9 Drivers' hours
| (25119)
15688/03
COM(03) 628
| Draft Directive on minimum conditions for implementation of Directive 2002/15/EC and Council Regulations (EEC) Nos 3820/85 and 3821/85 concerning social legislation relating to road transport activities
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| Legal base | Article 71 EC; co-decision; QMV
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| Document originated | 21 October 2003
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| Deposited in Parliament | 5 December 2003
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| Department | Transport |
| Basis of consideration | EM of 15 January 2004
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| Previous Committee Report | None
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| To be discussed in Council | Not known
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| Committee's assessment | Politically important
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| Committee's decision | Not cleared; further information awaited
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Background
9.1 Council Regulation (EEC) 3820/85 sets maximum limits on driving
time and minimum requirements for breaks and rest periods which
apply to most HGV drivers and about half the bus and coach drivers
operating in the UK. Enforcement is facilitated through Council
Regulation (EEC) 3821/85 which requires most drivers to use a
tachograph to record their daily activities. Directive 88/599/EEC
is concerned with standard checking procedures for the implementation
of Council Regulation (EEC) 3820/85. Most enforcement consists
of retrospective checks at company premises. Companies using
vehicles fitted with tachographs are required to keep their drivers'
record sheets for at least one year, allowing checks on charts
and giving a complete picture of drivers' working and resting
patterns. This legislation is concerned with hours driven and
was motivated primarily by road safety considerations. Directive
2002/15/EC, the Road Working Time Directive (RTD), is sector specific
legislation concerned with hours worked and originally was motivated
primarily by other social considerations.
The document
9.2 The draft Directive would repeal Directive 88/599/EEC and
replace it with one designed to raise the quantity and quality
of enforcement checks, to encourage greater co-operation between
enforcement authorities, and to harmonise certain sanctions.
It would triple the level of drivers' hours enforcement, currently
1% of days worked, to 3% and bring the RTD into the systematic
tachographs-based enforcement regime.
9.3 Other provisions in the draft Directive, most
of which bear on enforcement practice, include:
- improved, but more complex,
statistical returns of enforcement activity by Member States;
- more targeted enforcement;
- the Commission to be able, following advice from
the Tachograph Technical Committee (CATP), to increase the enforcement
level above 3%;
- the proportion of roadside checks to be increased
from 15% to 30% of total checks and of company premises checks
from 25% to 50%;
- provision for enforcement lay-bys to be made
in infrastructure plans;
- use of tachograph records to monitor the 60 hour
weekly limit and daily 10 hour limit for night workers, under
the RTD, at the roadside;
- regular checks on other RTD provisions, for example
the average 48 hour week, to be undertaken at company premises;
- roadside checking equipment to be better standardised
between Member States;
- better co-ordination between different national
enforcement agencies and appointment of a lead agency;
- Member States to set effective, proportionate
and dissuasive penalties;
- enforcement best practice to be agreed and disseminated
by a revised CATP;
- better training of enforcement staff.
The Government's view
9.4 The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department
of Transport (Mr David Jamieson) draws our attention to an important
subsidiarity issue. He says:
"Effective measures to strengthen, improve and
harmonise enforcement of the EU drivers' hours rules can only
be achieved by Community action. However, the Government believes
that the responsibility for setting minimum standards of enforcement
for working time Directives (including the road transport directive
- 2002/15/EC) should reside with individual Member States. If
the level and means of enforcement were set at European level,
it risks setting a precedent for European intervention for other
working time legislation."
9.5 The subsidiarity issue is also amongst those
addressed in the Minister's general policy statement in which
he says:
"The existing requirement to check 1% of days
worked (1% of tachograph charts) for drivers' hours purposes,
requires over 1 million charts to be checked in the UK. As long
as enforcement uses paper charts, an increase to 3% in the number
of charts checked would be impossible without a commensurate increase
in enforcement staff and resources. This would equate to an estimated
200+ additional examiners and managers at a cost of about £12
million per annum. Such additional costs would mean an increase
in excess of 50% to operator licence fees.
"The Government has strong concerns about the
burden of the proposed increase in paper-based enforcement, especially
since the current analogue tachograph is due to be replaced soon
by a digital version which will not use charts but will store
data in digital form on driver-specific smart-cards and in vehicle
units. In the Government's view, any increased enforcement level
should be directly related to the move to digital tachographs.
