Draft Goods Vehicles (Licensing of Operators) (Amendment) (No. 2) Regulations 2022
(2 years, 5 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Trudy Harrison)
I beg to move,
That the Committee has considered the draft Goods Vehicles (Licensing of Operators) (Amendment) (No. 2) Regulations 2022.
It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer.
This draft statutory instrument corrects an error in the recent Goods Vehicles (Licensing of Operators) (Amendment) Regulations 2022, which govern goods vehicle operator licensing regimes in Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The purpose of the original instrument was to make necessary changes to the legislation governing those regimes. The UK was obliged to implement the changes in the instrument following commitments included in the UK-EU trade and co-operation agreement, the TCA.
The purpose of this draft instrument is to correct the original instrument, which went beyond the policy intentions. The intent was that the original regulations would apply only to the operation of goods vehicles. By mistake, however, one provision also applied to the operation of passenger vehicles. In doing so, it disrupted the Public Passenger Vehicles Act 1981, making the regulation of passenger vehicles somewhat more complex. That is of course an error that we must fix. The traffic commissioners have been able to continue their important work for the past three months, but the error has added complication and is not sustainable in the long term.
The vital aim of both our goods and passenger operator licensing regimes is to ensure that goods and people are transported fairly and safely. Given the distances covered on UK roads by vehicles, and the potential risks to road safety posed by their use, maintaining high standards for UK operators is a key part of maintaining and improving the standing and reputation of the industry, which plays such a vital role in the UK economy.
Our intention was to correct the error with a statutory instrument using the negative procedure; and, in draft, we laid a correcting instrument on 25 February with that in mind. Following consideration of the correcting instrument by the sifting Committees, however, it was determined that the affirmative procedure would be more appropriate. The original instrument has been debated and has now come into force. The correcting draft instrument before us is slightly different from the one laid in February, because it will be made after, instead of before, the main statutory instrument.
This draft instrument will correct the error in regulation 7 of the original instrument. Due to how it was drafted, regulation 7 of that instrument erroneously applied certain provisions to road passenger transport operations. The error had the effect of applying the provisions to all transport managers of certain road goods vehicle operations and road passenger transport operations. That was not the intention of the policy; the changes made in the original instrument were intended to apply only to goods vehicle operator licences, as required by the TCA. Road passenger transport is governed under a separate title of the TCA. Therefore, changes to goods transport are not applicable to passenger transport. As a result of the relaying of this correcting instrument via the affirmative procedure, the error has been in force for about three months.
Working alongside the regulators in the industry—the traffic commissioners—we identified available options using case law, rather than legislation, to minimise the impact of the legislative gap. We are, however, eager to ensure that the gap is closed as soon as possible.
Let me turn to the practical implications. The effect of the error has been to make the regulation of transport managers of road passenger transport operators slightly more complex. The error relates only to transport managers within the public service vehicles jurisdiction—those already on licences and subject to regulatory intervention, or those who seek to be nominated as transport managers. Over 2019-20, only 19 transport managers may have been affected by such action.
A combination of existing legal provisions, case law and published guidance that reflects judicial decisions from previous appeal cases has assisted the continued effective regulation in the area, and this has managed to avoid any real-world effects, such as those relating to road safety. The traffic commissioners have taken particular care to communicate the decisions carefully during the gap period, and their continued hard work is much appreciated.
The original regulations were introduced to ensure that the UK upheld our obligations under the TCA. Since being introduced, they have ensured that UK-EU trade flows can continue. Once this correcting instrument is made, the regime as it applies to the transport managers working in the goods transport industry will continue to be included in the scope of the original instrument, as intended, and those working in road passenger transport will no longer be in scope. I commend the draft regulations to the Committee.
Gill Furniss (Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairpersonship, Mr Stringer. I must say I have a sense of déjà vu; after speaking on the original SI some months ago, I can only hope that further errors do not come to light and this does not become a trilogy.
We do not oppose the SI. The logistics sector has already faced unprecedented chaos in recent months, and it should not be thrown into yet more turmoil due to the Government’s mistake. However, I would like the Minister to address a number of serious points. The Committee would have been completely unnecessary if the Department for Transport got it right to begin with. It does not bode well that the Department in charge of transport links that passengers rely on cannot even get a piece of secondary legislation right first time around.
During the debate on the original SI, the Minister led the Committee to believe that the issue would be rectified before the legislation came into force. She stated that the second SI could be made imminently using negative procedure, but we now know that that was wrong, too. The first SI came into force on 17 March—almost three months ago—but only now is the correcting SI making progress. How has the Department once again got this so wrong? On what basis did it mistakenly believe that the issue could be rectified using the negative procedure? Why has it taken three months since the first SI came into force to put it right?
