HGV Road User Levy Bill

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Thursday 7th February 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Berkeley]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for that helpful introduction. It has filled a few holes in my knowledge of the Bill and is a good opportunity to discuss the policy surrounding this.

My first question is: why is this a money Bill? It seems to introduce changes to policy and to methods of collecting charges for road vehicles which probably merit greater scrutiny in your Lordships’ House. Of course, we cannot do that for a money Bill, so perhaps the Minister can explain exactly why it is a money Bill.

In that context, the Minister will know—because I mentioned it in a speech on Monday in Committee on the Growth and Infrastructure Bill—that I think that it would be much better if the Government came up with a consistent policy for tolling, charging, or whatever we like to call it, for vehicles using the Dartford tunnel, the new tunnels, congestion charging in London and other cities, and possibly eventually on the M6 toll road as well, for a start. All of those are effectively distance-based, unlike this one which is basically time-based. I expect that this is meant to avoid any policy intention to widen it to other vehicles; and of course, on that basis, it has to comply with the Eurovignette directive. I believe that the Commission has started to look at a wider charging solution for roads across the EU which is probably designed, as much as anything, to try to reduce the congestion on the most congested parts. However, I would be very pleased to hear the Minister’s explanation for why this is a money Bill.

The Minister explained that this was intended to increase the fairness between UK-registered and continental-registered vehicles, because when continental vehicles come here they do not pay the equivalent of a toll or VED, but when our vehicles go to the continent they have to pay tolls on some roads—most of which I think are distance-based. However, can he explain whether the locally registered trucks in any of the closer member states—on the roads which our own vehicles probably use the most—pay something equivalent to VED which visiting trucks from the UK and elsewhere would not pay? It would be a comfort to know that the balancing on which this Bill is based applies both ways. I am sure that there is an answer to that, but I do not know it.

In the case of non-UK heavy goods vehicles, Clause 4(2) places the liability for paying this levy on the holders of Community licences. I know that “Community licence” is defined in Clause 4(8), but can the Minister explain to the ordinary human being what that means? What is a Community licence? Is it one similar licence which every truck in the entire EU has, or does each member state have a different one? Whoever is going to enforce it will need to be familiar with 26 or so different types of licence if we are not careful. That will be quite difficult. I shall come back to that in a few minutes.

The Minister explained that UK-registered hauliers will be able to obtain their licences under this levy in the usual way, with the VED, on a 12-month or six-month basis. He said that a foreign haulier coming into Dover could buy a licence on the web or on the phone. Presumably there will be a kind of booth at Dover, or something, where you can pay for the licence at the time. If, as I believe, everybody will have to have a sticker with the licence on their windscreen, there is a question about how a haulier going backwards and forwards across Europe will manage to collect his post with the sticker in it. Or will there be a place where he can collect it every time he comes into the UK? Otherwise, it will be a bit of a mess, really.

This morning I got an interesting briefing from the Freight Transport Association, which raised the question of whether these stickers were necessary. That begs the question of how the Government intend for this new levy to be enforced. Window stickers are fine on cars, because traffic wardens go along and look at out-of-date licence stickers, and you then get a nasty message from the DVLA. However, traffic wardens are not going to be much use in enforcing this on trucks, because trucks do not usually park in the streets where traffic wardens operate, thank goodness.

Anyway, in Clause 10 we have a definition of who can stop a vehicle, and that person is called a “stopping officer”. I have never heard of a stopping officer before. Is it a police officer? Who is it? The definition says what his powers are, but how many of these stopping officers will we have in the country? If they are doing it already—which would be something I do not know about—in how many cases a year do they achieve this stopping? I am not convinced that there will be any enforcement at all of this new licence. If it is to be done by number-plate recognition, as the congestion charge is in London, can the Minister explain how that will work with 26 different number plates from 26 different member states plus a few from outside the EU? We get Turkish and other non-EU vehicles here as well. Is a system in place whereby all registered number plates from around Europe and beyond can be registered? And when they are indentified, what will happen to them?

I hope that the Minister can explain how this enforcement system will work. My suspicions are that it will hardly be done at all. UK vehicles will have to do it because they are paying with their VED, but who is going to do it for the foreign ones and where are they going to do it?

