Examination of Witnesses (Questions 160-179)
MR STEPHEN
HICKEY, MISS
ROSEMARY THEW,
MR CLIVE
BENNETT, MR
PAUL MARKWICK
AND MR
STEPHEN TETLOW
8 FEBRUARY 2006
Q160 Chairman: "Concepts of
accuracy" sounds like an interesting parliamentary idea we
could perhaps develop! Her Majesty's Government may be a bit ahead
of you on some of that.
Mr Bennett: The most important
aspect to us is traceability, and the police need traceability.
When somebody commits a crime or when there is a problem, you
need to be able to get to the person and trace him from the records.
Traceability is the top level accuracy we go for. That is at 97.4%.
We want to get it higher but that is where it is. Then there is
the issue of timeliness of data. Timeliness is more difficult
because it is about whether the process gets the data there quickly
enough. One example of that is with the Post Office. Prior to
a year and a half ago, before we put in what was called BART (Bar
Coding of All Relicensing Transactions) a person went into the
Post Office and taxed his vehicle and it could take up to six
weeks for the paperwork to get from the Post Office into our system
in Swansea DVLA. Clearly this meant that sometimes the police
were stopping members of the public for not being taxed when in
fact they were, and that is quite unacceptable. The bar coding
transaction means that when you go in to be taxed now, they simply
wand the bar code and that updates the record overnight. That
timeliness has now shot right up and we have not had a problem
with the police at all since we did that. There are several levels
of accuracy. For drivers it is a much more difficult problem.
It is a lower accuracy rate for drivers, the reason being it is
all about name and address. People just forget to update the name
and address system on their driving licences. It is one of the
human failing. It is very difficult to get to them. Over time,
we will be joining up, and we will be doing the first phase of
this later this year, the drivers' system—going back to
an earlier point—and the vehicle system such that when you
come in to update your vehicle details, which happens very frequently
because people are moving or doing their tax, we can deal with
the drivers at the same time. We have some way to go on our driver
accuracy. Our vehicle accuracy is reasonably good, but obviously
we want to improve that.
Q161 Mrs Ellman: There is not any
automated link between vehicle and driver?
Mr Bennett: There is not at the
moment. There are two separate systems, and it annoys the public
that they have to give us their name and address change twice.
That is clearly not good customer service. We are very intent
about going down the route of saying that if there is one name
and address change, we will update the total record. That is where
we are heading; we are not there yet.
Q162 Mrs Ellman: When do you think
you will be there?
Mr Bennett: We will have some
of that when we go live on drivers. We have already put in the
new drivers' system. We soft launched that in November. We actually
launch the first driver licensing next month. Then we have four
more transactions going live this year. That will enable the public
to update the name and address on the driving licence on line.
That makes it a lot easier. At that point, we have a link from
the drivers to the vehicles. It will be another three years I
think before we have a link the other way round, which is the
link I really would like, from vehicles to drivers.
Q163 Mrs Ellman: Why three years?
Mr Bennett: Because we have got
to put in a new vehicles system. It goes back to the point that
we want to use some of the money for that. We need gradually to
invest in improving the infrastructure. The drivers' system that
we talked about will be replaced within 18 months. We are engaged
at the moment on the drivers' project. The vehicle system then
follows that.
Q164 Mrs Ellman: What about the protection
of the driver information? Concerns have been raised about that.
What do you see as the issue and what are you going to do about
the problem?
Mr Bennett: There is no issue
with drivers' information; ie the detail of drivers, test passes,
medical conditions or anything like that. That is not an issue.
The issue you are referring to is the one of data supply and one
particular context was car parking companies. There is a legal
principle in place that we need to give data to anybody who, as
it is defined, has "reasonable cause" in law. You would
know better than I would about how difficult that is to interpret.
We seek to interpret that for individual circumstances. We take
as much information as we can. This particular case was one that
broke in the Mail on Sunday. I am glad that on the back
of that we are now having a public consultation. Ministers have
declared that we will do this. I think it is appropriate because
of the time because we are getting much more into data sharing.
It is really important to examine what does "reasonable cause"
mean for a given circumstance. I think that is the issue to which
you refer.
Mrs Ellman: What exactly is happening
now in looking at the interpretation of reasonableness? You said
there is a problem about interpreting that. Is there anything
different happening?
Q165 Chairman: Is your survey going
to include asking people what they think is a reasonable boundary?
Mr Bennett: Absolutely, and that
is the whole point about this consultation. The difficulty at
the moment is that we can give the information out only where
there are specific issues, for example if there is a road safety
issue or a potential crime issue, anything that goes right to
the core.
Q166 Chairman: Generally, what are
we talking about? We are talking about the police.
Mr Bennett: We are talking about
the police. For example, if a vehicle is abandoned in somebody's
driveway and they cannot get their car out and they do not know
how to get hold of the person, we would have to make a judgment.