"The Commission's proposal also provides for
the proportion of days checked to be increased above 3% on the
basis of agreement by the relevant all-Member State technical
Committee — the CATP … The Commission's impact assessment
suggests such an increase should not go above 10% but this is
not explicit in the draft Directive and we believe that it should
be. The Commission accepts that any increase above 3% would be
dependent upon the introduction of digital tachographs.
"The Government accepts that the use of digital
tachographs would enable an increased level of checking of 3%-10%
to be carried out with existing enforcement manpower but at some
additional cost arising from the need for enforcement agencies
to be equipped with the necessary hard and software. This cost,
currently estimated at £1 million for the Vehicle & Operator
Services Agency (VOSA), would be in addition to the projected
£8 million costs to VOSA alone arising from the implementation
of digital tachographs. The relevant EU Regulation requires these
to be fitted to all relevant new vehicles from August 2004 but
we now know that this deadline cannot be met because of a delay
in type approval. On current estimates, digital tachographs will
not start to be fitted to all new vehicles before mid-2005 and
it would be several years after that, perhaps up to 10, before
digital tachographs penetrate significantly into the fleet. But,
as long as the coming into force date of this proposed Directive
takes this into account — which it does not at present,
and as long as the proposed increase is related to digital tachographs,
the Government would not oppose it.
"The Government is against including the Road
Transport Directive [Road Working Time Directive] (RTD) 2002/15/EC
within the scope of this Directive. The responsibility for enforcing
European Directives (as opposed to European Regulations), normally
falls on individual Member States. Neither the main Working Time
Directive as amended, nor any of the other sector specific directives
are subject to any European wide enforcement regime. It is our
view therefore, that enforcement of 2002/15/EC is a matter for
subsidiarity.
"Even if subsidiarity were not an issue, the
timing of this part of the proposal is peculiar. Firstly, in
December 2001 the Council rejected a proposal from the European
Parliament (EP) to include less onerous controls in the draft
RTD itself. It is not clear, therefore, why the Commission believe
that the Council will be any more receptive to their more bureaucratic
proposals, barely 3 years later. Secondly, the Commission will
be reviewing the impact of the RTD on the road transport sector
before March 2009. Primarily, this is to consider the impact
of the temporary exclusion of self-employed drivers from the RTD,
but the review would also be a good opportunity to compare different
enforcement regimes used by Member States; to assess their impact
on road safety and competition. If the findings support the Commission's
concern about road safety, they would then be in a much stronger
position to press for tougher enforcement standards for the RTD.
"The EU drivers hours rules remain the most
important legislation for preventing fatigue among professional
drivers. Whilst there may be road safety benefits, for example,
in enforcing the maximum 60 hour working week in the RTD (although
quantifying these benefits has proved difficult) we do not believe
that enforcement of all the other limits, notably the average
48 hour working week over a 4 month reference period, would have
any impact on road safety.
"In the recently published consultation document
on transposing the RTD into domestic legislation, we have proposed
that VOSA inspectors carry out enforcement on the basis of complaints
— this is consistent with the existing regime used for other
sectors of employment. At this stage we are not proposing to
use roadside checks or carry out random visits on operators' premises
to monitor compliance, although we plan to review this before
2009."
9.6 The Minister has also provided us with a Regulatory
Impact Assessment (RIA) for the proposed Directive. The RIA estimates
increased paper-based enforcement of hours driven to cost £12
million annually, but digitally-based enforcement would not increase
costs by so much. The RIA says costs for enforcement of the RTD
"would significantly increase". The RIA does not quantify
possible benefits, but says of the benefits "The proposal
will help to strengthen, improve and harmonise enforcement of
EU drivers' hours regulations with a view to reducing road accidents.
It will also provide a clear framework for the rules governing
enforcement checks and encourage a more common approach amongst
national enforcement agencies". At the end of the RIA the
Minister says: "I have read the Regulatory Impact Assessment
and I am satisfied that the benefit justifies the cost".
Conclusion
9.7 We applaud the Government's clear intention
to oppose a move to a higher than 3% level of enforcement before
there is significant use of digital tachographs and, on subsidiarity
grounds, the inclusion of the Road Working Time Directive in the
proposed Directive. But we are concerned that the Government
appears less resistant to a move from a 1% to a 3% level of paper-based
enforcement, despite the prospect of a resultant 50% rise in operator
licence fees. Before considering the document further we should
like a more explicit statement of the Government's view of this
particular issue.
9.8 We should also like to hear from the Minister
as to why, in the light of the minimal information in the RIA
about benefits, he feels able to say that the benefits of the
proposal outweigh the costs.
9.9 Meanwhile we do not clear the document.
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