Motor Vehicles (Compulsory Insurance) Bill

Anthony Browne Excerpts

3rd reading
Friday 28th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Bone]

The hon. Lady goes to the crux of the matter. That question was brought up in Committee by the right hon. Member for Warley (John Spellar), and I will discuss it in some detail later on; if I may, I will deal with it when I get to it.

This Bill will restore the interpretation to British statute that this sovereign Parliament always intended. Most importantly, it will end any associated liability for insurance claims against the Motor Insurers’ Bureau for the cost of accidents on private land when motor insurance was not held. Importantly, the Bill does not seek to invent new policy, nor, to the point the hon. Member for Cardiff North (Anna McMorrin) raised, would it limit the Government or Parliament in changing insurance regulations for motor vehicles in the future, if that is what Parliament decides to do.

How did we get into this mess? Under the European Union withdrawal agreement, the Vnuk decision has become retained EU case law. In other words, it is the law of the land unless we change it. We cannot just ignore it, because it is an EU court decision and has now become the law of the land. Therefore, it is essential that we act to prevent this European Court of Justice decision from punishing motorists through higher premiums. At a time when the cost of living is at the forefront of all our minds, this is an opportunity to save ordinary people from an unnecessary burden.

I will explain further: if the status quo is allowed to continue, to account for its liability for accidents on private land, the Motor Insurers Bureau will have to increase its charging levy. That levy is paid by the motor insurers, which in turn will pass on the cost to the motorist.

That is all well and good, but how much will the extra cost be reflected in the average motorist’s insurance premium? The Government actuaries have got out their bean counters, pressed a few buttons on the computer and estimated the cost. By removing the Vnuk judgment, the average motorist will be saved from a £50 price hike to their insurance premiums. Let me say that again: the Government experts say the Bill will save the average motorist £50 each and every year.

Clearly, there are huge benefits to motorists, so it is no surprise that the Bill enjoys support from both sides of the House. I thank hon. Members on the Opposition Benches for supporting something that will benefit all motorists. On Fridays, as we know, it is good when both sides of the House work together to achieve something that helps our constituents.

[Anthony Browne (South Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

My hon. Friend mentions that motorists might benefit from reduced insurance by getting rid of the clause. Will those of us who have just renewed our car insurance, including me, get some sort of discount as a result?

[Mr Bone]

Nice try! It is important that the motor insurance industry knows that the Bill is making progress, so it has not put the £50 on. If we do not do it, that will happen. It is not that people will see their motor insurance go down by £50 per year, but that they will not see it go up by £50 a year. My hon. Friend can go ahead and renew his motor insurance.

I believe that I am correct in saying that, if passed, the Bill will be the first Act of Parliament to remove retained EU law. It will certainly be the first to remove retained EU case law, so it will be a landmark step in taking back control of our own laws. It is just one of the clear advantages of leaving the European Union that we can now alter our laws to ensure that they are interpreted the way that this sovereign Parliament intends.

The Bill will be the first of many post-Brexit dividends to be established in primary legislation. We will deliver the independence that the British people voted for and put pounds back into their pockets. In fact, it would not be a bad idea for the Government to have a Brexit Minister whose sole responsibility it was to root out such savings across the whole of Whitehall—and for that person to be a Brexiteer who had consistently supported that point of view, maybe even a Spartan, and clearly not someone who is a member of the current Government. Does that give the Minister any clues?

The Vnuk judgment has also led the European Union to revise its European directive, because it was as surprised by the decision as we were, although, as with many decisions taken at EU level, the interest of the ordinary motorist has been sacrificed in the name of greater harmonisation between states. The revisions it has made will fail to protect motorists in the EU from the associated costs of the compulsory insurance requirement on private land. Because of Brexit, this Parliament has the opportunity to do better, and that is just what we are doing with the Bill.

I will briefly mention the case of Colley v Shuker, which is being considered by the Court of Appeal next week, as I know the implications of the Bill have been questioned in relation to it. It is clear, however, that the case bears no connection to the Bill that we are considering today, as it involves an accident where an insurance policy was in place. The effect of the Bill is only to restore the statute book to the position that everyone understood it to be before the Vnuk decision.

I mentioned earlier my gratitude to Committee members and I am thankful for their excellent contributions. In Committee, the right hon. Member for Warley raised an important point, which the hon. Member for Cardiff North made today, that the obligation that we have discussed arises in cases where there has been an accident and possibly an injury. It is certainly true that protecting genuine victims and general safety is of the utmost importance when considering insurance requirements but, in most cases, for accidents involving motor vehicles on private land, a different type of insurance policy will already be in place. In many cases, there is even an existing compulsory insurance requirement, such as public liability insurance, employers liability insurance or events insurance.

