Draft Passenger and Goods Vehicles (Tachographs) (amendment) Regulations 2016

Debate between Ruth Cadbury and Richard Burden

Wednesday 10th February 2016 General Committees

[Richard Burden (Birmingham, Northfield) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship for the first time, Mr Hanson.

I hope we will not have to divide the Committee on this statutory instrument, because a lot of it seems non-contentious. I know that the UK prides itself on our high standards of commercial vehicle safety. For example, the Freight Transport Association has observed that there is little evidence of impropriety in this country in relation to the calibration of tachographs. However, I want to press the Minister on one area of the regulations that I have significant concerns about.

While the crux of the regulations is to ensure better quality of tachographs, if I have read them right, they also extend exemptions from drivers’ hours rules from 50 km to 100 km. As far as I know, the EU regulation that gave rise to this SI allows that but does not require it. I would appreciate it if the Minister’s confirmed whether I am right about that. If I am, and the extension is not required by the EU regulation, one has to ask what Ministers are trying to achieve by inserting it in these regulations.

The Government’s explanatory memorandum says:

“Road safety is improved by ensuring that professional drivers’ working hours are not excessive”.

However, by doubling the radial base for exemptions, do the regulations not have the potential to undermine that objective completely? That certainly seems to be the view of one of the key bodies that the Government consulted on these regulations. The Minister referred to some responses he received from business, but he did not refer to the response he received from Unite, the main trade union involved in the road haulage industry. I draw attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Interests.

I want to quote from the consultation document that the Government put out to interested bodies and from Unite’s response. The consultation asked:

“Do you agree that we continue to apply the national derogations to EU drivers’ hours (for USPs, vehicles using natural or liquefied gas or electricity and those carrying live animals to market,) with the extension to 100km radius? Please explain your reasons. Also, can you provide any further information on the costs or benefits of the extension of these exemptions/national derogations for any of the various sectors?”

Unite’s response was quite instructive:

“Unite believe what we need to remember is the reason the legislation was put in place was to combat driver fatigue. However with changes and derogations i.e. the introduction of Periods Of Availability (POA), the POA has been abused by employers to stretch the driver’s working day and get round the law.

Employers have an obligation in law to ensure their employees do not come to any harm at work (Health and Safety regs, Management regs and the Corporate Manslaughter regs).

However tiredness for drivers is endemic (just-in-time) industry imperatives and physiological intimidation seems to be the way transport operations do business today. POA is a tool that is being misused by employers to reinforce these practices. It is time that this is addressed with the removal of POA. This would be a major step in making roads safer for us all.”

Question No. 7 in the Government’s consultation was:

“Do you believe we should retain the 50km criterion for driver CPC or increase it to 100km? Please explain your reasons”.

The response was:

“Unite believes we should retain the 50 km criterion for driver CPC for the reasons stated above”.

Looking through the Government’s explanatory memorandum for these regulations, I am still none the wiser as to why they felt it necessary to double the distance and the radius-based exemptions in the UK. In fairness to the Freight Transport Association, it has been a bit clearer than the Government. It says:

“The complexity of rules will be significantly reduced by all radius based exemptions being uniform 100 km and therefore reduce the chance that the driver is penalised because he has become confused by the complexity rather than posed a realistic threat to road safety”.

I get that, but what I find unsatisfactory is that the Government do not appear to have addressed this issue at all. While the impact assessment looks at this issue, it takes the view that the extension to 100 km will be

“a deregulatory and proportionate measure reducing the administrative and financial burden on businesses and individuals”.

Again, I get that, but as far as I can see, the impact assessment makes absolutely no reference to the issue that Unite raised—in other words, any possible implications for safety. Can the Minister outline whether he has received any responses raising concerns about safety and the possible impact on driver fatigue that this extension could have? The impact assessment recognises that there were 95 accidents involving heavy goods vehicles for which fatigue was listed as a contributory factor, so why does that assessment not consider the possibility that that number could increase?

[Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend might want to comment on the fact that Brake, the road safety charity, says that one quarter of all crashes on Britain’s main roads are tiredness-related and that extending the hours could have a further significant impact, to the detriment of other people on the roads.

[Richard Burden]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point. Driver fatigue is, to use Unite’s word again, “endemic” in the road haulage industry. Drivers have long hours. There are not many other professions in which people do not know where they are going to stop for their next meal or where they will be able to go to the toilet next. They do not know whether they will be stuck in a traffic jam that means that they just cannot finish work when they need to, however tired they are.

