Draft Heavy Commercial Vehicles in Kent (No. 1) Order 2019

Charlie Elphicke Excerpts

Tuesday 8th October 2019 General Committees

[Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Ind)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Minister for bringing the order to the House. Representing Dover, which is literally on the Brexit frontline, I think it important that measures are taken to ensure an orderly Brexit.

I have a few questions for the Minister. First, what exactly is a traffic officer? It is important to ensure the orderly control and flow of traffic throughout Kent, not only on the A2/M2, but on the M20. If the Department and the Government as a whole are settled on trying to get people to Manston and to intermediate parks along the way, it is important not only that Kent police are designated as traffic officers, but that local authorities have traffic officer powers.

For example, let us say that a lorry has parked across a box junction in Dover—not a Highways England piece of road—and Kent police are busy elsewhere and do not have any officers available. It is advisable for the local authority to have traffic officer designation so that it can appoint people to be traffic officers to ensure that box junctions are kept clear and that the townspeople of Dover are able to get about their business, whatever the state of the main roads. That is important not just from the point of view of suppliers getting through, people getting to their jobs and emergency services getting access and so on; it is also important from the point of view of the orderly flow of traffic in the towns, and not simply along the main motorway arteries. I hope the Minister can give me some comfort on that.

The Minister will know that the leader of Dover District Council and I have written to the Secretary of State for Transport on the subject. I hope the Minister will be able to provide some comfort and perhaps even some level of direction and assurance. Perhaps he can even get the Department for Transport to focus on the issue to give the appropriate powers in due course.

The other key issue is that we know there are those who doubt that we can manage to leave the European Union. We know that the Opposition are strongly of the view that we should cancel Brexit and simply remain—they have basically said that time and again. We know what they are up to and we can see it. We also know that the transit convention that we extended in the event of no deal will mean that there is no need for any checks at Dover or Calais. There is no need for any “Project Fear” from the Labour party, which uses fear as a cloak for their true belief that we should remain under all circumstances, whatever the people voted for, scything, as they do, at the very foundation of our democracy.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

If Brexit were cancelled because of a fear of congestion, in leave parts of the world—I believe a great deal of the south-east was leave—there could well be demonstrations holding up the traffic and taking direct action, leading to the same congestion that is feared by the Labour party.

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[Charlie Elphicke]

I appreciate that, Mr Hanson. My hon. Friend the Member for Elmet and Rothwell tempts me to talk about the importance of making sure that the traffic flows, even when there are demonstrations. That is part of the reason why we need these traffic officers. If someone comes to Dover and glues themselves to the roads, as the Extinction Rebellion people did the other day, it creates a problem. We want to have the powers for people to ensure that the roads are kept open and free.

The key point that I am trying to make about traffic officers is that we will need fewer traffic officers and fewer powers provided that we make sure that we are entirely ready for a smooth Brexit, using the transit convention and making sure that HMRC has done its bit. To conclude, the ideal would be that clearances were done at the factory floor, which is possible, using the transit convention and making sure that HMRC is fully ready, rather than checks at Manston.

My other concern is that the Government’s idea of using Manston is problematic. Let us say that Stanislav from Krakow is driving a lorry—many lorry drivers are from eastern Europe and do not have the best grasp of English, but they know where the port of Dover and the M20 are. They will head there come hell or high water. The problem is how on earth we are going to tell them to go somewhere else. How on earth can we tell them that they should sit at Manston and be there, potentially, for days on end?

[Mr Fysh]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. I, too, have very serious concerns about the idea of Manston featuring at all in a solution to this, which is why the capacity issue for the processing en route is so important. I think there is a serious danger that if EU hauliers—after all, 80% to 85% are from the EU—find that inconvenient and get fined £300 unless they go to Manston, and that completely upsets their schedules and working time allowances which will get them to a certain point in Europe, they may abandon the route entirely.

[Charlie Elphicke]

That is my prime concern—to make sure that the traffic is free-flowing. The focus really ought to be on making sure that HMRC is ready to give the clearances from the factory floor, rather than on producing a situation at Manston. I am concerned, as are many colleagues in Kent, that if the procedures aimed at directing lorry drivers to Manston are implemented, it will be very hard to persuade lorry drivers for whom English is not their first language to go elsewhere. That is my one concern about this.

