Driver and Vehicle Agency (Northern Ireland)

Mark Durkan Excerpts

Tuesday 15th October 2013 Westminster Hall

[Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)]

It is a pleasure to meet under your chairmanship this morning, Mrs Riordan.

I commend the hon. Member for East Londonderry (Mr Campbell) for securing this debate on an issue that obviously affects not only many people in his constituency, but people right across Northern Ireland, including people in the Driver and Vehicle Agency in my own constituency, which is in Foyle street in Derry.

We have heard that this is not only about protecting the significant number of jobs in the DVA in Northern Ireland, but about protecting the existing level and quality of services and, indeed, trying to improve them with future investment. Other hon. Members have quoted the high customer satisfaction indicators in Northern Ireland that are running at between 98% and 100%. Of course, we heard the hon. Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson) describe himself as a victim of the DVA system as it currently operates, but he actually presented himself here in Westminster Hall today as a satisfied victim. [Laughter.] That just shows the degree to which there is customer satisfaction. The fact that he can advertise his own victimhood as a justification for keeping the status quo, and building and improving on it, says an awful lot for the DVA and its staff in Northern Ireland. It also possibly says something for the hon. Gentleman, too, who I never thought would appear as a satisfied victim. There again, my expectations have been confounded.

It is important to recognise that it is not only the defence of the jobs and services that has galvanised people from all parties and, indeed, from beyond party lines in the north of Ireland, but the way in which it took an intervention by the previous Environment Minister in Northern Ireland, Alex Attwood, even to get a consultation exercise provided by the Department for Transport.

Then, of course, there was the whole offensive implication that came in the context of discussing this issue—namely, that removing the jobs from Northern Ireland would be a way to remove any threat or fear of religious or sectarian bias. That was rightly seen as a direct slur, not only on the DVA’s work force, but on the entire public sector work force in Northern Ireland. This idea was, “Well, we’ll protect you from anything that might involve a suggestion of religious bias by removing jobs.” If that is the case, why stop at DVA jobs? Remove more and more public sector jobs if doing so is meant to be a way to try to create a shared future; it will be a shared future of poverty and unemployment, but at least there will be no bias.

Rightly, the previous Minister with responsibility for roads—the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, the hon. Member for Wimbledon (Stephen Hammond)—was forced to apologise, to a degree, for those remarks, but the fact is that they hurt and stung. They also exposed the folly and the contrived and scrambled thinking that has gone into this proposal from the London end.

We are not just concerned about defending the jobs and the service qualities that have been described. As other hon. Members have said, when we look at what has been happening with the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency in Britain, we are also concerned. We have seen that the presumption that providing online services will mean that everyone moves online is not borne out by the experience of the past 10 years. The chair of the Scottish Motor Trade Association described the situation in Scotland as “a shambles”, because of the closure of local offices and the move to centralisation. When we have all this evidence of the experience in other areas, of course we should listen to it.

However, not only the representatives of the people of Northern Ireland, but the Department for Transport and the Minister should be listening to that evidence. They should be saying, “Does it really make sense to put all the eggs into the single option of one single, centralised location for the entire UK?” As other hon. Members have said, allowing the DVA to be retained in Northern Ireland—in particular, the significant capacity and resource that exists in Coleraine—would give the DVLA the option and the flexibility of having a centre of excellence that it can rely on alongside Swansea.

[Mr Goodwill]

The hon. Gentleman mentioned some of the problems with the Scottish motor trade. The DVLA has acknowledged that it had temporary issues when some of the complex work was transferred from the GB local offices to Swansea. The DVLA has worked with the motor industry, and I understand that those issues have been rectified and performance is back up to target now.

[Mark Durkan]

I am not sure that I am fully persuaded by the Minister’s points, which, I accept, he has put on record. I think that I and others will test them with other soundings.

I want to make the point that we have had experience in Northern Ireland of other services being centralised. A number of years ago, when tax credits were introduced there was for a brief period a tax credit office in Northern Ireland, which tried to deal with complex cases; not all of them should have been complex, but by the nature of that system they became complex. We ended up with somebody having a bright idea, saying, “Let’s centralise tax credit.” The tax credit office was removed from Northern Ireland, although many cases in Northern Ireland are particularly complicated and people were unable to deal with or understand the needs and circumstances of people there, not least the cross-border cases that arise in the context of tax credits.

As other hon. Members have said, significant cross-border issues relate to vehicle licensing, including local traders’ dealings with the DVA, particularly in respect of used cars with a cross-border history. From time to time, there are changes in patterns of vehicle importation across the border from the south and the trade goes the other way, with people in the south buying their cars in the north. It is important that licensing and registration in both Shannon and the DVA in the north can work together, to track, connect and make sense of those things, and work with the Police Service of Northern Ireland and the Garda Siochana in relation to those matters. All that would be lost and we would end up with a repeat of the serious, chronic problems with border and cross-border issues on the centralisation of tax credits.

The fear is that the logic of centralisation will be not just be used in driver and vehicle licensing, but extended to other areas in future. Previously, we heard threatening suggestions from Whitehall Ministers that, if we did not make do with our lot on welfare reform, some of the servicing work—the back office work—done in relation to benefits in GB could be lost. Of course, the same argument could be applied in future to proposed changes in the regime for annually managed expenditure and further changes in relation to welfare reform and, for example, a new standardised computer system for universal credit.

We are not just defending the important jobs that we need to defend in DVA, but trying to hold the line against a relentless effort towards centralisation that goes completely against the grain of the commitments and promises made by the Prime Minister, in recognition of Northern Ireland’s talents and skills, its contribution and its offer.

Here we have talent, dedication and commitment from DVA staff, who, in spite of under-investment in technology by the DVLA, have delivered such a good performance. That commitment should be rewarded not with their jobs being removed to a remote location where the same quality of service will not be matched, but with their jobs being retained and new investment going in, so that they can provide an even better service to people in Northern Ireland and be able to provide that good service to people in Great Britain, as well, when it makes sense for the DVLA to call on their talents to do so.

[Mrs Linda Riordan (in the Chair)]

One hon. Member wishes to catch my eye. May I ask him to bring his remarks to a close at about 10.40 am, so that the Minister and shadow Minister have time to respond?