Finally, the Minister explained the revenue gain of £18.7 million to £23 million, which is probably worth having. It goes into the bottomless pit of the Treasury, but that is probably all right. Can he tell us the cost of administering this new scheme, both for UK-registered vehicles and foreign ones? In the debate on road-user charging I also said I believed that the cost of administering the road-user charging system in London—which is very good, and at the time it was introduced there was no better technology—is somewhere between 30% and 40% of the revenue gained. However, I think that the cost of some of the new electronic systems on the continent is about 5% of the revenue gained, which of course is much better. Therefore, what will be the cost of administering this scheme? Let us hope that it does not exceed the extra revenue expected.

With those few questions, I look forward to the Minister’s answers and to seeing this legislation implemented.

[Lord Snape]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow my noble friend Lord Berkeley on this topic. I well recall nearly 40 years ago when I was first elected to the other place and was told that the most effective political lobby in the United Kingdom was the farmers. I came to realise that in that conclusion they may well have been right. After all, I seem to remember that the farming lobby managed to blame the spread of foot and mouth some time ago basically on Ministers in the Labour Government rather than on their own practices.

Certainly, one lobby that runs the farming lobby very close in its effectiveness is the road haulage lobby. Most of us in your Lordships’ House are old enough to remember the immediate post-war period when heavy goods vehicles—I think this referred to those above seven tonnes, but it was a long time ago so I would not like to put my shirt on it—had to carry a 20 miles an hour plate and were restricted to that maximum speed. Given the number of heavy goods vehicles that appeared on our roads after World War 2—many of the drivers were demobbed from our Armed Forces—that issue was the first campaign that I remember the road hauliers lobby indulging in. It was very successful and it has indulged in many campaigns since, many of which have been successful.

Since the end of World War 2, we have seen heavy lorry weights increase dramatically. I think that the maximum now is 44 tonnes, although the Minister will correct me if I am wrong. It used to be about 12 tonnes, so the industry has done well there. The length of heavy goods vehicles also has increased fairly dramatically over that period. Each and every increase in weight and length has been accompanied by a cry from the road haulage industry that there would be fewer vehicles on the road because they are bigger, longer and heavier, and that once the motorways had been built they would not be much of a nuisance anyway.

This is not strictly speaking a matter for this debate, but I would be interested to know—perhaps the Minister will tell me, or write to me if he does not have the figures now—how many heavy goods vehicles above the 12 tonnes figure mentioned in the Bill are on our roads now compared to, say, a decade or two decades ago. Although it is not a matter for this Bill, it would be interesting to see not only how successful the road haulage lobby has been but how accurate it was in its predictions.

Another of the lobby’s major complaints was about the number of foreign lorries on our roads. Reverting back to my experience in the other place, I chaired for 15 years the West Midlands group of Labour MPs. It was one of my duties—whether it would be considered onerous or not I leave to noble Lords to work out for themselves—to attend meetings of the Sandwell chamber of commerce, which covered my former parliamentary constituency. The chamber of commerce may not have been dominated by the issue, but certainly a strong presence from the road haulage industry raised the same issue more and more often. It questioned the number of foreign heavy goods vehicles on British roads, and how they were filling up on cheap European derv and able to snatch the bread from the mouths of British hauliers by demanding not only the freedom to travel on our roads, which of course they had, but to take loads back to the continent, which rightly should have been the job of British hauliers.

I was a bit cynical and not inclined to believe that entirely, because every time I asked how many of these wicked foreign hauliers were behaving in this manner I did not get an answer. I found it difficult to believe, and I believe that I expressed the rather unpopular view at the chamber of commerce that I could not honestly believe that Mr Norbert Dentressangle, in his brightly covered lorries, was as guilty of undermining the British road haulage industry as the allegation made at the time suggested.

The Minister talks about 1.5 million trips, which I assume refers to round trips. Are we talking about 750,000 heavy goods vehicles that will be covered, at least in theory, by this measure? I should like to know just how many of these wicked foreign hauliers there are. They cannot use the excuse that they are driving around on cheap, continental derv anymore, because I understand it is just as expensive on the continent as it is in the United Kingdom these days.

The Minister went on to say that the maximum price we could charge foreign hauliers on a daily basis was €11. That will make a big dent in the deficit, whether or not the Prime Minister was accurate in his summing up of it. I cannot off the top of my head multiply 750,000 times €11, but while it is not an inconsiderable sum it will not make much of a dent in the road budget, let alone the deficit as a whole. Therefore, is this piece of legislation actually necessary, given the amount of money it is likely to raise?

The Minister did not use the phrase “a level playing field”, but he implied that this would balance the differences between British hauliers and their continental counterparts. However, €11 a day does not strike me as a particularly large penalty if one considers that for a heavy goods vehicle to travel 100 miles on a German autobahn, it would pay tolls of between €35 and €46. We throw open the whole road network of the United Kingdom for €11, but if you drive a heavy goods vehicle through Germany it costs €35 to €46.

