DVLA Closures (Scotland)

Mike Crockart Excerpts

Wednesday 7th March 2012 Westminster Hall

[Mr Doran]

The jobs have not really been considered in the consultation document. I understand that 1,200 jobs are at risk and some of those—200 or 300—will be moved to Swansea, if people are prepared to move. The hon. Gentleman is right. Despite the progress made by the DVLA in going online and its digital technology, I understand that there is a huge gap in the technology. The trade unions’ assessment is that it will take at least four or five years to fill that gap. That will add to the problem.

The other route being offered to customers is the post. We are talking about 2.4 million new transactions shifting from local offices to the centre in Swansea. A pilot test run a year or two ago, looking at postal loss—envelopes that go missing between the DVLA and its customers—showed that some 0.9% of post was lost. That does not sound like a lot and I am told that the DVLA has got that figure down to 0.5%, but with the number of transactions that will transfer to Swansea the potential loss is huge: almost 120,000 of 2.4 million letters will potentially be lost.

I have calculated that, if everyone in my area used the post—clearly they will not; this is just for illustration— over the past three years we would have lost 1,250 communications. Given that many of these communications will contain identification documents, such as passports, that is a serious problem. I should like the Minister to comment on that.

We are given three potential ways forward and there is a serious problem with each of them. More important, from my point of view as a former practising solicitor, are the legal consequences of another aspect of the DVLA’s work. The key responsibility in the local areas is enforcement.

[Mike Crockart (Edinburgh West) (LD)]

I am sure that the hon. Gentleman agrees that a key danger of the reorganisation is the potential effect on evasion of vehicle excise. I am also sure that he is already aware that if evasion rose by only 0.5% it would wipe out all the savings of this reorganisation.

[Mr Doran]

The hon. Gentleman is right. The 2004 figures, which are the most recent that I have managed to get hold of, show that evasion of vehicle excise duty was about 5%. That is a significant figure. Every percentage point costs the DVLA £57 million. Even a small increase, say 0.5% or 1%, would mean that the £28 million in savings expected from the closure process will be wiped out. It is not unrealistic to say that through this process, we are heading, particularly in Scotland, towards the serious possibility that evasion of vehicle excise duty will increase.

In the system at the moment there is an enforcement office in each region. In Scotland, that office is in Glasgow. Around the country, vehicles go out on our streets patrolling with number-recognition equipment, tallying what they find with DVLA records to pick up vehicles on which the vehicle excise duty has not been paid. It is quite a sophisticated operation.

I am told that responsibility for vehicles is to be removed from the local office, but Scotland has a particular legal issue. In England and Wales, and perhaps in Northern Ireland, the DVLA is the prosecuting authority, but in Scotland everything operates through the procurator fiscal, who has to operate within the confines of Scots law, which involves corroboration of every piece of evidence presented to the court.

In my local area, there are between 200 and 300 contested cases a year, because someone either pleads not guilty or ignores a summons from the court. That needs evidence, which at the moment is provided by an officer from Glasgow travelling to the local sheriff court, which could be just around the corner in the Glasgow sheriff court or in Orkney, Shetland or Western Isles. An assessment is made in each case—basically, a cost-benefit assessment: what is the cost of sending an officer to Shetland or Aberdeen and what are we likely to get in the way of a fine? If the costs outweigh the likely fine, a case will probably not be proceeded with, so people are already getting away with refusing or failing to pay their vehicle excise duty.

If the same cost-benefit analysis is done in the Swansea office, sending someone from Swansea to Shetland or even Aberdeen becomes a major operation. There are major cost factors, including overnight stays, which are unlikely at the moment. The cost will rise, and will we also see a rise in evasion of vehicle excise duty? If we do, what assessment has been made of the cost? Where is the financial analysis to show us what the new system might mean for evasion, in particular if we continue to provide evidence that must be from a witness, on which there is no option in the Scottish courts? What is the analysis? It strikes me that we will be opening the gates to people who might be prone to think that they can get away with evading their vehicle excise duty, and that undermines the whole system.

