Clause 29 - Compulsory surrender of old-form licences
Road Safety Bill
2:38 pm
Viscount John Thurso (Shadow Secretary of State for Scotland (And Transport), Scotland; Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross, Liberal Democrat)
I was seeking to persuade the Committee that, in respect of fees, it would be appropriate to leave the Bill where it is. The amendments would do that by removing subsection (4)(a), the fee-paying part of the clause, and clause 30(1). I had begun to refer to the comment made by the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, the hon. Member for Staffordshire, Moorlands (Charlotte Atkins), that the Government were seeking to impose the principle of the user pays. I have no particular argument with that concept, but I ask her to expand on it.
A wide variety of options was suggested in the consultation paper published earlier this year on proposed fees. One included the possibility of very low fees or, if I remember correctly, no fees for young people acquiring a provisional licence, the idea being that they should be encouraged to do so and that a low fee would encourage them. That may or may not be the case, but the consultation subscribed not to a principle that the user pays specifically for the service that they have used, but to the principle that the generality of service users across the piece should provide revenue to cover the costs, which seems somewhat different.
For example, if a company provides a service or product for which there is a healthy market and keen competition therefore exists to keep the end-user price down, it will be under considerable pressure to be as efficient as possible in controlling the cost of providing the product or service. In this case, however, there is a monopoly. There is only one provider of the licence, and it sets the fee. Whether the fee is set in the context of the keenest possible costs and the minimum recovered or in the context of low efficiency, which may mean that it is higher than necessary, is entirely decided by the people who are in charge of controlling the costs. I would say in parenthesis that my comments are in no way intended to be disparaging of those who work in that service; I merely give a hypothetical situation. If there were laxity and the costs went up, the fees could go up. There would be no control.
The concept that has been followed in the past is that all Government revenue goes to the Consolidated Fund and all expenses come out of it. In such circumstances, if one considers the consolidated payments that drivers make, one could argue that they have already paid enough and that they are entitled to receive free of charge what they have always received free of charge.
I would be interested in hearing from the Minister what the Government's thinking is on that. At what point will they cease to charge for all the different things that come in? As I said this morning, we may be entering a situation, particularly in respect of clause 30, in which all sorts of new technologies come in quickly, as technology does, resulting in a series of new licences. Whereas with my old paper licence I could confidently expect to make it to my 70th birthday without any charge, I could now be faced with a charge every five or 10 years.
I shall listen closely to what the Minister says, and I am open to persuasion. In a previous debate, I was persuaded by her to support an amendment that I had not intended to support. I leave it entirely in her hands to give me some reassurance, and I will listen to her comments and make my judgment about what to do at the end of them.