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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Mike Penning)
It is a pleasure to be working under your chairmanship this morning, Mr Williams, and I congratulate the hon. Member for Aberdeen North (Mr Doran) on securing the debate. If I were in his position, I would be in his seat, and he would probably be in mine.
The changes that we are proposing and that were subject to consultation are not only about money. The service offered by the DVLA to the British public is quite different from any offered by most other agencies: apart from the collection of vehicle excise duty revenue that we do on behalf of Her Majesty’s Treasury, the service is paid for by the people who use it. The DVLA has to be self-sufficient in how it operates. At the moment, the types of service that we offer to the public in offices around the country could clearly be done more professionally, efficiently and helpfully, and at a cost that could help the taxpayer as well. The hon. Gentleman rightly referred to the 2.4 million people who use the offices each year, but that equates to less than 6% of DVLA transactions, although they take up almost 25% of DVLA staffing levels. I shall leave others to do the mathematics, but if we can operate more cost-effectively, that is what Governments should do.
Many services are offered at different offices around the country, and the hon. Gentleman rightly alluded to the profitable business of cherished or personalised number plates—whatever we want to call them—but the system is quite archaic. Someone has to prove the MOT for the vehicle from which the plate is being transferred, even though the transfer has been approved by the Vehicle and Operator Services Agency: the vehicle has to be brought to the test centre and the process gone through. We want to speed that process up—we want more cherished number plates in Aberdeen. If there is money in Aberdeen to buy cherished number plates, the DVLA wants that money, because it helps to balance the books in the country. At the moment, there is a disincentive because the measures are complicated, which anyone who goes through the process will realise. We want to simplify it as much as possible.
Throughout Government, we want to use digital portals much more efficiently. Some 50% of all DVLA transactions now go through the digital portal, with people sitting at home or at their local library. That service continues to be rolled out across the country. On non-payment of VED, I am pleased that the latest figures are much better, and less than 1% is lost—in other words, people not paying are less than 1%. A lot of hard work has been done in the regional offices and the Swansea central office, but much of the success is to do with automatic number plate recognition. Modern ANPR cameras are ridiculously accurate—I hope people are listening to the debate—and, as we have rolled out ANPR through the police and through our camera technology, we have picked up more and more people. More individuals are being made aware that they are likely to be caught and prosecuted, which is why we have that level of less than 1% at the moment. There is no way in the world that I would be standing in the Chamber to condone any process likely to let that figure get worse. Most prosecutions are done through Swansea—I shall come on to the Scottish issues in a second, which are different, I accept, but we have taken them into consideration.
Mr Doran
A lot of the improvement in the capture of defaulters is because of the number of patrolling recognition vehicles, but my understanding, certainly in Scotland, is that they are being removed. Are they being removed throughout the country? What impact assessment has been made of the effect of that on defaults?
Mike Penning
There is a roll-out, not a roll-in, to use probably perverse language—more and more vehicles are going out. I will not tell the country where they are and where they will be, because I want to catch and prosecute people.
If any hon. colleagues have not been out on patrol with their local police with ANPR in the vehicle, I urge them to do so. They should contact their local constabulary and go out with them, because it will be an eye-opening experience for them. They can then explain to their constituents just how advanced the technology is. I sat in a police car on the side of an A road in Milton Keynes recently, but as the vehicles went past an alarm went off in the car if they did not have any insurance or MOT, and we knew who the vehicle was registered to. ANPR is very accurate. As we have rolled out continuous insurance—
Mike Penning
I urge the hon. Gentleman to bear with me, because I want to make a little progress. I am conscious that, otherwise, Mr Williams will shut me up before I have had an opportunity to address the issues that he raised.
I fully accept that there is some concern in the motor industry, but it is split. I regularly meet the industry’s representative bodies, and I have met representatives of the motor trade in my constituency. What we are proposing will be more efficient. It will not be a case of putting documents in the post and losing blank tax discs. We will use a secure system, and speed will be subject to a contract. Delivery will be the following day, and it may sometimes be possible to offer same-day delivery.