Among the problems to be considered, I have mentioned the consultation document, which is flabby and weak in every respect—I am concerned about it, because there is a host of areas where we do not have answers, some of which I have outlined. There has been no consideration of the huge rise in inconvenience to the public who use the local centres in significant numbers. The evidence is available: 2.4 million people a year will be inconvenienced, many of them businesses, some large, some small. The consultation report tells us that some such businesses already use the online system but, from my contacts in the motor trade, they are more interested in completing their licence or registration on the same day, rather than waiting several days, perhaps longer, for the material to come back from Swansea.

Also, from experience of such significant changes and reorganisations, the first two or three years are likely to be chaotic as the system beds down. I have commented on the loss of documents, in particular passports, which are valuable in themselves but are lost at huge inconvenience to the individual passport holder and with a possibly large profit for any criminal into whose hands the passport might fall. The potentially significant rise in tax evasion would be at significant cost to the Treasury. At this stage, with the lack of information from the consultation process, it is difficult to see anything positive. I have a simple question for the Minister: what is the point?

Oral Answers to Questions

Mike Crockart Excerpts

Thursday 22nd July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Norman Baker]

The Secretary of State was concerned about issues such as private sector wheel clamping, which had led to unfair treatment of motorists. That view is shared across the coalition. He is also concerned to ensure that we decarbonise road transport and achieve carbon gains from the roll-out of electric vehicles, for example. There is no difference at all between our positions on that. We have a coherent transport policy that will deliver jobs and carbon reduction.

[Mike Crockart (Edinburgh West) (LD)]

6. What assessment he has made of the implications for his Department’s policy of Sir Andrew Foster’s report on the intercity express programme.

[The Secretary of State for Transport (Mr Philip Hammond)]

My statement to the House of 6 July announced that a decision on the future of the intercity express programme would be made as part of the spending review announcement in October, and that the Government would use the intervening time to pause for reflection and a fresh, detailed analysis, including a review of the alternatives in line with Sir Andrew’s recommendations.

[Mike Crockart]

I thank my right hon. Friend for his response, but given that the country and indeed his Department continue to suffer from significant budgetary pressures, would it not be better to cancel the IEP programme and extend the life of our InterCity 125 trains, which have performed very well over the years, so that we can continue to invest in matters such as upgrading track infrastructure and high-speed rail, which would deliver significant economic benefits?

[Mr Hammond]

The previous Government commissioned a report from Sir Andrew Foster, which has now been delivered. It was a detailed piece of work containing a lot of recommendations, and one of Sir Andrew’s suggestions was that we should review the possibility of an upgrade and life extension of the existing 125 fleet. That is one option that we will consider during the pause that I mentioned.

High Speed Rail

Mike Crockart Excerpts

Wednesday 9th June 2010 Westminster Hall

[Mark Lazarowicz]

The previous Government made it clear from the outset that high speed train services would reach Edinburgh and Glasgow in due course. As the hon. Gentleman should know, I have been pushing for high speed rail for some time. I pushed the previous Government, and I intend to push this Government as hard as I pushed the previous one. If he wants high speed rail to go to places north of Manchester, I hope that he will put the same kind of pressure on his Government as I used to put on mine. I believe that we all want high speed rail to serve the nations and regions of the UK, so let us try to keep up the consensus and the pressure.

As I said, there are real economic benefits for all the communities and cities along the route of a high speed line. Research shows that cutting the journey time between Birmingham and London from 84 to 49 minutes would increase Birmingham’s annual economic output by £1.4 billion, or about 6%. The economic benefits of high speed rail would be more than £10 billion a year for the north-west and about £19 billion for Scotland. In total, 64,000 additional jobs would be created as a consequence.

There is an overwhelming case for extending the line to Scotland, to increase the number of business and tourist passengers travelling not just to and from London, but from the north of England to Scotland. Prosperity would spread much more than if the line were restricted to the south and south-east of England, and the UK as a whole would benefit as a result.

