Global Road Deaths

Debate between Barry Sheerman and Philip Hollobone

Tuesday 24th April 2018 Westminster Hall

[Mr Sheerman]

I take that point. My hon. Friend is a great campaigning friend of mine. I did not know whether to apply for this debate under this Department or the Department for International Development. I hope that I am stimulating a relationship between the Department for Transport, which is very good—I will give it its due—and has a Minister who cares about this, and the International Development team, so that they make proposals.

Using our experience, research and knowledge to help people around the world is one of the best investments we can make in helping a developing country at the moment. Road crashes are the No.1 killer of young Africans aged between 15 and 29. Certain countries leap off the page, such as Tanzania and South Africa, because they are well above where they should be, given the size of their population, the nature of their roads, and the number of people driving cars and two-wheeled vehicles. Much of this has a heartbreaking real cost. Road crashes frequently kill or injure household breadwinners, causing loss of income, increased costs—such as those of caring for a disabled victim—and tipping people into deepest poverty.

The Overseas Development Institute report “Securing safe roads” contained in-depth analysis in three cities—Nairobi, Mumbai and Bogota. That analysis was led by the ODI and the World Resources Institute, which found that it is the poorest sections of society that bear the brunt of traffic-related injuries and deaths, and that politicians and the public tend to blame individual road users for collisions, rather than policy makers or planners.

Can I put this next point at the heart of my remarks? The fact is that, in many ways, cars have become much safer—like a cocoon. My wife recently changed her car because she wanted a hybrid car. It has automatic collision avoidance and 16 airbags. Cars are safer and getting safer still thanks to some of the great work that is being done on the new car assessment programme worldwide. The people in danger are the vulnerable road users—the pedestrians, cyclists and people on two-wheeled vehicles—across the world. Those are the people we really have to worry about.

In terms of other places, America is in fact slipping back on its success. There should be good laws and sensible research-based activity by Government, such as seatbelt legislation, as well as law enforcement, so that people are not let off, or able to pay bribes, because they do not want to be caught for speeding or drunk driving. In the United States, because the states have different rules and regulations, many of their cars do not have rear seatbelts or regulation on that. They are slipping behind. We need that mixture of wise laws, good science-based answers and ensuring that these laws are obeyed. How confident are the Government that their contribution to accident prevention overseas will be well spent?

There is a new United Nations trust, which we established last week. It has every possibility of being a good and substantial fund. The Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile put in the first £10 million, and some companies will put in. However, given my experience with the World Bank and the Global Road Safety Partnership, there is a danger that we put too much emphasis on the private sector. Individual Governments must come in. I hope the British Government will put money into the United Nations trust, but they must ensure that there are strings attached, so that we know that the money flows to evidence-based, good ends.

We need to support the development of a road accident strategy across the world. We need to highlight what the Overseas Development Institute report says. We need to reframe road safety in public debates, making connections with issues that people care about, such as the economy, equality and education, and to build alliances at all levels of government, including local, regional and national. We must also produce, in every country, a dedicated road safety plan with short, medium and long-term objectives.

I have had the privilege to work with some very good people on this. Etienne Krug at the World Health Organisation in Geneva has been inspirational in the work that I have done. David Ward and the team from his organisation produced the wonderful report “Manifesto #4roadsafety”for the Global Network for Road Safety Legislators—that comes out of the Towards Zero Foundation. There are some very good people in this area, but at the end of the day, we must ensure that we have, as the World Health Organisation says, a policy called “save lives” based on an integrated safe-systems approach. The WHO report recommends 22 priority interventions in six key areas: speed management, leadership, infrastructure, vehicle safety, enforcement and post-crash survival.

To conclude, we know the answers. We can stop these 1.3 million deaths. We can reduce them dramatically if we work together on the basis of good laws that are enforced fairly and squarely across every country that we work with. We have an enormous opportunity to save lives, communities and families. Let’s go for it!

