Motor Vehicles (Driving Licences) (Amendment) (No. 4) Regulations 2021
(Limited Text - Ministerial Extracts only)
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Baroness Vere of Norbiton
That the Grand Committee do consider the Motor Vehicles (Driving Licences) (Amendment) (No. 4) Regulations 2021.
Relevant document: 17th Report from the Secondary Legislation Committee
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Transport (Baroness Vere of Norbiton) (Con)
My Lords, first, I bring to your Lordships’ attention a matter relating to one of the SIs to be debated in Grand Committee today. It relates to the SI that covers the removal of the car and trailer driving test, which was due to come into force on 15 November and was debated in the other place yesterday. For procedural reasons, the SI will now be unable to be approved by the other place by 15 November, so we are exploring all options with the House authorities about bringing in an identical SI with an amended date in the future. I hope that noble Lords agree with me that it remains appropriate to debate the substance of these SIs, as planned, in Grand Committee today.
These two statutory instruments, along with the Motor Vehicles (Driving Licences) (Amendment) (No. 3) Regulations 2021, which follows the negative procedure, are a package of measures designed to increase driving examiner availability and allocate this time to test heavy goods vehicle drivers, thereby helping to reduce the acute HGV driver shortage in this country. This is a global issue. It has affected the haulage industry for many years, but it has been further exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic, which meant that driver testing had to be suspended for much of last year. During this time, the shortage increased further as new drivers could not join the industry to replace those leaving.
The shortage of HGV drivers affects the supply chains not only of fresh food but of fuel, medicines and medical equipment across Great Britain. We therefore need to tackle this matter with urgency, and these SIs are part of the 30 interventions that the Government are putting in place to tackle the shortage of drivers.
Lord Rosser (Lab)
My Lords, most of my comments will be directed towards the (Amendment) (No.2) regulations and to the report of the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, which homed in particular on that order.
Under these regulations, the obligation is removed for some car drivers towing a trailer to have to take the additional test. As the Minister said, that is to free up capacity and enable more test appointments to be fitted in each month for heavy goods vehicle licences in a bid to address the current shortage of HGV drivers. No doubt the Minister in her response may wish to comment on the extent to which that shortage has been eased or the extent to which it continues.
The regulations also remove the requirement in relation to the staged access route to licence acquisition for heavy goods vehicle and bus licences, which will also free up driving examiner time and shorten the amount of time that it takes for a driver to become qualified to drive the largest heavy goods vehicles.
I understand that the category B towing test will not be abolished, because it is still needed by anyone wishing to drive a trailer in the EU. The regulations simply remove the obligation to take the test before towing in the UK, and will be reviewed after three years and then every five years after that, which frankly suggests that the Department for Transport see these changes to all intents and purposes as being permanent, rather than being a short-term measure to address the current heavy goods vehicle driver shortage—unless, of course, the Department for Transport envisages that shortage going on for years and years.
The Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee has drawn the attention of the House to the regulations, not least in respect of the potential safety implications. There are, apparently, about 1,000 collision injury accidents or incidents involving trailers each year. It is not clear whether the Government do or do not expect that figure to be affected by the removal of the towing test. Frankly, at the moment, I do not think the Government even have a view, since the Department for Transport has indicated that a risk assessment on road safety will form part of the impact assessment, which is fine, apart from the fact that the impact assessment will not be cleared for publication until the end of this month at the earliest. I note what the Minister said at the beginning, and that the regulations were intended to come into effect this coming Monday.
The Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee said:
“We view this as poor practice.”
It is right. Once again, the Department for Transport has been slow to react, caught out by a driver shortage that it did not address in time, despite it being in large measure of the Government’s own making, thanks to their own particular brand of hard Brexit. The committee commented:
“It is part of the purpose of an IA”—
an impact assessment—
“to provide information on what options, including non-legislative options, were considered and why they were not adopted. Because the IA has not been made available to the House alongside the instrument, we are unclear about why possible alternatives were rejected … From the date this instrument comes into effect, any car driver will be able to tow a trailer but DfT has provided no estimate of the additional numbers that that might attract or the likelihood of incidents that might follow.”
