Draft Motor Vehicles (Driving Licences) (Amendment) (No. 5) Regulations 2021
Debate between Karin Smyth and Sam Tarry(3 years ago)
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Sam Tarry (Ilford South) (Lab)
It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Dowd, for the first time.
Our views on this legislation are already on record, so I will not reiterate all the points made in previous debates. I note that my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol South is here, and I am sure she will have a few things to say about the regulations. We on the Opposition Benches understand the Minister’s rationale for this decision, as the regulations make a technical amendment, but it would be remiss of me not to ask a few questions. We all want the HGV shortage to be addressed. Let us be clear: that shortage has been many months, if not years, in the making. Successive Conservative Governments have had the opportunity to address the problem, and have so far failed to get a permanent, workable solution.
As a result of that mismanagement, MPs are today being asked to make a decision that has significant risks. What do we know? Some 30% of drivers fail the B+E test, and since the introduction of the test in 1997, road safety has improved. Ministers simply do not know the risks associated with this decision, and whether a younger cohort more prone to accidents will begin towing as a result of it. These are serious questions that need to be addressed.
It is not acceptable for MPs to be asked to take a decision blindly, when the Department’s impact assessment of the implications for road safety is either not completed or not being shared with Parliament. The ability of this place to scrutinise the Government has been compromised as a result. We did not hear answers when the matter was debated in the Chamber a few weeks ago. Given that implications of the decision are as yet unknown to Parliament, I would like to press the Minister on the review period. A review of the implications of the decision will take place only every three years. That cannot be right. I ask the Minister to consider a shorter period, and to update the House on towing accident figures quarterly; that will give some reassurance that those involved will be in a position to undertake remedial action swiftly if a problem emerges.
In the absence of an impact assessment, can the Minister explain the thinking that underpins the safety assessment? Baroness Vere said in her letter to the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee that there is not currently any statistical evidence to suggest that competence and skills will worsen if drivers do not take a statutory test to tow a trailer. What statistical evidence did Ministers assess to come to that conclusion? Are they conducting an assessment of whether there will be a change in the trend in the age distribution of drivers towing trailers if all current and future car licence holders become automatically eligible to tow, and will that be published?
Although we will not oppose the regulations, we would welcome, either here or in writing, answers to the very serious questions that we have for Ministers, and we would like to put on record our serious concern about the way in which the regulations have been managed.
Karin Smyth (Bristol South) (Lab)
I rise to speak on behalf of my constituents, but also as chair of the all-party towing and trailer safety group. I put on record my strong opposition to the regulations on the Floor of the House on 8 November. Since then, the Government have created such chaos, through the announcement in September of this measure, which has still not been brought into law, that I have frankly become less assured, and more concerned, as the weeks have gone on. We are now unleashing thousands of untrained, unsafe and unqualified drivers of trailers on to our roads. It really does beggar belief that we are still doing this.
My hon. Friend the Member for Ilford South mentioned the answers Baroness Vere of Norbiton gave to questions tabled by the noble Baroness Randerson and Lord Bassam. I do not know if you have seen answers like this, Mr Dowd, in your time in the House, but the answers we have had to questions asking the Government
“what data they hold on the safety impact of the B+E car and trailer test; and what criteria they will use to review the impact on safety of the Motor Vehicles (Driving Licences) (Amendment) (No. 5) Regulations 2021 after three years”
beggar belief. The answer states:
“There is not currently any statistical evidence to categorically say that competence and skills will worsen if drivers do not take a statutory test to tow a trailer.”
In that case, frankly, I do not know why we are taking a driving test at all. Baroness Vere goes on to say:
“Road safety has significantly improved over recent decades for several reasons”—
we do not dispute that—
“and it is therefore difficult to identify how much the car trailer test…has made a difference since it was introduced in 1997…The number of trailer accidents is low, with the proportion of accidents of cars/vans towing a trailer compared to all car/van accidents, as roughly 0.45% in 2019.”
Over the past four years, the all-party parliamentary group on trailer and towing safety has worked steadfastly with the Department for Transport to gather data and information. The problem with further improving safety is that there has not been any more data and information.
Baroness Vere goes on to say:
“In respect of the demographics of the drivers towing trailers, our statistics show that individuals generally only start getting their car and trailer licence (Category B+E licences) from their late 30s and 40s onwards”.
If this is such a crisis, what is stopping drivers in their 20s from driving these trailers without a test? I have the support of the Association of British Insurers and of the Road Haulage Association, because they know that it is not safe—with all due respect to 22-year-olds—to put a 22-year-old on the roads, untested and unqualified, driving those trailers. I have spoken to very many people in their 20s, 30s, 40s and 50s, including people like me who, as the Minister has said, do not need the test. None of us thinks that we are competent to drive those trailers without training and testing. As my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford South said, we already know that 30% of people who have been trained and tested fail.
As I said in November, this move is reckless and dangerous. We know that 50% of trailers on the roads are already not compliant, as shown by the APPG’s work over the past few years, and that 30% of people fail the test. We know that the Government do not know the impact of their decisions, and that the so-called review after three years is a hollow commitment based on no data. I hope that the Minister will respond to my hon. Friend by explaining what on earth the criteria will be that are used to assess these regulations when they are reviewed in three years’ time. I will be here in three years’ time, and will hold the Government to their commitments. I promised my constituents Scott and Donna Hussey that I would do all I can to honour the memory of their son through “Tow Safe 4 Freddie”. I am grateful for the fact that the Government will continue their commitment to that campaign, but I am really quite appalled that we are back here again today, and I sincerely hope that, as a result of these regulations, we do not see the sort of reckless and unsafe driving on the roads that I fear we will.