Most of the complaints that I have heard from colleagues have come from people at local offices, who believe that they may lose their job. I fully understand their concerns, but the necessary efficiencies will mean that the risk to the motor trade of holding whole books of blank tax discs in their showrooms will be removed. At the moment, showrooms receive them in blocks, and are responsible for those blocks, which they may return if they do not use them. That is not efficient for them or for us, and we intend to roll out a more efficient way.
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right in saying that the system in England and Wales is different from the system in Scotland. The system in Northern Ireland, as the hon. Member for North Antrim (Ian Paisley) knows, is completely archaic, and no electronic portals can be used because the database is not compatible with the database in Swansea, so we must do something about that. There may be an Adjournment debate on the subject, but I thought I should raise the matter. We must deliver a much better service for the Province of Northern Ireland. In Scotland, as the hon. Member for Aberdeen North rightly said, the procurator fiscal is the prosecutor, but we do not intend to have everyone sitting in Swansea and then taking lovely journeys to Shetland and the Western Isles.
Mike Penning
The hon. Gentleman agrees that it is a lovely journey. I have been to Shetland and the Western Isles, and I agree, but it takes a while and requires an overnight stay.
We will work with the procurator fiscal. I am not a lawyer, but this place is full of lawyers, and we will ensure that case notes are available with the evidential base for prosecution. I want the number of prosecutions to rise, not fall. If anyone in Shetland and the Western Isles believes that they will not be prosecuted because of the cost analysis, they are wrong. We will be able to roll out prosecutions on a level playing field throughout the country. I fully accept that at the moment that is not the case. I apologise to those who live at the extremities of this great nation of ours, but we will ensure that whether people live in London or Shetland, they will be prosecuted if they break the law.
The consultation is genuine, as is any consultation I introduce. I remember standing here and speaking about a completely different consultation and saying that it was not a closed deal. Matters that were not in the consultation will arise. Some 400 colleagues and others have contributed to the consultation, which closes on 20 March. We will consider all submissions, whether or not they were detailed in the consultation.
The issue is categorically not just about saving money, although there will be savings. It is my responsibility, and the responsibility of the chief executive of the DVLA, to ensure that we provide a service to the public that is as cost-efficient and as accessible as possible. There is demand for a more digital service, and for it to be provided through the excellent post office network, which we have all defended in this Chamber over the years.
It is imperative that at the end of the consultation we ensure that all the issues are considered. If the plans go ahead, we will ensure that, wherever possible, staff will be transferred to other departments if that is what they want. If there are redundancies, we will ensure that we handle them correctly, and if retraining is required, it will be provided. Only the other day, I met a group of DVLA workers who were worried because they had never filled in a CV or applied for a job. Assistance will be given to everyone who applies for a new job in a Government agency or Department, or who are leaving DVLA. That is a moral responsibility, as well as a legal one.
We must ensure that the cost base is delivered correctly and that, as my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh West (Mike Crockart) said, we do not lose the benefit of the current level of non-payment, which is 1%. I cannot claim full responsibility for that, because I have been in the job for only 21 months, and the figures cover three years, so the previous Government must have been doing something right to achieve that figure. Some of that excellent work is done in local offices but—I hate to say this—most of it is being done through technology and at Swansea.
There will be more than 300 new jobs at Swansea. That does not equate with the 1,200 jobs at risk around the country, but some of those new jobs may be taken up by existing DVLA staff if they wish to relocate, although I fully understand that relocating from Aberdeen to Swansea would be extremely difficult. That is why we will offer redundancy packages if necessary.
My job is to ensure that we deliver the best possible service for the public, who are telling us that they want a more digital system. I accept that some businesses are saying one thing, and others are saying another, but as long as we can ensure that we deliver the service to the motor trade professionally and without much of the risk, I think they will be happy, and they have mostly indicated that they will be.
We want to sell many more cherished numbers, particularly in parts of Scotland where there are affluent people who want to use their disposable income in such a way. We must make it simpler for them to do so, and end the present bureaucratic and archaic system.