| Draft Road Vehicles (Registration and Licensing) (Amendment)(No.3) Regulations 2003
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The Chairman: I remind hon. Members that the scope of the measure is very narrow and ask them to confine their remarks to the information given by the Minister, or to the proposals. I call Mr. Alan Reid. Mr. Christopher Chope (Christchurch) rose—
The Chairman: Order. Mr. Chope: I thought that the convention was that the Opposition spokesman spoke after the Minister. The Chairman: Your reluctance to get up threw me.
2.41 pmMr. Chope: I am sorry. I had to run to get here because there was a hold-up, which you may wish to report, Mr. Hancock, as I thought the obligation was to keep the entrances to this place open. There is an enormous amount of traffic congestion in the vicinity because of a demonstration in Trafalgar square. I got here before 2.30 pm and I hope that I shall do justice to this important subject. As a debate on the Mersey Tunnels Bill is starting on the Floor of the House within an hour, I am not sure that we will be able to extend the debate for as long as the Minister would wish. I thank the Minister for his full introduction to the debate and for having corrected the original regulatory impact assessment when he realised that it contained mistakes. Paragraph 11 of that document states:
per month at the outset. That is an extremely high number of people receiving fixed penalty notices and it seems inconsistent with the report produced by the Department on 12 June setting out the Government's proposed arrangements for the cost recovery system for continuous registration. Page 15 of that document states:
That is half the figure that the Minister is talking about and I hope he can clarify the matter. I hope, too, that he can confirm what is contained in the small print of Column Number: 007 the document to which I referred—that the regime will not apply to vehicles that have not been registered since January 1997. The Minister gave some figures for the number of unlicensed vehicles, but it is thought that a large proportion of vehicles registered before 1997 but not registered since then have been scrapped, or are lying under hedges or in ditches around the countryside. It would be useful to clarify the application of the new regime, not least for owners of classic cars.I share the Minister's outrage that so many people avoid paying, unlike law-abiding motorists who pay into the system conscientiously. It is annoying to see vehicles without an up-to-date tax disc on the road in one's neighbourhood, knowing that the owners are avoiding their tax liabilities. Will the Minister explain in nitty-gritty terms how the new regime will operate in respect of people whose cars fail the MOT, which they are in the process of putting right? They still have to park their vehicles on the road and they cannot relicense the car because they need an MOT certificate in order to do so. What will happen in such cases? What does the Minister estimate to be the total cost and burden of the new regime on the court system? The document to which I referred earlier indicates that, of the 60,000 per month that will be reported, about 40 per cent. will be expected to pay their fine immediately. However, through various other convoluted processes, another 47 per cent. would receive a court judgment. An enormous number of court judgment fines remain unpaid. What proportion of court judgments does the Minister expect to result in the payment of fines imposed, and what will be the cost of the process? The Government say that they are keen to cut through red tape and have allowed 57,000 asylum seekers to stay in the United Kingdom because it is not worth a candle to take enforcement action against them through the courts, but the regulatory impact assessment states that 120,000 people per month will be in receipt of enforcement action, and half will receive a judgment against them in the courts. I am bound to ask the rhetorical question: why is adding to the burden on the courts in such cases thought acceptable, but it is not in respect of the example that I gave earlier? The Government do not appear to have their priorities right. I should be grateful if the Minister expanded on what is happening in relation to the production of insurance documents when people apply for registration or re-registration of their vehicles. He mentioned some figures but I understand that there is a well-practised scam, in which people who need to relicense their vehicles contact an insurance company. The company sends them a temporary cover note, which they present to relicense their vehicle, and then they cancel the insurance and never pay for it. Will the Minister allay my concerns about that extensive scam? There is not much point in having a requirement to produce an insurance document if it Column Number: 008 does not prove that a person has paid for insurance and is covered by it.The Minister estimated that the loss of vehicle excise duty revenue was about £193 million a year. It is interesting to note how much the figure has increased since the document was published in June, when the amount was estimated at about £150 million. It also estimated that there were between 1 million and 1.25 million uninsured vehicles on the road. They represent an enormous additional cost for ordinary motorists, who probably have to pay an extra £30 on their vehicle insurance because of the burden on the Motor Insurers' Bureau of paying out for claims on vehicles that are uninsured. However, an enormous number of losses are borne by people personally because they are not insured, or there is an accident not involving injury. The Chairman: Order. I have to interrupt you, Mr. Chope, because you are going far beyond the scope of the legislation. I ask you to draw your remarks back to the issues under consideration. Mr. Chope: I am happy to do that. The Minister mentioned the issue of insurance. The document to which I referred was placed by the Minister in the Library. It sets out the Government's arrangements for the cost recovery system for continuous registration, which is what we are discussing. As hon. Members know, I believe in being succinct whenever possible and in not delaying matters unnecessarily. I am sorry that, because of the timing of the Committee, I shall not be able to listen to the peroration of the address of my party leader in Room 14, although I am sure that I shall be able to get a report of what he said. Some important issues have been raised in the document. I have tried to ask some constructive questions, to which I hope the Minister will respond. I shall raise one further point. Can the Minister tell me what will happen if the registered keeper's vehicle is stolen and the person who steals the vehicle does not re-register it in his own name? What are the obligations, and what will be the burden of proof on the person who says that his vehicle has been stolen?
2.51 pmMr. Alan Reid (Argyll and Bute): I would like to raise a couple of concerns. When a seller sells their vehicle and notifies the DVLA of the identity of the person who has bought it, the system will work only if the buyer's identity is correct. Can the Minister tell me what onus is on the seller to establish the true identity of the buyer? The buyer could tell lies, or show false documents to the seller. Will the seller be committing an offence if he notifies the DVLA that, for example, John Smith has bought his vehicle when, in fact, it is someone completely different? In the Minister's written statement of 22 May, he advised that motorists who sell their cars should keep a record of the identity of the person to whom they sell them. He suggested, for example, obtaining the number of the buyer's driving licence. I want to Column Number: 009 establish the extent of the legal obligation placed on the seller.In the regulatory impact assessment, it is stated that the
and that
However, later in the document, in paragraph 16, it is stated that the proposals
vehicles
If more people are tempted to remain outside the system, there is a risk that that will cost the Government more, rather than the system bringing in more money. In the regulatory impact assessment, the Government also state that they intend
Presumably, that means using traffic police. However, I note that traffic police numbers in England—the Government are responsible for roadside enforcement only in England—have declined by 8 per cent. since 1999. If the numbers of road traffic police are decreasing, how do the Government intend to increase roadside enforcement? With less traffic policing, there is a greater incentive to evade. Can the Minister tell the Committee why he is so confident that money collected from extra penalties will be able to pay the £65 million?
2.54 pmMr. Jamieson: I am sorry that the hon. Member for Christchurch (Mr. Chope) was delayed in getting here. Perhaps on his journey he encountered the queue for the Room next door. I apologise for the small errors in the regulatory impact assessment. Somebody seems not to know the difference between a verb and a noun—that has been corrected—and the word ''month'' was omitted. As you know, Mr. Hancock, I was a schoolmaster a long time ago. When the document came in front of me, it did not get past old hawk-eye that somebody had mistaken ''license'' with an ''s'' and ''licence'' with a ''c''. I agree that that is acceptable in the English language, but it is certainly not acceptable in anything that I am taking through the House. The hon. Member for Christchurch raised a number of points, although he did not welcome the measure on cracking down on crime, which was rather unfortunate.
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| ©Parliamentary copyright 2003 | Prepared 29 October 2003 |
