Motor Vehicles (Driving Licences) (Amendment) (No. 2) Regulations 2025

Lord Lucas Excerpts

Monday 19th May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Goschen (Con)]

My Lords, I do not have any argument with the Government over their laudable environmental and other objectives in bringing forward these regulations, but I have a question that is really to do with the physics of the matter. We know that kinetic energy is a key, or perhaps the key, determinant in the severity of and damage caused by road accidents. Kinetic energy is of course calculated as half of the mass times the square of the velocity.

Essentially, if, as I understand it, the Government are content that it is safe for a category B licence holder to drive a 4.25 tonne vehicle powered by zero-emissions means, why is it not safe for that same driver to drive another vehicle powered by any other means? In the event of a road accident or collision, the power source of the vehicle the category B driver is at the wheel of will make no difference to the brakes and tyres, and to the impact caused to the other vehicle involved in the accident.

When we are legislating on road safety, we have to take into account the realities and physics of the matter as well as other government objectives, such as decarbonisation, laudable though they may be. I would be very grateful if the Minister could answer that question.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, as the Minister points out, we have a large electric car market; as my noble friend Lord Moylan on the Front Bench points out, what we have is a market for large electric cars. I ask the Minister: why does that continue to be the case?

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Lucas for raising the interesting point about an electric tuk-tuk for passenger use. I listened with great care to the Minister’s response. I have to admit, a few years ago, I looked at the possibility of purchasing a BMW i3. The cost at that stage was £33,000. I do not know what the Minister paid for his. I do not think, however, that my noble friend Lord Lucas is thinking about a vehicle of that sort and that cost. That is one of the principal—

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

For noble Lords’ information, the cost of an electric tuk-tuk in China is about £1,500.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

I am very grateful. That is something the Minister should respond to. I shall not comment further on it other than to say that it is a useful thing to know. But the BMW i3 is not £1,500; it costs a great deal more, and that is beyond the scope of the majority of people.

My noble friend Lord Goschen and the noble Earl, Lord Russell, made a point about road safety. The Government have given assurances on this. Although I am happy to accept those assurances for today, they will be held to them. We will expect those changes to be monitored for their road safety effects. The Minister has said that and we will hold him to it—it is a very important consideration.

Concerning the state of the roads, much has been made by the Minister and the noble Earl, Lord Russell, about the fact that a heavy goods vehicle is heavier than a car. I know that. Everybody knows a heavy goods vehicle is heavier than a car. It has the word “heavy” in its name. The key difference is that there are 33 million cars in this country. There are 500,000 heavy goods vehicles. The damage being done to our roads is not, as I said in my opening remarks, because of the occasional passage of a heavy goods vehicle down a lane in Oxfordshire. It is done by the relentless passage of heavier and heavier cars across those roads, which is not only leading to potholes but breaking up the base and creating a huge maintenance and restoration bill for our roads that will not, in my view, be properly addressed by £1.6 billion.

Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, the Government were given the opportunity to reject the notion that they were going to manipulate driving licences and the conditions on driving licences to achieve objectives related not to road safety or vehicles but to net-zero policy. That would open a door to further manipulation in the future, which could well be used to disadvantage—as the price of a BMW i3 already disadvantages—people on lower incomes. The Government took no opportunity to reject that. Indeed, the noble Earl, Lord Russell, on behalf of the Liberal Democrats, endorsed it and thought it was a very good idea. That is a cloud perhaps no larger than a man’s hand, but it will come back—