Haulage Permits and Trailer Registration Bill [HL]

Debate between Earl Attlee and Baroness Randerson

Report stage (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 17th April 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Randerson]

My Lords, to take further the argument put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, I note that the Minister said that the Government would seek to maximise the benefits to the UK economy in the way in which permits are distributed—and that needs to be done in a way which seeks to enhance the good repute of the industry and therefore of our country. I was struck by a point put to us in a briefing from Unite, which suggests that permits should be linked to the good repute of the operator; for example, their record on driver infringements should be taken into account, not just to reward good practice but to incentivise further good practice. I raise this issue because I seek an assurance from the Minister that the Government will be prepared to investigate such an approach, which seems a much fairer system than that suggested in Committee, when we talked about first come, first served and some kind of balloting system. There needs to be something to encourage good practice in the industry.

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, of course I support my noble friend the Minister’s amendment. On the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, the noble Lord was Roads Minister many years ago and I was the Opposition Front Bench spokesman on transport. We had a lot of fun together and we made various improvements. The noble Lord will know that to engage in international goods vehicle operations, one needs an international goods vehicle operator’s licence—one can have an international licence or a national licence.

When the noble Lord was Minister, I would try to increase the standard required of all operators—not just international operators but national operators as well. Sometimes he took my suggestions—there was one issue on which we achieved an improvement—but, generally speaking, as happened with most Ministers, the Opposition’s suggestions would be turned down.

However, if we wanted to, we could raise the bar for having an international operator’s licence. The tests already include the need for good repute and financial standing. If an operator gets into trouble with their annual pass rate or the number of prohibitions they pick up on the roads, the traffic commissioner can remove their licence. However, the noble Lord is right: if you want to engage in international operations, you need to operate to a higher standard than national operations—because, let us face it, operators operating on the continent are representing the United Kingdom. So the noble Lord raises a good point, but it is already covered by the fact that, to engage in international operations, you need an international goods vehicle operator’s licence under the Goods Vehicles (Licensing of Operators) Act.

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[Baroness Randerson]

My Lords, two things above all concern the haulage industry in relation to this aspect of the Bill: the number of permits that will be available, which the Minister has already addressed, and the key issue of the potential cost of those permits. As the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, has just said, it is, at least in part, about fairness—to give our operators a fair opportunity in competition with those from the rest of Europe. We should not be making it more expensive than we have to.

I raised this issue in Committee. In her response, the Minister made the point that if we made the EU permit free, the Government would just put up the cost of the operator’s licence to cover the cost of it. I can clearly see that point of view, so the amendment in my name is an attempt to balance that issue and shut off that exit for the Government by saying that, overall, the cost has to be proportionate.

What I am really trying to do is to urge the Government to minimise the cost of these permits. It is probably not terrifically significant for the big operators but for the small operators—the people who have just one, two or three lorries going to Europe—it is a very significant aspect of their cost structure, so I ask the Government to give the industry a break and make this as cheap as possible. There is also a symptomatic or symbolic thing in this decision: it has been free in the past, for very logical reasons because the EU has been an extension of our domestic market so people were therefore not charged extra for going there; but, symbolically, they are now to be charged more for the right to travel and transport goods overseas. It is therefore important that we keep that cost to the minimum possible.

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, once again the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, raises important points and I agree with them. That should be what the Government will negotiate for—equal access, reciprocity, et cetera—and I am sure that my noble friend the Minister will tell us that that is the case. However, once again, I would not like to see the Government tie their hands by agreeing to have the noble Lord’s amendment in the Bill, because it might be necessary to do something that does not quite meet the requirements of his amendment in order to achieve some other desirable outcome. I hope that he will reluctantly accept that point.

As to the amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, I agree with the sentiment, particularly on the need to minimise the costs. I hope that if we did have to have this system, it would be just a technicality that a permit would be issued and the costs could be very low. Whatever we do, it must be on some form of cost-recovery basis where the international haulage industry pays for it, but there is the horrible prospect that, for some reason, the system that we will have to adopt is much more complicated and expensive to administer than the old Community licence system. The noble Baroness’s amendment says that the costs should not exceed that, which I suggest to my noble friend the Minister means it is not wise to accept that amendment. It will otherwise be impossible to recover the costs of operating the system. I entirely agree with the sentiment but I hope that my noble friend the Minister does not accept the noble Baroness’s amendment.

