My Lords, the House of Lords Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee had, if not harsh words, some words of doubt about the Government’s proposals. Partly for those reasons, I support some of the sentiments expressed by those who seek to oppose these regulations. Among the concerns that the committee raised was the lack of parliamentary scrutiny before these exceptions came into force—a familiar source of complaint. I do not particularly blame the noble Baroness for this, as it seems all too typical of the present Government that the only chance the House has to debate these regulations is when they have come into force and there is not much we can do about them. There seems to be a continuing pattern here, which Ministers should look at.
The committee went on to ask about the guidance to use the exceptions only “where necessary”—a vague phrase. On its behalf, we seek a definition from the Minister on when a “where necessary” situation will arise. It went on to talk about whether the system would be abused for commercial advantage. Most heavy goods vehicle operators in the United Kingdom are perfectly reputable people, but there is a fringe element within the road haulage industry where pressure on drivers to exceed permitted hours happens from time to time and it is difficult for drivers, particularly for smaller operators, to resist.
My noble friend Lord Berkeley mentioned consultation, particularly with the primary trade union involved in heavy goods vehicle operation in this country, Unite. A piece of Civil Service wording came back about that consultation. I forget the exact words, but it was that the union was not kindly disposed to the proposals on excessive hours. That was one way of putting it. In December, Unite issued a press release about the increase in drivers’ hours, under the heading
“Unite condemns ‘dangerous and useless’ relaxation of HGV driving rules in response to Dover delays”.
That is a bit stronger than we were led to believe from the committee’s wording and a lot stronger than the Government might like. I wonder whether that informal
consultation with the trade union was genuine or consisted of a telephone call from the Minister’s department saying, “This is exactly what we are going to do”.
What we are talking about is a solution in search of a problem. It is not a lack of drivers or drivers’ hours causing delay but a lack of customs officers in the Port of Dover in particular. The noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, referred to the number of empty vehicles coming back from the continent. It is no secret that the Road Haulage Association is annoyed by what it sees as a failure of the Government to recruit the necessary number of customs agents to ensure that these delays do not continue. It is not as though this problem has arisen unexpectedly; it is over four years since the country voted to leave the EU, yet we seem no nearer to recruiting sufficient customs agents to help prevent these delays.
I draw the noble Baroness’s attention to last Sunday’s Observer. Under a heading about how delays at ports would go on for months, Mr Richard Ballantyne, the head of the British Ports Association, said that most ports had seen a recovery in shipments over recent weeks, although the delay to import checks had
“put off a problem rather than resolved it”.
The Road Haulage Association says pretty much the same. The noble Lord, Lord Frost, who has been appointed by the Government to resolve these problems, says that they are temporary and that, since January, things have picked up. I go back to the point mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh: there are still a heck of a lot of heavy lorries passing between this country and the European Union. The trouble is that too many of them are empty, for the reasons that I have just outlined. Increasing drivers’ hours and the consequential impact on road safety are not going to help that. I hope that the Minister can reassure us this afternoon and tell us how many extra customs agents—a question I put to her some weeks ago, but no answer came—have been recruited and whether she is tackling the real problem, rather than the Government sending up a smokescreen, as these proposals appear to be.
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