HGV Driving Licences

Sam Tarry Excerpts

Monday 8th November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Sam Tarry (Ilford South) (Lab)]

The ongoing driver shortage is having a profound impact on businesses and consumers, yet the Government have fallen well short in their effort to boost driver recruitment. The shortages that are crippling our economy and supply chains could lead to disruption and misery for millions in the upcoming Christmas period.

We have a mounting driving test backlog, and it is clear that only the Opposition and our proposals will take the necessary steps to address the issue and invest in upskilling UK workers. It is vital to take the urgent action that is required to boost driver recruitment and get our country moving again to support businesses after a challenging two years. That means putting in place mechanisms to encourage more people to take up jobs in the industry and to make it a more attractive place to work through improvements in conditions and facilities.

The driver shortage demands urgent action, which is glaringly lacking from the Government. Instead of expanding testing capacity through examiner recruitment, increasing facilities and resolving outstanding industrial action, they are taking the short-sighted and short-term measure of diluting testing requirements and endangering all road users in the process.

No one on this side of the House will deny that the shortage of heavy goods vehicle drivers is an international problem, but it has been particularly acute in the UK due to the Government’s incompetence. To put it into context, we are facing a shortage of 90,000 drivers, which is double the number required in Germany and France and six times the figure facing Italy and Spain. The Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency is currently conducting only 3,000 vocational driving tests a week, which means it would take months to fill the huge shortage of HGV drivers.

Instead of expanding testing capacity, the Government’s answer to the crisis is to increase the legal working hours of HGV drivers, endangering their lives and those of other road users due to an inability to operate safely if they are exhausted. They are already working too many hours on too little pay. The Government should urgently set out plans to improve conditions and facilities in the HGV industry to make it more attractive to a new and more diverse generation of drivers, as well as working with the industry and workers to retain existing staff by resetting pay, terms and conditions.

It is staggering that the Government are not doing all they can to address the crisis, given its significance for our economy’s success. If it was not enough to make UK roads more hazardous, the Government have announced regulatory changes to driving tests that will apparently speed up recruitment. That is all well and good, but when it involves removing off-road manoeuvres and rigid lorry practical tests from the testing obligations for new drivers, it has the potential to threaten road safety for drivers and users.

The way to turn the crisis around is not to dilute testing requirements and downskill HGV drivers, especially as there will be more vehicles on our roads that have not reached the standards that they are currently expected to meet. Will the Minister therefore tell the House what the safety implications will be of the decision to dilute testing requirements? Can she assure all those who use our roads that measures are being taken to recruit more instructors and expand the capacity of existing testing facilities—positive measures that would help to boost driver numbers and would be welcomed on both sides of the House?

It is a further concern that the measures will be made permanent, rather than being a temporary fix until the driver shortage and supply chain crisis have been resolved. The statutory instruments provide for three-yearly reviews before moving to five-year checks, but they do not mandate the collection of any specific safety data to inform those reviews, which make them unlikely to be as carefully considered as they should be. I repeat that they do not require the collection of any specific safety data for the reviews, which is clearly not acceptable. The Opposition are clear that, unless it can be proved that the changes have not affected road safety, we want them to be temporary and reconsidered as soon as the driving test backlog and driver shortages have improved.

The Government also need to address the cost of funding the training and tests of prospective HGV drivers. The ones I have spoken to say that the costs are too high and often unaffordable. We need to have a conversation with the Department for Education about how HGV training could benefit from some of the measures that help other students to access courses.

All of this is happening at a time when the supply chain crisis risks spiralling out of control, so I urge the Government to provide greater clarity on the steps they are taking to address this crisis in food supply chains specifically. In particular, I would like to know whether measures will be reintroduced to suspend competition laws for supermarkets.

If the Secretary of State needs ideas for how his Government can bolster the number of HGV drivers and reverse the current downward trend, he could do far worse than listen to the Opposition. To us it is abundantly clear that, in the same way as for the covid crisis, a dedicated Minister must be appointed for this latest crisis. That Minister should hold an emergency summit bringing together all those who can help overcome this current impasse, including the road haulage industry, training providers, affected business groups and transport unions.

Industry associations such as the Road Haulage Association have understandably been critical of the Government’s proposals because, like many, they have not been properly consulted. The Government must also sit down with the Migration Advisory Committee to assess the extent of the skills shortage in this sector and identify how this can be recognised in the immigration points system. The fact that neither of these have so far happened weeks into this crisis is nothing short of a dereliction of duty and shows how detached from reality this Government are from the needs of our country.

When urgent action was required, time and again this Government have either dragged their feet or run out of ideas altogether. As long ago as July, the shadow Transport Secretary, the shadow Transport Minister—my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy)—the shadow Home Secretary, the shadow Work and Pensions Secretary and the shadow Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Secretary all wrote to their counterparts to warn that the measures the Government had taken were not enough to address the scale of the crisis. Despite this, the Government continued with their short-termist approach and the crisis has scaled new heights, further compromising the safety of already exhausted drivers, increasing their working hours and putting road users in danger by diluting testing requirements for new drivers. Because of Government inaction, this crisis is now almost certain to continue well beyond the end of this year, ruining Christmas for so many.

As I have already made clear, the Government must do all they can to reverse the HGV driver shortage and the related supply chain crisis, but they cannot do so by diluting tests and downskilling drivers, increasing their hours operating dangerous machinery and vehicles, and endangering all of those who rely on UK roads in the process. Instead, we must see positive changes such as investing in more examiners, expanding and improving facilities, and making any changes temporary. As my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol East made clear in the summer:

“These measures just kick the can down the road for another year. This crisis is affecting businesses and consumers now, and the Government needs to understand that.”

But we are determined to ensure that this crisis does not continue for any longer than is absolutely necessary.