HL Deb 26 November 1987 vol 490 cc789-99

6.45 p.m.

Lord Nugent of Guildford rose to ask Her Majesty's Government what role they expect the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents to play in the promotion of safety, particularly on the roads, and to what extent the society must be self-supporting in order to meet government criteria.

The noble Lord said: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Unstarred Question standing in my name on the Order Paper.

At the annual general meetng of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents at the beginning of this month it was reported that the Government had provided that the finance for RoSPA for the next five years was to be reduced by 50 per cent. in five annual reductions. The Department of Transport carried out the negotiations, if thus they can be called, and explained that it expected RoSPA to make up the reduction of grant by earning more by its own efforts. It was explained that this was consistent with the Government's incentive concept. Not surprisingly there was a strong reaction from those present at the annual general meeting and it was agreed that those of us present who were able to should take parliamentary action to ventilate this matter.

I should explain that RoSPA's grants from government departments in the current year, 1986–87, consist of £507,000 from the Department of Transport, £200,000 from the Scottish and Welsh Offices, £23,000 from the Home Office, £85,000 from the DTI and then there are some special grants. The total sum from Government sources adds up to £897,000 for the year. The total revenue of RoSPA for the year is £4,486,000. In other words, Government grants amount to just 20 per cent. of the total revenues of RoSPA. There are other items of safety such as agricultural or water safety, which RoSPA covers but without grant. Therefore 80 per cent. of the revenue is earned by the services which RoSPA provides to local authorities and to industry.

The enlarged industrial training centre near Birmingham—a first-class training centre—now earns over £1 million per annum in a continuous series of industrial training courses. Services to local authorities include a wide range of educational and training material both for adults and, most importantly, for schools. In addition to road safety RoSPA covers home, industrial, agricultural and water safety.

From this brief account of RoSPA's work in the cause of safety in our national life and the manner of its finances, it is evident that at 20 per cent. of total revenue the present Government grant is not excessively high and that RoSPA might be given a good mark for becoming 80 per cent. self-sufficient.

Nor is this all. When the perspective of the past 10 years' operation is looked at, the achievement of the present leadership appears even more commendable. When the present director general, Mr. Warburton, was appointed about 10 years ago by my predecessor, the noble Lord, Lord Kearton—I am delighted to see him here—the reserves of RoSPA were in debit. It was in debt to the extent of £1,762. The turnover was just under £2 million—£1,900,000. The leadership had collapsed; I am sure that the noble Lord will bear me out. Today its reserves stand at £435,000 and the turnover is £4.5 million, an increase of more than twice. Perhaps most important of all, the reputation and influence of RoSPA is the highest ever in the 30 years that I have known the organisation. In fact the total government grant has reduced during the period from 23.6 per cent. to 20 per cent. as it has fallen behind the increasing turnover of the organisation.

All this has been achieved during a period of industrial recession in the first half of this decade when new subscriptions from industry and greater use of training services were never more difficult to win. At the end of this remarkable record of success, the decision of the Ministry of Transport, indeed of the Government, to halve the grant to encourage RoSPA to try harder would be laughable if it were not tragic.

The RoSPA director general in negotiation with Ministry of Transport officials has responded by undertaking to try to meet the target, but he confessed to me that the prospect of success is nil. To raise the extra cash needed by increased sales of services and training would need approximately the doubling of the present level of sales to produce that sum in profit. To achieve that in the face of the immense efforts already made is clearly impossible. The result is that if this target remains, RoSPA, being the sort of organisation it is, loyal and co-operative, will try like mad for a year or two. It will balance the books inevitably by trenching into the hard-worked-out reserves to cover the shortfall and then will be forced to recognise that the whole operation, particularly with regard to road safety, will have to be scaled down. This is the reality which the Ministry of Transport has forced onto RoSPA: if the Ministry of Transport is the mouthpiece of government, then the Government have done this.

I turn to the second half of my Question. What role do the Government really want RoSPA to pursue? The toll on our roads runs at over 5,000 killed annually, 69,000 seriously injured and a quarter of a million injured less seriously, and every year there are more vehicles on the road. The scene in home safety involves an even larger toll of fatalities and injuries. Local authorities generally seem to have fewer resources available to spend on road safety. I ask my noble friend who is to be good enough to answer the Question tonight, do the Government really want a substantial scaling down of RoSPA's work on road safety, home safety and industrial safety? I know jolly well that the nation does not want any such thing. I do not believe the Government want it either.