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[Baroness Randerson]

Before the noble Earl sits down, I hope he will accept that the wording I used was not that it should not exceed it but that it should not be “disproportionate”.

[Earl Attlee]

I entirely accept the point. The amendment is carefully drafted but it would still have the undesirable effect.

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[Baroness Randerson]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, raises an important issue which did not have much discussion in Committee. It is a complex issue partly because it is possible to stick a registration plate on a trailer but not really know which trailer it is for. It appears to be the same trailer, but it could be a different one, depending on what is pulling it. We need a system to specify who is responsible and who is operating in a rental market for trailers. We should remember that rental trailers range from trailers used to cart excess household rubbish to the tip through to camping trailers for holidays and up to large commercial trailers. It is a big market. We must also take account of the important issue that, at the commercial level of the industry, drivers swap trailers regularly. In order to be fair to the drivers, there needs to be a simple way for them to check that the trailer is properly registered and safe. That is a key issue that we did not address at all in Committee.

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, I take it that the intention of the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, is to deal with the commercial HGV trailer market. He said that the issue is complex, and it is certainly that. There is a wide variety of renting, leasing and finance arrangements and they will all have different registration arrangements, so he is right that it is complex. However, it is no more complex than the situation for tractor units or rigid vehicles, which also have complex leasing and rental arrangements. Equally, the situation is no more complicated for a trailer than it is for a goods vehicle. I therefore cannot see why we need to have special consideration in this legislation in the way that the noble Lord suggests.

The noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, suggested that operators would not know which trailer is which. However, we already have the ministry plate which is attached to the trailer along with the goods vehicle test disc. Moreover, there is a chassis number on the trailer and the manufacturer’s plate.

[Baroness Randerson]

For clarity, I was referring to the casual observer rather than the industry insider, or indeed the police or any law enforcement agency that sought to check.

[Earl Attlee]

Yes, my Lords. As I understand it, there will also be a conventional number plate on the trailer. Once it is registered under this legislation, it will have a number plate in the same way as a rigid vehicle.

The noble Baroness touched on smaller trailers for private use. My comments are particularly aimed at the commercial sector.

Haulage Permits and Trailer Registration Bill [HL]

Debate between Earl Attlee and Baroness Randerson

Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Thursday 22nd March 2018 Grand Committee

[Baroness Randerson]

My Lords, my Amendment 23 is an attempt to tackle the issue in a parallel manner. It takes on board the Delegated Powers Committee report which I think we can say was not entirely favourable. Last week, I quoted the committee as saying that the Bill is,

“more of a mission statement than legislation”.

As the noble Lord just said, the committee specifically referred to Clauses 1 to 5 all beginning with the words, “Regulations may”. It also chastised the Department for Transport for not producing some illustrative regulations alongside the Bill and urged us to probe the Government in Committee. I am trying to follow its advice.

As the committee report highlights, 16 of the 24 clauses contain delegated powers, all of them subject only to the negative procedure. Amendment 23 attempts to rectify this, ensuring that the substantive clauses of the Bill are subject to the affirmative procedure.

I also want to note that the Constitution Committee said specifically that Bills like this are difficult for Parliament to scrutinise and—this is the key phrase—present a fundamental challenge to the balance of power between Parliament and the Executive. Given the reference just now by the noble Lord to the number of statutory instruments that we have coming through, it is important that we continue to maintain a more stringent attitude to SIs than is indicated by the Bill as currently written.

Amendment 21 particularly highlights Clause 17, which would give the Secretary of State the power to create offences by statutory instrument. Labour’s Amendments 24, 25 and 27 relate to the sifting committee for statutory instruments, which was recommended in the report of the Delegated Powers Committee. I believe that these are very sound suggestions and I support them. There are good reasons for adopting a more rigorous attitude towards this and I am sure that the Minister would be the first to admit that at this stage the Government do not have absolute clarity as to how they are going forward. To my mind, that is an even stronger argument for why we should have some form of sunset clause and sifting to ensure that the important elements of this Bill are properly scrutinised in the future.