[Mr Philip Hollobone (in the Chair)]

I am obliged to call the Front-Bench spokespeople no later than 5.8 pm. The guideline limits are five minutes for the Scottish National party, five minutes for Her Majesty’s Opposition and 10 minutes for the Minister. Then Mr Sheerman has a minute or so to sum up the debate at the end. There are five hon. Members seeking to catch my eye, including at least two former firemen. I am afraid there will have to be a time limit of four minutes to ensure that everyone gets in.

Road Traffic Accident Prevention

Debate between Barry Sheerman and Philip Hollobone

Tuesday 6th December 2016 Westminster Hall

[Mr Philip Hollobone (in the Chair)]

Will all those who are inexplicably not staying for the next debate please leave quickly and quietly, because we now have an hour-long debate on the very important subject of road traffic accident prevention?

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered road traffic accident prevention.

It is a pleasure to introduce my debate under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. We are long-term colleagues and often compete for Mr Speaker’s eye, but always on a very good and familiar basis, so I am looking forward to this debate.

Some hon. Members will know that road traffic accident prevention is a long-term interest of mine. As a very young man, a very long time ago, I came into the House after having seen the deaths of two young people who were thrown from their car and who died by the side of the road. That image never left me or my imagination—it haunted me—and when I got into the House, we had tried 13 times to introduce compulsory seatbelts, and 13 times that had been defeated. On an all-party basis, a number of us organised and formed a group to campaign. As you might know, Mr Hollobone, the 14th time, the night before a royal wedding, we kept our troops here on an amendment tabled by Lord Nugent of Guildford, a Conservative peer. It bounced back to the House of Commons. We kept our troops here and the others did not. Remember that in those days Mrs Thatcher, Michael Foot and both Chief Whips were against seatbelts. We held our nerve, kept our troops here and, by a majority of 72, seatbelt legislation was introduced. How many lives have we saved since then? It was a really good fight and victory.

These days, we could all be in a nice cosy bubble, thinking, “Isn’t it wonderful? The UK, the British, are leading on road safety. We are an exemplar to the rest of the world. We sometimes vie a little bit with Sweden, but we are pretty darn good.” Well, I have to tell you, Mr Hollobone, that 1,730 people died on British roads last year. For 1,730 families, there was a knock on the door to tell them that their loved one was dead. And these are preventable accidents. This is not like a disease; it is not like getting something ghastly and wasting away. This is something that happens for all sorts of reasons, but it means that those families are devastated. If I may say a little on the financial side, it of course costs the country a great deal. Every road death costs an enormous amount of money, and that is in addition to the human tragedy.

When we organised the seatbelt legislation, a group of MPs set up something called the Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety. Today, most people call it PACTS, and it has become one of the most influential transport safety groups in the world. We are an exemplar to many Parliaments throughout the world, and we spend a lot of time persuading other Parliaments to follow our path.

Also, after 10 years, we got together with a group of the Dutch, Germans, Belgians and Swedes to form the European Transport Safety Council, which has become the most influential group across Europe. We are very proud of that. Sometime afterwards, I had the honour of being asked to form, with the backing of the World Bank, the Global Road Safety Partnership, which operated and still operates right across the world, trying to save—this is a desperate number—the 1.3 million people in the world who die every year on the roads. Yes, some countries have much less regulation than we do. In India and China particularly, the situation is tragic, as it is in South Africa. There are dreadful accidents, deaths and serious injuries in other countries, but today I want to concentrate on the UK.

As I have said, 1,730 people died on our roads last year. I think that we are becoming a little cosy and complacent about that number of deaths. I am not saying that we are becoming too complacent. I am looking at the Minister, who is a good friend of mine. He is a very good Minister, but I will nudge him today in a kindly way. Five people are killed every day in our country. That is five families destroyed. Ahead of today’s debate, I was inundated with emails and tweets, many of which were from bereaved families who had been torn apart by the actions of drunk, drugged or distracted drivers. That is the truth of the matter: the deaths are preventable.

