Schedule 3 - Endorsement: all drivers
Road Safety Bill
10:15 am
Mr Christopher Chope (Shadow Minister, Environment and Transport; Christchurch, Conservative)
The Minister says that schedule 3 will not come into operation for some years; I think that he said five or more. However, when it comes into operation, how will the individual driver know what is on his licence? As the Minister said, the licence will effectively be a smartcard containing encrypted information. Unless one has means of de-encrypting such information at home, how will one know, for example, that when a licence is subject to penalty points and sent off to the DVLA, the information is put on the licence accurately?
That is sometimes relevant in the context of totting-up. One cannot be subject to disqualification for 12 points on a licence unless the subsequent offences took place after previous penalties. So it is possible, in certain circumstances, to have 12 points or more on one's licence without being subject to disqualification because of the order in which offences were committed, compared with the order in which the convictions came.
At present, one can look at one's licence and see the information and, if there is a court appearance, one's adviser can look at the licence outside court. However, what will happen in future in relation to the information on the licences? How will people know that information? I hope that the Minister will be able to clarify that.
Later in our scrutiny of the Bill, we will consider whether old driving licences should have to be surrendered. It is implicit in what the Minister has already said that people with old-style driving licences will not have to submit them and exchange them for the brand-new driving licence without a counterpart until that system comes into operation, and that, in the interim, they will not have to change them for the newer licence with the counterpart. I understand that any requirement that there should be a mass return of old licences to the Department will not take effect until schedule 3 is operative.