As previously stated, the Bill does not seek to create new law or to tie the hands of Parliament in making changes to the requirements for motor insurance in the future. What it does is restore the interpretations of the Road Traffic Act 1988, which stood for almost 30 years. In that time, copious case law in British courts shaped the interpretation of that Act and established through precedent recourse to the Motor Insurers’ Bureau in certain circumstances. To give the House an example, although my local Waitrose car park might technically be on private land, were I to have an accident with an uninsured driver, the Motor Insurers’ Bureau would have liability, as established through existing case law. It is impossible to anticipate every possible accident scenario, although the Road Traffic Act has historically proved very adaptable. If, out of the blue, an incident highlighted a deficiency in protection for injured parties, I have every confidence this Parliament would act to rectify that.

I would also like to address the concerns of my right hon. Friend the Member for East Yorkshire (Sir Greg Knight), who bowled the Minister quite the bouncer during the Committee. I must add my thanks to the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton), for stepping in at the very last minute to deal with the Bill in Committee, as the responsible Minister was unfortunately ill on that day.

My right hon. Friend the Member for East Yorkshire raised a concern about how electric scooters will fall under the Road Traffic Act. It is my understanding that electric scooters would be classified as motor vehicles under the Road Traffic Act and would therefore require compulsory insurance. However, electric scooters are not allowed to be used on the roads, so Parliament will have to clarify that situation. That is not relevant to this Bill, because all we are doing is restoring the law to what it was before the Vnuk judgment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Anthony Browne (South Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

It is an honour to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Clwyd (Dr Davies). I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone) on bringing forward this legislation. It is the first to get rid of some inherited EU law, as he said, for many of the reasons that have been highlighted by other Members.

Clearly, anything that reduces costs for motorists is welcome. As many Members have done, I declare an interest as a motorist who pays car insurance, which costs a lot of money. Anything that brings that cost down is very welcome, particularly during a cost-of-living crisis, and this measure that will help with that.

As my hon. Friends the Members for Vale of Clwyd and for Dudley North (Marco Longhi) mentioned, the retained law is incredibly impractical in the details. Just how would it work? How would responsibility be assigned? How would pay-outs be made? None of that has been properly sorted out. Practical measures are very important in a farming constituency such as South Cambridgeshire, where there are an awful lot of off-road vehicles—I live in a small farmhouse, and we can drive for quite a long way without going on to a public road.

Just as important is the unpopularity of the retained law not just in the industry, but among the public. Various Members have mentioned the consultation that the Government held, in which 94% of respondents said that they did not want that legislation. It is expensive, impractical and unpopular, yet we still have it in the UK.

My constituency is quite different from many of those that other hon. Members have mentioned because it overwhelmingly—63%— voted remain. I think, however, that even my constituents would have trouble understanding why the European Court of Justice, rather than this Parliament, should be able to decide the policy and laws on insuring golf buggies.

[Chris Clarkson (Heywood and Middleton) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that one of the first positive signs of our new freedom post-Brexit is that we can start to reverse some of the impractical judgments that were made without the UK specifically in mind, which started, for example, with the Factortame case?

[Anthony Browne]

I completely agree. I declare another interest. I used to be Europe editor of The Times and I lived in Brussels for many years. I used to drive around across borders. If you drive for a couple of hours from Brussels you get into Luxembourg. Another half an hour and you are in Germany. Within 10 minutes, you can drive between France, Germany and Luxembourg: you are crossing borders the whole time. From that point of view, one can understand why one would want some co-ordination between insurance policies and so on. In the UK, we are an island. That is a very different position and different motoring rules apply. Often, the EU would have motoring rules, for example regulations on child seats in cars, that might have made sense if one lived in Luxembourg and drove into Germany and France every day and would not want to have the different regulation of child seats. In the UK, however, there is no particular reason why we should have the same regulation for child seats in cars as there is in, say, Poland.

[Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)]

We drive on the left.

[Anthony Browne]

We do. Clearly, people do drive from what is now the EU to the UK, but the volume of traffic is very low.

I want to raise a point about why we ended up with this European Court of Justice ruling. As a Europe editor of The Times, I wrote various think-tank reports about EU regulations and structure. I advised the Government and was involved with European law-making for about 20 years. In the Lisbon treaty, there is the principle of subsidiarity. We do not talk about it much in this place. When Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister, she talked about it and everyone scratched their heads saying, “What is subsidiarity?” The basic principle is that one should make laws at a European level only where necessary, for example on cross-border issues such as pollution or trade. I cannot see any argument for why the insurance of golf buggies needs a pan-European law.

[Sir Greg Knight]

I join my hon. Friend in declaring an interest as the insurer of several vehicles. Is it not the other side-effects of Vnuk that are so offensive and why we are right to support the Bill? Without the Bill, would it not mean that, for example, ride-on lawnmowers would need to have insurance?

