Examination of Witnesses (Questions 20-39)
DEPARTMENT OF
TRANSPORT AND
DVLA
23 APRIL 2008
Q20 Angela Browning: But numerically
did you have targets?
Mr Boucher: In terms of the numbers,
we specified that we wanted a minimum number of observations for
the survey and the contractor had achieved that.
Q21 Angela Browning: No doubt, but
not very accurately.
Mr Boucher: I think there has
always been an assumption that the accuracy of the survey would
be checked at the roadside. Many of the contractors actually use
two people, pairs of individuals, so one would read out the number
plate while the next person would write it down.
Q22 Angela Browning: Has it never
occurred to you to make the terms of that contract contingent
not just upon the numbers that they provided but the percentage
of accuracy of the data they provided to you for cross-checking?
Mr Boucher: That is exactly what
we did for the 2007 survey.
Q23 Angela Browning: I realise you
have now but I would have thought in any business organisation
it is the easiest thing in the world, is it not, to ask people
to go and take numbers? Did you not think of any quality control
involved there?
Mr Boucher: The quality control
is mainly about making sure that the number plates that were recorded
were in a valid UK format so that they could then run through
the survey but there was not a quality check in any of the previous
surveys about making sure that the number plate as recorded was
accurate.
Q24 Angela Browning: No, that is
very apparent to the whole Committee but why was that so?
Mr Boucher: I do not know.
Q25 Angela Browning: You do not know?
Dr Hickey: The measure which was
introduced for 2007 of course could not have been introduced until
cameras were being used. The additional checks do require that
technology to be there, so they could not have done it in earlier
years.
Q26 Angela Browning: You do not think
there should have been some form of contract that required the
people taking the numbers manually to at least have a certain
percentage rate of accuracy attached to them? Otherwise people
could have just sat there and made up anything, could they not?
Dr Hickey: There are two levels
of check we have introduced, and the biggest one is actually at
the time when they are being done. An accuracy check of the type
you are describing would have required a parallel team of people
checking on a 100% basis. That is what is now happening. By definition,
that would have doubled the scale of the whole exercise, and still
have been subject to individuals' eyesight and those sorts of
factors. Your general point is valid but the sort of checks we
are now able to introduce, however the incentives would have been
structured, could not have been done technically in previous years.
Q27 Mr Bacon: One of the things I
do not understand, Dr Hickey, is why you took so little notice
of the motorcycle industry bodies who were so hacked off with
the Department of Transport. The point they were making to you
again and again was that the increase between 2004—actually
not just 2004; there had been an increase for some years but there
was a particularly marked increase in those two years where it
appeared to double—was out of all proportion to all the
other surveys: the surveys showing the number of bikes on the
road, the surveys showing the number of miles travelled, the surveys
showing the kinds of journeys undertaken by motorcycles, were
all growing at a much slower rate and they said to you the fact
that all those other surveys are growing at a much slower rate
ought to indicate to you that there is something wrong with the
way that you are producing figures on Vehicle Excise Duty evasion,
but you carried on and published these figures as being 38% and,
as the Chairman said, we rely on the figures that the Department
of Transport publish. Why did you not listen to what they were
saying?
Dr Hickey: As we said at the last
hearing, we too were surprised by that scale of increase. We were
taken aback by that increase. It is worth saying though that the
change which has happened—
Q28 Mr Bacon: But you signed your
name to it.
Dr Hickey: They were the best
figures we had. They were the ones we had. It is worth saying
though that the change between 2006 and 2007, which had brought,
clearly, the motorcycle numbers down quite markedly, had not been
a change as a result of those particular issues that I think the
motorcycle industry have raised in the past. The reduction from
2006 and 2007 in relation to motorcycles is not massively out
of line with the reduction to other types of traffic. The change
for private vehicles was one to 1.8. For motorcycles it was one
to 2.4 but the change was even higher in relation to goods vehicles
and much the same for buses as well. So the change we see from
2006 to 2007 is not a change specifically about motorcycles; it
is a change which affected the whole set of figures.
Q29 Mr Bacon: Could I ask the National
Audit Office to remind us when your Report was published on which
we took evidence last October?
Mr Burr: In July.
Q30 Mr Bacon: We took evidence in
October and our Report came out on January 22nd and then you published
on the Department of Transport website this press release in which
you, interestingly, make no reference to the earlier figures;
you just say it is the start of a new series. You would not know
from reading your press release on the Department of Transport
website just how big a drop there had been, would you, just how
embarrassing the difference was, because you make no reference
to it?
Dr Hickey: We do not, because
the change is of a nature that, strictly speaking, is not mixing
comparables. The figures from prior to 2007—
Q31 Mr Bacon: You said that it is
the start of a new series and is not comparable with the old figures
but there is no reason why you could not admit that the old lot
were a load of cobblers if you had wanted to. I had to go on record
publicly and say I was at fault because I believed your figures.
What I said was "I was at fault. I believed the Department
of Transport." I would like to ask, Mr Boucher, you started
in September 2006 in your present job?
Mr Boucher: Yes.
Q32 Mr Bacon: So you were there through
this whole period. The surveys using this new methodology and
new techniques were in June 2007.
Mr Boucher: Yes.
Q33 Mr Bacon: That is right. The
NAO published its Report in July 2007, when you would not necessarily
be expected to have processed all the information resulting from
the June 2007 survey but am I right in thinking that the surveys
themselves had taken place and were completed during June 2007?
Mr Boucher: Yes, they were.
Q34 Mr Bacon: So by 1 July 2007 they
were done. It was then a question of processing the information.
Mr Boucher: Yes, that is right.
Q35 Mr Bacon: So for the whole of
July, August, September, October, November, December and January,
the first three weeks up to the 22 January, it was a case of processing
that data.
Mr Boucher: Yes. It is a very
complex process.
Mr Bacon: I am sure it is. During
that entire process, those seven months or so, at no point were
you able to say—not, obviously, to the National Audit Office,
whose Report was only published a few weeks later, but neither
to this Committee in October nor at any point subsequent to the
hearing that your investigation of this data that you had collected
in June, during these six months of turning it over in your minds,
had produced anything in your minds that suggested that there
was any doubt. This is what you are asking us to believe, is it
not? That basically, for those seven months—and it is seven
months—you churned away at these figures, they are very
complex and they took a long time, and nothing was flagged up
to suggest there was any problem, and yet somehow, miraculously,
roughly three weeks after our hearing suddenly, bingo, it was
suddenly clear.
Chairman: After the publication
of our report and all the press publicity.
Q36 Mr Bacon: Funnily enough, after
all the publicity saying it was wrong and after we had had a recommendation
saying that you should look at the numbers again and work with
industry bodies to make sure that they were reliable, suddenly,
bingo, there was this new figure of 9.8% rather than 38%. Are
we supposed to believe that for the seven months prior to the
hearing you had no idea?
Mr Boucher: If I could just explain—
Q37 Mr Bacon: I am just asking, is
that what we are supposed to believe? Is that what we are supposed
to believe, that for the seven months prior you had no idea? A
"yes" or a "no" will do.
Mr Boucher: I did not have any
idea at all—
Q38 Mr Bacon: Right, you had no idea.
Now, can you tell me about the University of Southampton study,
because you did mention it earlier. This is the one from—I
do not know how to pronounce his name; it looks Portuguese to
me—Pedro Luis do Nascimento Silva. Is that the chap?
Mr Boucher: Yes.
Q39 Mr Bacon: Could you just remind
the Committee of what recommendation six of that report said?
Mr Boucher: I do not have the
report in front of me.
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