HC Deb 15 February 1991 vol 185 cc1166-9

Order for Second Reading read.

2.14 pm
Mr. Michael Jopling (Westmorland and Lonsdale)

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.

I am bound to confess that I am slightly surprised, but equally delighted, that there is enough time today to debate what I believe is one of the most helpful and important private Members' Bills to come before the House this Session. I begin by expressing my thanks to those right hon. and hon. Members on both sides of the House who have been kind enough to add their support to the Bill. As one who, over the years, has played a part —perhaps too big a part, sometimes—in assassinating private Members' Bills, it is hardly surprising that I took particular trouble to recruit as one of my Bill's supporters the Opposition deputy Chief Whip, who was also extremely generous in giving it his support.

I am enormously grateful for this opportunity to introduce my Bill, which is aimed at further improving the safety of child passengers. Children are especially vulnerable in car crashes. According to road accident statistics, 1,000 children are killed or suffer serious injuries in cars each year. In addition—this is very frightening—about 10,000 more children suffer slight injuries.

The House has addressed the problem on many occasions. The Motor Vehicles (Wearing of Rear Seat Belts by Children) Act 1988 requires that children under 14 should be restrained in the rear seats of cars. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Cheadle (Mr. Day) for getting that legislation through. The 1988 Act describes types of child restraints appropriate for different children, and led to almost a doubling in the number of children restrained in rear seats.

It is estimated that that innovation prevented more than 200 deaths and serious injuries in the first year after it was enacted. That is a major achievement, but there are still far too many deaths and injuries among child passengers each year. They remain a major element in all child casualties on our roads. That is particularly true of children under four years of age, who should always be restrained by the appropriate type of seat belt for their weight. Such restraints have been shown to save about three quarters of deaths, and nearly as many serious injuries, compared with unrestrained children in similar accidents.

Seat belts alone are far from ideal, because they are designed for adults, and are, in many cases, wholly inappropriate for children to use. It is vital that parents, who are responsible for ensuring that their children are properly restrained, are given the best possible guidance and information on the most appropriate child restraint, and on how to install and use it. That last aspect is enormously important. My Bill will help to ensure that that guidance is available at points of sale. It will enable the Secretary of State to make regulations to control the sale and hire of restraints, so that only those approved to British or international safety standard can be sold or hired out as being for the protection of children in accidents. That will help in two ways.

First, if the Bill is agreed by the House, it will be easier to check at the time of purchase or hire that the restraint is of an approved type, which has satisfied the stringent design and performance requirements of either the relevant British standards or of United Nations regulations. These standards are continually being improved and a European Community directive is being developed which, when it is adopted, will also be recognised by the regulations.

Secondly, the Bill will help because retailers will have to ensure that all the appropriate information specified by the standards is provided with the restraint. That includes the weight of the child, in certain cases the vehicle model for which the restraint is suitable, clear instructions for installing the restraint in the vehicle and for putting the child in the restraint, and specific warnings about the dangers of misuse. The provision of that information is most important because circumstances have shown that a substantial proportion of child restraints are incorrectly installed. In many cases that makes them ineffective in the event of an accident. There is no point in putting child restraints into a car if in the unfortunate event of an accident they do not do the job which they are bought for.

More needs to be done by vehicle manufacturers, child restraint manufacturers and those who set the standards to develop restraints which are less prone to misuse.

Mr. Peter Bottomley (Eltham)

Although this is not in the Bill, does my hon. Friend agree that the minority of parents who are not yet belting their children up should get in touch with road safety officers and try out a sledge like the one in the Upper Waiting Hall in the House this week to see what even a five-mile-an-hour crash is like and what happens to an unrestrained or badly restrained child involved in such a crash? This year and every year there will be more than 300,000 crashes and children will be injured unnecessarily. I wish my right hon. Friend well with this Bill.

Mr. Jopling

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention because he has huge experience of these matters from his ministerial days. I endorse, as he has done, the exhibition which has been on display in the Upper Waiting Hall this week and which I have taken the trouble to see.

