Haulage Permits and Trailer Registration Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Snape and Lord Campbell-Savours

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

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

The difference of course is that one is more likely to be a commercially operated trailer as against one which is owned by an individual using it for general purposes.

[Lord Snape]

Desperate though we are to hear from the noble Baroness, and I know that she is equally desperate to put us right on this amendment, I am concerned about the tone of the debate. My noble friend Lord Tunnicliffe has talked about the nanny state and not wishing to overregulate trailers. My noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours said that this is about small trailers. He had one himself that he drove around the countryside and everything was fine. However, noble Lords ought to reflect on the fact that no matter how small they are, these trailers can travel at a fair old speed, depending on the mood of the driver. Even a small one breaking away on a motorway, for example, could cause an enormous amount of carnage.

I spent my working life in the railway industry, where the smallest wagon is inspected on a regular basis. That is probably the reason the railway industry has gone for a decade without killing a passenger in a moving train accident. The same does not apply on our road network. For my noble friend Lord Tunnicliffe to talk about the nanny state ignores the fact that we are still killing a couple of thousand people and seriously injuring more than 10,000 on our roads. The smallest trailer, if badly maintained, could play its part in adding to that carnage.

My noble friend shakes his head, but he must be aware of the issues when he is driving on a motorway. Because of the lack of traffic police these days—we can play a game called “spot the traffic policeman”; the only time I see one is when I watch the television because I do not see any on our roads—I have been overtaken by people dragging those little trailers that my noble friend has just referred to. They drive in a cavalier way at 65 or 70 miles an hour, although strictly speaking they are supposed to be restricted to 50 miles an hour. If one of those trailers were to break away at 70 miles an hour, I do not care how small it is, it could cause a great deal of carnage on the road. I disagree with my noble friend’s view that the nanny state should keep out of legislation in this particular instance and I think that there is a proper case for inspection and regulation. I hope that the Minister will refer to it when the happy time comes and she is allowed to respond to the debate.

Haulage Permits and Trailer Registration Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Snape and Lord Campbell-Savours

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

[Lord Campbell-Savours (Lab)]

My Lords, I might be the only person in the Room who has run on one of these permits, which was some 50 years ago. I have some permit documentation, going back 30 years, in front of me now. I want to talk about what happened then and what we should avoid happening in the future.

We were carrying our own goods, exporting them and importing components. When we were exporting goods, we had to run on either non-quota or quota—non-quota was a defined group of products that we carried if we were going to an exhibition. For example, I remember going to a clock exhibition in Switzerland, and we had to get a non-quota to carry to Basle there. If we showed at the Paris Porte de Versailles in France, again we would run on non-quota permits but if we were running goods of our own manufacture, we would have to carry a permit. The undersupply of permits was a real problem.

The Minister sent us out a letter during the week in which she talked about electronic management of these systems. To some extent, that might work but I will come to a problem that might arise. The problem in the late 1960s and 1970s, when I was involved in this business, was that there were a lot of forgeries out there. Many truckers who could not get permits would forge them and, when they got to customs frontiers in Europe, bribe customs officers to get passage into another country. As I said at Second Reading, I saw this happen myself. I remember that the customs officer would almost wink and people would drop notes in an old jar standing on the counter. People knew what was going on and it was widespread. I never got involved in it myself, but I observed it. People used to get quite angry about the attitude of some customs officers. They would ask you to open the back of your truck to see what you were carrying, as if they were checking against the bills of lading—the document which indicated what goods you were carrying—as if they were to be given a tip for the pleasure of having your truck opened. It was examined, not properly but in a very curious way, with nods and winks. That went on a lot and I am worried about it.

That was one of the abuses. The next one—it was not even an abuse, as people just turned a blind eye to it—was the selling of permits. Some companies had more permits than they needed whereas others were starved of them. Someone told me on the phone the other day that the going rate, even in the 1980s, was something like £250 for a permit, depending on where you were. When they were carrying expensive goods that was a minor cost to pay, because it was transferred on to the people whose goods they were. If there is electronic control, the chances of abuse in that form are very remote.

We come back to the number of permits. If there is a shortage—and the French, the Dutch and the Belgians may argue for one—it will mean that when you load your truck in the UK you will have to drop your load at Antwerp, Amsterdam, Ostend, Zeebrugge, Calais or wherever. A French lorry will come and pick it up and get the business. At the moment, many British hauliers are able to carry right across Europe. If we do not have the permits to run in Europe, the Europeans will get the trade and all our lorries will be doing is running them across the channel, dropping them, then taking the tractor unit home. In the real world, there could be many problems. I know that this is a skeletal Bill and it may not even happen, but if it does there is going to be a lot of trouble and people are going to be angry.

