New Clause 6 — Immediate suspension and revocation of drivers' licences

Part of Orders of the Day – in the House of Commons at 5:15 pm on 9 October 2006.

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Photo of Stephen Ladyman Stephen Ladyman Minister of State, Department for Transport 5:15, 9 October 2006

Clearly there are opportunities within the process that someone must go through to have the right to drive a vehicle under the contract exemption that might allow someone who had not been appropriately checked to drive. We had this debate on Second Reading, when the hon. Member for Orpington said that the need for checks would put his constituent, who had a PHV company that was taking advantage of the contract exemption, at a competitive disadvantage, because he would now have to pay for his drivers to be checked. Clearly there is a loophole. I agreed in Committee to look at the matter and to decide whether, in the interests of consistency, we should close the loophole not only in London, as Transport for London had requested, but in the rest of the country. We took the view that we should close it in the rest of the country.

The hon. Gentleman asked me to cite three examples, but I cannot do so. I hope that nobody will ever be in a position to do so, because we have closed the loophole. Serious questions would certainly be asked if we did not do so. Will the change be a major regulatory burden on the industry? No, it will not. I hope that anybody who has used the contract exemption in the past has checked their drivers and gone through the whole process. The fact that they will now have to do so by law is neither here nor there. It should be no additional burden if they have followed best practice in the past. If they have not been doing so, there will be an additional burden, but I argue that it is an appropriate burden for them to carry.