I expect that my noble friend will tell us that the Government want road safety and all the other aspects of safety not only maintained but stepped up. But at the same time he will tell me that they want to ensure that a public body which receives a grant of public funds must make the maximum effort to raise its own revenue. I applaud that policy in principle, but I have demonstrated, I believe beyond peradventure, that over the past 10 years RoSPA has already made the maximum effort. It has made an heroic effort and has been strikingly successful.

In the light of that picture I say to my noble friend that to set this new target by halving the grant now would cripple RoSPA and would be totally unfair. I ask my noble friend to take my message—I do not doubt that other noble friends will support me—back to the Ministry of Transport and request that the review which has been promised in the new agreement in two years' time should take place now, without delay, with a view to maintaining the present level of grant. Whatever else it does, the reduction in the grant will fatally handicap this immensely valuable national organisation to the detriment of all.

6.55 p.m.

Lord Kearton

My Lords, it gives me great pleasure to support my noble friend Lord Nugent in his plea for RoSPA. I had the honour to be president for some years. RoSPA went through a very bad patch about 10 years ago. It was then a very worthy organisation but very unprofessionally run. On his appointment 10 years ago, the present director general transformed the whole running operation and the morale and effectiveness of RoSPA. Like the noble Lord, Lord Nugent, I do not think its reputation has ever stood higher than it stands at present.

As an ex-president and current vice-president, I receive the minutes of the finance and general purposes committee. What impresses me is that the emphasis all the time is on cost-effectiveness and an attempt to assess the value of what the organisation does in terms of the return in hard cash. As the noble Lord, Lord Nugent, indicated, it is a remarkable investment for this country. It gives an immense return on a relatively trivial amount of government support.

The noble Lord, Lord Nugent, was perhaps too modest to say that one of the projects in which RoSPA played a great part, and in which he himself played a major part, was the introduction of the seat-belt legislation. That has had a major effect on the death rates on our roads. It has had a major effect in reducing the load on our hospitals and so on.

The director of road safety is probably the most respected man in his field in this country. He is known internationally as well as nationally for his work and his pioneering efforts and, if I may say so, his stout common sense in all aspects of road safety. RoSPA is itself the largest safety organisation in Europe. It does a wonderful job in industrial training—in which I have a great personal interest—and this is increasing all the time. Despite the enormous pressure under which industry was placed in the early days of this decade, RoSPA improved its service, improved its premises and improved its acceptability.

RoSPA does a wonderful job on home safety. People do not realise how many deaths are caused accidentally in the home each year. I believe the current figure is about 800 a year and RoSPA, in collaboration with various university departments, organises seminars all over the country for education purposes. That has been instrumental in achieving a much higher standard of home safety in regard to electrical appliances and all other aspects. It has done a great deal to make homes safer for disabled people.

Its work on leisure safety, and safety on the water particularly, has been quite dramatic. I know of the enormous efforts it has made on agricultural safety—an interesting subject in that perhaps it is not unfair to say that our farmers have been used to getting everything for free. They have certainly had the safety efforts of RoSPA for free. Farmers have been asked to pay for those efforts more and more in recent years, but it is an uphill struggle getting farmers to pay for anything.

All I can say in reinforcement of what the noble Lord, Lord Nugent, so eloquently said is that RoSPA is one of the most worthy, cost-effective and valuable organisations in this country. Besides its small core of professional staff, it mobilises the support of hundreds, indeed thousands, of people all over the country in a major national network: all have but one end in view—more safety, more comfort for people, and less drain on the health and police services of the country. It is the narrowest and the most short-sighted of views to reduce government support which is quite small but absolutely crucial to RoSPA at this time. Like the noble Lord, Lord Nugent, I strongly urge the Government to restore support at least to its present level.

6.58 p.m.

Lord Brougham and Vaux

My Lords, as the non-paid president of RoSPA, I thank my noble friend Lord Nugent of Guildford, himself a past president, for raising this Question tonight. A lot of what I wanted to say has already been said by my noble friend and by the noble Lord, Lord Kearton, also a distinguished past president. I hope that the few words I shall say will be taken as constructive comment.

Our director general, Mr. Richard Warburton, during his time at RoSPA has had three preoccupations. The first is to re-establish a sound financial basis for the continuation of the society's role in offering services to its members and the community. The second is to improve the society's capacity and capabilities to meet changing needs and demands within a context of offering the best possible service to our members and others, and thereby to raise public awareness at all levels. The third is the scale and cost of accidents and of the opportunities that exist to reduce accidents and their costs. As the noble Lord, Lord Nugent of Guildford, has said, our reserves have been improved, but it can be argued with some justification that against a continuing expansion of our activities and turnover—now approaching £4.5 million—it would be prudent for these reserves to be more reflective of likely future demand.

