Greg Smith

I think I am grateful for that intervention. I am not sure whether I have any contacts in the Conservative group on the hon. Gentleman’s council, but I will gladly see if I can get that message passed to them. In the limited time we have available, I would like the Minister, when she sums up, to consider a few practical points about how we might start making this problem better. I will start with getting the basics right. When I drop my middle child to school—a rural primary school in a village—I watch a particular taxi driver pull up on the zig-zag lines every single morning. The dirty look I give him does not appear to be doing very well in stopping that behaviour. If we cannot enforce the basic rules that we already have outside schools, what hope do we have of making it better? I ask the Minister to reflect on how we can better enforce those rules and implement the important points that many hon. Members made about yellow line parking and pavement parking. I also ask her to consider the physical infrastructure near schools, such as narrowing sight lines, which force drivers to slow down; there is a lot of evidence out there about those and other physical infrastructure such as chicanes. On the question of speed—I promise that I will draw to a conclusion very quickly, Mrs Hobhouse—we have heard examples from the Netherlands, but I have seen examples in France and some parts of the USA of variable speed limits outside schools at drop-off times. Can that be considered in this country, perhaps to answer the very good challenge laid down by my hon. Friend the Member for Chester South and Eddisbury (Aphra Brandreth)? There is a lot more that can be done in this area, and I urge the Minister to get on with it.