Bus Drivers’ Working Hours

Jim Fitzpatrick Excerpts

Thursday 6th June 2019 Westminster Hall

[Jim Fitzpatrick (Poplar and Limehouse) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to see you presiding in the Chair this afternoon, Sir Graham. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington (Matt Western) on securing this important debate. I commend him not only for his excellent contribution, but for his campaigning on this issue, including his ten-minute rule Bill, which he introduced on 13 February, as he mentioned in his remarks.

I had hoped to welcome the new Minister of State, Department for Transport, the hon. Member for Northampton North (Michael Ellis), who has responsibility for road safety, to his place. I am never unhappy to see the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, the hon. Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Andrew Jones), but it would have been nice to be able to firmly welcome the new road safety Minister. As chair of the all-party group for transport safety, I was hoping to get an assurance from him that he would engage with the all-party group as much as his predecessor did, so I hope the Minister will take that message back to the hon. Member for Northampton North.

Will the Minister also pass on a message about the updated road safety statement, which he knows has been long awaited? I hope the reshuffle will not delay it, given the concern about how the road safety casualty figures on those who have been killed or seriously injured have stagnated over the past few years. It would be an impetus to getting those figures on a downward trend again, which we all want to see.

My hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington highlighted the crystal clear anomaly between the permitted hours of driving for HGV drivers, long-distance bus drivers and local bus drivers—a point also made by the RMT trade union in its briefing. I thank the union, the Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety and the Library for their information and briefings for this debate.

The Rowan Fitzgerald case cited by my hon. Friend graphically and tragically portrays the problem, and I offer my sincere condolences to the family. Long driving hours were a key cause of the death of seven-year-old Rowan. It is well documented that fatigue causes crashes. According to the Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety’s most recent figures, 62 people died in collisions where fatigue was recorded as a contributory factor and a further 509 were seriously injured, so fatigue is a major problem. Public sector staff have a responsibility for public safety. It is for local government and the Government to monitor how best to protect the public in these situations.

When one is driving a vehicle the size of a local bus, whether single or double-decker, regulations should protect passengers, other road users, pedestrians and the driver himself or herself. My hon. Friend put two cases: first, local bus drivers’ hours should be capped at 56 hours per week or 90 in a fortnight; and secondly, we should match European Union employment regulations. The fact that drivers are expected to drive for up to five and a half hours without a break under the existing regulations is absurd in this day and age.

I will not detail the specifics of the Coventry crash that killed Rowan and Mrs Dora Hancox; they have been well documented and the court has pronounced its verdict. Cause, effect, responsibility and blame are all indisputable. The financial penalty is significant, but, given the loss of life and serious injury caused, I am sure the victims and the families were not happy with just that outcome. A more significant conclusion would be for the Government to recognise that fatigue for that class of driver can be addressed and reduced so that we can prevent more deaths and serious injuries. It is within the gift of the Government to introduce the type of regulations that my hon. Friend mentioned.

The statistics on bus crashes, especially in London, my city, are very worrying. Fatigue is not responsible for every crash, but it is responsible for some, and it can be addressed and such instances reduced. I look forward to the Front-Bench responses, but especially the Minister’s, and hopefully we will see some progress in better protecting those who are at risk.

To conclude, a spokesperson for London Bus Watch, Tom Kearney, having spoken to many bus drivers across the country, said:

“Fatigue is their single biggest worry.”

If the drivers are worried, so should we be.

[Martyn Day (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Graham. I am delighted to take part in this interesting debate, introduced by the hon. Member for Warwick and Leamington (Matt Western). I pay tribute to his work on this issue, and I wish him every success with his private Member’s Bill.

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his account of the tragedy that took place in Coventry. The hours worked in that case were truly shocking. Perhaps even more shocking is that those hours are perfectly legal. I also thank him for raising the splitting of routes to avoid the 50 km long-distance requirements. That is unacceptable, and I am grateful to him for mentioning that today. The hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick) highlighted how fatigue causes crashes, and I could not agree more. I am grateful to him for the statistics he used to illustrate that point.

The Scottish National party has been a powerful advocate for fair working hours and working practices, so it will come as absolutely no surprise that I fully support the change being sought. A limit of 56 hours in a week or 90 hours over two weeks seems perfectly reasonable. In fact, I would not want to be driving for that many hours. I certainly would not want to see someone driving the hours they are driving now on local routes. I fail to see why any difference between the working hours of local bus drivers, long-distance bus drivers and HGV drivers should exist, other than it being an accidental mismatch from historical pieces of legislation. The average driver’s hours are 42 a week, which suggests that there would not be insurmountable problems for bus companies in facilitating a more respectable number of hours. It certainly would not put people out of work.

