Road Vehicles (Powers to Stop) Regulations 2011

Lord Shutt of Greetland Excerpts

Wednesday 16th March 2011 Grand Committee

Moved By

[Lord Shutt of Greetland]

That the Grand Committee do report to the House that it has considered the Road Vehicles (Powers to Stop) Regulations 2011.

Relevant document: 15th Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments.

[Lord Shutt of Greetland]

My Lords, I am pleased to introduce the Road Vehicles (Powers to Stop) Regulations. The purpose of these regulations is to provide examiners from the Department for Transport’s Vehicle and Operator Services Agency, or VOSA, with direct powers to stop commercial vehicles at the roadside throughout Great Britain in order to enable them to conduct compliance checks.

These compliance checks are to ensure that commercial vehicles and drivers of commercial vehicles comply with the requirements of EU legislation relevant to vehicle roadworthiness and driving requirements. For example, EU legislation prescribes minimum standards of technical compliance for vehicles circulating on our roads. There are rules that prescribe maximum weight limits for commercial vehicles. There are also very detailed rules about maximum driving time and rest periods and about the recording equipment and records that are needed to verify compliance with these rules.

Of course, all these requirements and rules are there to help to keep our roads safe, but they are effective only if there is adequate enforcement. Consequently, the legislation also stipulates that member states must put in place appropriate systems and checks for compliance, which is something that we would want to do in any event, regardless of the country of origin of the vehicle and driver.

As things stand, VOSA already has a limited power to stop vehicles for checking in England and Wales. It has the power to do so under provisions in the Police Reform Act 2002—or, more precisely, the law allows chief officers of police to accredit individual VOSA examiners with the power to stop vehicles in order to carry out roadworthiness checks. Although this is a rather cumbersome administrative process, the general arrangements for enabling VOSA to stop vehicles for inspection work well in practice, since they save time in overall terms both for the police and for VOSA. They also release police officers for front-line duties when they would otherwise have had to stop vehicles for VOSA, as they used to do in the past.

The main problem is that these arrangements do not apply in Scotland, which currently commits the police to having to support VOSA at roadside enforcement checks. The draft regulations before the Committee today will resolve that problem. Under the provisions of the draft regulations, VOSA officers appointed by the Secretary of State will be able to stop commercial vehicles for checking throughout Britain without having to have a police officer present. The main benefit that this will bring is that it will release a significant amount of police resources in Scotland that are currently taken up in assisting VOSA with this task.

The regulations will also simplify the process of accrediting VOSA stopping officers. The proposal is that VOSA stopping officers will, in future, be appointed by the Secretary of State for Transport—in practice, that would be done by the chief executive of VOSA—rather than by individual chief officers of police. Of course, no one will be authorised as a stopping officer until they have successfully completed all the necessary training, which will be equivalent to the training that stopping officers in England and Wales currently have to undertake. The benefit of simplifying the process of appointing stopping officers will be in reducing the administrative burden on both the police and VOSA.

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[Lord Bradshaw]

Before the Minister does so, I point out to the noble Lord that in Northern Ireland we had an international border and many of the international troubles to which he has referred, which the stopping officers dealt with. The flagrant breaches of the law by lorries from one side of the border were often caught. VOSA officers have the power, as do Customs and Excise officers, to immobilise the vehicle. If there is any trouble, the police can be called anyway, but the officers have powers to stop the vehicle. That is the big sanction.

[Lord Shutt of Greetland]

My Lords, I thank the three noble Lords who have contributed to this short debate. Clearly, these regulations enable VOSA examiners to stop commercial vehicles for inspections that they routinely carry out at the roadside. These checks are on the roadworthiness conditions of vehicles and on whether the driver is complying with all relevant laws, including the particular law on maximum permissible time spent behind the wheel.

The noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, made one or two points and was generally supportive. The stopping powers relate only to VOSA; no other agency can be legitimately associated with those roadside checks. The point about census checks could perhaps be looked at in future; I do not think that I can say anything about that, but I shall take it back to the department. The current priority is to enable VOSA to complete its duties throughout Great Britain.

The noble Viscount, Lord Simon, made several points. I am delighted that I had some degree of notice on one or two of them, but not necessarily on all—if we cannot cover them all, we will have to write. He asked whether chief constables would be happy to let people work completely independently. VOSA officers will continue to maintain close links with the police. They have already been stopping vehicles in England and Wales since 2002—nine years—and there have been no problems. These regulations will allow VOSA to stop vehicles in a similar way in Scotland. They have the support of ACPO in Scotland and the Scottish Government.

The noble Viscount asked whether the fact that VOSA will be working on its own would encourage criminals to take advantage. VOSA officers will continue to maintain strong links with the police; even though they have the power to stop vehicles for inspection, they still have those strong links. In the event that they encounter any difficulty, they will immediately request assistance from the police in the normal way.

The noble Viscount asked how VOSA stopping officers will be trained. They will need to complete an intensive police driver training course before being appointed and an in-house training course to familiarise them with the extent and limitations of the powers—for example, the fact that VOSA officers are under no circumstances allowed to chase suspect vehicles. They will not be permitted to have blue lights. Their vehicles will have stopping matrix signs that request drivers to follow the vehicle to a safe stopping point, as they do at present.

The noble Viscount also asked whether VOSA has the necessary budget to provide a 24/7 service by stopping officers. Obviously, there is a limit to resources, just as there is for the police, and priorities have to be targeted. In some areas—on the main arterial roads into Britain, for example—VOSA can provide a 24/7 service, as it does. In other cases, it has fewer resources available but will rely on intelligence to determine when it is best to run enforcement exercises.

The noble Viscount asked whether in time the regulations could be extended to all vehicles. There are no plans to seek to extend the scope of these regulations to cover any other classes of vehicle. The law could be amended in the future, but that is not contemplated at the moment. VOSA’s main priority is commercial vehicles, not cars—cars are primarily a matter for the police.

The noble Lord, Lord Davies of Oldham, asked how the VOSA officers would be identified. While on duty, they will be required to wear a uniform that is unique to them; to carry clear identification; and to be in clearly marked vehicles that have a black and yellow Battenberg livery, are clearly marked “VOSA” and have amber light bars on the roof.

The noble Lord asked questions and commented on the extent to which there are more vehicles on the road. He referred to foreign commercial vehicles in particular. He will be interested to learn that, in 2006-07, 56,596 roadside checks on foreign vehicles were made by VOSA. In 2009-10, that figure had increased to 177,460. Those figures come from the most recent random fleet compliance survey and VOSA’s effectiveness report.

I trust that I have answered the bulk of the queries, as I have endeavoured to do. I will carefully check that nothing that I ought to have responded to is outstanding. As I have indicated, the purpose of the regulations is to create an efficient and effective mechanism for stopping commercial vehicles throughout Great Britain so that they and their drivers can be checked by VOSA examiners. These checks cover a wide range of compliance issues affecting vehicles and their drivers; they are necessary to keep our roads as safe as possible.

Historically, the police have stopped vehicles for VOSA, but it has to be said that that does not necessarily make the very best use of their valuable time. Of course, they have many other pressing priorities, which only they can deal with. For that reason, VOSA was given the opportunity in 2002 to stop vehicles for roadworthiness enforcement checks in England and Wales. That arrangement worked well in practice and we are now seeking to extend that practice to other types of compliance checks and to extend the new system throughout Britain. As well as making the process easier for VOSA, the new provisions will help to free up police resources in Scotland in a similar way for core policing priorities. The new provisions will also make easier the process of appointing VOSA stopping officers and provide a useful minor clarification of the relevant equivalent law in Northern Ireland. I commend the regulations to the Committee.

Motion agreed.