Vehicles: Insurance

Lord Davies of Coity Excerpts

Wednesday 4th July 2012 Lords Chamber

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, we cannot use the DVLA database to work out whether a foreign truck is insured. It would be a matter of the truck driver producing his insurance paperwork, but I am not aware that there is a huge problem with commercial vehicles being uninsured. The much more serious problem is their mechanical state.

[Lord Davies of Coity]

My Lords, if there is some improvement as a result of what they do in Ireland and France, why do not we do something that will be an improvement on the current situation?

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, I have already explained my position on the insurance disc. I cannot understand why noble Lords find it so difficult to understand. A few weeks ago I went out with Hampshire police and the police officer, using his ANPR equipment, stopped a motorist because she was uninsured. The reason she had no insurance was that it was cancelled because she could not keep up the payments on it.

Airports: Heathrow

Lord Davies of Coity Excerpts

Monday 28th May 2012 Lords Chamber

[Earl Attlee]

My noble friend makes valid points.

[Lord Davies of Coity]

My Lords, my noble friend Lord Foulkes described the circumstances arising out of his question, such as the slotting of aircraft. The Minister replied to the issue of the slots but he never replied to the point about the dithering over the decision, for which the Government are responsible, about the third runway at Heathrow.

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, we are not dithering about a third runway at Heathrow. Coalition policy is that there will not be a third runway at Heathrow.

Olympic Games 2012: London Air Quality

Lord Davies of Coity Excerpts

Monday 23rd May 2011 Lords Chamber

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, I obviously failed to explain properly to the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, that there is very little chance indeed of us being fined by the International Olympic Committee. We could be fined only if an event could not take place for any reason—for instance, if there was far too much pollution to run a marathon—or there was some non-compliance with the contract. Both those conditions are extremely unlikely to arise.

[Lord Davies of Coity]

My Lords, in answer to an earlier question the Minister said that we are all responsible. Is that not a case of the Government again passing the buck?

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, we are certainly not passing the buck. We have helped the mayor with a £5 million grant to deal with some of the technical issues; for instance, fitting particulate traps to London buses to deal with some the PM10 hotspots that I talked about earlier.