Schedule 3 - Endorsement: all drivers
Road Safety Bill
10:15 am
Mr David Jamieson (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Department for Transport; Plymouth, Devonport, Labour)
The hon. Member for Christchurch raised an important issue. The new licence will be a card, and no record will be shown on it. In that respect, it will be similar to a debit or credit card, which shows nothing that one can check. However, one can put a credit or debit card into a machine and enter a PIN code, and it will provide a reading of part or all of one's account. Thanks to the wonders of modern technology, one can now do all one's banking by accessing a computer, including finding out detailed information about the bank account, and even paying bills and transferring money from one account to another. I usually find myself transferring money from my account to my son's account, which is one of the hazards of being a parent.
The systems have not been set up yet, but such things should be equally possible with the new licence. We anticipate that there will be secure systems, similar to the current banking systems, where the user has to put in a series of commands to the computer that only he or she knows about, unless they are foolish enough to share them with others; I certainly do not share those commands with my son. There would be careful encryption of the information, so that only the person entitled to it could access it.
That would be one method of accessing the information—the individual interrogating the computer using the appropriate information such as PIN numbers, as for a bank account—but there would still be the facility, if someone had forgotten or lost their record, to write to the Department or to make a telephone call. However, with the telephone call, there would have to be a procedure with a series of checks prior to the information being given out, as for a telephone call to one's bank. It would therefore be perfectly possible for someone to make those checks with the new system.
One downside of the current system is that people lose or misplace their counterparts. I dare say that if I were asked now where my counterpart was, I could find it at home, but I do not instantly know where. I know where my licence is, but I do not instantly know where the counterpart is, and that applies to many people. Proper checks and security will be in place, and people will be able to check, through old as well as new technology, the information on their licence.