Driving Instruction (Suspension and Exemption Powers) Bill
9:30 am
Robert Goodwill (Shadow Minister, Transport; Scarborough and Whitby, Conservative)
It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship today, Mr. Wilshire. I also congratulate the Minister on his survival following the reshuffle.
Credit is due to the hon. Member for Dunfermline and West Fife, for his tenacity in promoting the Bill. It is an example of how parliamentary democracy should work when a case brought to the attention of a constituency Member by a constituent results in a private Member’s Bill getting to this stage of the process. I am pleased that Her Majesty’s official Opposition support the Bill, and I hope that it quickly gets on to the statute book.
We should be clear from the start that the legislation will apply to only a small number of approved driving instructors. The vast majority of the 40,000 driving instructors who teach our young people and others to drive are fit and proper people to carry out that role. The legislation might be needed in a very small number of cases.
We have a responsibility to protect learner drivers, especially as many of them are young. The fact that we use the word “approved” driving instructor, means that we can expect the person in question to meet certain standards. As the Minister has said, we have an obligation to driving instructors to consider their appeals as quickly as possible. If those appeals are successful, compensation will be paid.
The hon. Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk raised the issue of vexatious or malicious claims, but I think that we have got the balance right. In other cases, such as those of teachers or people who drive school buses, if a malicious allegation is made, the person often finds that they are suspended for a considerable period. There was a case in my constituency of a school bus driver who, it was alleged, had paedophile information on his computer. It turned out that that was a malicious allegation and that there was nothing on the computer. However, because of the backlog in police computer forensics, it was more than six months before that person could commence work again.
In the present case we have got the balance right, and I say that for two reasons. First, we are generally dealing with young adults. The youngest person involved would be 16—a moped rider, perhaps—but the majority will not be as vulnerable as school children or those adults who suffer from mental health conditions that might make them vulnerable. Secondly, if we were to embark on an arrangement in which a person would be suspended when an allegation or an arrest was made, we might be looking at paying compensation for far more than 45 days, which is the duration of the average case.
I have pondered on the matter at length, and I think that we have got the balance right. The justice that we need to deliver for accused driving instructors and the protection that we must give to young people have both been covered. I am pleased that we can support the amendments, and I hope that the Bill reaches the statute book as quickly as possible.