Bull bars may be banned

The Government is to consider banning bull bars from motor vehicles even if that involves circumventing European legislation.

Speaking at a fringe meeting at the Labour conference in Brighton, Baroness Hayman, transport minister, said yesterday that the Department of Environment, Transport and the Regions will issue a consultation paper later this week setting out the options on how bull bars could be banned.

Ministers have lost patience with the slow pace of European legislation on the subject which has become bogged down in the Brussels bureaucracy. The previous government argued that it would be impossible for the UK to legislate on its own because regulations concerning the construction and use of vehicles is a European matter.