If the Bill is successful it will encourage manufacturers to comply with the latest standards and will increase the incentive for them further to improve those standards. It will also encourage the correct use of the most appropriate restraint for the child in a particular car.

The reason why the Bill is needed is that present regulations—vehicle construction and use regulations—prescribe only those types of child restraint that can be considered to be vehicle parts and which are in themselves complete restraints, directly attached to the vehicle. The use of equipment such as booster cushions and carrycots, which are not restraints in themselves, but which comply with the standards, cannot be controlled by those regulations without banning all ordinary cushions and carrycots from vehicles. That would be quite unacceptable to many people and could not be justified on safety grounds.

To sit a child on an ordinary cushion does not pose any safety hazard and in some cases it may improve the protection offered by an adult seat belt. However, as I said, for a small child it would certainly not be so effective as an approved booster cushion. To avoid those pitfalls the best way forward is to regulate the sale of equipment designed to protect children in cars without preventing parents from using equipment for their children that they already have in their possession. The effect should be an improvement in the range of equipment on sale for children, which should be reflected in a reduction in road casualties in future. I hope that if the House agrees with my Bill, the good progress that has been made through the Motor Vehicles (Wearing of Rear Seat Belts by Children) Act 1988 can be continued.

As for the detail of the Bill, clause 1 is the main provision. It allows regulations to be made prescribing types of equipment that are recommended as conducive to children's safety. It provides that equipment cannot be sold as conducive to safety unless it conforms with the type prescribed in the regulations. Clause 1 also enables regulations to be made requiring appropriate information to be made available.

The remaining clauses of the Bill are supplementary to the purposes of clause 1, which I have already described. For instance, clause 2 provides for certain defences against offences under the Bill. Clause 3 provides for certain penalties for transgressions to which the Bill may give rise. Clause 4 gives the short title of the Bill.

I stress to the House that the Bill is intended to be a useful contribution to the task of reducing child injuries on the roads. There could be no better motive behind any piece of legislation. I certainly commend the Bill to the House and I hope that it will be accepted.

2.26 pm
The Minister for Roads and Traffic (Mr. Christopher Chope)

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend the Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Mr. Jopling) for giving me this opportunity to comment on his important Bill. He made an eloquent speech in support of it. I am happy to declare the Government's full backing for the content of the legislation.

Despite our improving road casualty record, there is still a significant number of casualties among children. In many cases they are unnecessary tragedies which could have been avoided. More than 10,000 child car passengers are killed or injured every year. In the case of children under five, deaths and injuries inside cars represent as many as half the deaths and injuries for that age group in all types of road accidents.

One of the best things that parents and others in charge of children can do to minimise the risk of injury is to ensure that children sit in proper child restraints. There have been considerable advances in the quality and range of child restraints available in the past few years. Any parent of young children will have noticed the improvement in what is available in the shops during that time. Partly as a result of that, there has been a marked increase in the use of child restraints. Nevertheless, the improvement in that availability carries some problems of its own.

First, it is often hard to be sure what is the best equipment for the child. Yet to minimise the risk of injury, the correct restraint for the size and weight of the child should be used. Also, some restraints are more suitable for some cars than others. It is vital that that information is made properly available to parents.

Secondly, there is considerable evidence that many restraints are not properly installed in the car. For example, the seat belts used to secure the restraint may be too slack to provide proper protection in the event of an accident. Often that appears to be as a result of inadequate instructions being given to the parents.

Thirdly, while parents are genuinely much more aware of the benefits of child restraints than a few years ago, more needs to be done to explain the general benefits to children of using child restraints, as there are still far too many children travelling who are inadequately restrained, if at all. Recent efforts by the House have greatly contributed to this. The Bill is an important piece of legislation.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read a Second time, and committed to a Standing Committee, pursuant to Standing Order No. 61 (Committal of Bills).