§ Mr. Matthew Banks (Southport)It is a great pleasure to have the opportunity during this short lunch-time Adjournment debate to raise the important question of the provision of a driver theory testing station in my constituency. I am pleased to see my hon. Friend the Minister for Transport in London in his place. I look forward to a positive reply at the end of the debate and I have discussed this matter with him in private meetings and, latterly, in correspondence.
The House will know that I have long had an interest in transport, since before I came into the House. When I was first elected to the House in 1992, I was appointed to the Select Committee on Transport. Before I rose to the dizzy heights of being parliamentary private secretary at the Department of Transport, I was first the secretary and latterly the vice-chairman of the Conservative Back-Bench transport committee. Although I am a firm supporter of Government policy on transport, I have occasionally taken the opportunities afforded to me as a Member of the House, and as a member of those Committees, to affect and to effect Government policy on transport.
There have been a number of notable successes, including rail privatisation, environmental matters relating to transport and aviation policy. During that period, my hon. Friend has been a Transport Minister and I know that he has been well disposed to listen to, and act on, the lucid, well-argued and detailed proposals that I have put before him. I hope that he will do so at the end of the debate today.
My hon. Friend the Minister knows the geography of my constituency well, and he also comes from the north-west. He has listened, as I have mentioned, to my lobbying behind the scenes on behalf of my constituents, on this and other issues, and has also received correspondence from me. I hope that, by raising this matter on the Floor of the House, I may be able to elicit a more positive response than I have hitherto received.
There has been the odd rumour that my hon. Friend the Minister might seek to leave the Government before leaving the House at the end of the Parliament. I know nothing of my hon. Friend's plans, but if the rumour is true, that will be a terrible loss for the Government. If I may say so, those of us who know my hon. Friend well wish him well for the future. There could be no more fitting tribute for somebody from the north-west, who has been such a successful Transport Minister as my hon. Friend has, than the provision, for future generations, of a driver theory testing station in Southport. If my hon. Friend has, could be a little more positive on the issue—I know that resources are tight—I would be the first to think of the station as the Steve Norris theory testing school.
The driving test was first introduced in 1935 when the first candidate was Mr. Bean. Apart from the scrapping of hand signals—for which another Mr. Bean is famous—in 1975, the test remained largely unchanged, until the European Commission insisted that new drivers face a theory test. Britain's multiple-choice papers, with questions designed to weed out over-aggressive candidates, will be introduced in due course. The theory test is an important part of Government policy and I have no doubt that it will improve road safety. Accident statistics and research have shown that young and inexperienced drivers are several times more likely to be involved in accidents and fatalities than more mature drivers.
288 The test complies with the second European Community directive on driver licensing and I have had the pleasure of spending much time in European Standing Committee A, also with my hon. Friend the Minister, dealing with the issue of driving licences. My hon. Friend knows my concern about the competence of the European Commission to take decisions that should be taken by member states of the European Union. He also knows that I am concerned about the competence of the Transport Commissioner, Mr. Kinnock, but I shall leave that subject for another Adjournment debate on another day.
Although Britain is the only country without a theory test, we have the safest roads measured by casualties. However, I am not complacent. I believe, and I expect, that people will become safer drivers by preparing for the theory test. I hope that my hon. Friend will adopt one small suggestion and ensure that one or two questions in the test cover drivers' awareness of cyclists and motorcyclists. It is important to crack down on the number of casualties among those road users, as well as among car drivers, and to increase the driver's awareness of the motorcyclist.
That said, we cannot achieve those aims satisfactorily without the provision of a theory testing station in Southport. I want my constituents to be able to take their practical test and their theory test in Southport. It is not good enough that my constituents should be expected to travel to Liverpool or to Preston. My hon. Friend the Minister knows that my constituency was proudly independent before 1974. He also knows that, against all the odds, we shall be unique as the only metropolitan area considered by the Local Government Commission for independent status. We shall break away and make our own decisions locally as we once did.
We do not want to have to go to Liverpool or Preston for a theory test. Before 1974, we never had to go to Preston to deal with Lancashire county council because it never held sway over our affairs. We did not have to go to Liverpool to deal with Merseyside county council. We were independent. My hon. Friend could give my constituents and myself an enormous fillip in that campaign, too, by ensuring that we are independent in driver theory testing. I am fed up with people in Liverpool telling us what we can do. We should make decisions locally.
On 29 May, my hon. Friend the Minister wrote his last letter to me on this subject and he drew attention to the railway line between Southport and Liverpool. Due to the policies of the Labour-controlled Merseyside passenger transport authority, that line is the least subsidised line of the Mersey rail network, with some of the most expensive fares in Britain, apart from certain services out of Fenchurch Street in London. The Merseyside passenger transport authority does not allow us to travel by train between Southport and Preston, because my predecessor in the House was so wholly unsuccessful in restoring a piece of track taken away by Beeching.
The only other railway we have that links my constituency with the west coast main line is the Southport to Wigan line and not a single penny has been spent to promote, protect or maintain that line, not even the part in Merseyside which is in my constituency. That is totally unacceptable. No wonder my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment described me as the only real bulwark that my constituents have against a Greater Bootle.
