DVLA Closures (Scotland)

Debate between Mike Penning and Frank Doran

Wednesday 7th March 2012 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Mike Penning)]

It is a pleasure to be working under your chairmanship this morning, Mr Williams, and I congratulate the hon. Member for Aberdeen North (Mr Doran) on securing the debate. If I were in his position, I would be in his seat, and he would probably be in mine.

The changes that we are proposing and that were subject to consultation are not only about money. The service offered by the DVLA to the British public is quite different from any offered by most other agencies: apart from the collection of vehicle excise duty revenue that we do on behalf of Her Majesty’s Treasury, the service is paid for by the people who use it. The DVLA has to be self-sufficient in how it operates. At the moment, the types of service that we offer to the public in offices around the country could clearly be done more professionally, efficiently and helpfully, and at a cost that could help the taxpayer as well. The hon. Gentleman rightly referred to the 2.4 million people who use the offices each year, but that equates to less than 6% of DVLA transactions, although they take up almost 25% of DVLA staffing levels. I shall leave others to do the mathematics, but if we can operate more cost-effectively, that is what Governments should do.

Many services are offered at different offices around the country, and the hon. Gentleman rightly alluded to the profitable business of cherished or personalised number plates—whatever we want to call them—but the system is quite archaic. Someone has to prove the MOT for the vehicle from which the plate is being transferred, even though the transfer has been approved by the Vehicle and Operator Services Agency: the vehicle has to be brought to the test centre and the process gone through. We want to speed that process up—we want more cherished number plates in Aberdeen. If there is money in Aberdeen to buy cherished number plates, the DVLA wants that money, because it helps to balance the books in the country. At the moment, there is a disincentive because the measures are complicated, which anyone who goes through the process will realise. We want to simplify it as much as possible.

Throughout Government, we want to use digital portals much more efficiently. Some 50% of all DVLA transactions now go through the digital portal, with people sitting at home or at their local library. That service continues to be rolled out across the country. On non-payment of VED, I am pleased that the latest figures are much better, and less than 1% is lost—in other words, people not paying are less than 1%. A lot of hard work has been done in the regional offices and the Swansea central office, but much of the success is to do with automatic number plate recognition. Modern ANPR cameras are ridiculously accurate—I hope people are listening to the debate—and, as we have rolled out ANPR through the police and through our camera technology, we have picked up more and more people. More individuals are being made aware that they are likely to be caught and prosecuted, which is why we have that level of less than 1% at the moment. There is no way in the world that I would be standing in the Chamber to condone any process likely to let that figure get worse. Most prosecutions are done through Swansea—I shall come on to the Scottish issues in a second, which are different, I accept, but we have taken them into consideration.

[Mr Doran]

A lot of the improvement in the capture of defaulters is because of the number of patrolling recognition vehicles, but my understanding, certainly in Scotland, is that they are being removed. Are they being removed throughout the country? What impact assessment has been made of the effect of that on defaults?

[Mike Penning]

There is a roll-out, not a roll-in, to use probably perverse language—more and more vehicles are going out. I will not tell the country where they are and where they will be, because I want to catch and prosecute people.

If any hon. colleagues have not been out on patrol with their local police with ANPR in the vehicle, I urge them to do so. They should contact their local constabulary and go out with them, because it will be an eye-opening experience for them. They can then explain to their constituents just how advanced the technology is. I sat in a police car on the side of an A road in Milton Keynes recently, but as the vehicles went past an alarm went off in the car if they did not have any insurance or MOT, and we knew who the vehicle was registered to. ANPR is very accurate. As we have rolled out continuous insurance—

[Mr Doran]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mike Penning]

I urge the hon. Gentleman to bear with me, because I want to make a little progress. I am conscious that, otherwise, Mr Williams will shut me up before I have had an opportunity to address the issues that he raised.

I fully accept that there is some concern in the motor industry, but it is split. I regularly meet the industry’s representative bodies, and I have met representatives of the motor trade in my constituency. What we are proposing will be more efficient. It will not be a case of putting documents in the post and losing blank tax discs. We will use a secure system, and speed will be subject to a contract. Delivery will be the following day, and it may sometimes be possible to offer same-day delivery.

Most of the complaints that I have heard from colleagues have come from people at local offices, who believe that they may lose their job. I fully understand their concerns, but the necessary efficiencies will mean that the risk to the motor trade of holding whole books of blank tax discs in their showrooms will be removed. At the moment, showrooms receive them in blocks, and are responsible for those blocks, which they may return if they do not use them. That is not efficient for them or for us, and we intend to roll out a more efficient way.

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right in saying that the system in England and Wales is different from the system in Scotland. The system in Northern Ireland, as the hon. Member for North Antrim (Ian Paisley) knows, is completely archaic, and no electronic portals can be used because the database is not compatible with the database in Swansea, so we must do something about that. There may be an Adjournment debate on the subject, but I thought I should raise the matter. We must deliver a much better service for the Province of Northern Ireland. In Scotland, as the hon. Member for Aberdeen North rightly said, the procurator fiscal is the prosecutor, but we do not intend to have everyone sitting in Swansea and then taking lovely journeys to Shetland and the Western Isles.

Coastguard Modernisation

Debate between Mike Penning and Frank Doran

Tuesday 22nd November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mike Penning]

The closures are planned for March 2015, so there will be no cliff edge. I repeat that, having studied the results of the consultation extremely carefully, we decided to adopt the pair-based system because the current local knowledge of the topography would be retained. When I visited Swansea—and I expect that a Swansea Member will ask a question shortly—the station was closed while I was meeting the staff, and Milford Haven took over the local knowledge. That sort of thing is happening regularly, and it will introduce more resilience to the system.

[Mr Frank Doran (Aberdeen North) (Lab)]

I welcome the Minister’s recognition of the unique position of the Aberdeen station and its links with the oil and gas industry. However, although he has accepted that there needs to be a back-up MOC—which was not included in the plans announced last September—I understand that it is to be a part-time empty station in Dover. The Aberdeen station, which was included in the original December proposals, is fully manned, and could act immediately with a full staff complement in an emergency. What assurances can the Minister give about the security of the system in such circumstances?

[Mike Penning]

The Aberdeen station is not fully manned as a MOC today. It is a co-ordination centre. Under the previous proposals, if we had taken out the second MOC there would have been 23 staff in Scotland, whereas 69 will be working for me at the co-ordination centres in Scotland. We considered carefully whether we would need a second MOC if we kept the twin stations open 24/7, and decided that, with the twin stations open and a nationally resilient communications system, we did not need a full-time second MOC.