Motor Vehicles (Compulsory Insurance) (Amendment etc.) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019

Debate between Lord Adonis and Baroness Randerson

Wednesday 20th February 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

The noble Baroness is making a very powerful point in respect of compensation for accidents, but there is also a massive bureaucratic issue in respect of insurance here. It is understated in the Explanatory Memorandum. Paragraph 3.7 says:

“If there is no deal with the EU, UK motorists will also be required to carry a ‘Green Card’ which guarantees third-party insurance provision when driving in the EU. This may result in increased bureaucracy and costs for those drivers”.


That must be the understatement of the year: how can that not result in a massive increase in bureaucracy and inconvenience to drivers? Should the Government not be telling all the motorists proposing to leave the country in five weeks’ time that they are going to be required to have this green-card, third-party insurance provision which they do not have at the moment, and how they can secure it? I am a former Secretary of State for Transport, but I myself do not know what it is, so the population of Northern Ireland which, as the noble Baroness says, will be decamping over the next 12 months to the European Union, is going to have to be well informed about the green-card insurance system, about which it knows absolutely nothing at the moment.

[Baroness Randerson]

The noble Lord makes a powerful point and I will come on to the green card later. It did strike me, as I read the Explanatory Memorandum, that it was a masterpiece of understatement. It said some fairly amazing things without the slightest hint of a raised eyebrow.

The point I am making is that the Government’s proposal is totally inappropriate to modern life. The Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments points out that paragraph 3.6 of the Explanatory Memorandum says that the method of claiming will vary from country to country and that victims might have to pursue an uninsured person directly.

It also points out that no deal will lead to the issuing of green cards again. I am sure that noble Lords will remember green cards—but not with affection. The DfT has acknowledged that this will also apply to travel between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. Although it says that the SI has nothing to do with green cards, perhaps the Minister can update us on the situation with green cards, because the British Insurance Brokers’ Association is alerting us now to the urgency for a decision, because physical green cards will have to be produced in their millions in the next few weeks.

I sometimes think that Brexit is a giant conspiracy against the great British tradition of a holiday in the sun.

[Lord Adonis]

I did not pick up on this in my reading of the statutory instrument. Did I hear the noble Baroness correctly: that you will require a green card to cross the Irish border? Is that the point she was making? Is that not a breach of the Good Friday agreement?

[Baroness Randerson]

I am quoting the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments. The noble Lord makes an interesting point. It quite possibly would be but I am not sufficiently expert on the Good Friday agreement to be definitive on that.

There is a conspiracy against our summer holidays. We will now be going off with an international driving permit, sometimes two, and a green card to wait in the queue at the Channel Tunnel or the port—unless we choose to go by air, with all the doubts about whether or not the plane will fly. It will cost more because of the changes in the exchange rate in the past two and a half years; the ATOL system will not have the guarantees that it once had; and now we hear that if you have an accident you will be left to fight for compensation on your own. What will we get in return? A shiny blue passport. The problem is that this takes us back to a cumbersome, bureaucratic system that goes back decades and does not fit the modern way of travel.

On the consultation outcome, paragraph 10.1 of the Explanatory Memorandum states:

“Given the EU Exit negotiation sensitivity of changes to the Motor Vehicles (Compulsory Insurance) (Information Centre and Compensation Body) Regulations 2003, formal public consultation was not considered appropriate”.


I have read that several times. Are the Government really saying that because this will upset motorists they are not going to tell them about it or consult them? That is how I read that sentence. If that is not accurate, will the Minister explain exactly what the Government were trying to say?

The paragraph goes on, almost incredibly, to say that the Motor Insurers’ Bureau, the insurance trade associations and the motoring trade associations have been consulted and are satisfied. Are they seriously satisfied with this? They cannot possibly be satisfied and I would like to know what they really think. They might take the opportunity after they have read Hansard to tell us. It cannot be possible in an industry as diverse as this that all those organisations are happy with these seriously problematic regulations.

Paragraph 12 refers to the impact. Astonishingly, it deals with the impact on the courts of an expected spike in the number of cases being pursued prior to Brexit to take advantage of the current system. It totally ignores the impact on private individuals who are victims and find that they have to go to another country to pursue their case. Justice is a right, not a privilege, and these regulations cut at the basis of that right. UK citizens injured abroad may effectively lose the right to compensation as a result of this. Indeed, it is likely that compensation will be available only to privileged, wealthy people who can afford expensive legal representation.

[Lord Adonis]

My Lords, it is important that the House does not lose its capacity to be shocked by the scale of the dislocation that may be imposed by the Government on the country in one month’s time if no deal Brexit proceeds.

