M5 Motorway Accident

Debate between Justine Greening and David Laws

Monday 7th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Justine Greening]

To go back over the figures on road safety, of course it is concerning that the most recent quarter’s figures that have been released showed such a rise, but we should still not lose sight of the fact that the trend is in the right direction. We should also be conscious of the fact that levels of road safety can, of course, be affected by the weather, so it is not quite as straightforward as simply saying from looking at those figures that there is an underlying reduction in road safety compared with previous quarters.

One key point to recognise in relation to those numbers and the right hon. Gentleman’s point about speed is that people can drive unsafely at any speed and in any weather conditions. It is important that we do not jump to a conclusion when the police still have to examine the causes of the accident, and that we ensure that we have a measured discussion about action that could be taken in future months to improve road safety. We as a House need to have that discussion in a responsible and balanced way.

[Mr David Laws (Yeovil) (LD)]

I join the Secretary of State and my hon. Friends the Members for Taunton Deane (Mr Browne), for Somerton and Frome (Mr Heath), for Wells (Tessa Munt) and for Bridgwater and West Somerset (Mr Liddell-Grainger), as well as the other local MPs, in congratulating the emergency services on their fantastic response to Friday’s tragedy. From a Yeovil perspective, I particularly pay tribute to the many people from my constituency, including at Yeovil hospital, who did fantastic work on Friday night and Saturday morning.

Although the Secretary of State is absolutely right not to leap to conclusions when we do not know the full facts, there are undoubtedly many positive lessons to be learned from the response of the emergency services on Friday and Saturday. I hope that she will undertake to ensure that that best practice is spread to all emergency forces across the United Kingdom.

[Justine Greening]

The right hon. Gentleman makes an excellent point. During both my trip to the scene and local hospitals and that of the Under-Secretary of State, my hon. Friend the Member for Hemel Hempstead, the point was constantly made to us about the extremely effective way in which a number of different agencies had worked together. For example, at the hospital that I visited in Taunton, staff talked to me about how they had in place an emergency process for dealing with such an incident, and it worked extremely well when an incident finally happened. There are best practice lessons to be taken from that, and we will certainly work to ensure that they are disseminated to other agencies across the rest of the country. I hope that the Highways Agency will play a key role in that.