Draft Goods Vehicles (Licensing of Operators) (Amendment) (No. 2) Regulations 2022

Gill Furniss Excerpts

Monday 13th June 2022 General Committees

[Gill Furniss (Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairpersonship, Mr Stringer. I must say I have a sense of déjà vu; after speaking on the original SI some months ago, I can only hope that further errors do not come to light and this does not become a trilogy.

We do not oppose the SI. The logistics sector has already faced unprecedented chaos in recent months, and it should not be thrown into yet more turmoil due to the Government’s mistake. However, I would like the Minister to address a number of serious points. The Committee would have been completely unnecessary if the Department for Transport got it right to begin with. It does not bode well that the Department in charge of transport links that passengers rely on cannot even get a piece of secondary legislation right first time around.

During the debate on the original SI, the Minister led the Committee to believe that the issue would be rectified before the legislation came into force. She stated that the second SI could be made imminently using negative procedure, but we now know that that was wrong, too. The first SI came into force on 17 March—almost three months ago—but only now is the correcting SI making progress. How has the Department once again got this so wrong? On what basis did it mistakenly believe that the issue could be rectified using the negative procedure? Why has it taken three months since the first SI came into force to put it right?

By inadvertently misleading the Committee in this way, the first SI was passed on what turned out to be a false basis. It is vital that Members are fully informed when deciding on legislation; that is a fundamental bedrock of our parliamentary system and its democratic duty to scrutinise the Executive. Concrete steps must therefore be taken to ensure that we never again see a repeat of this blatant incompetence, which undermines that function.

During the debate on the first SI, the Minister expressed regrets at the error. Her ministerial colleague in the other place, Baroness Vere of Norbiton, stated that

“the causes are being addressed urgently as part of our wider review of SI processes.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 9 March 2022; Vol. 819, c. GC490.]

Given that three months have now passed, will the Minister update the Committee on what progress her Department has made? Will she urgently look at the mistakes that culminated in the inadvertent misleading of the previous Committee?

Moving on to matters of substance, chaos at ports is having a major impact on British business. We are now merely weeks away from the summer holidays, when passenger numbers are expected to spike, but still we are lacking a plan from the Government to deal with that issue. The industry is calling out for support, but its call has fallen on deaf ears. It was inevitable that the implementation of more checks on food products would be delayed yet again, but this instrument just kicks the can further down the road for the fourth time. When will the Government produce an effective long-term strategy to fix the crisis at Dover? When will they give the industry the guidance it needs on future checks? The industry needs certainty and stability, but at the moment all it is getting is delays, empty words and a Department that cannot even get the basics right.