicle—the same point will arise on the next Clause with regard to the provision for two lights—will not be immediately enforced for public service vehicles, because it will entail a great deal of expense.

Mr. Speaker

I think the hon. Member is going beyond what the Amendment represents. What he is saying now is of a more general character and might be reserved for the Third Reading of the Bill, when he will have more scope than on the narrow ground of this Amendment.

Mr. Wilson

I bow to your Ruling, Mr. Speaker, but I understood that this Amendment meant that Clause 1 comes into operation at an earlier date than mentioned in the Bill and provides that two reflectors shall be placed on a vehicle. 1 was hoping that some latitude would be allowed on this Clause if it is to come into force in 1954.

Mr. Speaker

The hon. Member's arguments ought to be directed to the Amendment, and the general matters on which he is making such an interesting speech could, I think, more conveniently for him be dealt with on Third Reading.

Mr. Wilson

I will leave that point. The operation of this Clause in 1954 does not arouse the objection of the interested parties I was mentioning so long as it does not apply to them forthwith.

Mr. Crouch

I am sorry that I cannot agree with the suggestion of my hon. Friend the Member for Truro (Mr. G. Wilson). I welcome the suggestion that the date when the Bill should come into operation shall be October, 1954, instead of January of the following year, because one of the main purposes of this Bill is to endeavour to give greater safety to those people using the roads. By bringing the date forward I feel quite sure that lives which would otherwise be lost would be saved, and I should like to thank my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Eye (Colonel J. H. Harrison) for bringing forward this Amendment in an endeavour to give greater security upon the roads in the winter of 1954–55.

Mr. H. Nicholls

My hon. Friend the Member for Truro (Mr. G. Wilson) will see the point he made is already covered by subsection (4), because power is given to the Minister to exempt any class of vehicle he thinks is already fulfilling the conditions that we have in mind. Subsection (4) does not interfere with the date of coming into operation. If my hon. Friend reads the Clause he will be satisfied that to start at an earlier date, as my hon. and gallant Friend is now suggesting, is a good thing and that the sooner we start the sooner will the benefits from this Bill be felt by all concerned.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Transport (Mr. Gurney Braithwaite)

I hold a sort of watching brief on a Private Members' day, but perhaps I may be permitted at this stage to intervene. I hope that the earlier date will meet with the approval of the House, and I would say to my hon. Friend the Member for Truro (Mr. G. Wilson), who gave us an account of how public vehicles are lighted in many ways which make them conspicuous and who advocated special treatment in other cases, that 1 cannot advise the House to accept his views. My hon. Friend must remember that when public service vehicles are in operation, plying for hire, they are well illuminated, but they are not so well illuminated when the destination signs are deliberately extinguished and the vehicle is proceeding to its garage. Often on those occasions it is very inadequately lighted. I hope the House will take the view that this legislation should be brought into operation at the earliest possible date, and to bring it into opera- tion at the beginning of the winter and not in the middle of it will be beneficial to the public safety.

Mr. Ede

I should like to express my gratification at the statement just made by the Parliamentary Secretary, because the point he has made is a very practical one in the administration of the law. If a public service vehicle is exempt and it is being driven back to the garage without external lights on, then a prosecution might take place and there might very well be a very long argument as to whether it was at that moment a public service vehicle or not. The members of the legal profession appearing in the magistrates' courts, who do not have an opportunity of standing up in the House of Commons and saying that they are willing to take more business if only they could get it, might feel that if they could get a good report in the local paper as to the way in which they tried to bamboozle the clerk of the court and make the magistrates' lives intolerable it would be well worth making the attempt.

Surely the addition of two reflectors at the rear is not an intolerable burden to put on vehicles that are plying for private profit on the roads. One sometimes might feel that making a private car carry additional signs and distinctive marks might impose burdens on persons of small means who are not using their vehicles for profit, but I should have thought that public service vehicles of all vehicles, ought not to be exempt. I hope that the Minister will confirm the statement that has been made by the Parliamentary Secretary, and I hope the Law Society will turn a blind eye when it peruses the remarks of the hon. Member for Truro (Mr. G. Wilson) in HANSARD tomorrow.

Mr. Braithwaite

I made the statement on the authority of my right hon. Friend.

Amendment agreed to.