In the first objective we have made substantial progress. Throughout our activities we operate a demanding financial oversight and control. We aim to carry out our work economically, and our members are well aware of and are committed to financial accountability. We must constantly update, replace and improve upon what is at present available. One example—and there are many others—is in safety education, where in order to guarantee integrity and acceptability to road safety officers and the teaching profession the production costs of new materials are high.

The second objective is never realisable since change is a necessity for a successful operation. By our standards, considerable investment has been made over the years in the society's infrastructure, from computerisation of our accounts and sales ledger to even wider expansion into new technology in the form of computer-aided design, typesetting, audio-visual equipment and beyond. We now have through these investments a first-rate studio and design team which together with the expertise in the operating safety division is capable of making first-class educational, training and publicity programmes. Indeed, RoSPA has won international awards for its productions.

As for the third objective, I believe the only stark conclusion is that we have all singularly failed in raising public awareness of the scale and cost of accidents. The figures speak for themselves: on the road, 5,382 killed, 69,000 seriously injured and 247,000 injured; in the home, 5,720 killed, 3 million injured and 2 million treated in hospital; by drowning, 900 killed; during sport, at least 100 killed; at work, 632 killed, 20,000 seriously injured and 300,000 employees reported injured.

If RoSPA were allowed to use its expertise, of which there is a considerable amount, to produce safety programmes—films, leaflets, books, posters, and so on—for the Department of Transport and local authorities on a commercial basis, this would increase awareness of accidents, create involvement of many people in programmes designed to reduce accidents and would increase RoSPA's income, thus allowing further reinvestment in the development of safety programmes. However, at the moment the department issues free material and commissions material from other sources while at the same time requiring RoSPA to be commercially self-supporting without giving us the opportunity in open competition to tender for that material. Thus the market is distorted, both by our not having the opportunity to increase our income, which of course affects unit costs, and by a reduction in purchasing by local authorities which will allocate their funds elsewhere if they are given free material by the department.

RoSPA welcomes the opportunity it has had recently to tender for research and development contracts through the Transport and Road Research Laboratory, but the issues I raise are separate from this activity. All RoSPA seeks is the opportunity to support the Government's initiatives. RoSPA still feels strongly that it has a key role to play, and the Government's active support is critical for the future.

In conclusion, it is interesting to note that the Home Office, the DTI and the Northern Ireland Office support has steadily increased over the years, unlike that of the Department of Transport.

7.5 p.m.

Lord Auckland

My Lords, my noble friend the Minister may well be forgiven if he thinks there is a gang of four against him this evening—

Lord Underhill

Five.

Lord Auckland

I say four, my Lords, because at least three former presidents have spoken and your Lordships are now hearing a vice-president. We have a distinguished contribution to come from the noble Lord, Lord Underhill, whose interest in road safety is well known in your Lordships' House. My noble friend Lord Nugent has undertaken a very valuable task this evening. In another place he held distinguished office in the transport ministry.

I go back to early 1960 when my then honourable friend Mrs. Patricia McLaughlin, who sat for Belfast, West, was the first secretary of the All-Party Parliamentary Committee on Home Safety. The then honourable Member for Greenock, Dr. Dickson Mabon, and I were the joint chairmen. Dr. Mabon later became Minister of State for Scotland and the group broke up as such because of the pressure of parliamentary business. In this group we managed to persuade the government of the day to bring in legislation regarding flammable nightwear for children and to have Proban contained in children's garments as a protection against fire. We also had the Oil Burners (Standards) Act which the late Sir Gerald Nabarro piloted through the other place. There was also the Act to do with local home safety.

My interest is naturally in safety in the home but, as has been said, RoSPA is an all-embracing organisation—the home, factories, agriculture and roads. Like other noble Lords I should like to pay a particular tribute to Mr. Warburton and his hardworking staff in their headquarters in Birmingham. The tragedy from many points of view was when RoSPA moved from London to Birmingham. When the head office was in London there was more contact with Parliament. However, that is not exactly within the ambit of my noble friend's Unstarred Question.

I have a great interest in the health service and as many of your Lordships know serve on some hospital committees. I believe that the work of RoSPA has cut down the number of beds which would normally be used in accident hospitals and casualty departments. The number of accidents on the roads, in the home and elsewhere is far too great, but I submit to my noble friend the Minister that were it not for an organisation such as RoSPA there would be far more casualties in the home and on the roads.