However, the department asserts:
“There is not currently any statistical evidence to suggest that competence and skills will worsen if drivers do not take a statutory test to tow a trailer … it is therefore difficult to identify how much the car trailer test … has made a difference since it was introduced in 1997 or that there is a causal link between road safety and the test.”
I do not know for how many years that has been the Department for Transport’s view—perhaps the Minister could respond to that point in the Government’s reply—but if the Government do not know whether there are any safety benefits to the statutory test to tow a trailer, and have not taken any steps over the past 11 years to find out, that does not appear to say much for their much-vaunted campaign to reduce bureaucracy and unnecessary red tape.
Safety was, however, a concern of a significant percentage of those responding to the consultation on the amendment to the regulations: a third of the 8,750-odd respondents expressed safety concerns. As I understand it—I am sure that I will be corrected if I am wrong—the DVSA advises that anyone intending to drive a car with a trailer for the first time should still first take training from a driving instructor. What steps are being taken to publicise this advice?
Moving on, is it not the reality that the Government hope that people affected by these regulations will, either individually or through their firms, still undertake the aspects of the required training that these regulations will remove? This was indicated frankly in the Minister’s response to the chair of the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, in which there was a reference to the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency
“exploring industry-led accredited training that could offer a standardised non-statutory testing approach. The DVSA has received strong support for an accreditation training scheme which is also generating considerable interest from companies who tow as part of their business and we are progressing discussions urgently.”
That letter also stated:
“We know through DVSA’s stakeholder engagement, that there is a strong indication from professional business users that they will continue to undergo Category B+E training to ensure staff are safe and competent and that their corporate responsibilities are fulfilled.”
This certainly indicates that, as far as professional businesses are concerned, they regard the B+E training as necessary to ensure that staff are safe and competent. The Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee concluded:
“The Department failed to provide any indication of the instrument’s wider effects when the instrument was laid and, in response to our follow-up questions, DfT was unable to explain what effect the removal of the BE licence will have on road safety.”
I conclude by simply asking whether the Government will in their response comment on the recommendations of the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee in its report on the Motor Vehicles (Driving Licences) (Amendment) (No. 2) Regulations 2021. The first was,
“We recommend that the DfT should review the current complex arrangements for what car and van drivers are permitted to tow and, if needed, replace them with a simpler licensing system. That decision should be based on evidence rather than the current experimental approach”.
Secondly, it said that the department should
“provide an annual Written Statement setting out towing accident figures as a reassurance that it will be in a position to undertake remedial action swiftly if a problem emerges”
and, thirdly, that the Minister should provide “more specific details about” the “wider safety implications” of the instrument, since the House
“has insufficient information to enable proper assessment of the policy”.
Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)
I thank all noble Lords for their contributions today and for enabling this debate to go ahead in the circumstances. I am very grateful, and I have appreciated the input of all noble Lords. I have listened to their concerns and suggestions very carefully, and I will write, as there is a bit of extra detail that I will give.
Returning to the overall driver shortage, the Government have been aware of it since 2010, but the issue is that it so is multifaceted that it is very difficult to pin down. We estimate the size of the acute shortage to be around 39,000, but there are numbers out there of 70,000 and 100,000, so what is not being delivered if those drivers are not available? I have asked the sector many times. The reality is that the lack of those drivers is about sector resilience and ensuring that people who are in the sector are not feeling that their shifts are too long, or whatever. We believe that the acute shortage is around 39,000. I am not going play EU bingo with the various shortages in the other countries. Suffice it to say that there are shortages in other countries, and they are something we are all dealing with.
To briefly pick up on the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, about visas, I will check that, because we do not do late parliamentary questions. I think it is because it might have gone to Defra, and that will be the reason—not that it does late parliamentary questions, but there is the transfer, if you know what I mean.
There is an international shortage. We sort of know the size of the shortage, but I would love firmer data on it. It is incredibly difficult to assess a precise number in this fast-moving environment. It has got better. One of the things that I have been following very closely is the number of people asking for application forms from the DVLA to apply for an HGV provisional licence, which has gone up massively, as has the number of licences and provisional licences going out of the other end. Now we have to get those people into the training system and then into the testing system. Having sorted out DVLA and testing, I am now turning my attention to the bit in the middle, which is obviously a private sector affair, but we will be working with it so that it increases its capacity as much as possible.
