Asked by: James Daly (Conservative - Bury North)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, with which (a) foreign countries and (b) administrative regions of foreign countries that issue their own driving licences his Department has an agreement for mutual recognition of documents; and whether his Department is taking steps to reach such agreement with other countries and regions.
Answered by Richard Holden - Minister without Portfolio (Cabinet Office)
The UK continues to exchange and recognise licences originating from all European Economic Area (EEA) countries. Arrangements are in place with all EEA countries for the recognition and exchange of the vast majority of GB licences.
Outside of the EEA, mutual driving licence exchange agreements are in place with the following designated countries:
Andorra | Gibraltar | South Africa |
Australia | Hong Kong | Switzerland |
Barbados | Japan | Taiwan |
British Virgin Islands | Monaco | Ukraine |
Canada | New Zealand | United Arab Emirates |
Cayman Islands | Republic of Korea | Zimbabwe |
Falkland Islands | Republic of North Macedonia |
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Faroe Islands | Singapore |
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Work is currently progressing on arrangements with a further seven countries:
Albania | Moldova | Sri Lanka |
Kosovo | San Marino |
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Malaysia | Serbia |
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I also recently met with an official delegation from Kenya to discuss existing arrangements with them as well.
Asked by: James Daly (Conservative - Bury North)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, which rail lines have been fully electrified since 1997; of those, how many miles were electrified; which rail lines are in the process being electrified as of October 2023; and of those, how many miles are being electrified.
Answered by Huw Merriman - Minister of State (Department for Transport)
From 1997/98 to 2009/10, around 63 miles of track were electrified in Great Britain (this figure excludes around 7 miles of an electrical format conversion on the North London Line).
From 2010/11 to 2022/23, around 1265 miles of track have been electrified.
Major projects since 2010 have included the North-West Electrification programme and the Great Western Electrification Programme.
A number of electrification projects are currently underway, this includes the Midland Main Line (MML), the TransPennine Route Upgrade (TRU) and Wigan to Bolton Electrification. As of October 2023, 31.3 miles has been electrified on the MML between Bedford and Corby, with 22.4 miles from Kettering to Wigston due to be complete between 2023 and 2024. TRU is expected to be complete by 2028, with 70 miles of line being electrified between Manchester Victoria and York, alongside two subprojects between Church Fenton and York and Manchester Victoria to Stalybridge which amount to approximately 18 miles.
Asked by: James Daly (Conservative - Bury North)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, which local transport authorities have introduced lane rental schemes; how much mileage is covered by each scheme; what the average reduction in roadworks has been in the areas that have implemented those schemes; and how much money has been raised in fines from utility companies for overrunning works in those areas in each year since the inception of lane rental schemes.
Answered by Richard Holden - Minister without Portfolio (Cabinet Office)
The Government recently published a plan for drivers which included support for further Lane Rental schemes, which reduce roadworks by incentivising utilities to avoid the busiest roads at the busiest times helping to reduce congestion caused by road works. The Department will be consulting on requiring local authorities with Lane Rental schemes to use at least 50% of any surplus on pothole repairs or resurfacing poor quality roads.
There are currently four schemes in operation which publish annual monitoring and evaluations of their own schemes, and which include information relating to the impact of lane rental on works carried out by utility companies. These can be found on Transport for London’s and Kent County Council’s websites. Surrey and West Sussex County Councils are yet to publish their evaluations due to the recent implementation. As scheme coverage can vary year on year, these authorities will be best placed to advise on current mileage.
Ongoing discussions are now taking place with other local authorities, and I would encourage all Members of Parliament to press their own Local Authorities to implement lane rental schemes.
The Department commissioned an independent evaluation of lane rental pilot schemes, which was published in 2016. The evaluation estimated that Lane Rental led to 3000 fewer days of congestion on the highways network.
We do not collect nor hold information on fines relating to overrunning works carried out by utility companies. This is held by highway authorities.
Asked by: James Daly (Conservative - Bury North)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, how much funding his Department has provided for new buses in Greater Manchester in the latest period for which data is available; and how many and what proportion of the buses that have been purchased with that funding were manufactured in the UK.
Answered by Richard Holden - Minister without Portfolio (Cabinet Office)
The Department for Transport has allocated over £1.1 billion of taxpayer funding to Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA) through the five-year City Regional Sustainable Transport Settlement (CRSTS) and Zero Emission Bus Regional Areas (ZEBRA) scheme.
