Transport Act 1985 (Amendment) Regulations 2019 — House of Lords, 2019-05-20
Topic: Transportation
Charlotte Vere (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, for tabling her regret Motion today. It has given the House the opportunity to scrutinise these regulations in more detail, and also to raise some very important issues. Some issues raised, particularly by the noble Baroness, went into some detail and raised evidence I am not entirely sure my department has seen. I would be very grateful if she could share the evidence with us. Certainly, I will go through Hansard and make sure that if I am unable to cover issues today, I will write to her, and to all noble Lords who have taken part The Government always recognise the vital role of community transport in connecting people to their communities, employment, local services and each other. Most community transport operators provide a vital social care service to those who are elderly, isolated or disabled, and we know that particularly in rural areas, community transport services encourage growth and reduce isolation. However, in recent years, concerns have been raised about how the use of community transport permits fits with EU law on operator licensing. It became clear that the current interpretation of "not for profit" equating to "non-commercial" would be challenged, as noted by the noble Lord, Lord Rosser The noble Lord, Lord Rosser, also asked, "Why now?". While the UK remains a full member of the European Union, all the rights and obligations of EU membership remain in force, and for the duration of the withdrawal agreement, we are also bound to implement these rules. The EU has an outstanding case against the UK in respect of them. This SI implements the short distance exemption, which we could not implement after leaving the EU or during the period of the withdrawal agreement without primary legislation. If this SI had not had happened, we would not have had this exemption. In the broader context, this issue is coming before your Lordships now because there has been quite a significant amount of consultation around this issue—necessarily, because it is very important indeed. The Government have taken as many steps as they can to provide as much certainty as possible to community transport operators, given the current constraints As I have said, the Government recognise the importance of the sector. However, we also need to ensure that where community transport operators compete for contracts with small, family-run commercial operators, competition is fair. That includes considering how operator licensing rules affect both these groups. That is why it is important that we do this: we need a level playing field. At the same time, we must ensure that we exempt those that can be exempted. It is clear that the previous position of a blanket exemption for the sector from EU law is not legally sustainable In this context, the Government consulted in 2018 on how to revise the guidance. We wanted community transport operators to understand whether they were exempt from the EU regulation on operator licensing and could carry on using community transport permits or whether they needed to apply for commercial operators’ licences, so they have been aware of this issue for a while. We received almost 500 responses to the consultation and were in contact with 550 stakeholders at stakeholder events. These were people and organisations from across Great Britain. The responses to the consultation highlighted that we have to strike a delicate balance, and we have worked very hard to try to deliver that balance on the feedback that we received. But it must be pointed out that there was no consensus on this issue, which I suppose is where we are today My ministerial colleague Jesse Norman MP and officials from the department met members of the Bus and Coach Association during May 2018. Despite this, the association decided to launch a judicial review a few months later. The legal proceedings should eventually result in a definitive judicial interpretation of "exclusively non-commercial", which will resolve the long-running debate about what it means and provide a way forward on this issue.