I am so sorry to hear about my noble friend’s issue with his driving licence. I have some good news: my daughter passed her driving test a couple of days ago, and she received her licence like that. I am happy to take up any concerns noble Lords have about their treatment by the DVLA, but I am pleased to say that on HGV licences it is back to normal processing times. That also applies to buses.
On the road safety aspect of this, it is incredibly complicated and we are working at pace. I appreciate that we do not have an impact assessment that noble Lords can point to, so I will do what I can to assuage noble Lords’ concerns.
Again, there is a significant challenge with data here. People will often come up with anecdotes about how they saw a trailer doing X, Y, Z—I have seen cars and buses doing all sorts of dreadful things—but actual data is one of our big challenges. As the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, pointed out, in STATS19, 865 incidents involved a car or vehicle with a trailer, which is 0.45% of the total incidents in the entire year. That is a very small amount, but it does not matter; it still has to be considered.
Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)
My noble friend makes a good suggestion. I am responsible for National Highways, but it does not collect incident data; it all comes from the police. We will of course look at any data that we can get from various sources. This will be part of the work we do in the coming period because the other issue in all this is that incidents often happen because of poor trailer maintenance. That has nothing to do with the B+E test; it is caused by people driving around trailers that are not roadworthy. DVSA enforcement picks up vehicles that are not roadworthy all the time, and may prohibit them from being on the road, but again, that is not related to the B+E driving test. I am happy to have a meeting with my noble friend about the H licence.
The noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, brought up the response to the consultation. The consultation closed on 7 September and we announced it on 10 September. We were able to do that so quickly because much of it came through electronically, and we were monitoring responses as we went. There is a short summary of our response on the web, but we will issue a fuller response in due course.
I am not entirely sure about the issue with us reducing the standard of bus driver trainers. If the noble Baroness writes to me, I will look into that more, because we have not changed the standards for trainers in the bus sector at all. Again, they have no delay in getting licences or tests; it is the bit in the middle. But many bus companies have good training departments, so I am pleased about that.
A number of noble Lords mentioned the impact assessment. We recognise that we need one and that it cannot be rushed because it requires an awful lot of analysis. We will try to publish it as soon as possible, once it has been through the Regulatory Policy Committee. Once again, I am happy to have a meeting with noble Lords once that is available.
On recognition overseas, my noble friend Lord Naseby asked about Northern Ireland, which is responsible for its own road regulations. It would therefore make its own decision about this. GB licences continue to be recognised in Northern Ireland. Drivers who travel abroad will be covered under international road traffic regulations. We are in discussions with other countries to make them aware of these changes and will report back if there are significant changes to this.
The accreditation scheme is one of the other factors we need to think about when it comes to road safety. When it is set up, it will be targeted at everybody who wants to tow a trailer of any weight when, previously, training was very much for people who needed it to pass the test or tow a heavier trailer. We will be looking at all people towing trailers, particularly the 16 million of us—I sense noble Lords are in the same bucket as me—who have grandfather rights: “I am going to tow a trailer. I have always been able to tow a trailer. I have just chosen not to, as I prefer larger articulated lorries when I am given the opportunity”. This is one of the other factors that we need to consider. It may well be that we will see a significant increase because all sorts of people will take up this accredited scheme because it is available and widely communicated. We will work with the industry and all sorts of people to make sure that people are aware of the scheme.
The noble Lord, Lord Rosser, asked about employers, who we know are very keen on this—but that is not unusual. Employers often provide a higher level of training for their workforce for all sorts of different reasons. It is not just the case that you pass your driving test and head into a haulage firm, for example, and that is it, your training is done. So, whether it be for a vehicle and a trailer or an articulated lorry, it is always the case that more training goes on, so I am not surprised to hear that that is what the industry will do.
I have rattled through most of what I wanted to say. I will definitely pick up Hansard to make sure that I have gone through all of the points, and I would be very happy to meet noble Lords in due course, perhaps to chat about this again, when the accreditation scheme is developed a bit further and when we have the impact assessment. We can look through all of the information we have at that time.