Road Humps and 20 mph Speed Limits

Debate between Iain Duncan Smith and Peter Dowd

Tuesday 5th December 2023 Westminster Hall

[Peter Dowd (Bootle) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Robertson. Where to begin on this particular issue? I am glad that the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) brought it before us, because while in some regard it is a very simple area to deal with, it is also a very complex area. I start from the principle of subsidiarity—namely, that the people best able to make the decision at, for example, a local government level, are the best people to make the decision at a local level: a determination by them of the needs of their community. I completely accept that should be in full consultation, as the right hon. Gentleman mentioned.

I was chair of a highways committee when we started to introduce speed humps, bumps and tables over 25 years ago. That was because there were so many people who were sick to death of their residential areas being used as rat runs. They wanted us, the council, to do something about it, so we started that process. However, this is also part of the wider issue of, for want of a better phrase, speed awareness. Speed bumps, humps and tables are one way that we can start changing the culture of people speeding.

Only in the last few days, one of my local schools, St Oswald’s Church of England Primary School, asked me to be a judge of posters made by children in reception to cut speed; I would like to announce the winner, but I do not think the school has announced it yet. The point is that people do recognise the need to cut speed. The figures are there. Starkly, there are 1,700 deaths and 29,000 serious injuries a year on our roads. The right hon. Gentleman talked about the cost of it, but the cost on the human side is absolutely dreadful. The figures from a Statista report show costs of £3.5 billion a year. Where is that factored into this? That has to be taken into account as well.

On the issue of subsidiarity, Parliament is here to set out a framework for how we operate at local government level, for example. I do not think it is for us to tell local government and local councils what they should be doing. I accept that the right hon. Gentleman is not necessarily saying that. However, it is worth pointing out that we give them the responsibility to do this, and it is also the responsibility of the electors in those areas to hold them to account and challenge them.

I welcome that challenge, as I always did as a member of the local authority, but this also has to be part of the wider traffic issue. For example, I understand that no pavement parking is permitted in London, but it is rife in my constituency. It is dangerous: people park on pavements all the time, blocking them, and obstructing elderly people and women and men with prams and wheelchairs. That is also an issue, and it is part of the whole question of traffic calming. There are issues with people parking on cycle lanes, for goodness’ sake, and blocking them—they do not care about anybody but themselves. That is not acceptable either.

In my view, the issue is all about trying to get people to understand that speed kills, whether in a pedestrian area, on a motorway, on an A road or on a B road. It is important that people understand that. Speed humps, bumps and tables—there are variations on themes—do help to control speed on roads. The evidence is there for that. They do reduce accidents, help to regulate traffic and ensure the safety of pedestrians. They are also relatively easy to construct. We know that speed humps are highly effective and important for avoiding road accidents.

If the Government, of whatever party, want more significant research into the issue, I welcome that. Neither I nor anyone else has anything whatever to fear from a full, unambiguous, substantive review of these proposals. I completely accept that that should be evidence-based and that we should learn from the evidence, but that does not detract from the fact that I do not want to tell people in any other constituency, or any Member in this room, what their local traffic-calming plans should or should not be—this should not be by diktat. Whatever assessment the right hon. Gentleman is suggesting, it cannot be a way for the centre here to tell local authorities what to do—where they can or cannot put speed humps or how far apart those should or should not be. That should be a matter for local determination.

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

The point I was trying to make was that if local residents have concerns about what is happening to them, their houses and so on, they have no ability to benchmark what the council is determined to do. If we want local decision making—yes, absolutely—that needs to be fair and on the basis of the best evidence available so that councils can understand when these things should be applied for best effect, rather than just making arbitrary decisions based on very old measures that actually did nothing at all. The request today is for better independent inquiry into what works, what does not work and where any measures should be. That would be far better. Councils could then discuss that with their electors.

[Peter Dowd]

As I said, I do not disagree with that. I am all for it being evidence-based. There are road bumps outside my house. They do not particularly bother me, I have to say, but that is my view. I do not think they particularly bother my neighbour either. They were introduced before I moved into the house over 25 years ago, in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Sefton Central (Bill Esterson). It was called the village entry scheme, because people in the village got sick to death of people speeding through at 60 or 70 mph. The price that we as residents pay for that, to some extent, is road humps outside our houses. If that is the way we want to dress this up, that is the consequence. The alternative consequence is people speeding through, which is more dangerous and more disruptive than the speed humps.

That is my personal perspective. It is a perspective as a Member of Parliament, as a councillor and former chair of highways, and as a resident. I want to take this in the round. I welcome the debate introduced by the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green; I just hope that we deal with it in the spirit in which it is intended and, as he said, that we do not politicise it. When we start to politicise things like road humps, speed humps or pelican crossings, there lies—excuse the pun—the road to perdition.