As I indicated, the Minister said that this mighty measure before your Lordships today would raise the sum of £19 million to £23 million. He might recollect that a few days ago we had a debate about toll roads, and I pointed out that there was a toll road in the West Midlands that was not used much by heavy goods vehicles. I have noticed that Eddie Stobart vehicles do use it, but by and large those are the only heavy lorries that I have ever seen on the toll road. The heavy goods vehicle industry generally uses the M6 motorway, which passes through my former constituency on an elevated section. During my 27 years as the Member of Parliament for West Bromwich East, I calculated that the taxpayer had spent something like £800 million repairing just that one section of the M6 because of the damage done to it largely by heavy goods vehicles. On the department’s own figures, the heaviest heavy goods vehicles do as much damage to Britain’s road network as 30,000 private cars. This great sum of £19 million to £23 million, therefore, might repair one archway of the Ray Hall viaduct in the West Midlands, but it will not make much of a dent in the overall road budget.

I therefore have to say to the Minister, as the wartime sign said, “Is your journey really necessary?” as far as this piece of legislation is concerned. We heard from him that continental hauliers can pay on a day-to-day basis—not something that is open to British hauliers, who pay through VED on an annual basis—so why give them this particular benefit, which will be not shared by their British counterparts? I do not know whether, again, this is a matter for Europe, but why not insist that lorries used in the United Kingdom pay on an annual basis? Then they could come and go as they wished. Why allow them to pay on a one-day, two-day or weekly basis: a privilege denied to their British counterparts? Perhaps the Minister could explain.

Of course the penalties for non co-operation, under this legislation, can only be described as pathetic as well. Is a maximum fine of £200 really going to deter a heavy goods vehicle driver with, perhaps, £30,000 worth of valuable cargo? It is surely not serious that we impose a penalty that is so palpably inadequate. The Minister and the Government ought to look again. Even that penalty is based, as I understand it, on a vehicle limit and the number of axles. Who in this country of ours would be able to tell the vehicle limit or count the number of axles?

That leads me to the point raised by my noble friend Lord Berkeley about enforcement. Is the Minister seriously going to tell your Lordships’ House that there will be proper and adequate enforcement of this legislation? If he is, I do not believe him. Let me refer him to one of this morning’s newspapers. I am sure that the Daily Mail is the Minister’s favourite newspaper. From its optimistic front page to its unbiased sketch writing, I always think of it as a newspaper of value and repute. Today there is a story in the Daily Mail which I cut out as, reading it on the train, I thought: “The Minister will be interested in this one”. It is headed: “Toll of illegal foreign cars on UK roads”. I appreciate that it is not about foreign lorries, but I will come to those in a moment. The story says that:

“Only four out of an estimated 15,000 foreign cars driving illegally on British roads were caught last year. And not one of their drivers was prosecuted”,

the Department for Transport said yesterday. Given that record, it does not inspire me with confidence that our jails will be full of non fine-paying continental lorry drivers. What can the Minister tell us about the likelihood of enforcement under this legislation?

About 15 years ago, the then traffic commissioner for the West Midlands, Mr John Mervyn Pugh, invited me to join him on what he described hopefully as a purge of overloaded vehicles on the M6 motorway, particularly foreign ones. My noble friend asked about an enforcement officer. I presume that that enforcement officer must be from the police, because we were accompanied by three or four police cars. Between Birmingham and Stafford, the police directed heavy goods vehicles off the motorway so that they could be checked.

[Lord Berkeley]

Clause 10 refers not to an enforcement officer but to a “stopping officer”. Perhaps my noble friend would like to comment on that.

[Lord Snape]

Whether stopping or enforcing, my only response is that I guess he would have to be in police uniform. Perhaps I might take your Lordships back 15 years to the enforcement on the M6. I still have the paperwork, which I kept. Out of 14 vehicles that were stopped, only three of which were foreign, six were overloaded. In two of them, the driver had exceeded the permitted number of hours. A couple were borderline, while one was taken off the road immediately because of its lack of roadworthiness. Only 14 vehicles were stopped because, within about 40 minutes, there were no heavy goods vehicles heading north on the M6. This is before the days of mobile phones; it was presumably in the days of CB radio, or whatever it was called.