All the time in this Parliament we are trying to get more Members engaged in reducing the casualties on their patch, bringing the figures down home. Every year, PACTS issues to every Member of Parliament—I hope that everyone can pick this up online or through PACTS—a dashboard showing what happens in their constituency, but it does not only show that: it shows how many deaths and how many serious accidents there have been, and we rate the constituency against other similar constituencies. That is a very useful tool. Someone cannot say, “I happen to live in a very dense urban area and the roads are terrible,” or “I live near a motorway.” All that is accounted for, so if someone’s constituency is well above the norm in this regard, they as the Member of Parliament should be out there campaigning with a coalition or partnership.

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[Mr Sheerman]

My right hon. Friend makes a very fair point. I made a decision that I would not cover everything in this discussion but, yes, increasingly there are vulnerable road users including cyclists and pedestrians, both children and adults. There is also an increasing concern—I am sure the Minister is listening—about the number of really horrid, terrible, tragic accidents involving heavy goods vehicles. All the conferences and presentations I saw this summer mentioned the increasing relationship between horrible accidents in places such as London and HGVs. But, to be honest, I have to say—I am not a London MP, but a Yorkshire one—there has actually been more improvement in road safety standards and casualty reduction in London than in many places outside. We can get carried away by the passion and enthusiasm, but my message is that these are avoidable deaths, and we should use good science, good evidence and practical work done in other places to learn and improve.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (in the Chair)]

The debate finishes at no later than 5.30 pm. The guideline speech limits for the three Front Benchers are five minutes for the Scottish National party, five minutes for Her Majesty’s Opposition and 10 minutes for the Minister. That means that I need to call the Front Benchers no later than seven minutes past 5. It is now nine minutes to 5, which means that we basically have 15 minutes, and there are four people who want to speak. If hon. Members limit themselves voluntarily to four minutes, I will not have to impose a time limit. If you go over four minutes, somebody is not going to be able to speak. Rebecca Harris will show us how she can make all the points she wants to within four minutes.

Postgraduate Education

Debate between Barry Sheerman and Philip Hollobone

Wednesday 25th January 2012 Westminster Hall

[Mr Philip Hollobone (in the Chair)]

I welcome hon. Members and warn them that we may be interrupted by Divisions in the House. If that happens there will be a 15-minute interruption to proceedings. Let us hope that that does not happen.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to speak in Westminster Hall again, Mr Hollobone, but under your chairmanship for the first time. I hope that I will not need much calling to order during my remarks.

The Minister knows about my long-term interest in higher education and so do my colleagues. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for City of Durham (Roberta Blackman-Woods), truly a good friend and not just formally so, who had the original idea when she asked, “Isn’t it time that we talked about postgraduate education?” thereby inspiring me to request this debate, which I am delighted about and lucky enough to introduce.

I introduce this debate with a fair-minded point of view. Many hon. Members know that I have a long-term interest in education. I chaired the Education Committee under its different names for 10 years and particularly enjoyed my time as the Chair of the Education and Skills Committee, when I had a brief covering higher education, stolen away as it was when I became the Chair of the Children, Schools and Families Committee, which did not have the higher education remit. I have missed it.

Many years ago, I started the all-party parliamentary university group, on which my hon. Friend the Member for City of Durham now has a senior position, because it was important that this vital sector in our economy had a good relationship, good conversation and good communication with Members of both Houses of Parliament.

I have a long-term interest. I am now involved in the newly formed Higher Education Commission, chaired by Lord Broers, the first inquiry of which will look at postgraduate education. It is important to discuss that part of higher education because it is a bit isolated—on its own—and we have had a pretty eventful period for undergraduate education over the past months and years. Everyone has been busy looking at student finance for undergraduates, which has led, unfortunately, to our taking our eye off the postgraduate world.

I read somewhere recently that the Minister said—I believe him—that the noble Lord Mandelson could not be persuaded to include the postgraduate sector in the Browne review of higher education. I shall give way to the Minister if he wants to correct me.