In saying that, I should point out that the SNP supports the full devolution of employment law to the Scottish Parliament. We do not have control over that, so the debate is particularly relevant for me, as it allows me to make these points. In Scotland, we have control over transport policy, and we have tried to prioritise the provision of quality bus services. In general, we believe that the current model for providing bus services, where public authorities have the power to intervene, including through subsidies, is generally the right one. However, we need to do more. That is why we are trying to strengthen the powers through our Transport (Scotland) Bill to allow transport authorities to run their own services in some cases, or to take over whole networks or parts of areas. In that melting pot, it would make great sense for Scotland to have control over the hours drivers may work. That would assist us in boosting public confidence in the safety of the service, which is a point I am happy to make here, as this Parliament has that power just now.

Another area of concern is that many of the protections and rights secured for our workers have flowed directly from our membership of the European Union. It is imperative that those are not put at risk by any Brexit race to the bottom. It is worth pointing out that the UK rules on drivers’ hours are slightly different from the EU’s. Under UK rules, after 5.5 hours of driving, a break of 30 minutes must be taken. Under the equivalent EU rules, a driving period of no more than 4.5 hours gives drivers a break of 45 minutes. I am not a professional driver or a professional transport person, but on the few occasions when I have had the misfortune of having to drive from my constituency to London—a journey that took me longer than 5.5 hours—I needed a considerably longer break. I say that as someone who is not regularly driving every day. While I may not be a professional driver, starting from a more relaxed position and coming out severely fatigued would worry me from my personal experience.

[Jim Fitzpatrick]

I just want to make the point that we would not go five and a half hours in this place without having a break, a cup of tea and a chat, and we are not driving vehicles the size of a bus.

[Martyn Day]

Absolutely. I thank the hon. Gentleman for making that excellent point. I could not agree more.

In conclusion, I hope the Minister will look favourably at addressing drivers’ hours and breaks. The hon. Member for Warwick and Leamington has highlighted a good issue. I support him and wish him every success. Can the Minister tell me what the rationale is for continuing to have different working hours for local and long-distance drivers? It certainly is not safety, and I fail to see any logic for it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Andrew Jones]

That is an important point. The traffic commissioner is the regulator and responsible for the licensing and regulation of public service vehicles, which includes enforcement and prosecution where appropriate. We also have the DVSA—the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency—which carries out monitoring and compliance checks. Those can include not only routine checks, but reactive or proactive checks where there is evidence that an operator is non-compliant or an issue has been reported.

There are methods in place, with checks and balances, to be reactive in response to information or proactive if necessary. Those checks can include looking at the logs of drivers’ rosters and considering the health and wellbeing of drivers. Those are the two methods through which the regulations can be enforced.

[Jim Fitzpatrick]

I am grateful to the Minister for that further explanation of the checks and balances in the system. Given the numbers of complaints that he catalogued that were recorded against this driver in the days, weeks and months preceding the tragic crash, is he reassured by the traffic commissioner and the other authorities that cases of drivers such as the one responsible, who got away with so much for so long, will not be able to be repeated because of the example of this case, where clearly the system did not work?

[Andrew Jones]

That is at the heart of what is happening. The system has not worked here, and the points about how we take that forward and improve the enforcement and vigour of the regulation are central to where we need to go. That is a point that I will be taking from this debate and taking to my hon. Friend the bus Minister in our meetings next week, when she is back from overseas.

It might be helpful if I updated the House on some of the data involving buses. We all need to see a continuation of the long-term trend of improving road safety in the UK. Colleagues in the House have made a significant contribution to that over a sustained period, and we all owe them a duty of thanks. It has led to the UK—along with, I think, Sweden—having the safest roads in the world. There are still significant areas where we need to make more progress, but we should look at that sustained cross-party initiative with some pride, although we recognise that there is no room for any complacency anywhere at all.

On that point, the hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse asked about the new Minister with responsibility for road safety. My hon. Friend the Minister of State, Department for Transport, is not here and I should be a little cautious about putting things in his diary, but I am absolutely confident that he will wish to engage strongly with the all-party group. I will also pass on to him the comments made about the updated road safety statement.

Fatal road accidents involving buses have been falling over time. The number of buses involved in fatal road accidents, per billion vehicle miles, has fallen by 36% in the last 10 years, so there is a positive downward trend and we want it to continue. It needs to be kept in mind that the GB domestic drivers’ hours rules set maximum limits, to give some flexibility to the bus industry, and do not reflect drivers’ normal working patterns. Figures from the Office for National Statistics show that, on average, in 2017 bus drivers worked 42 hours a week, which is within the 48 hours average limit allowed in the general working time rules. The bus Minister has promised to look into the robustness of these figures, and it is of course some of the outlying figures, rather than the average, that we need to focus on here. The average is perhaps not showing the entire picture, which is why that further work needs to be done.