Commercial Vehicles: Safety

Lord Moylan Excerpts

Wednesday 19th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

The safety requirements that the noble Baroness, Lady Pidgeon, asked me about are those applicable to new vehicles. The standards of safety that apply to all vehicles on the UK’s roads are the latest standards that applied at the time at which they were manufactured, of course, improved by the regular testing system. There are reasons why historic vehicles cannot always comply with modern standards. There is a silver lining in that, which is that most very ancient vehicles cannot go very fast. My experience of the vehicle testing regime is that it is rigorous but respectful of the age of vehicles and their original manufacturing condition.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate the Minister on his birthday. It is a great pity that it is not being celebrated by a parade around Parliament Square featuring the noble Lord driving his bus accompanied by my noble friend Lord Attlee driving his Army truck. Perhaps that it is something to plan for next year. Broadening this out a little bit, UK motor manufacturing is in a state of crisis. Is it not time for the Government to take a lead from the Conservative Party and start to reassess their net-zero and, in particular, imposed electric vehicle targets while we still have a domestic motor manufacturing base to save?

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

To the serious point that the noble Lord raises, the Government are continuing to modernise the requirements for vehicles on British roads and are continuing to insist on the trajectory to zero-emission vehicles, for obvious reasons. In fact, contrary to the implication of what he says, that was started by the previous Government. On a more jocular note, neither the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, nor I need to add to the traffic around Parliament Square, particularly in the past few days.