National Accident Prevention Strategy

Greg Smith Excerpts

Tuesday 28th April 2026 Westminster Hall

[Greg Smith (Mid Buckinghamshire) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Murrison. I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Sir Andrew Mitchell) on securing the debate and on the thoughtful way in which he presented his opening remarks, highlighting the need for a national strategy to prevent accidents, not least through the lens of the horrific tragedies that he outlined in the royal town.

I am always pleased to see the Minister in her place, but this debate was tabled to discuss a national accident prevention strategy, which would need to extend well beyond the Minister’s portfolio and the Department for Transport. Roads and other transport methods represent only a portion of the challenges raised in the debate. For a Government whose principal ideology appears to be predicated on a misguided notion of due process, it seems that there has been an accident in today’s assignment.

The issue at hand requires a Minister whose responsibility it is to think about the broader impact and prevention of accidents, which I would argue is someone in the Cabinet Office or the Department for Work and Pensions, which holds significant responsibility in this area as the sponsoring Department for the Health and Safety Executive. I say none of that as a criticism of the Minister, for whom I have a high regard and respect; I do say it as a criticism of the Government, because I cannot understand why they have chosen to field the Department for Transport in this debate rather than a Department that cuts across the whole of Government.

This is an incredibly important issue. There is a risk of accident from the moment we wake up in the morning, when we travel to work or enjoy a leisure activity, and when we go about our daily business. Risk is in our journeys, and in every product we use and place we visit. The Government have a regulatory responsibility to mitigate those risks as much as possible—to prevent avoidable accidents, save lives and shield the taxpayer in the process. A national accident prevention strategy should be about creating not a burden or over-regulation, but the safety and confidence that people and businesses can live, operate and thrive in an environment with lower risk.

The cost of accidents to the NHS is estimated at around £6 billion a year. It is suggested by the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents that accidents are the leading cause of death in the under-40s. We have a duty to do what we can to get to grips with the significant causes of accidents, especially as they change with new developments in our way of life.

It is interesting to dive into the figures about prevalent accidents over time. Transport-related accidents are horrific, and of course the Government should want to do more to reduce those further, but they have already fallen by 17% over the past two decades. The number of falls, however, many of which will affect our elderly constituents, is up considerably by 90%, making up 46% of all accidents. I am interested to know how the Minister plans to address some of the major emerging causes of accidents, particularly by working across different Departments.

RoSPA’s November 2024 report makes several recommendations, but the clear theme is the need for a more holistic, joined-up approach to accident prevention. The Health and Safety Executive does a robust job of upholding safety standards in the workplace, but there is a need to ensure that the safety standard is consistent at work, at home and in the public realm. Future-proofing our safety standards will also play a key role in mitigating risk for the long term.

I would like to hear from the Minister what considerations the Government have made to accommodate the growing use of artificial intelligence and robotics in industry and business, both to mitigate accident risk and to utilise new technologies to reduce risks elsewhere. We have seen in our newspapers this week an example that is relevant to the Minister’s Department: a self-driving car drove straight through the police cordon around a crime scene in London. That emerging technology is clearly not foolproof, and has shown on the streets of our capital city this week that it is potentially dangerous, so how will the Government rise to the regulatory challenge?

As my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield eloquently set out, this is a broad topic. It is clear from delving into the issue of accidents that the Government must take it seriously. Given that real strain and cost are being placed on our NHS and public services, and that some truly horrible accidents are happening around us each and every day, I would like to hear that the Government are taking this issue seriously and that work is being done across Government and not just within the Department for Transport. When it comes to delivering a broader accident prevention strategy, I hope that they will not take a narrow approach, but will listen to the recommendations of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents and take the cross-departmental approach that is clearly necessary.