§ Lord MELCHETT rose to move, That the draft Roads and Road Traffic (Northern Ireland) Order 1978, laid before 547 the House on 19th June, he approved. The noble Lord said: My Lords, this draft Order touches on many aspects of road traffic and safety law. It will strengthen the law and bring the law in Northern Ireland more closely into line with that in Great Britain. The draft Order covers a wide range of matters, all of which will make a substantial contribution to road safety and which I believe are urgently needed in view of the appallingly high number of road casualties in Northern Ireland. Again, I hope your Lordships will give a welcome to this Order. I beg to move.
§ Moved, That the draft Roads and Road Traffic (Northern Ireland) Order 1978, laid before the House on 19th June, be approved.—(Lord Melchett.)
Viscount LONGMy Lords, I am most grateful to the noble Lord and I will not keep him a moment; he has been under enormous pressure and torture the last hour, and I think he is doing very well. This Order was interesting to me on a particular item called builders' skips. These are instruments dropped on the side of a road for rubbish to be placed in them. I had the feeling that, with security as it was, these could be used as barriers in one way or another. I am wondering—and I did not see it in the Order—whether a builder or anybody involved in using one of these skips has to obtain permission from an authority to place one of them either on a road or on a site. I wonder whether the noble Lord could enlighten me on that. On page 3, indeed, which was interesting to me, in Article 4(3), it says:
The Department or a constable in uniform may remove or reposition a skip or cause it to be removed or repositioned".May I ask the noble Lord whether a constable in uniform could move one of these ton-weight instruments? Otherwise, we are quite in agreement with the Order.
§ Lord MELCHETTMy Lords, I have no doubt that that is why the Order carefully provides for a constable to be able to cause it to be removed, rather than placing the sole duty on the constable to remove it personally. The answer to the noble Viscount's other question, is that the Order originally embodied in Article 3 the provision that a person would have to obtain permission from 548 the Department of the Environment or the road authority before a skip was placed on a public highway, but after strong representations from the Northern Ireland Federation of Building and Civil Engineering Contractors, who said that the existing provisions in the Order would give sufficient powers for the authority to ensure that skips were sensibly and safely sited, that provision was withdrawn. I hope your Lordships will accept that.