While the Department for Transport (DfT) allocate funding for schemes, it is up local authorities and operators how they manage the tender process and who they chose to manufacture the buses on their networks.
As part of the ZEBRA scheme, GMCA was awarded £35.7m to deliver 170 zero emission buses (ZEBs). These buses will be manufactured by Volvo. The body of these buses are manufactured in Egypt by Volvo’s partner MCV.
GMCA has been allocated £1.07bn through its City Region Sustainable Transport Settlement. The city region has chosen to allocate some of this funding towards the purchase of 100 ZEBs, which will be produced by UK manufacturer Alexander Dennis Limited, based in Scarborough and Falkirk. GMCA have informed DfT that they intend to use further CRSTS funding to deliver additional ZEBs.
Asked by: James Daly (Conservative - Bury North)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, how many deaths there have been (a) on (i) conventional and (ii) smart motorway hard shoulders and (b) on smart motorway rest areas in the last five years.
Answered by Richard Holden - Minister without Portfolio (Cabinet Office)
In May 2022, National Highways (NH) published its ‘Smart motorways stocktake Second year progress report 2022’, with the latest available five-year (2016-2020) safety data per road type.
a) The data in the ‘Smart motorways stocktake Second year progress report’ shows that for the period 2016-2020 there were 28 fatal casualties (out of a total of 403 fatal casualties on motorways) resulting from a motorway collision which involved a vehicle recorded as entering, leaving or on a hard shoulder, which is 1 out of every 14 fatal casualties. Of these fatalities, 26 occurred on conventional motorways, 2 on controlled motorways and none on a Dynamic Hard Shoulder (DHS) motorway. (There were 2 additional fatal casualties on DHS motorways which occurred when the hard shoulder was operating as a live lane the collisions are categorised as live lane collisions and included in the DHS live lane data).
b) Between 2016 and 2020, there were no fatalities in emergency areas.
Asked by: James Daly (Conservative - Bury North)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, how many road casualties there have been involving (a) cars, (b) vans and (c) motorcycles per billion miles travelled in the latest period for which data is available.
Answered by Richard Holden - Minister without Portfolio (Cabinet Office)
The Department does not publish information on casualty rates for all casualties involved in road collisions by vehicle type. The published casualty rates are only where the casualty is in the same vehicle type as the relevant vehicle mileage by vehicle type. For example, the car occupant casualty rate only includes car occupant casualties per billion vehicle miles travelled by cars, irrespective of whether the collision may have involved casualties of other road users, such as pedal cyclist casualties and pedestrians.
These casualty rates for users of (a) cars, (b) vans and (c) motorcycles per billion miles travelled in the latest period for which data is available, 2021, is given in the table below:
Reported road casualty rates by severity and road user type, Great Britain: 2021 | |
Per billion vehicle miles | |
Road user type | |
(a) Car | 320 |
(b) Light goods vehicle | 72 |
(c) Motorcycle | 6,259 |
Asked by: James Daly (Conservative - Bury North)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, how many zero emission buses have been (a) ordered and (b) are currently operational.
Answered by Richard Holden - Minister without Portfolio (Cabinet Office)
We are committed to supporting the introduction of at least 4,000 zero emission buses and achieving an all zero-emission bus fleet across the UK. Since February 2020, across the UK, an estimated 4,193 zero emission buses have been funded, of which 1,288 have been ordered and 1,017 are on the road. These numbers are not official statistics: they are based on the latest information and are therefore subject to change. They do not include complete figures for the number of buses that have been ordered or on the road in the devolved nations.
Asked by: James Daly (Conservative - Bury North)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, how many (a) deaths and (b) serious injuries occurred per million miles travelled on (i) roads and (ii) railways in each of the last 10 years.
Answered by Richard Holden - Minister without Portfolio (Cabinet Office)
The rate of deaths and serious injuries for different modes of transport, including road and railways, covering each of the last 10 years for which data are available, can be found in the table below.
