§ Ms Rosie WintertonTo ask the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions when the report on signals passed at danger in December 1999 will be published. [107469]
§ Mr. HillI have today placed in the Library a copy of HSE's report on signals passed at danger (SPADs) for December. Future monthly reports will be placed in the Library as a matter of course.
In December there were 22 SPADs on the national railway. This figure is lower than for the same month in the last two years and half the December average for the last six years. Taken with the significant improvement in November, the December figure appears to indicate that the measures being taken by the industry to cut down on SPADs are beginning to have a positive effect, although it is of course too early to draw definitive conclusions.
As explained in the October report, Railtrack and the HSE use different criteria to assess the severity and significance of a SPAD. This has led to some confusion as to how to identify for non-specialist purposes a consistent and simple definition by which a SPAD could be considered serious, to the extent that it gives rise to a potential for damage to passengers, staff, or equipment.
Ministers have accepted a recommendation by Her Majesty's Railways Inspectorate to define as "serious" those SPADs which fall into Railtrack's severity categories 3–8. These categories cover those SPADs which lead to a train over-running by at least 200 yards (the normal safety overlap distance) and/or which cause damage or casualties. This definition gives three serious SPADs in December. On this definition there were 14 serious SPADs in October and 10 in November.