We get them to send in their information. We would then help them
to find the person so that the car can be removed. Every one of
these examples is quite difficult to administer because you are
doing it remotely. With any of the major companies, and this particular
one was a car parking company, we actually check that the company
is bona fide and they have to make the request on headed
notepaper, et cetera.
Q167 Chairman: It might be quite
useful if you lost you husband to come to you and say, "I
need to have his vehicle removed" and then get an address
out of you, might it not?
Mr Bennett: There is a risk. Whenever
"reasonable cause" comes in, there is a risk that you
will get unscrupulous people trying to get a name and address.
Q168 Chairman: Oh, yes, there is,
Mr Bennett.
Mr Bennett: The difficulty is
that in law we are bound to give people that information: the
name and address of the vehicle keeper.
Q169 Chairman: Is that what you are
asking them now?
Mr Bennett: That is what we are
doing and asking, "Would you please help us with this reasonable
cause?"
Q170 Chairman: Are you talking about
the end of the year?
Mr Bennett: I do not know how
long the consultation period is.
Mr Hickey: It is with Ministers
at the moment. I hope that will be ready to publish soon.
Q171 Chairman: How long has it been
with Ministers?
Mr Hickey: We have been talking
to Ministers since this broke before Christmas. Ministers announced
before Christmas that they would be consulting shortly in the
new year. I hope that consultation will start quite soon.
Q172 Chairman: We are not actually
consulting at the moment. You are saying we are about to consult.
Mr Hickey: Yes. If it is agreed,
then the Ministers have said they will publish a consultation
paper about this, which hopefully will come out in the next week
or the week after, that sort of period, quite soon.
Q173 Mrs Ellman: Is there an EU-wide
database?
Mr Bennett: There is. That is
another issue that has to be addressed over the next few years
on the back of this. At the moment, there is a sharing of data
between the European authorities and there are certain guidelines.
For example, there is a drivers and vehicles register across Europe
which is looked at for dealing with criminal issues and so on,
but as we move downstream, there is becoming a much larger problem
now which need to be addressed. This is quite a way off. There
are many areas that need data from other countries. What is starting
to happen now is that a local authority will phone up the Paris
authority and ask for French details to be sent. We have people
phoning up from the Continent asking us to give details. This
is quite untenable. Something that has to be worked on quite strongly
over the next few years is data, starting to become joined up
and to have a much stronger and more debated policy on exactly
how one does join up across Europe. There are different standards.
Q174 Mrs Ellman: How does that operate
now? Is it on a case-by-case basis?
Mr Bennett: Yes, it is on a case-by-case
basis. For example, if somebody tries to come here and get a licence
when they have a foreign licence, say an EU licence, we check
out their licence on the system where they came from to ensure
that that is a genuine bona fide licence before issuing
one. We can do that sort of thing.
Q175 Mr Scott: Can I go a little
further into this? We see a lot of cars on our roads from former
Soviet Union countries driving about and to the eye they look
a little dubious as to their reliability. What could be developed
through better data links to stop the possibility of uninsured
and unroadworthy cars on our roads? There are more and more of
them on our roads.
Mr Bennett: That is a fair point.
It is quite difficult. You are conscious of the situation on this
when vehicles are coming in. Some things are done. I can tell
you what tends to be done. For example, Transport for London deals
with the congestion charge for vehicles coming in. They do pursue
those vehicles via the home countries.
Q176 Chairman: Mr Bennett, that does
not always happen, does it? There is real ill feeling because,
frankly, there are occasions when it appears to people working
in the industry that if you are driving a vehicle that is registered
somewhere on the Continent and you break every traffic rule in
the book, no-one is going to do much. They might individually
stop you, but I doubt even that. That is going to be more and
more the case, is it not?
Mr Bennett: I think it is a real
issue. It goes beyond my remit. I simply apply the law that is
there.
Q177 Chairman: If there is a sharing
of data, that has to be on an even basis; it has to be with proper
safeguards and it has to be effective, does it not?
Mr Bennett: The EU is considering
this. This is another area where they are very engaged in terms
of looking at the whole area of REGNET, the cross Europe network
of Registration Authorities, and RESPA, which is the driver licence
initiative across Europe. There is a whole raft of discussion
going on about that. It is at this topic level of how you deal
with sharing of data across boundaries to deal with these kinds
of issues. This is in the EU dimension.
Mr Scott: My only point would be this:
we have all read stories about uninsured and unroadworthy cars
causing very serious accidents and some fatalities. It is something
that I believe, and I hope you would agree, needs tackling now,
not some time in the future when it is getting worse and worse
and there are more of it.
Q178 Chairman: I think that was more
an opinion than a question. The level of customer complaints received
by the Agency has tripled since 1997. Why is that?
Mr Bennett: Are you asking the
DVLA that question?
Q179 Chairman: I think I am, yes.
Mr Bennett: Complaints in DVLA
are still really low, between 40 and 90 per million.
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