[Anthony Browne]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. That ECJ judgment has incredibly wide-ranging implications across many different sectors. I picked on golf buggies, but it affects lawnmowers, agricultural vehicles and electric scooters, as we heard. It is incredibly wide ranging. It is baffling and extraordinary how a Slovenian farmer, Mr Vnuk, getting knocked off his ladder—poor guy; I hope he was not too badly injured and I hope he got compensation—can lead to a series of different judgments, amendments and so on that cost the British motor insurance industry £458 million or a £50 increase in premiums for British drivers, a total of £1 billion a year. It is difficult to explain to voters, even in remain constituencies like mine, what the justification is for that.

Before my right hon. Friend’s intervention, I mentioned subsidiarity as a principle enshrined in an EU treaty. There are various mechanisms in the EU to try to ensure subsidiarity. Parliamentary committees of national Parliaments are meant to have votes and give red flag warnings when EU legislation contravenes it. However, this was not EU legislation. It was a judgment from the European Court of Justice and, as case law has the effect of legislation, it was enshrined in UK law after we left the EU. That raises the question of the European Court of Justice.

I reported on the European Court of Justice. I have visited its buildings many times. I will give one little anecdote about a story I once tried to do. The British Government were appointing a judge to the ECJ. I thought that that was quite an important story. The British Government were involved and the ECJ had, when we were in the EU, a constitutional role in the UK. It could make laws that overrode the national Parliament and the national Government, and could change the lives of British citizens. The Vnuk ruling is a clear example of that. At the same time that I was suggesting to the editor of The Times that I write a story about the British Government’s appointing a judge to the European Court of Justice, there was some controversy over a judge on the United States Supreme Court, as hon. Members may recall—one of them had a nanny they should not have employed, or something. I said, “This is a far more important story. The British Government are involved. This court changes the lives of British citizens. It can overrule the British Government and the British Parliament.”

I wrote my story, and the next day the Supreme Court wrangling was front page of The Times, the main story, and my story about our appointing a judge to the European Court of Justice was a “News in Brief”, a tiny little thing. This is not a pro-remain or pro-Brexit argument, but even when we were members of the EU we had virtually no knowledge or understanding of the workings of the European Court of Justice or its important or significance.

When we were members of the EU, I used to play a little parlour game: “We have the right to appoint a British judge to the European Court of Justice. What is the name of our judge on the European Court of Justice?” I used to ask MPs and so on, and no one had any idea. I searched for his name in newspaper articles and this particular judge was never mentioned—I cannot actually remember his name now. I will save their blushes, but I asked the serving Europe Minister at the time, “What is the name of our judge on the European Court of Justice?” and he had no idea. I thought, “We really do have a problem as a country. We have no understanding or appreciation of the importance of the court, the way it works or the influence it has over our daily lives in this country.”

The Vnuk judgment is not only a clear example of the role of that court, overriding the objections of the British Government and of Parliament, but a clear breach of the principle of subsidiarity, which is enshrined in EU treaty law. There will probably be other examples of retained EU legislation; my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough suggested that there will be a whole series of such bits of legislation that we think are inappropriate for the UK. He suggested a new Government position: a Brexit Minister, someone who has had an interest in this issue for the whole time and is not currently serving as a member of the Government. I wonder who he could be thinking about?

Without repeating that suggestion, let me make another one. I keep coming across different bits of legislation in this place that we can only enact as a result of our having left the EU. This Bill is one example, but there are many others. It would be useful for the Government to compile a list across all the different Departments of all the little things we are doing as a result of leaving the EU, as well as the big things such as reforming the common agricultural policy and so on.

[Mr Richard Holden (North West Durham) (Con)]

One of the first things we did was to change the taxation on motorhomes, which is very important to my constituents because North West Durham is where we manufacture many of them. Under the EU regulations that came forward, gold-plated by our civil service, we would have seen a 700% tax increase, which we have been able to reverse since leaving the EU. I agree with my hon. Friend’s point, but does he think that we need to see all those practical examples laid out by the British Government to show the benefits of our having left the EU?

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Order. Before the hon. Gentleman responds to that, is there any possibility of steering his great speech back to Third Reading of the Motor Vehicles (Compulsory Insurance) Bill?

[Anthony Browne]

I was talking about the underlying legislative process for the Bill. I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention, and I agree; there are probably many other bits of legislation such as this, and it would be good to get a holistic view of the impact of all that.

For all the reasons I mentioned at the beginning of my speech, before talking about European jurisprudence, I fully support this Bill. The Vnuk ruling is impractical, it is expensive to motorists, including myself, and it does not serve the deemed objectives. For the reasons mentioned by the Opposition, the Government probably do need to think about whether there are any other bits of legislation needed to ensure that there is no harm done by lack of insurance on private land, but this Bill is incredibly popular and I fully support it.