The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Transport (Mr, G. R. Strauss):

I at once accept the claim of the two hon. Members opposite who moved and seconded this motion, that their intention, and that of their hon. Friends, in moving Amendments on this point during the Committee stage was to strengthen the Bill and to make the roads safer. But I must make the comment that the deduction complained of was a perfectly fair one to draw from the speech of one hon. Member during the Second Reading Debate, as he argued that, while other people who had committed road offences should come up for driving tests, even though they had held a provisional licence for more than a year, those who had been convicted of driving under the influence of drink need not come up for a test. I do not doubt that that hon. Member may have wanted a more severe test for those convicted of that particular offence, but, if so, he did not express himself very well and, therefore, the deduction drawn by the newspaper commentator was not, in the circumstances, wholly unfair.

As regards the merits of this Clause, the hon. Member who moved it said that it was only suggested that the Minister should have power to make regulations providing for a medical test, but I think that the House will agree that, if in a Bill of this sort, a Minister is given certain powers to make regulations for a certain matter, then he is expected to make some such regulations. If, therefore, he does not intend to do so, it would be wrong to accept the permissive powers. A great deal can be said for introducing a medical test into our present driving tests, but it is a highly controver- sial problem, and we think it is wholly inappropriate to introduce medical tests in this limited Measure, which attempts only to deal with granting provisional licences to about one and a half million people without any test during the war. If we are going to have medical tests for afflictions from which an applicant may be suffering, we should only do so after very careful consideration and after consultations with the various motoring organisations and a large number of other bodies. I am sure that after all that, there would be a large number of Members in all parts of the House who would say our conclusions were wholly wrong, and tell us to think again.

We did not want to introduce any controversial matter into this Bill. We have deliberately and carefully avoided that. I suggest to the hon. Members who have moved and seconded this Clause that, while I have no doubt that their motives are to strengthen the provisions of the Bill and to make driving safer in the future than it has been in the past, it would be unwise to introduce a fundamental change in our licensing procedure into this Bill. Therefore, I hope the House will not accept this Clause.