Draft Vehicle Drivers (Certificates of Professional Competence) (Amendment) Regulations 2024

Greg Smith Excerpts

Tuesday 29th October 2024 General Committees

[Greg Smith (Mid Buckinghamshire) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer.

Although the draft regulations may be touted as innovative legislation, I am sure the Minister will be the first to accept that they were in fact the product of successive Conservative Governments, who, following our exit from the European Union, took the decision to simplify regulations for our hard-working hauliers by asking the industry what it needed to thrive, while of course ensuring the high standards of vehicle and driver safety that have always been upheld and enhanced. The draft regulations are a culmination of that process. Indeed, the previous Minister, Guy Opperman, is listed in the explanatory memorandum as having signed the declaration on the draft regulations. Therefore, as the previous Government would have laid this instrument anyway, the official Opposition will clearly not divide the Committee today.

The regulations deliver is the long sought-after flexibility that the industry needs to ensure that safety standards remain among the best in the world—all thanks to the work of the previous Government over the last few years. Hauliers will welcome options made available by the split between UK and international training programmes, and the means through which training is delivered—above all, the option to complete a course over a series of half days rather than full days.

Perhaps the Minister will tell us why one critical element—the incentive for hauliers to push the international training programme as a viable option for drivers—has been omitted from the regulations, risking the available pool of drivers for overseas work by essentially making that training an opt-in part of the job. Combined with the rumoured end to the previous Government’s fuel duty freeze, which has been critical to hauliers since its introduction by the Conservatives in 2011—if the rise goes ahead, hauliers estimate it could cost their businesses over £185 million a year—we must ask: who is really standing up for our hauliers and championing the vital role that they play in our economy?

I will simply end by saying that it is only because of our exit from the European Union that any of this is possible in the first place. While the Labour party in opposition sat on their hands without making any real contribution to the haulage sector, blaming Brexit for every challenge the sector has faced in recent years, it was Conservatives in government who took steps—including drafting the very regulations before us today—to support hauliers on terms that were right for the United Kingdom, not for the European Union. Although we welcome the regulations, I gently ask the Minister: what are the Government offering the haulage sector that is new?