Heavy Commercial Vehicles in Kent (No. 2) (Amendment) (No. 2) Order 2021 Debate
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Sam Tarry
Main Page: Sam Tarry (Labour - Ilford South)Department Debates - View all Sam Tarry's debates with the Department for Transport
Heavy Commercial Vehicles in Kent (No. 2) (Amendment) (No. 2) Order 2021
Sam Tarry Excerpts(2 years, 11 months ago)
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Sam Tarry (Ilford South) (Lab)
It is an honour to serve under you for the first time, Ms Fovargue. I thank the Minister for his frankness and honesty on this technical error. It would be remiss of me not to touch briefly on the impact that the profound shortage of drivers is having on the haulage sector, and all the organisations and companies that rely on it. It has been exacerbated by long-standing Government inaction and incompetence on this issue. The knock-on effect of the crisis will be more chaos in our supply chains, inevitably leading to more disruption ahead of Christmas, which is such a crucial period for our whole economy.
The SI is obviously just a technical tweak to ensure that we have the right legislation. It demonstrates an inability to establish reliable contingency measures that would helpfully avoid some of the chaos that we have seen for hauliers and local residents in that part of Kent. Although commercial flows in and out of the country should face minimal disruption, we cannot keep relying on short-term emergency measures. I will not reiterate all the points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) on the previous Committee, but it is clear that there needs to be a longer-term solution to this crisis, not just a reliance on emergency provisions. She said that there should be an effort to ensure
“efficient operations at borders, close co-operation with the European Union and working with industry and local communities to identify ways to minimise the disruption.”—[Official Report, Fourth Delegated Legislation Committee, 20 October 2021; c. 6.]
That is something that I think everyone in this House could agree on.
The provisions are deeply unpopular in Kent. They can be quite short term, and are costing taxpayers an awful lot of money. We will not oppose today’s measure, because it is just a technical tweak, but I am glad to have put those points about Government action on the record.