The education system which the various departments of RoSPA propound is very valuable. We have, for example, the Tufty Club for children. I am convinced in my own mind that this prevents a good many accidents among children. It is essential therefore to realise that if RoSPA is to suffer cuts in government grant it will impair the valuable education aspect of the organisation and it will put an even greater stress on the health service at a time when it is under enormous pressure, as we all know.

I urge the Minister to take on board particularly what was said by the preceding three speakers with their distinguished roles as president and former presidents. I hope that my noble friend will recognise that all those who have been presidents and vice-presidents have approached the matter in a completely non-party spirit. Accidents happen to us all, whatever our politics and way of life. I believe that my noble friend has done Parliament a unique service, albeit to a thin House, at a time of the year when the number of accidents mounts. All noble Lords know that accidents on the road and in the home increase nearer to Christmas. One hopes that this debate will be a contribution towards fewer accidents.

7.11 p.m.

Lord Underhill

My Lords, as the noble Lord, Lord Auckland, has said, we are grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Nugent, for tabling this Unstarred Question. It enables us to discuss this important issue and it has brought forward many people of prominence in the work of RoSPA.

I am interested in the general work of RoSPA but my particular interest is in its work on road safety. The Question of the noble Lord particularly emphasises the roads. I understand that the Department of Transport has decided to cut the grant to RoSPA over the next five years, so that its grant from the department will be halved from £520,000 to £250,000. That represents approximately 25 per cent. of RoSPA's income.

The noble Lord, Lord Nugent, asked from where RoSPA will derive income to make up the difference. Will it be from a voluntary organisation? It can rely only upon subscriptions and the services which it sells and is paid for. The noble Lord emphasised the fact that there is little hope of it being able to charge enough for its services in order to recover the substantial cut in grant.

It is interesting to note that the grant to RoSPA from the DTI has not been cut; the grant from the Home Office has not been cut; the grant in connection with work on road safety in Northern Ireland has not been cut. One must ask why. Does it mean that the Government have decided to change their view of what is important in education and training work in connection with RoSPA?

I read an article which appeared in the New Scientist on 29th October. It dealt with the European collaborative programme, Prometheus, on road safety research. The article refers to rules laid down by the TRRL (Transport and Road Research Laboratory) that university transport study groups should take certain action in what is known as the pro-general part of the Prometheus programme. I have a copy of a letter sent by the TRRL to the university transport units. I shall quote one small paragraph from the two-page letter. It states: It is important to remember that PROMETHEUS is primarily an industrial R&D programme. PRO-GENERAL is concerned with traffic management and safety research but there is no point in proceeding with work which does not, in some way, further the aims of the vehicle companies". Whatever that may mean, it suggests that TRRL is putting forward its viewpoint because it is a government view that university transport units should concentrate on aspects other than direct road safety.

In February of this year local authorities were told that the Government were abandoning all publicity on road safety, except on drinking and driving, as they considered that this could more appropriately come from local authorities. Is that the reason why the Government have cut their grant to RoSPA? We should like to hear from the Minister whether that is so. As I understand the matter, no extra money is to be given to local authorities to carry out the essential work which the Government have told them should now be their responsibility. That is the reason for the cut in the RoSPA grant from the Department of Transport.

In the absence of any additional central government grant it is obvious that most local authorities will be unable to take up the extra work. If they cannot carry out the extra work, if the university transport units are to be told that they should not make road safety part of their studies, and if the grant to RoSPA is being cut, who will carry out the essential education and training work in connection with road safety? That is the important question raised by the noble Lord, Lord Nugent. All noble Lords who have taken part in the debate support that and wish to know the reason why Government have taken this attitude.

7.17 p.m.

Viscount Davidson

My Lords, after listening to three ex-presidents of RoSPA, as well as the current president, I feel that I have a somewhat daunting task ahead of me. I hope that I shall be able to reassure them that the concern they have expressed about the future of RoSPA is not shared by the Government.

I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Nugent for asking his Question today. My noble friend has made a strong plea on behalf of RoSPA. He has referred to the sterling work that RoSPA has done in the field of road safety over the years. He has asked to what extent the Government will be supporting the society's activities in the future. Let us be clear at the outset how much common ground there is between the Government and my noble friend. For a start, there is no conflict of objectives. The only possible objective for road safety must be to reduce the appalling toll of death and injury on our roads. On that I am sure we are agreed.