The problems in enforcing legislation such as this are enormous. The fact is that we do not enforce the existing heavy goods vehicles regulations at the moment. How can we, when the traffic commissioner’s total staff 15 years ago was four to cover the whole of the West Midlands and Wales? Given the Government’s clampdown on the Civil Service, I do not suppose that there are 44 of them these days. I suspect that if those four positions are still in situ, that is about it. Are these the people who are going to enforce this particular legislation? I honestly very much doubt that.

The Minister says that there will be a reduction in vehicle excise duty for UK-based hauliers. I have to ask why. I have a copy here of the report of the Armitage inquiry, Lorries, People and the Environment, from December 1980. Your Lordships will be relieved to know that I have no intention of reading that fairly bulky document, but as I would summarise it it pointed out that the number of heavy goods vehicles on Britain’s roads in those days was possibly more than the road network could cope with. If we have moved on from 1980 to 2013, I repeat the question: how many heavy goods vehicles are there on our roads these days, compared with then?

I hope the Minister does not think that I have been too rude about this legislation but it is palpably inadequate and will not be enforced. I do not think that unenforceable legislation—given the present lack of enforcement, that is the only way this can be described—is at all sensible. It is not actually necessary because, despite the propaganda from the British road haulage industry, I do not see this as the great problem that it outlines. If it is, let the continentals pay exactly the same price as British hauliers pay to drive across Europe. If a Bill is necessary, I am afraid that this is not it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, that will be done under the powers that were wisely introduced by the previous Administration, who also set the level. I agree that it is at quite a low level and made that very point from the Opposition Benches—I cannot remember whether it was the Front Benches or the Back Benches—at the time we introduced the necessary powers. The key thing is that we will be able to stop the vehicle. That is extremely inconvenient to the operator, and I will have more to say on that point.

The noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, asked me what a stopping officer is. Stopping officers already exist. They are appointed under the powers in the Road Traffic Act 1988, as amended, and are able to stop vehicles in relation to enforcement of vehicle roadworthiness and driver’s hours. Stopping officers are VOSA enforcement officers.

[Lord Berkeley]

I have a question before the Minister leaves that subject. There is presumably a database with every vehicle’s number plate on it. Are stopping officers lurking in every motorway service station or do they pick these things up from cameras above motorways? How are they going to find these lorries that have not paid even before they direct them into somewhere safe to deal with them? If I was a foreign lorry driver and did not want to pay, I would keep off trunk roads and go on the side roads, like many people do in France if they do not want to pay the motorway tolls.

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, I plan to address most of the points made by the noble Lord later on. To answer his point about leaving the strategic road network and going on to minor roads: an operator would have difficulties with that because the vehicle would be much less productive, while he would be trying to avoid only a £10 per day charge. I suggest that the extra cost of lowering your average speed by using local roads would simply not be worth it. For cases that go to court, the offence is a level 5, which can incur a fine of up to £5,000.

However, the real deterrent for operators is the inconvenience of being stopped, as well as another inconvenience that I will come to in a moment. VOSA already carries out risk-based stops for a number of different offences, including weight, vehicle defects, and driver hours, among others, and the levy enforcement will simply be added to this regime. I also suggest that when VOSA detects a vehicle that has not paid the levy, that is exactly the same as if the driver had put a big sign on the lorry which says “Stop me, because I’m a problem vehicle”.

I am aware that the British Vehicle Rental and Leasing Association has identified an area for a small potential cost burden to operators, which has been introduced due to the way that the levy is rebated, when compared to how VED is currently and will continue to be rebated. It may be helpful for me to say a few words on this. Currently when a vehicle is delicensed—typically, when it is sold—the previous owner can claim back the outstanding whole months of VED, with the rebate calculation done in twelfths. From the introduction of the levy in April 2014, UK operators will still be able to reclaim VED on the same basis, but the levy can be reclaimed only in tenths. To comply with EU law, and to maximise revenue from monthly charges, the annual rate is set at 10 times the monthly rate. This means that in effect it is discounted when compared with the costs of 12 monthly levy charges.

The decision to offer rebates on the basis of tenths is to prevent foreign hauliers paying for a year, using the vehicle for a month or less on the UK’s roads, and then reclaiming 11 months. The value of the loss incurred by the operator is entirely dependent on when the rebate is claimed.

The legislation before the House is not designed as a precursor to increased charges on businesses or on road users in general. This charge has a very clear, focused objective, and its introduction is entirely separate from the reviews on future road policy which the Department for Transport is currently undertaking.

I will now deal with a few other points. The noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, asked why it is a money Bill, and the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Oldham, very kindly helped me. The Bill only concerns money, and is certified as such by the Speaker of the House of Commons; it is not a matter for the Government.