My hon. Friend is right. The problem of fatigue affects not only the driver, but potentially other road users; it is a hazard to other road users. It is therefore very unsatisfactory that the Minister appears to have just skated over that. He has not mentioned it at all in his explanatory memorandum or in his statement today. I therefore ask him to answer this question when he responds to the debate. Why has he not addressed this issue? I want to be confident that the Government are not creating a situation in which more drivers further from home will be under pressure to drive regardless of their fatigue levels. Surely it is reasonable, if we are to pass this SI today, that we get some answers from the Minister on this issue.

We may not get to the bottom of this in the time available today. If a lot of what the Minister proposes in the regulations is sensible, it would be unfortunate if the whole SI had to be held up on this one point. If that is not to happen, we need to know from the Minister what he will do to listen and to act on the concerns that have been expressed to him by hon. Members here today and by Unite. One way he could do that would be by building in a robust review mechanism for the SI, but as far as I can tell he is suggesting precisely the opposite.

Paragraph 12 of the explanatory memorandum, entitled “Monitoring & review”, states:

“A review provision should be included in all secondary legislation that regulates business other than in exceptional circumstances where the potential benefits of doing so are clearly outweighed by the potential adverse effects…The reasons for not including a review provision in this instrument are, firstly, that most of the substantive changes that are being made by the instrument are amendments to primary legislation which is outside the scope of the review provision policy. Secondly, almost all of the changes to secondary legislation are simply the updating of references to EU Regulation 165/2014 and as such the introduction of a requirement to review the amended instruments would be disproportionate in the circumstances…Andrew Jones MP has made the following statement regarding the inclusion within the instrument of a periodic review provision:

‘It is not appropriate in the circumstances to make provision for review in this legislation.’”

That is simply not good enough. Either the Minister can fully answer the concerns that have been raised about the extension of the limit from 50 km to 100 km in a way that we can all understand and that is watertight, or, if he cannot do that today, he can acknowledge those concerns and undertake to build in a robust review mechanism and a timetable for that review, through which any concerns can be explored and addressed. What is simply not acceptable is for him to do neither of those things. I therefore invite the Minister to revise what he said in his explanatory memorandum, to commit today to a review of these changes and to tell us what that review will consist of, when it will happen and how he will conduct it.

The reason for that is related to precisely the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Brentford and Isleworth made about improving road safety through more effective enforcement of tachograph legislation. It is important that professional hauliers and drivers have adequate places to stop for rest breaks, as required by law. As I have said, there are not many occupations where someone’s place of work makes it unclear when they will get their next meal, where they will next sleep or even when they will be able to use the toilet.

The logistics industry has highlighted a package of measures to make the industry a more attractive place to work. Much of it relies on Government support for the appropriate infrastructure. For example, does the Minister recognise that Highways England must ensure the provision on its network of adequate secure lorry parking, with toilets and provisions?

As an aside, I would be grateful if the Minister updated the Committee on the M20 lorry-park consultation and when he hopes to publish a response. Will he also tell us what the Government are doing to deal with the manpower time bomb in the industry, with the failure to attract sufficient new recruits, when it is vital to our economy?

I gather the regulations are the foundation for the development of what Ministers refer to as “smart” technologies that will automatically record driver location. Will the Minister provide a timeframe for when those might be introduced? Until then, even with these regulations to improve the assessment of tachographs by enforcement bodies, concerns remain about falsification as well as ability of the DVSA to monitor and enforce drivers’ hours effectively.

Although there is little evidence of falsification in the tachograph calibration market in the UK, the Road Haulage Association has recognised that the falsification of tachograph records is one of the most significant offences within the industry, with enforcement agencies unable to track rest stops, and any threat of sanction sadly often woefully weak.

I would be grateful if the Minister revealed whether the trend, highlighted by the RHA and others in the previous Parliament, of a dramatic fall in recent years in the number of roadside checks and issuing of fixed-penalty notices has continued. Will the Minister write to me outlining the figures and the amount generated from fixed-penalty notices issued to drivers of heavy goods vehicles and firms, indicating the proportion relating to tachograph offences?

I would welcome some answers today to the issues I have raised, in particular those that draw on the response that the Minister has already received from Unite. As he is unlikely to bring the Committee to a place where we can reach firm conclusions today, will he do the only possible thing, if the SI is to receive cross-party support, and commit himself to review the operation of the regulations with a clear timetable, so that the issues can be properly addressed? I look forward to his response.