Heavy Commercial Vehicles in Kent (No. 2) (Amendment) (No. 2) Order 2021 Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Department for Transport
Gavin Newlands
Main Page: Gavin Newlands (Scottish National Party - Paisley and Renfrewshire North)Department Debates - View all Gavin Newlands's debates with the Department for Transport
Heavy Commercial Vehicles in Kent (No. 2) (Amendment) (No. 2) Order 2021
Gavin Newlands Excerpts(3 years ago)
General CommitteesRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Gavin Newlands (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (SNP)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Fovargue. I will not detain the Committee for long. I will reiterate a couple of points that the hon. Member for Ilford South, my former colleague on the Transport Committee made, and make one other. He touched on the driver shortage. We are all well aware that there was a driver shortage of circa 100,000. The Office for National Statistics suggests that around 16,000 fewer EU nationals are here as drivers. Sadly, we are all getting used to the grim reality of empty shelves in our shops. I would love to detain the Committee by going on about how Brexit has ruined things and why independence for Scotland is obviously the only solution for us, just to hear the groans from the Government Benches, but I will not.
The Transport Committee is looking at this issue at the moment. Having ignored the warning signs from industry and from the Opposition for many years, just when do the Government plan to get our supply chains moving again and keep them moving? We have looked at how the industry attracts and retains drivers; at pay and conditions, which was have seen an uptick in; at the lack of appropriate facilities; and at road safety. Full import controls are planned over the next few months, including checks on sanitary and phytosanitary goods, which were due to come in in October but will now come in in January. Export health certificates were due to come in a couple of months ago and will now be introduced in July.
We need to see much more robust arrangements, not least for the drivers, who face pretty hellish conditions. They have been forced to accept handouts from kind-hearted volunteers over fences or even lowered down from bridges. I would like the Minister to explain what the Government plans are to improve that situation and to ensure there are contingencies in place should those plans fall through.