On the wider points made by the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, on the methods of tolling, following our debate during the passage of the Growth and Infrastructure Bill I offered a meeting at ministerial level with the noble Lord; I hope that that meeting, which is in hand, will be with me. I have mentioned detection. I was asked about VED in other countries. All EU countries have VED for HGVs, or a local equivalent circulation tax. VED or equivalent is required in the Eurovignette directive, and minimum rates are set. Our new VED rates comply with the minimum rate.

The noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, raised a very important point about whether we should implement a levy on a distance or a time basis. I will say a few words about this important point. The HGV levy is a time-based charge which is both simple and inexpensive to operate. It allows more than nine out of 10 UK operators to be fully compensated through VED reductions. A distance-based scheme has been considered and has some benefits, in that hauliers who use the road network the most would pay the most. That seems, at face value, to be inherently fair. However, in reality it would cost hauliers more and it would not be possible to introduce offsetting measures for UK hauliers, which would mean that they would pay more than they do now. In many cases foreign hauliers would pay less than they would under a time-based scheme.

The introduction of a distance-based scheme has also been discounted as it would be very complex and costly to operate, and would potentially involve the use of a mechanism such as a fuel duty rebate, which is illegal under European law. This has already been tested in Germany. We also believe that the revenues gained from foreign hauliers would not cover the costs of operating this scheme. The Department for Transport looked at options for distance-based charging in 2010 and concluded that in order to fund it the scheme would have to be structured to be revenue-raising, and would therefore have a negative impact on UK hauliers, who would pay most of the charges.

Another difficulty is how to capture the distance-based data. That could be done with a tachograph, but the problem is that the tachograph and the records would have to be inspected by enforcement officers. In addition, the tachograph is in essence a safety device to ensure that drivers do not drive for too long. If we insert an economic effect into it, we would increase the chances that the drivers or the operator would interfere with the operation of the tachograph.

[Lord Berkeley]

I am grateful to the noble Lord. I will not go back over tolling, as we will have a meeting on that, and I am grateful to him. This is a tit-for-tat issue. He very kindly said that other member states also have a VED for domestic-registered trucks; for example, in France. Is there not a risk that those member states might play tit-for-tat and say, “Well, British hauliers going into France will be able to use the roads, with or without the tollings, but they won’t have paid the VED in France, so they’re getting an advantage”? Are we not in danger of getting a tit-for-tat situation across member states?

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, the situation is, as I said in my opening remarks, that our operators often have to pay motorway tolls that no one pays in the UK, and because of the Eurovignette directive, whatever a foreign country did in terms of a vignette they would be limited to the prevailing limits of what you can charge. It could not, therefore, cost our operators more than €11 a day. At the moment our operators pay tolls to use the European road infrastructure.

The chosen time-based scheme, coupled with reductions to VED, is a simple, effective and targeted way of ensuring that UK hauliers pay no more than they do now. VED cuts are a time-based method of offsetting the charge, which means that they fit well with a time-based system. In addition, we need to remember that, in terms of administration, this scheme will have a negligible burden on UK operators.

I always enjoy listening to the noble Lord, Lord Snape. He asked many questions, and I will answer as many as I can. I have probably answered quite a few already, and of course, I will write to him on some of them. He asked me what type of penalties there will be. As I believe I have said, drivers will be charged £200 at the roadside. Fines can be enforced electronically, and they can be invited to pay by credit or debit cards. The noble Lord, Lord Davies, made the point that with modern systems of doing business it is easy to collect the charges.

The noble Lord, Lord Snape, also asked if, under the directive we have to offer periods that are appropriate for the trip being made. If we offer only six-month or annual levies to foreign drivers we will contravene the European directive. He asked about the number of foreign vehicles and I can tell him that 3.6% of miles driven by HGVs in the UK are by foreign vehicles. For HGVs of 12 tonnes and over, the percentage is higher. The noble Lord, Lord Wigley, asked about revenue in VED. All levies or fines go into the Consolidated Fund, as we discussed. There are no plans for hypothecation, as the noble Lord suggests, but we will ensure that VOSA, as the primary enforcement agency, will have sufficient resources to enforce the scheme.

I am grateful for the helpful interventions from the noble Lord, Lord Davies, and for his support for the Bill. He asked me about cabotage. The Bill does not change the rules on cabotage but it does do a little to level the economic playing field. It is a difficult problem to deal with. I am delighted that the Bill has been so positively received. It has been long called for by industry and others from across the political spectrum, and I am delighted to be taking it through the House.