International Road Passenger Transport (Amendment) (Northern Ireland) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019 — House of Lords, 2019-05-20
Topic: Transportation
Charlotte Vere (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I will start with some background to these regulations. EU legislation governs access to the international passenger transport market. The EU regulation establishes the conditions for the international carriage of passengers by coach and bus within the EU, and cabotage within member states by non-resident EU operators. It covers regular timetabled services and occasional services such as holidays and tours. It establishes for this purpose a system of community licences, which act as the international bus and coach licences used within the EU, and for these licences to be issued by the competent authorities of member states To ensure the continuation of bus and coach services in the event of no deal, the Government have already made the regulations on common rules for access to the international market for coach and bus services. These were approved by this House on 25 March. That SI amends the retained UK version of the EU regulation on a UK-wide basis. It allows EU-based operators to continue to access the UK market through the continued recognition of community licences and control documents issued by EU member states Turning to the content of this SI, Section 2 of the withdrawal Act will retain EU- derived domestic legislation which gives effect to the EU regulation in Northern Ireland. This SI, which applies to Northern Ireland only, adjusts the language and references in those pieces of retained legislation. The draft regulations make minor and technical changes to reflect the fact that the UK will cease to be an EU member state. For example, they remove references to "community licence" and "community rules" from relevant Northern Irish domestic legislation. The regulations also ensure that domestic enforcement provisions may continue to be applied to EU operators so that the Driver and Vehicle Agency, the relevant enforcement body in Northern Ireland, can continue to take action I turn to our approach to maintaining UK access to the EU. In the event of no deal, UK operators will be able to continue to access the EU market through the Interbus agreement in respect of occasional services. That agreement is an EU multilateral agreement which allows bus and coach operators to carry out occasional services between the participating countries: currently, the EU and seven other contracting parties in eastern Europe. The UK has completed the accession process and will become a member of the Interbus agreement in its own right in the event of no deal The agreement will be extended to regular services in due course but, until the end of 2019, access for existing regular services would be through the EU contingency measure on basic road freight and road passenger transport connectivity. This contingency measure, which was approved in March, will enable UK operators to continue operating existing regular timetabled services to EU member states until 31 December 2019. Since it was agreed, an extension to the exit date has been granted until 31 October, so we will work with the EU to determine the impact of this on the timing of the measure. This is particularly important to the ability to carry out bus and coach cabotage in the border counties of the Republic of Ireland, which is currently allowed only until the end of September The EU contingency measure is dependent on the UK reciprocating. If it does not, the EU could suspend rights for UK operators to continue running regular services under the EU regulation, ensuring basic road connectivity in the event of no deal. In this case, no UK regular services would be able to operate in the EU.