I broached this subject because I want Brexit to succeed—unlike the Labour party, which wants to cancel it and to remain under all circumstances. I want Brexit to succeed, so we have put forward solutions to make the best advantage of the transit convention and avoid the need for quite so many traffic officers.

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

I thank hon. Members for their contributions and questions. I will try to take on all of them. If the hon. Member for York Central does not mind, I will start with my hon. Friend the Member for Dover, whose constituency would be more affected than that of anyone else in this room, were Operation Brock to stand up. He has rightly been very helpful in raising legitimate questions of the Department about the powers that might be required by individuals. He has also represented his constituents, who should expect—and, I hope, if Brock is stood up, can expect—that even though their life will be slightly different, business and life will continue, basically, as normal.

My hon. Friend mentioned using transit. The common transit convention is used for the movement of goods between member countries, and that includes the EU27 and European economic area states. In the CTC, customs declarations are not required at each border, duties are paid only at the final destination, and some procedures can be completed away from the border. So, obviously, it is very sensible for big hauliers or big traders to ensure that they use transit, and we are communicating with them all to try and persuade them that using the transit procedures is the best way to go.

My hon. Friend spoke wisely about getting hauliers, and the traders that use them, border-ready—compliant —way before they start. We are looking at all the ways we can do that, including from a simple communications campaign point of view, to ensure that every single driver who uses the short straits crossing, or another UK crossing, understands what the new processes will be.

I talked about pop-up sites appearing at motorway service stations, at ports and on ferries—and, indeed, at sites in the European Union where we know that many such drivers commence and finish their journeys. The whole point of such sites is to talk to those drivers. We have documentation being translated into 11 different languages. The hauliers’ handbook has been not only translated into those languages but road-tested by different road haulage associations—the Road Haulage Association and the Freight Transport Association—to ensure that it works for the people it is aimed at. It is in, not simple language, but the language that people use in their everyday jobs, so that they know what they are expected to do.

We are really trying to get to everybody beforehand. That is why my hon. Friend will have seen signs on motorway gantries reminding people, especially hauliers, that the paperwork that they need may change on 1 November. It is not to make a fickle political point; it is for them to go back to their place of work, and to the traders that use them, and say, “I will need this to make my living—please ensure that you are ready,” and to enquire as to how ready they are.

There is a big reason for pointing people in that direction. If traders complete the necessary process, and give hauliers the right paperwork so that they can take their goods over the border, that helps the flow of goods. Our measures are contingency measures, and if there are no problems at the border, as we hope there will not be because the whole campaign of communications and education will have worked, there will be no need to stand up any of these measures. However, as we saw in 2015, problems may occur whether or not we are in the European Union, so it is sensible to have such contingency measures anyway.

My hon. Friend also asked what a traffic officer was, and whether local authority staff could have powers. That is a genuinely interesting point. As someone who has struggled with traffic wardens in the past, I am not sure how much extra power I would like to give them, but a traffic officer is designated by the Secretary of State to support the management and operation of the strategic road network. That is the definition. Highways England has recruited more staff for border-readiness checks. The Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency, the police and Highways England are sourcing staff from outside the south-east, which is obviously where Brock will be stood up and where any problems are most likely to occur. That answers the question by the hon. Member for York Central about why it is just for Kent. All modelling suggests that if there are problems, they will be in Kent. We have done modelling for all the other ports around the country.

[Charlie Elphicke]

My hon. Friend is giving some positive and excellent answers to my questions. I believe that under section 3 of the Traffic Management Act 2004, a traffic officer can be designated in relation to any relevant road in England if he is designated by or under the authorisation of the Secretary of State—not simply for the strategic road network. Highways England needs to think a little way beyond its own personal little interests in running motorways, to the towns with the roads that it does not manage, and the designation by the Department for Transport of traffic officers should be extended to local authorities to manage local roads.