In a succession of speeches, the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, has laid out the impact of no deal on motor industry regulation and she did a good job of weaving together the changes in relation to insurance, accidents and international driving licences. The extraordinary thing about it is that, because we are going back to pre-1973 law, not only are many bureaucratic requirements being imposed but they are being imposed in a way that is entirely pre-digital.

Noble Lords will recall the green card but I am still of an age where I do not recall it—I do not think the Minister recalls the green card—which is a telling remark. You have to be—how can I put this delicately?—of a certain age to remember the green card. I certainly do not remember the international driving licence. However, as we go into this Alice in Wonderland world of disaster that the Government propose to inflict on the country, we now know that not only will you require an international driving licence and a green card but you will have to have them as physical constructs because the regulations under which they are imposed go back to the pre-digital era. You will have to get a physical international driver’s licence or licences—the Minister can intervene on me at any stage if she wishes—and a physical green card. Is that correct?

Road Vehicles and Non-Road Mobile Machinery (Type-Approval) (Amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019

Debate between Lord Adonis and Baroness Randerson

Wednesday 20th February 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

I am very grateful to the noble Baroness for giving way. She cited the fact that there would be no formal consultation on this SI, as indeed on any other SI that has come before the House. Did she note that paragraph 10.1 also said that,

“the intention is to ensure that, as far as possible, the status quo is maintained”?

The noble Baroness has done a very good job in the last 10 minutes of explaining why the status quo is not being maintained in key respects. There is a contradiction in paragraph 10.1 regarding the justification the Government have given for not consulting. According to that justification, they should have made no changes at all but continued with the existing type-approval regime. Given that the Government have made those changes, and given the statement that they themselves made in paragraph 10.1, there should surely have been consultation.

[Baroness Randerson]

I agree with the noble Lord that there should be consultation, because the Government themselves have admitted that there are aspects that could be misleading. That is what they say in the EM.

It is my understanding that gaining EU type approval is pretty expensive. It would be useful to know at least approximately how much it costs, so we can get some view of what the Government will have to undertake in future.

I turn now to the SI on emissions. These EU regulations establish mandatory fleet average CO₂ emissions targets for all cars and vans in the EU, plus Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway. They establish targets by which manufacturers must abide, based on a formula, and levy fines for non-compliance. EU states record and report new EU vehicle registrations to the EEA, which leads to the publication of emissions performance for individual manufacturers. Are we going to carry on with this system on a UK basis? Powers are being moved to the Secretary of State, but will the system of publication of performance continue? It is really important for public confidence. Small manufacturers can apply for derogations. In the SI, small manufacturers are defined as producing 300,000 cars and 22,000 vans. Are the Government going to divide that by 28 or something, to redefine a small manufacturer, or will the definition of a small manufacturer across the whole of the EU apply within the UK, in which context it will hardly be small?

Air Passenger Rights and Air Travel Organisers’ Licensing (Amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations 2018

Debate between Lord Adonis and Baroness Randerson

Tuesday 12th February 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Adonis]

As the noble Lord is aware, because we debated it at some length in Grand Committee, in one SI the consultees were “selected” and “trusted”, but that has not appeared in others. It is not clear in this case who did the selection and whether they were trusted—perhaps the Minister can tell us.

I want to pose to the Minister the obvious questions. Who has been consulted on these regulations? What were the “long-established stakeholder forums” which were consulted? What issues relating to the UK’s withdrawal from the EU were raised by the consultees? What was the Government’s response to each of those concerns?

I do not serve on the statutory instrument committees but, when I meet noble Lords leaving those meetings with a haggard expression, they tell me there are hundreds more SIs to come and that apparently they are getting longer—some of them are hundreds of pages. I hope that, in these committees, noble Lords are asking questions of the Government as to what these processes are. It would be very helpful to us if these statutory instruments came to the House with a description of which “trusted” and “selected” groups were privy to the Government’s consultations.

[Baroness Randerson]

Is the noble Lord aware that, in some of the forums that the Department for Transport brought together to discuss EU and Brexit issues, those who took part were required to sign non-disclosure agreements?

[Lord Adonis]

So it is not just Seaborne Freight that had to sign a non-disclosure agreement; it turns out that people who turned up to meetings in the department also had to. Perhaps the Minister would like to clarify whether non-disclosure agreements were involved. Indeed, I am told there was an attempt to try to get your Lordships to sign non-disclosure agreements on the ground that, if we debate these issues openly and start expressing our concerns, people might become alarmed—as the noble Lord, Lord Warner, said, there are some members of the public who observe our proceedings.

This is worse than deeply unsatisfactory and is no way to make legislation. It is totally unacceptable and should not be happening. There is nothing the noble Baroness can say that will meet the substantial points, but perhaps she can at least give us some basic information on how consultation has been conducted and what the results were.