[Lord Snape]

I do not doubt the situation outlined by my noble friend, but will it not be to the advantage of British hauliers, to a certain extent, if the system applies the other way around? If there are three times more lorries coming to the UK than going from the UK to Europe, will the British road haulage industry not benefit enormously? Judging by what he said, loads coming from the EU will have to be dropped in Dover or wherever.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

I do not know. That may well be, but I want a straightforward system. I want the number of permits to be sufficient to meet the demand and not have to fiddle around with whether we reciprocate or not. I want to avoid all that.

Finally, I turn to what the permits are. In the old days, we had quota and non-quota permits. If we get ourselves into trouble in this area of negotiation, we should try and widen the description of non-quota. Earlier in my contribution, I referred to non-quota covering exhibition goods—which is what we ran. Because the rules are set so tightly if we have to go down this route, we might well be able to widen the description of non-quota to cover what would otherwise come under quota. I do not know if the Minister is with me on that. That is because the regime for non-quota permits is different from the quota regime. On the quota regime there will be a lot more restriction, because non-quota permits are not as frequently used so, if we widen the non-quota permit arrangements, some of that trade may well be transferred over to non-quota. I am sorry if I have not made that altogether clear, but I am sure that in time it will ring correct.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Lord Snape and Lord Campbell-Savours

Wednesday 15th December 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

I am sorry about that. What is the process within the department? The noble Lord will take back the proposal made by my noble and learned friend on the Front Bench. Are there additional consultations within each party and within each element of the coalition about an amendment that might be further considered; or is it simply dealt with in the private office? I am trying to understand to what extent each element within the coalition will be drawn into discussion on the acceptability of any amendment which the Minister might be prepared to consider.

[Lord Snape]

Perhaps I may detain the Minister and the House for just a couple of minutes on the clause stand part debate. I hope that we can continue in the spirit that the Minister extended in his response to my noble and learned friend on the Front Bench. Does he agree that this debate illustrates the problems of holding the referendum on the same day as the other elections? It is inevitable that one matter will spill over into another. As my noble friend Lord Grocott reminded your Lordships a few moments ago, those of us old enough to have participated in the 1975 referendum campaign well understand the bewilderment expressed by people, who were not necessarily politically involved or that concerned about the result of the referendum, at the way these arguments crossed party boundaries. Indeed, I hope that the noble Lord, Lord McNally, will accept that it would be impossible completely to restrict expenditure in the way that the previous amendment, so ably moved by my noble and learned friend, tried to do.

I hope that he will look carefully at that amendment. Again, in the spirit in which this debate has been conducted today, I hope that he will see the sheer difficulty, if not impossibility, of doing all these things on the same day. I hope that, even at this late stage, the Government will reflect on this. I am seeking to help out his party. I do not know how to support AV. I am firmly in the first past the post camp. However, from his own party’s point of view, it is inevitable, given the economic situation and the actions of Her Majesty’s Government—I will not go into them here—that there will be some degree of unpopularity for the Liberal Democrats. That will spread over into the whole debate about the electoral system that we are to adopt, and I am quite relaxed about that.

I have a great deal of affection for the noble Lord. After all, he used to represent my home town—with a different political interest, of course, but let us put that to one side. If we are to have a sensible referendum and a sensible debate about the matters that we should be discussing, rather than the ins and outs of economic or coalition policy, then the noble Lord should look carefully at the amendment. I know that he has promised to do so but perhaps he could go a little further and adopt the very sensible suggestion made by my noble and learned friend.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Lord Snape and Lord Campbell-Savours

Monday 6th December 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

Perhaps I may remind my noble friend that the only party that has consistently supported and campaigned for AV is the Labour Party. We are the only ones to have done so. Am I being helpful?

[Lord Snape]

My noble friend is indeed being helpful and I am grateful. The fact is that we got it wrong. At least that is certainly the opinion that many of us hold, and we will continue to get it wrong if we continue to support it. I accept the sincerity of my noble friend and my noble friend Lord Rooker. I remember a conversation that I had with him in 1987 after the then—from the party’s point of view—unsuccessful election. I asked him why he was in favour of PR. I cannot imagine why we were discussing PR—we must have been stuck on a very long train journey. I hope that I am not betraying any confidences when I say that my noble friend was brutally honest and said, “Because we can’t win under the present system”. However, we did eventually win under that system. The Liberal Democrats argue that they cannot win under the present system because their votes are diffused throughout the United Kingdom. I understand why they campaign in favour of proportional representation and I would understand them supporting some parts of the amendment before your Lordships tonight. However, I wish that they would be a little more honest, as was the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, in their declared support for AV. It is totally in their interests, although it is against everything for which they have campaigned for over 100 years.