Motor Vehicles (Tests) (Amendment) (Coronavirus) Regulations 2020

Lord Mann Excerpts

Wednesday 13th May 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Mann (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I recognise and support the Government’s rationale in bringing forward this change. The last thing that we want is to unnecessarily criminalise any driver or inadvertently leave people doubly locked in at home because they cannot use their vehicle, for example, to get to a doctor’s surgery or to pick up a prescription. I echo the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, that, without this change, some people would be discriminated against.

Therefore, I support the change, but I think that the Government should be looking at things beyond it. They have, rightly, encouraged and allowed bicycle repair shops to open. Although I am fully in favour of the maximum number of people shifting to using bicycles, in some parts of the country that would be rather a full-time occupation for people as they tried to get to work and to get around for their business. I would like the Government to give out a stronger message that garages can be open for business and that, where possible, they should be.

For some of us, this is the perfect time to arrange for an MoT to be done. I would be quite happy for the six-month period to be brought forward and to allow MoTs to be carried out earlier, because garages can employ caution and use safety measures. Using myself as an example, I could drive my car to a garage for an MoT and would be happy to leave it there for a week. I could walk home, then walk back to pick it up. Not only would that allow social distancing and no human contact, but it would allow the car to remain in isolation for, say, three or four days before it was touched by the garage.

The nation’s productivity could be damaged if we built up a bottleneck in the future, meaning that people had to disrupt their working lives to get an MoT carried out. Therefore, in addition to this measure, I urge the Government to provide encouragement to bicycle repair businesses, as they have done, to encourage garages to open and, where possible, to encourage people to use them and get their MoTs done.