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, I have no idea why your Lordships keep banging on about affirmative orders and want everything to be done by the affirmative procedure. It is good that we have my noble friend the chairman of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee with us, and we have his counsel. However, in my opinion, and it may be wrong, his committee keeps recommending the affirmative procedure when it is not appropriate.

These are insignificant matters. We are talking about having an international permit for heavy goods vehicles and about registering trailers. The Bill does not provide for significant or severe penalties—they are limited in the Bill. But my noble friend the Minister can make drastic changes by means of negative instruments. For instance, using Section 42 of the Road Traffic Act 1988, she can change the construction and use regulations, having decided one day that every car must have a 20 kilogram dry-powder fire extinguisher. That would be really painful and a tremendous waste of money, but she can do that under the negative procedure. Or she could put a requirement in the construction and use regulations that it is very easy to fall foul of. That would be undesirable, but again, she can do so under the negative procedure.

It there was a problem with the regulations that will arise from this Bill or with a negative instrument—perhaps the penalties are too severe, although they are limited, or have other unintended consequences—the negative instrument can be prayed against; I think the praying period is 40 days. Industry and stakeholders have very good means of alerting Her Majesty’s Opposition to any problems with new regulations. If there are undesirable effects, the Opposition and other parliamentarians have a range of tools they can use to flag them up. Her Majesty’s Opposition can require a negative instrument to be debated on the Floor of the House, and they can also make sure that it takes place in prime time.

[Baroness Randerson]

I recall the noble Earl saying similar things last time, but he knows as well as I do that the precedents for that kind of activity—that kind of movement against negative instruments—indicate how difficult it is to actually change anything. He knows there is an outcry if we try to deal with things like that in the way that he describes. Is it not therefore better to have a more precautionary approach? Although the issues here might seem small, the big issue of whether we can trade properly abroad and with our neighbours is fundamental to the whole economy. I think the noble Earl would accept that the tenor across the Room today has not been that of a group of people seeking minute regulation. There has been a very reasonable attitude towards increasing regulation.

[Earl Attlee]

On the precautionary principle, the problem I have is that we are using precious time to debate things that we do not need to. When I was an Opposition Front-Bench spokesman, I dealt with affirmative orders while thinking, “Why in God’s name are we debating this?” One day, the noble Baroness, Lady Symons, came in with a defence order—a Foreign Office order or something. She made a big speech, and I just smiled at her and then the order went through.

The other point that the noble Baroness raised was about the difference between an affirmative order and a negative one. The ability to debate it and to change it is no different whether the order is affirmative or negative. The only difference is whether it has to be debated or whether it gets debated only if we can flag it up: our ability to amend it is no different. I am going to get killed now.

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[Baroness Randerson]

My Lords, my Amendment 28 in this group is to Clause 23. It provides a sunset clause which would cause Clauses 1 and 3 to expire after three years, which is a period that the Secretary of State could extend by affirmative resolution. This was recommended by the Delegated Powers Committee.

Amendment 22 to Clause 21, moved by the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, requires the Secretary of State to lay a draft of the regulations he intends to make under Clauses 1 to 5 and 2 to 18 before the House within three months of the Bill passing. I understand the purpose of this: to improve scrutiny and introduce a sunset clause, but I am not sure that we support the three-month timeframe in this case. We expect the Secretary of State to consult thoroughly before making the regulations and, to my mind, three months is not a realistic period. I understand that the need to make law quickly has to be balanced by the need to make law well, and that always requires consultation, but the Minister has our sympathy if she has to keep to a three-month timescale. I think that that is overly ambitious, but the principle of a period within which the work has to be done is very good.

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, I have some sympathy for the noble Baroness’s amendment. I have general concern about Acts of Parliament hanging around on the statute book that have not been commenced. I have drafted an amendment that I have not used yet—I will willingly share it with the noble Baroness—and discussed it with officials, along with my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham. Some pretty high-profile bits of legislation have hung around causing hellacious problems when the Government did not implement them. I have sympathy with her amendment, but I suspect that there are reasons why it is not appropriate for the Bill, although we need to stop legislation hanging around that has not been commenced.