By inadvertently misleading the Committee in this way, the first SI was passed on what turned out to be a false basis. It is vital that Members are fully informed when deciding on legislation; that is a fundamental bedrock of our parliamentary system and its democratic duty to scrutinise the Executive. Concrete steps must therefore be taken to ensure that we never again see a repeat of this blatant incompetence, which undermines that function.
During the debate on the first SI, the Minister expressed regrets at the error. Her ministerial colleague in the other place, Baroness Vere of Norbiton, stated that
“the causes are being addressed urgently as part of our wider review of SI processes.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 9 March 2022; Vol. 819, c. GC490.]
Given that three months have now passed, will the Minister update the Committee on what progress her Department has made? Will she urgently look at the mistakes that culminated in the inadvertent misleading of the previous Committee?
Moving on to matters of substance, chaos at ports is having a major impact on British business. We are now merely weeks away from the summer holidays, when passenger numbers are expected to spike, but still we are lacking a plan from the Government to deal with that issue. The industry is calling out for support, but its call has fallen on deaf ears. It was inevitable that the implementation of more checks on food products would be delayed yet again, but this instrument just kicks the can further down the road for the fourth time. When will the Government produce an effective long-term strategy to fix the crisis at Dover? When will they give the industry the guidance it needs on future checks? The industry needs certainty and stability, but at the moment all it is getting is delays, empty words and a Department that cannot even get the basics right.
Christian Matheson (City of Chester) (Lab)
It is a great pleasure, as always, to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. It was nice to hear the Minister’s speech and learn something about procedure in this place. We have batted between negative and positive procedures and so on, so I feel I have learned something today.
I echo the words of my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough, who spoke from the Front Bench. I speak to people in my trade union, Unite—for the record, I should point out that Unite appears in my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests as having supported me in the past—and that union, which represents people in the road haulage sector, is crying out for fundamental change, whether in respect of members being forced to work longer and unsafe hours or the lack of support in terms of, for example, truck stops. I hope that part of the responsibility of the designated responsible person—the transport manager mentioned in the proposed regulations—will be to look after their employees in what is an arduous and difficult profession, with long hours spent on the road, away from home. People are driven—no pun intended—to work longer hours and do further miles, which has a real safety implication.
Has the Minister noticed the growing trend for decorative lighting on heavy goods vehicles, including blue decorative lighting, some of which flashes? I mention that because I am pretty sure that such lighting contravenes the Road Vehicles (Construction and Use) Regulations 1986. If we see blue lights in the rear-view mirror at night, we assume it is an emergency vehicle and try to get out of the way. Will the responsible people—the transport managers designated in the regulations—have responsibility for maintaining the road traffic standards on the construction and use of heavy goods vehicles so that drivers will no longer be confused at night by decorative lights that masquerade as emergency vehicles? The Minister might not respond directly to those points, because I am not sure that they fall wholly within the regulations, but I would be grateful if she could give them some consideration.
Trudy Harrison
I thank hon. Members for their contributions. As I set out in my opening speech, the regulations will correct an error in the Goods Vehicles (Licensing of Operators) (Amendment) Regulations 2022.
Let me respond to the points that have been made. The Department for Transport has drafted 100 SIs in 2022 so far, and there were 223 SIs in 2021, so we are a very busy Department. That is, of course, no excuse, so we have set up the SI delivery reform programme to assess how we need to make further improvements and support the many staff who have been working hard to draft complicated SIs in what I think everybody would agree have been fairly adverse times over the past few years. I would be happy to share with the hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough the findings of that programme when it concludes.
I do not downplay the importance of resolving the error, but the effective operation of the operator licensing regime has meant the traffic commissioners have been able to mitigate any real-world impact as a result of the error over the gap period. I put on the record my personal thanks to them for that. In practice, the issue relates only to those transport managers within the public service vehicles jurisdiction—either those who are already on licences and are subject to regulatory intervention, or those who seek to be nominated as transport managers. By correcting the error, which is absolutely the right thing to do—we have been honest and forthright in doing so today—we can ensure that the regime will apply only to transport managers who work in the goods transport industry, as was originally intended.
The hon. Member for City of Chester invited me to discuss flashing lights on heavy goods vehicles. He made an important point, but I am not the Minister responsible for roads, so will endeavour to write to him with information on that specific point. On how we are improving facilities for heavy goods vehicle drivers generally, the Chancellor recently committed a further £32.5 million, in addition to more than 30 measures, to improve the conditions and attract more people to the freight and logistics sector.
I thank all Members for their participation in the debate.
Question put and agreed to.