Haulage Permits and Trailer Registration Bill [Lords] — House of Commons, 2018-05-14
Topic: Mixed Topics
Alan Brown (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): I completely agree. I am sure that the haulage company that my hon. Friend referred to—it is clearly a massive haulage company—will have concerns about how the licence will come about, how vacancies will be filled in future and, as we heard earlier, the rising age profile of drivers. Something else that the UK Government have refused to do is help to pay for drivers to be trained so that they can get into the industry. Individuals cannot afford the £3,000 that it costs to train for an HGV licence Just to surprise the right hon. Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson), on a slightly positive note, I welcome the fact that clause 9 comes from the Government accepting a Lords amendment about future reporting on the impact on the UK haulage industry of the restrictions that apply to a permit scheme. What I find curious about that is that when I try to get amendments through in Committee that require the Government to report on future implementation, they always vote them down, so I hope that this will be a precedent for other future legislation. I welcome these provisions on future reporting Clause 12 covers Northern Ireland. Despite assurances from the Minister in the Lords that this legislation will not result in a hard border in Ireland—we have heard that from the Secretary of State—we need to know how the powers will be enforced and how it will not lead to a hardening of the border. I notice that the Secretary of State could not state clearly how the Irish Government see this operating. The Bill also specifically requires the consent of the Northern Ireland Assembly, which, as I am sure he is aware, has not been operating for 16 months, so will the Minister or the Secretary of State explain how consent will be sought in the absence of a devolved Government Overall, the Government may continue to assert that there will be no hard border, but they need to answer difficult questions about the broader picture regarding not only the Bill, but the customs arrangements and how they will do checks with this mythical "no infrastructure." The Secretary of State talks time and again about how there are no checks on the US-Canada border, but I remind him that there are. Lorries have to stop there, so that model cannot be followed or else it will mean a hard border in Northern Ireland Part 2 of the Bill covers trailer registration as a consequence of ratifying the 1968 Vienna convention. Again, this is a series of enabling clauses with the detail to follow, so we do not know how this will be implemented or what the costs will be. The UK Government have stated again that private-use trailers such as caravans and horse trailers will not fall within the scope, yet those exclusions have not been put in the Bill, so how can we guarantee that that is the case? The Secretary of State might be aware that the National Caravan Council has raised concerns about the lack of clarity on exemptions for non-commercial trailers. It currently operates its own voluntary registration scheme, which is cost-effective and very successful, so any new scheme should not duplicate what it is doing. If needs be, a new scheme should build on what it is doing. We have also heard that this is only a registration scheme, yet clause 14(4) suggests that the regulations may make "provision for a periodic mandatory safety standards testing scheme" What are the Government’s intentions regarding road safety measures for trailers? Is there a planned timescale for implementing them In conclusion—everybody will be pleased to know that I have come to the conclusion—we do not know if part 1 of the Bill is required, and if it is, we do not know what the secondary legislation will look like. We do not know what the fees will be. We do not know what the application process will be. We do not know whether there will be limits on the number of permits available. We do not know what additional checks will be required and how the situation will be managed regarding the Irish border. To borrow from Donald Rumsfeld, it seems to me that there are still a lot of known unknowns as regards the Bill. I also suspect that there are further unknown unknowns to follow. Having said that, the Government must be delighted with the progress they have made on taking back control, so I absolutely welcome the Bill.