[Baroness Randerson]

To clarify, the reason for this is that with most Bills we pass here, the Government believe that they need the legislation—whether we like it or not—and have a clear idea of how they are going to implement it. This Bill suffers from a number of uncertainties over exactly how it is going to work in practice and even whether it will be needed. It is worth remembering the Minister’s opening words, which were to the effect that this was a Bill the Government hoped they did not need.

Haulage Permits and Trailer Registration Bill [HL]

Debate between Earl Attlee and Baroness Randerson

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 13th March 2018 Grand Committee

[Baroness Randerson]

My Lords, I rise to speak specifically to Amendment 12, to which I added my name, but also to the group as a whole, because it covers the cost of all this to the haulage industry: the cost of UK-registered vehicles operating in the EU; the efficiency of haulage after Brexit; future arrangements for the international transport of goods; and the cost impact. I have a slight feeling of Groundhog Day. I will spare your Lordships much of the detail, but I have been through this once in the previous 24 hours, during the EU withdrawal Bill debate, when we covered some of the same territory. For the sake of variety, I will say a few different things because there are plenty of things to say.

A report came out today—hence it was not the topic of my speech last night—by Clifford Chance and Oliver Wyman. It estimates that the costs to business of Brexit in terms of customs arrangements, additional legal and bureaucratic requirements and haulage requirements in relation to customs arrangements for goods in transit will be £32.8 billion. I always measure things in relation to £350 million, for reasons that might be obvious to some noble Lords here; that figure comes out at roughly double £350 million a week. That is a very significant issue and I am delighted that the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, illustrated the situation so well with original documents. I recall that, a year ago, one of the haulage organisations—forgive me, I am delving into my memory and cannot remember which one—sent us a briefing about the costs to the haulage industry. It illustrated them by saying that, depending on the type of goods being carried, driving from the UK to Italy and back could require 64 different pieces of documentation. In this day and age, I am sure that would not be pieces of paper, but people have to fill in the forms online in just the same way. Anyone who spends as much time filling in forms online as I do will know that it is very easy to make one of the mistakes referred to by the noble Lord.

Last night, we talked about delays at the ports. Dover is a particularly stark example because of its geographical configuration and the built-up area around it. That all adds to the cost, and the issue of permits and other documentation is key to getting the lorries through Dover and all the other ports as quickly as possible.

The amendments address the impact of additional border controls and delays, the costs of which go well beyond the haulage industry. When we had Operation Stack—and Dover port is predicting worse queues than Operation Stack as a regular feature—it cost the police and council in Kent £1 million a day. All these other things add up, so it is so important that any permit system is simple, straightforward and as flexible as possible.

I also emphasised last night that we talk all the time about the cost to government, but businesses have to internalise and absorb those costs or pass them on to their customers. In the case of large companies, that might be quite reasonable over a period, but there are SMEs that have only ever exported to EU countries. They will never have dealt with custom systems before, and will not be familiar with the whole process. They will have to set up whole new departments and systems, which will be of significant cost to business and have significant impact on our industry. That applies across the board.

The Clifford Chance report picked out the impact on the car industry because car parts move across borders frequently during their production. The impact will be on car manufacturers not just in this country but in other countries bringing their cars and car parts to us.

I very much hope that the Minister will be able to assure us that the Government are doing some work on this and will soon be able to produce some hard figures. Reports have been published. They may be accurate or inaccurate, but the work has been done. Individual industries are doing that work. It would be very useful if we had some information on what the Government calculate will be the impact.

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, I see merit in some of the amendments. Clearly, we need to know the outcome of the negotiation and what the impact will be. The noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, mentioned demurrage, which is a good point. If you have a complex system, you can foul up. The problem for a small haulier is getting anyone to pay demurrage. It might be in the contract, but you try getting your customer to pay it for a small haulage business: you will struggle. It may be okay if you have a supertanker and your contract agreed on the Baltic Exchange, but for a little haulage deal? Forget it.

The Committee needs to consider the position of our EU partners. It is not in their interest to have a complex system either. We have the Hams Hall engine plant making BMW engines that have to go to Germany. We know perfectly well that automotive components go backwards and forwards several times, as the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, said. It is in no one’s interest to have a complex system.