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[Mr Sheerman]

I will not be tempted by that question because I intend to talk about that issue at the end of my speech and I would ruin it if I did so now. It might surprise people in Westminster Hall this afternoon, but there is some shape to my speech—a little. Let me gallop through the rest of it. I will come to the hon. Gentleman’s point, I promise.

At present, there is one great danger—well, there is more than one, but let us start with this one that I have picked up over the years. I want as many UK-based students as possible to come through as postgraduates, as the researchers of the future, but too often, I am looking at departments—even the big science departments of the big science universities—that rely too much on overseas students. In science and engineering, students come particularly from China and India. In other subjects, the students are very often from the United States. People can see the statistics on that. UK students are increasingly coming through with high levels of debt—EU students are also pretty stretched in the present economic climate—and I worry that those high levels of debt may be putting them off further study. There is the belief that debt levels will be much higher in the future. Whether they are right or wrong, they are thinking, “Can I afford to go on into postgraduate education and then the commitment of a doctorate and all the rest?”

I become very worried when I look at the statistics and I hope that the Minister will come back to us on the matter. Is he content with the number of UK-based students, particularly in the challenging subjects to which I am referring? We have to have a high density of scientists and clusters of scientists in our country. In particular, is he confident that we will be breeding the postgraduates that we need—tomorrow’s researchers?

We want to keep up the research dynamic in our country. We want to keep up its international excellence. We still have it. We find it very easy to do ourselves down in this country. We say, “Oh, it’s all terrible.” It is not all terrible. We still have fantastic universities that have the top ratings in the world. However, it is possible to become a little complacent and then suddenly our institutions become less attractive, not just to overseas students but to the high-level, high-calibre scientists who we want to come and work in them as part of the teams there. We must keep up the research dynamic if we are to have international excellence.

I am also worried about access to postgraduate education. As Alan Milburn said in his report on social mobility, are we getting into a situation in which only kids from very wealthy backgrounds can contemplate staying on in education long enough to push their talent to its furthest potential? That really worries me. Will we be in a situation in which many bright young people from less well-off backgrounds are put off staying with a science or a social science? Will they be put off staying in education long enough to be part of a successful research future?

Let me return to the point made by the hon. Member for Gillingham and Rainham (Rehman Chishti). I am totally in favour of partnership between researchers and industry. I think that it is fantastic. People can see that I am in my best suit today. This is real Huddersfield cloth. Not many people could afford it, but I am the Member for Huddersfield and am in a privileged position. I should not drop names, but the reason why I am wearing it is not that I am in your company, Mr Hollobone, but that I am having dinner this evening with Lord Bhattacharyya. He is one of the great exponents of partnership across universities. He built Warwick as a partnership university and has had great success.

I believe in partnership, but I also believe in free science. I believe in academics having the freedom to conduct science that has nothing to do with likely commercialisation. That is what I call free science—science for its own sake, or the subject for its own sake. It could be social science; I am a social scientist by training. It should be able to go somewhere where it does not have to be sponsored and does not have to have a tag saying that it might be useful to some institution, lobby group or whatever. The fact is that we will be a poorer nation and will cease to be a high-science nation if we do not have what I call free science. Free science research must be at the heart of what we do. That is not to gainsay at all the wonderful relationships that do other kinds of more applied science.

This is an important debate. I am sure that the other hon. Members present will say much more profound things than I have said, but there is a policy vacuum that needs to be filled. We need a sense of direction for the future of postgraduate education and research in this country. We also need to know that our research universities have a healthy future and that anyone in our country who has talent and the potential to contribute to that will be able to do so.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (in the Chair)]

The hon. Gentleman may be wearing a suit made of cloth from his constituency. I am wearing shoes made by Cheaney’s in Desborough in my constituency. I am sure that we both appreciate each other’s attire.

Mr Speaker has received a very nice handwritten note from Paul Blomfield, so I call him to speak next.