Haulage Permits and Trailer Registration Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Bassam of Brighton and Lord Berkeley

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

[Lord Bassam of Brighton]

I am sorry about this but on the permits from within Ireland that means a company based in Dublin, for example, would require a UK government permit to travel through the UK to go to the rest of Europe and beyond. Have we consulted with the Irish Government on that issue? It seems an important consultation to undertake. What if they are not happy for us to have a permit scheme which will apply to companies based in Ireland? I do not know how many of those there are; possibly not that many, although I am sure there are a sufficient number to be a burden on their businesses. Have they actively considered that?

[Lord Berkeley]

Before the Minister responds, I will widen the question a little. My noble friend mentioned the example of a lorry starting in Dublin and going through the UK to the continent, and asked whether it needs a permit. That is why I tabled Amendment 14B, which we shall come on to in due course, to ask whether foreign trucks need a permit to enter the UK. Surely it does not make any difference whether it is delivering from Dublin to the UK or going through the UK to deliver to Paris, as it still needs the same licence. Is my assumption correct?

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[Lord Berkeley]

My Lords, I will also speak to Amendment 14B in my name.

Amendment 9 is quite simple. It would require the Secretary of State to publish a report saying what is in any agreement that has been made on the allocation of permits for UK-registered vehicles to operate in the EU. I do not need to go into it in any more detail than that. We have had a good discussion about that this afternoon, and I am sure that the Minister will welcome this. She will probably say that she is going to do it anyway, and if she is not going to, she jolly well should. However, there is a reciprocal problem that we have not discussed so far—although my noble friend Lord Snape mentioned it—which is about EU lorries coming into the UK. Amendment 14B would allow the Government to make regulations to issue permits for non-UK registered vehicles to come into the UK. This would include vehicles, as I said earlier, from the Republic of Ireland.

Does the Minister agree that there is a need to issue such licences? I hope that she does, because otherwise, EU lorries will roam around the UK freely, doing exactly what they like, presumably doing cabotage for several months before they run out of fuel. It seems unfair, and I am sure that the European Union negotiators will accept that there has to be a reciprocal arrangement. Does the Minister envisage an allocation of permits to each member state, or will there be one lot of permits to cover the whole 26 or so member states—apart from Ukraine and places like that, because they are not within the EU? If the answer is, “No, it is an EU one and that’s fine”, will the Republic of Ireland to be happy with that, and how will it get its allocation—will it be separate or together?

I can see from past experience that the French and Dutch Governments in particular may want more than their fair share, or more than what we may think is their fair share, so there is the question of how we would deal with that.

Lastly—I hardly dare go back to this question of first come, first served—but how will it be done? I cannot say much more than that, but I look forward to hearing what the Minister says. I beg to move.

[Lord Bassam of Brighton]

My Lords, I have a number of amendments in this group. These amendments have been laid to ensure clarity of purpose in the Government’s strategy. Amendment 12 seeks to get the Government to lay a report within a month of the Bill passing on forecasts of how the permits regime will affect the efficiency of haulage and in every year following. Amendment 13 asks that within three months of the Bill passing the Government produce a report setting out their expectations for future arrangements between the EU and the UK with regard to road haulage. Amendment 14 suggests that within three months of the Bill passing a report on the costs of the future international haulage permit scheme be published.

It is essential to business continuity that the industry knows what the Government are up to and what their expectations are, what forecasts are being made and, most importantly, what costs they are likely to incur should the scheme in the Bill need to be implemented. It is fair to say that the impact assessments published were delphic in the extreme on cost estimating. No figures were given, but there were a lot of words to suggest that there is an expectation that companies in the small and medium-sized haulage sector might seriously struggle with the cost when permits are introduced, particularly given that, on the face of it, it is going to be a full cost recovery system.

The Minister will say that it is too early and that we have not got to the point at which we need to do a lot of this, but at Second Reading she gave some indication of what the range of costs might be for individual permits. We need more information, and there ought to be an obligation on the Government to produce reports setting out forecasts and expectations for future arrangements and costs. Without those things, we will not have certainty in the industry, and the industry definitely needs certainty. From my discussions with the FTA I know that it is concerned not so much about the scheme itself as about how it will work, what the details of implementation will be, the burdens that it will place on its businesses and the likely impact on the haulage industry in the UK generally. These are not unreasonable concerns. We, as responsible legislators, ought to focus on that. I hope that the Government can come up with some answers and will commit to producing reports and assessments of the sort that these amendments describe.