I think we are also agreed that road safety education has a vital part to play in reducing that toll. Although Britain's road safety record is very good overall, our record of child pedestrian fatalities is one of the worst in Europe. With this in mind, we are now giving a high priority to a pilot project by the Transport and Road Research Laboratory to study ways of improving road safety education in schools. I know that road safety education is a particular interest of RoSPA and I am sure they will have an important role to play in developing these proposals.

My noble friend Lord Brougham and Vaux made the point that RoSPA should be allowed to bid for the production of publicity material for the department. I must say that that is a fair point. The position is that the department, in common with other government organisations, looks to the Central Office of Information for most of its publicity requirements. This arrangement has enabled the Government as a whole to co-ordinate their publicity requirements as efficiently as possible. However, we are looking again at these arrangement with a view to establishing whether RoSPA can play a larger role. In this context, I should mention that RoSPA has already bid for research contracts for the Transport and Road Research Laboratory but has been too costly.

The availability of free material from the Department of Transport frees local authority resources for them to spend more on material from organisations such as RoSPA. That can only be helpful to the society. In July this year, the Government published the results of an inter-departmental review of road safety: Road Safety: The Next Steps. This review has now been sent to a wide range of interested organisations, including RoSPA, and we look forward to recieving its views. The key strategy recommended by the review, and which the Government accept, is the redirection of resources available for road safety towards measures which can be shown to be cost-effective in reducing casualties. I must emphasise that concentrating on cost-effectiveness in road safety does not mean that we are more interested in saving money than in saving lives: it simply means that we want to use resources as effectively as possible to save as many lives as possible. It was with that aim in mind—obtaining the maximum possible casualty savings from limited resources—that we reviewed RoSPA's grant arrangements.

I now turn to the new grant agreement which we signed with RoSPA in April this year. This new agreement was the culmination of a long process of analysis and discussion by the department and the society. In 1985, the society prepared a detailed review of its performance, analysing all the various costs of its activities; and I should say that it made a very professional job of that analysis. The review allowed the department and the society to consider which activities provided the best value for money.

With those considerations in mind, we identified the following of the society's activities as being worthy of grant support: first, training courses for road safety officers and other professionals; secondly, management and administration of the society's training functions; thirdly, research and copy testing of road safety educational and publicity material; and fourthly, central administration of the society's education, training and publicity marketing functions.

We concluded that the appropriate government contribution required for these activities was rather less than half the current grant, which was £530,000 in 1987–88. But this reduction must be looked at in the context of two other provisions which we agreed with the society.

The first is that we both recognised that the society would be able to bring forward proposals for further activities. We agreed that if these proposals were cost-effective in casualty reduction terms, they would be favourably considered for further grant support.

The second provision we made was for an additional transitional grant, to be phased out over the five years of the agreement to cushion the effects of the change. We also agreed that we would review progress with the new agreement after two years; that is, at the end of 1988–89. These are very adequate, indeed generous, transitional arrangements which allow RoSPA every opportunity to adjust to the new approach.

On the question of the "free" issue of the Department of Transport publicity on road safety matters, I must say that on a subject as important as road safety it is essential that the Government support their road safety publicity campaigns in every way possible, including circulating free publicity material to road safety officers. But this does not undermine RoSPA's commercial position; far from it. By issuing such material free, the department does not erode local authority budgets for road safety.

RoSPA's new agreement is not a hasty, ill-considered attempt to save money without regard to the consequences for road safety. The new agreement is the culmination of close and detailed discussions between the society and the department over many months. Those discussions have been characterised by a spirit of friendly co-operation in reviewing the society's road safety activities and in developing a new business-orientated approach to road safety.

RoSPA has already made considerable progress in implementing the new agreement. It has restructured its management organisation, appointed a new assistant director to market its publications and services more effectively and slimmed down the National Road Safety Committee. It has set itself challenging but achievable targets.

Although the aim is to reduce the Department of Transport grant by 50 per cent. over five years, the initial reduction next year is only 14 per cent. and the same the year after. We have already accepted that we must review the position to see whether the 50 per cent. target is achievable. In the meantime, we shall be working closely with the society in every way possible. That is surely a vote of confidence in it.

I pay tribute to RoSPA for its work in road safety over the years and I commend its officers for the efforts that they have made to reorganise in order to implement the new agreement. I am confident that the society will rise to meet the challenge presented by the new agreement.

Finally, my noble friend Lord Nugent asked me particularly to convey his message to my right honourable friend the Secretary of State. I can certainly assure the noble Lord that he will read today's Hansard with the greatest of interest.

House adjourned at twenty-five minutes past seven o'clock.