New Clause 5
Road Safety Bill [Lords]
6:30 pm
Owen Paterson (Shadow Minister, Transport; North Shropshire, Conservative)
The new clause was given a thorough airing in another place, where there were real fears that it was a Trojan horse for identity cards. My main concern is that this will be a huge task. We have already discussed the burden that the DVLA has because of the way that it is constituted, and we established that it is not 100 per cent. accurate. We also established the difficulty in other countries of getting an accurate database.
I am not sure what the gain will be, although it is clear that the establishment of a valid, water-tight database is important. My worry is that we will go to huge efforts regurgitating data from that vast majority of law-abiding people whose records are not out of order. There will be a titanic administrative task, but in the meantime my party’s fears about what we call the hard core—that small group of people who have come up again and again in our debates, who are outside the law, who drive uninsured and without MOTs or licences—will not be addressed. Those are the people whom we should be after.
My worry about the proposal is that it will involve an enormous administrative effort by the DVLA to change everyone’s paper licence when well over 98 or 99 per cent. of people are thoroughly law abiding. Their records are in order and they will not cause a problem. I wonder how many staff will be involved in the exercise. Will the DVLA engage a whole new section? Will it have a new budget? How long will the process take?
We detect the hidden hand of the European Union, which has taken competence in this area. It proposes that licences should be renewed every 10 years for drivers up to the age of 65 of mopeds, motor cycles, cars and light vans, and every five years for drivers of medium and large goods vehicles, mini-buses, buses and coaches. It has been said that the proposed new measure will have the potential for administrative and customer service advantages, and that it would facilitate greater accuracy of the record and of the data on the licence. That may be right, once the DVLA gets to dry land, but it will be an enormous exercise getting there.
I would like the Minister to comment, first, on the mechanics—how this will be done, how many people will be involved, how long it will take—and, secondly, on the Commission’s proposal that licences should be changed every 10 years for those up to 65. In fact, the recommendation is that they should be changed every five years for drivers over 65 of mopeds, motorcycles, cars and light vans, and every year for drivers over 65 of medium and large goods vehicles, mini-buses, buses and coaches. That will lead to an enormous churning of data about people who act within the law. They are not the bad lads whom we should be trying to catch. I would be grateful if the Minister would comment on that before we pass judgment on the new clause.