Examination of Witnesses (Questions 196-199)
19 MAY 2004
MR ROGER
KING AND
MS KAREN
DEE
Chairman: Good afternoon. If you will
forgive us, you know our rules, we have a little housekeeping
service to perform before we start. Members having an interest
to declare.
Clive Efford: I am a member
of the Transport and General Workers' Union.
Miss McIntosh: I am a former MEP and
I have an interest in the RAC.
Chairman: Oh, well, I also am a former
MEP. I did not think it was of interest to anybody. ASLEF and
a former MEP, member of the parish council, member of the Totnes
Borough Council. I mean, if we are going to declare it all, daughter
of Baroness Phillips of Fulham. Perhaps we could go on for some
time.
Mrs Ellman: Louise Ellman, member of
the Transport and General Workers' Union.
Mr Stringer: Member of Amicus and a director
of the Centre for Local Economic Strategies.
Q196 Chairman: Thank you very much indeed.
Mr King, may I say welcome to you. You are well known within these
hallowed halls in your numerous capacities but thank you for coming
this afternoon. Could I ask you first, for the purpose of the
record, to introduce not only yourself but your colleague.
Mr King: Yes. My name is Roger
King. I am chief executive of the Road Haulage Association and
Karen Dee on my right is our director of policy.
Q197 Chairman: Did you have something
you wanted to start with, Mr King?
Mr King: I think in terms of the
impact of European legislation we believe that the primary function
of the European Commission, certainly in terms of what it is trying
to legislate for throughout Europe, must affect safety and competition
and those are the two areas which we think it should confine itself
to. There are a number of issues currently that the European Commission
is concentrating its efforts on which cover both those particular
areas and if I may just draw the Committee's attention to issues
like weekend bans, we welcome the establishment of clear principles
for Member States when they are applying a weekend ban for the
movement of goods vehicles but the proposals, which have failed
to go anywhere for lack of agreement, do not force Member States
to bring them in. They say that if a Member State wants to introduce
a weekend ban on the trans-European network system there must
be a very good reason. Bans of course can cause problems where,
for example, perishable goods are involved, in addition concerns
about security of vehicles, loads and drivers forced to stop for
long periods of time waiting for the ban to be lifted and traffic
to be resumed. So if we are looking for an integrated road transport
system throughout Europe, Member States having various views on
weekend bans is not the way to go about it and the Commission
needs to ensure that it has control over such issues. In terms
of drivers' hours, that is clearly a safety issue and therefore
is a case for agreement at EU level. The rules are complex, although
fairly well understood, although enforcement is a different matter.
Enforcement throughout Europe, and I guess the arrival of the
10 new Member States will make this worse, is very imprecise,
to put it bluntly, and many hauliers would be the first to admit
that the UK is foremost in enforcement of drivers' hours. If the
rules are not agreed at EU level, that is the new drivers' hours,
it will be difficult to check behaviour of visiting drivers. So
unless we have a European system it would be impossible to ensure
that Continental drivers, foreign drivers coming into this country
were complying with the rules of operation. The big issue for
us, of course, is the Working Time Road Transport Directive. We
maintain this is not a safety issue. The European Commission has
said it is a safety issue and therefore it overrides human rights
and everything else. We say it is not a safety issue for the very
simple reason that it excludes the self-employed. If it is a safety
issue it would involve all drivers. We believe it is just as disastrous
to be killed by an employed driver as it is a self-employed driver
and therefore legislation should apply to everybody. The self-employed
are due to come in in 2009 unless a review in 2007 suggests that
they do not come in. We would say the whole thing is a nonsense.
It gives us a two tier playing field between employed drivers
and self-employed drivers blows a hole right through the concept
of European legislation primarily motivated towards safety in
this particular area. It also causes problems for competition
as there are many areas of derogation that Member States may interpret
in different ways. We had hoped that all legislation coming from
Brussels' directives would seek to offer a level playing field.
Obviously that is in everybody's interest.
Q198 Chairman: What did you base that
foolish hope on?
Mr King: Well, some imaginary
kind of legislature on the Planet Zog I think would be appropriate,
because I do not think it is happening in Brussels. What we have
got is a Working Time Directive but there are a number of individual
national interpretations. Many of these we welcome, but what it
means is that we are going to end up with 15, probably 25 different
Working Time Directives for mobile workers throughout Europe.
For instance, the reference period can be fixed or it can be rolling
depending on what the Member State wanted. It can be 17 weeks,
it can be 6 months. The night time working element can be different.
The core night time working hours can be different. For instance,
if you are a Northern Ireland haulier the night time working suggested
by the UK Government is between midnight and 4.00 am. We do not
know what southern Ireland is going to opt for. I did hear from
the Irish Road Haulage Association that they are looking at 2.00
am to 6.00 am. Is a Northern Ireland haulier working to the UK
Working Time Directive when he goes south of the border or does
he have to comply with the southern Irish Working Time Directive,
in which case he becomes a night worker and subject to separate
restrictions? Actually, when we questioned the European Commission
on enforcement policy they had no idea either. They were not aware
that there were differences of interpretation in this way and
they had no idea whether a British driver in France had to comply
with the French Working Time Directive or the British Working
Time Directive. The nearest we could get was, "Well, he has
to comply with laws over there, driving laws, driving hours, which
are cross-Europe anyway," and we said, "Yes, you can
provide evidence on the tachograph of a driving infringement there
and then but how do you check his working time?" He does
not carry that information in the cab and it is not recorded.
It is recorded back at his base and back at his base the UK operator
would be working according to the UK Working Time Directive, not
to the French, Italian, Spanish or any other Working Time Directive.
So we are less than a year away from something that is supposed
to be uniform and not even the officials know quite how it is
going to be. As a result competition may be affected, certainly
in terms of self-employed drivers (and considerable numbers of
Spanish drivers are self-employed) where they operate in a collective
group of five and are considered to be self-employed, although
we perhaps would interpret them as a company. They are obviously
going to be better off in exploiting the opportunity of the longer
hours they can work for than those who are covered under the employment
regulations. Road user charging is another big issue that is now
coming to the fore that the European Commission has set out some
thoughts on.
Q199 Chairman: Mr King, what I think
I need to do really is to stop you because I think what you are
doing is you are raising all the things we want to question you
on, so it would actually be just as sensible for us to proceed
to the questions. I am not trying to stop you. If at the end you
think you have missed anything, by all means raise it, but it
just seems a bit of a waste of time. I want to go back to the
beginning, before we get on to some of the detailed points that
you have raised. I want to ask you something quite fundamental.
Do you think the European Commission is less favourable towards
the development of road freight than other modes of transport?
Mr King: We believe that, yes.
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