[Mike Crockart (Edinburgh West) (LD)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for raising this important subject. He will know that my predecessor John Barrett also worked tirelessly on this matter, and I intend to continue his support for it in this Parliament. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the greatest argument for extending the high speed rail line is an environmental one? For example, if we manage to drive London to Edinburgh journey times down to two hours 40 minutes, which is eminently possible, there would be a similar switch from air to rail, as happened when the Madrid to Barcelona line opened. That resulted in a 50% reduction in the number of flights between the two cities. If the same happened with Edinburgh and London, there would be 700,000 fewer air journeys between them.

[Mark Lazarowicz]

The hon. Gentleman is correct. Indeed, there has been increased use of the Manchester to London service as a result of the upgrade to the west coast main line, and we have seen the same with the London to Paris and Brussels services as well.

The point that the hon. Gentleman made about the benefits from reducing journey times particularly applies in respect of cities that are further away from London. The greatest journey time reductions will allow the greatest benefits in environmental and economic terms—and, indeed, in terms of convenience to passengers. That is why I hope that the Government will give a definite commitment to extend high speed rail to the north of England and to Scotland.

As the hon. Gentleman said, environmental benefits will be particularly important. Transport currently accounts for more than 20% of UK carbon emissions, so high speed rail has a role to play in that respect as well. Reducing journey times from London to Edinburgh to just over two hours could result in 80% of the current travel market between Scotland and London being captured by high speed rail. Even at three hours, with a partial high speed rail network, 67% of the travel between Scotland and London could be captured by high speed rail, so there are certainly environmental and transport benefits as well as economic ones.

In that respect, I have two other questions that I hope the Minister will address today or at another time. First, what is the Government’s view on whether the line should run to Heathrow or a connector station at Heathrow, or simply offer a connecting service, as the previous Government advocated? I am aware that there were criticisms of that decision, and I believe that she shared them. Certainly she made such criticisms before she was a Minister, so I would be interested to hear her current view on whether the line should serve Heathrow directly.

I would also like to hear the Minister’s views on whether there should be a link from a new high speed line north of London to the existing line from London to the south-east, France, Belgium and beyond. If there were no link—I hope there will be one—passengers from Scotland and the north would be less likely to use the high speed rail line for journeys to the continent, and travellers from the continent would be less likely to use it to travel north. Clearly, if there were no direct link, there would be less use of those services as well.

I hope that today the Minister can give some indication of how the Government will take the plans forward, and to answer the questions in their entirety, or at least to a great extent. I would like to hear a reiteration of the commitments that were given before the general election. I hope that today we will not hear from the Government any excuses that, because of the financial situation they claim to have inherited—we had all those excuses yesterday in the debate on the Queen’s Speech—they cannot make any further commitment to high speed rail at this stage.

I hope that we will not get that line later this morning. It would be unacceptable for several reasons. First, it should hardly surprise the Government parties that a high speed line would require major expense. If they did not realise that, they should not have made such sweeping promises in their manifestos. Secondly, the spending on high speed rail would, of course, be some time in the future. There will be many years of preparation involving planning, legal and parliamentary approval and so on. We are talking about commitments that will last for 10, 20 or 30 years, and I do not believe that anyone—not even those in the Government parties who make the most pessimistic forecasts—would suggest that the current economic circumstances will last for 10, 20 or 30 years.

Thirdly, the commitments, although large in their totality, are not actually as substantial as many other Government commitments. The cost of a line from London to Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds is estimated at £30 billion spread over 10 years. Compared with many other Government commitments, that is not as expensive as might be thought at first. And, of course, there are the wider economic benefits that I have already set out and the fact that the costs of high speed rail do not all have to come from public subsidy. Some of the public subsidy would be recouped from commercial income from passenger and goods traffic if the traffic projections and estimates are reflected in reality.

On the extension to Scotland, there are issues around the role in linking up services and the financial commitment from the Scottish Government as part of the devolution arrangements. I would be interested in hearing from the Minister about what discussions the coalition and her Department are having with the Scottish Government on how high speed rail could be funded in Scotland, and on how it would link up with existing rail services in Scotland.