Passenger casualty rates per billion passenger kilometres by mode (road, air, rail and water): Great Britain, from 2006 | ||||||||||||
Transport mode | Severity | 2011 | 2012 | 2013 | 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 |
Air | Killed | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 |
Air | KSI | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.1 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.1 |
Rail | Killed | 0.1 | 0.1 | 0.1 | 0.1 | 0.2 | 0.1 | 0.1 | 0.2 | 0.1 | 0.2 | 0.2 |
Rail | KSI | 80.2 | 85.5 | 82.8 | 91.0 | 88.0 | 87.8 | 80.4 | 80.0 | 84.7 | 136.1 | 103.4 |
Water | Killed | 0.8 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.8 | 1.6 | 0.8 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 |
Water | KSI | 92.6 | 43.2 | 39.6 | 47.4 | 44.9 | 43.1 | 18.4 | 67.2 | 68.5 | 53.7 | 22.7 |
Bus or coach | Killed | 0.2 | 0.3 | 0.2 | 0.2 | 0.1 | 0.3 | 0.2 | 0.2 | 0.4 | 0.3 | 0.3 |
Bus or coach | KSI | 13.1 | 12.5 | 13.2 | 12.5 | 11.8 | 12.1 | 9.7 | 12.0 | 10.6 | 11.9 | 11.0 |
Car | Killed | 1.4 | 1.3 | 1.2 | 1.2 | 1.1 | 1.2 | 1.2 | 1.1 | 1.1 | 1.2 | 1.2 |
Car | KSI | 21.9 | 21.3 | 19.8 | 20.3 | 19.3 | 18.6 | 17.5 | 17.8 | 17.3 | 17.2 | 17.7 |
Van | Killed | 0.4 | 0.4 | 0.4 | 0.3 | 0.3 | 0.5 | 0.4 | 0.3 | 0.4 | 0.4 | 0.4 |
Van | KSI | 5.9 | 6.1 | 6.1 | 6.2 | 6.0 | 5.2 | 4.9 | 5.4 | 5.1 | 4.8 | 5.5 |
Motorcycle | Killed | 71.9 | 72.9 | 72.0 | 71.3 | 76.5 | 66.3 | 73.2 | 75.0 | 72.5 | 75.8 | 70.6 |
Motorcycle | KSI | 1,495.2 | 1,593.8 | 1,520.3 | 1,587.5 | 1,522.4 | 1,475.9 | 1,394.4 | 1,380.6 | 1,316.1 | 1,276.8 | 1,268.8 |
Pedal cycle | Killed | 21.0 | 21.9 | 20.9 | 19.6 | 18.4 | 18.8 | 18.1 | 17.5 | 17.1 | 16.5 | 16.4 |
Pedal cycle | KSI | 907.7 | 885.1 | 908.9 | 898.6 | 878.5 | 839.3 | 813.4 | 797.9 | 744.5 | 524.9 | 660.7 |
Pedestrian | Killed | 23.2 | 22.2 | 20.3 | 23.3 | 20.8 | 22.0 | 22.1 | 20.9 | 22.0 | 15.0 | 16.3 |
Pedestrian | KSI | 425.9 | 437.4 | 387.3 | 405.1 | 381.0 | 349.2 | 334.1 | 332.9 | 327.6 | 204.9 | 243.5 |
Asked by: James Daly (Conservative - Bury North)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, whether he has made of an assessment of the feasibility of introducing secondary legislation to require drivers to stop and report an accident with a cat.
Answered by Richard Holden - Minister without Portfolio (Cabinet Office)
It would not be possible to do this without amendment to primary legislation.
Asked by: James Daly (Conservative - Bury North)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what the average time was for processing a drivers medical check by the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency in the latest period for which data is available; and how many and what proportion of outstanding checks are waiting for third parties to provide medical information.
Answered by Richard Holden - Minister without Portfolio (Cabinet Office)
The current average time to make a licensing decision in cases where the driving licence applicant has declared a medical condition is 81.18 working days. This figure includes new applications, notifications and renewals for both Group 1 (cars and motorcycles) and Group 2 (HGV and bus) drivers. The Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA)’s business plan target is to make a licensing decision within 90 working days in 90 per cent of cases for applications received from October 2022.
On 31 January the DVLA was dealing with 139,238 driving licence applications where a medical condition must be investigated before a licence can be issued. In 78,124 of these cases, the DVLA is awaiting information from third parties (including NHS health care professionals or the customer themselves) before any further action can be taken.
The length of time taken to deal with an application depends on the medical condition(s) involved and whether further information is required before a decision on whether to issue a licence can be made. It is important to note that the majority of applicants renewing an existing licence will be able to continue driving while their application is being processed, providing they have not been told not to drive by a doctor or optician.