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

My hon. Friend makes a fair point; I will get feedback from officials on the point of law. We are doing everything, but we are completely open; if he or other Kent MPs, or others from the Kent Resilience Forum, believe that there are other things that we can do to make the process simpler and more helpful and to keep things fluid within the county, we are completely up for looking at those suggestions, but we do believe that the contingency measures will be enough to deal with the levels of lorries, on which I have some numbers for my hon. Friend the Member for Yeovil in a moment.

Highways England has recruited staff for the checks and the DVSA will be deploying 130 officers, 60 of whom will come from outside Kent—there will be a lot of people surged into the Kent area for this process. I would very much like to think that that is welcomed by Kent.

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[Chris Heaton-Harris]

Brock will be in place to stop that happening. The powers we are discussing today will be the powers that the police and the representatives of the highways authorities will be using to stop lorries from doing exactly that. That is why we are here today to examine this statutory instrument and the other two with which it is associated. There are powers that can be used in bits, but, realistically, this is the law that the Kent Resilience Forum and others have been calling for, to stop exactly what my hon. Friend has described in his intervention happening.

[Charlie Elphicke]

I thank my hon. Friend for giving way; he is being incredible generous.

My hon. Friend’s previous intervention makes exactly the point that I am concerned about. Highways England has a habit of thinking only about its motorway network; it does not think what happens when people duck off to go through side streets and rat-run through villages. It is not Highways England’s road network, so it is not interested. That is why we need designation of traffic officers or direction of Kent police to do their job properly in east Kent, because they do not always do it as well as one might want them to. In the case of Operation Stack and so on, we need that designation to ensure that there is enforcement of lorries that seek to rat-run, or that obstruct roads in towns and villages.

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

I understand my hon. Friend’s point. To answer his earlier point, and hopefully this point at the same time, he is quite right to say that designated traffic officers can work on local roads, but they are mainly meant to be relieving problems on the strategic road network. However, we are considering designating Kent County Council officers to support Brock in this circumstance—it is not Dover Council, which I think is where his question came from, but Kent County Council officers. I hope that is of some assistance to him.

I want to finish on a couple of additional points that the hon. Member for York Central raised. She made a point on the timing and asked why the plan was timed to end at the end of December 2020. It is actually nothing to do with the transition period; it is when the planning permission allowing us to mount the operation at Manston finishes. It is about planning; it is not about any transition period should we get a deal. Why is it so important that it is done in Kent? Well, 80% of the UK’s freight goes through the Kent ports—a big percentage of our trade goes through them.

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[Chris Heaton-Harris]

Although that is not necessarily part of this debate, I would like to answer it. I mentioned, but probably did not emphasise enough, that we are looking at changing the very popular pop-up sites that we have for this basic communications campaign—the ones where we get a huge amount of footfall—so they can check the paperwork, as my hon. Friend describes, and inform drivers about whether they are border-ready and have the appropriate paperwork. If they get into Kent, there are turnaround sites, which HMRC is setting up, on top of the numbers that I mentioned in my previous answer to my hon. Friend. For people who believe that they can get ready to cross the border within 24 hours, there will be facilities for them to do so.

I apologise for not addressing the question that my hon. Friend asked about facilities. He asked what the facilities will be for drivers and others if we are doing all this. There will be facilities—we will ensure that we look after drivers’ welfare properly—that include toilets and food. At Maidstone, there will be things like access to the internet and printers, so if paperwork needs to be checked and changed, drivers have the ability to do that. We are very cognisant of the welfare of drivers in that industry, which is very important to our nation.

[Charlie Elphicke]

Before the Minister took the intervention of the hon. Member for Yeovil, he was touching on the heart of the matter: there need not be any problems at the border, and there need not be any traffic officers at all. We need them only against the risk of a punishment Brexit from the other side. Only the European Union, and those in this House that it consorts with on the drafting of Bills and legislation, could cause that kind of problem and undermine our nation and national interests, and act in a frankly unpatriotic way.

My second point, which is key, is that the Minister has kindly confirmed that Kent County Council will be designated to have traffic officers; that is great. Will KCC have the ability to give a sub-designation to local authorities at district council level, should it wish to do so?