289 I do not know whether the rumours are true that not only does my hon. Friend the Minister know my constituency well but, years ago, he sold some second-hand motor vehicles—fine ones, I am sure—at the northern and southern ends of Lord street in the centre of town. He might also have enjoyed the odd boozy business lunch at the best hotel in town. I know that he knows Southport well and that he will have listened over the weeks to the representations that I have made privately, in writing and now on the Floor of the House. He has listened to detailed arguments, which I hope have been well argued, and I hope that he will be able to act positively on them. I hope that he will look back with fond memories of his time in Southport and I urge him to consider the fact that there could be no finer tribute to his successful tenure as a Transport Minister than providing a theory testing station in Southport.
If my right hon. Friend can give me a positive response, I look forward at some stage to being able to invite him back to Southport to visit the theory testing station and, perhaps when he has finished driving for the day, I might be able to enjoy a celebratory glass of champagne with him and my constituents.
§ The Minister for Transport in London (Mr. Steve Norris)In all the years that I have had the honour to be a Minister, I have seldom heard a more oleaginous and sycophantic appeal to my better nature than that expertly articulated by my hon. Friend the Member for Southport (Mr. Banks). As I do indeed consider pastures elsewhere and contemplate the words of Sir Christopher Wren—"Si monumentum requiris, circumspice"—I can think of no greater monument than a theory testing centre in Southport where, as my hon. Friend rightly said, I passed a considerable part of my misspent youth. I enjoyed a great deal of that time in the Prince of Wales, which was a fine establishment in those days, although I have no idea what it is like now. I was indeed proprietor of several distinguished premises in the town, at both ends of Lord street. A man has to earn a living—I make no other comment.
As to the crowning achievement of my entire stint at the Department of Transport, rivalling that of Hore-Belisha and my noble Friend Lady Chalker, let me turn to the matter in hand. The specification for the establishment of theory testing centres was based on responses to the Driving Standards Agency's customer surveys. Driving test candidates and their instructors said that they thought that it was reasonable to travel up to 20 miles for a driving test. A national network of theory testing centres has been developed broadly on that basis and they will run frequent test sessions to meet candidates' needs.
As my hon. Friend said, we have come late to the business of theory testing and I make no apology for the fact that, in due course, we shall perhaps move further than the present theory test, which is a written test, to the use of interactive technology that will enable us to test hazard perception in a more realistic environment than we are able to do with the written test alone.
My hon. Friend was, however, entirely right to concentrate on the fact that the theory test exists principally because the greatest cause of death among young people is the road accident. Seventeen to 25-year-old drivers have a particular propensity to accidents and injury. They comprise 10 per cent. of licence holders but, sadly, 20 per cent. of casualties and 25 per cent. of fatalities. It is in that 290 context that we have introduced the theory test and done so to approbation on both sides of the House. There was no disagreement about the desirability of that happening.
The specification for test centre location requires that a test centre should be available within 20 miles but in districts—usually towns or cities where the population density is greater than 1,250 people per sq km—a test centre should be available within about five miles, as that is clearly a more appropriate measure in a dense conurbation. For the record, in more sparsely populated areas with low populations, test centres should be available within 40 miles because the nexus of time and distance can be regarded in a slightly different light when there is much less impediment from traffic or population.
It is on that basis that my hon. Friend made representations to me about his constituency, as did my hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Mr. Burns) whom I am delighted to see in his place. Convention demands that my hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford cannot speak in these debates, but I can take it as read that, were he able to do so, the paean that would fall from his lips would equal that of my hon. Friend. I was delighted to be able to accommodate the forceful and articulate representations that my hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford made to me on precisely this subject in relation to his own constituency and that his constituents will now enjoy that facility.
The original plan for the theory testing centre serving the Southport area was to put test centres at Liverpool and Preston. However, those plans did not necessarily properly address the fact that Southport lies in the administrative district of Sefton, which forms a strip stretching along the Mersey coastline, and Sefton has more than 1,250 people per sq km. The southern part of the district is within five miles of the theory testing centre at Liverpool but Southport, at the northern end of the strip, is 20 miles by road from the Liverpool centre. The theory testing centre proposals covering Southport did not therefore meet the precise specified requirement because residents would not have a theory test centre within five miles.
I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Southport for drawing this error in the application of the service specification to my attention and, even at this stage, giving me the opportunity to set matters right.
While my hon. Friend knows that I would not dream of touching his champagne for all sorts of reasons, not least my fear and terror of the good Lord Nolan—not to mention my aversion to drinking and driving—I am happy to tell him that I have given directions for an additional theory testing centre to be sited in Southport. He has, in the vernacular much practised in my constituency, got a result. I congratulate him on it.
§ It being fourteen minutes to Two o 'clock, the motion for the Adjournment of the House lapsed, without Question put.
§ Sitting suspended, pursuant to Standing Order No. 10 (Wednesday sittings), till half-past Two o'clock.