HC Deb 23 June 1964 vol 697 cc363-74

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Pym.]

10.35 p.m.

Mr. W. T. Rodgers (Stockton-on-Tees)

I am very grateful for the opportunity of raising on the Adjournment the question of the enforcement of goods vehicles licence regulations, and I hope that the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Transport is as grateful to me as I am to you, Mr. Speaker, because this seems to me to be a subject which has been proved to be too substantial to be usefully pursued in Questions but might be regarded as peripheral to a major debate on transport policy.

Since I indicated my wish to raise this matter on the Adjournment, we had yesterday a statement by the Minister of Transport about roadside spot checks of heavy goods vehicles. I should like to congratulate the Minister on having sensitive antennae, and I would like to believe that this was because of the powerful advocacy which he knew would be exercised this evening in persuading him to take action. Whatever the Minister may have promised to do, there is certainly no indication that it is adequate to deal with the problem as I see it. In any case, I hope the Parliamentary Secretary will say a little more in expansion of yesterday's statement.

I was particularly struck by one phrase used by the Minister when he said that a lunatic fringe of operators fail to maintain their vehicles. As I hope I shall show, and as I think the Parliamentary Secretary will know, this is a very big fringe indeed, and that is why the problem is so serious and why it should be looked into.

I am not concerned with the overall question of the enforcement of "A", "B" and "C" licences. Nor am I concerned this evening with the overloading of goods vehicles; this is most important but, as I understand it, this is really a question for the local authorities' weights and measures inspectors. I am mainly concerned with excessive hours of work and with maintenance. I am concerned for two different reasons—first, the most obvious one of public safety, and secondly, because of the need for fair competition. This is a problem which has caused a good deal of public attention lately.

I refer, for example, to an article in The Times of 5th November last, the title of which—"Lorry driver was happy to pay a £10 fine"—tells part of the story. Another article in the same newspaper of 11th February was entitled: "Motorway Cowboys Need Curbing."

There was also a rather interesting B.B.C. "Panorama" programme recently, and I should like to refer to one or two of the things which were said in the course of that programme because they indicate the nature of the problem. The programe dealt with checks on road vehicles, and I should like to quote from a transcript of it: In two hours here Ministry of Transport inspectors pulled 67 lorries into the side of the road. Their inspection of this random harvest revealed that more than half of them were defective. Two of them were considered too dangerous to travel another yard. In the same programme, when a lorry driver was asked what happened when he declined to take out a vehicle which he thought was inadequately maintained, he replied: I got my cards the same night. Later the commentator said: In a savagely competitive industry it's the honest driver and operator who are being hardest hit by undercutting, overloading, and drivers working longer than is safe. That gives a fair picture of the position and of the great public concern about it.

This problem has been mentioned in evidence presented to the Geddes Committee. In particular, I would refer to the evidence presented by the T.U.C. where, among other things, they say: There is extensive evidence that the regulations governing hours of work, period of rest and maintenance of vehicles are widely disregarded. This is mainly because of the intense competition and rate cutting which is still going on despite the efforts of the more responsible type of haulier to prevent it. I hope that the fact that the Geddes Committee is sitting will not be used as an excuse for inaction. In recent years the Minister of Transport has established a number of Committees. We have had Beeching, Hall, Buchanan, and Smeed. Each has from time to time been used as an excuse for postponing taking action.

I am not concerned with the overall question of what the licensing system should be, so whatever the Geddes Committee might recommend and whatever the Government of the day, enforcement will remain a problem. I want to refer to the annual reports of the various licensing authorities, particularly those covering 1962–63. I hope that the Minister will undertake to look at the form in which these reports are presented to discover whether it would be possible to have more comparable data in future. Each of the licensing authorities presents its report in a different way. The Northern Traffic Authority, for example, finds space for 20 headings, Yorkshire for five and the North Western four, but un-numbered. It is difficult to compare one report with another. One has a large number of paragraphs thanking people who helped him when he was a licensing authority because he is due to retire.

It must be remembered that these are serious documents. Indeed, in many respects they are the basic documents available for a study of the ways in which the present licensing system works. Without saying precisely what can be done, I hope that the Minister will look at the form of these reports and try to find a way of improving them in future.

Despite this, and despite the lack of comparable data—including the lack of information and statistics about persistent offenders, about which I asked a supplementary question in the House recently—together with the lack of information about the penalties that have been imposed, I want to look in more detail at these reports to see what they tell us about whether or not the present standards of maintenance are adequate.

The Report of the North-Western Traffic Area stated: The continued high percentage of defective vehicles indicates that there is no noticeable improvement in the standard of vehicle maintenance … The West Midland Traffic Area stated in its Report: … offences relating to hours and records show no signs of decreasing. The Report of the East Midland Traffic Area stated: The fact that 1 in 4 goods vehicles are still found to be sufficiently defective to warrant prohibition leaves no room for complacency". Meanwhile, the Report of the Metropolitan Traffic Area stated: …five years ago … I reported that 12,160 goods vehicle inspections had been carried out and that the general run of examinations revealed that 10.1 per cent. were defective to the point of prohibition. The Report stated that 33 per cent. of vehicles had been found defective to the point of prohibition in the period under review. Thus the percentage of defective vehicles is increasing.

On several occasions my hon. Friends and I have pressed the Minister to say where there are adequate inspectors to do this checking. We have been led to believe that there are sufficient. But considering these reports and the evidence available, one sees that the authorities concerned are unanimous in complaining that they cannot do their job properly because they do not have sufficient staff. Either the Minister has been right in the past—in which case the licensing authorities are not telling the whole truth—or the authorities have been right, and the Minister has been concealing something from us. But these reports of the licensing authorities are a powerful indictment of the lack of enforcement and the failure of enforcement to achieve its purpose.

To summarise, of the total vehicles on the roads only one in 15 has been examined this year, and of that number about one-third have been found defective—33,903 defective vehicles out of 97,067. That seems to me to be a serious position. I would particularly like the Parliamentary Secretary to say something more about the spot checks which will take place and to make clear whether these can be conducted by the inspectors of whether the inspectors will require police assistance in the stopping of vehicles. Secondly, will the hon. Gentleman say something about the effort to recruit further enforcement officers? I understand that their pay varies from £913 to £1,532. Does the hon. Gentleman regard these rates as adequate remuneration for people who are charged with these heavy responsibilities?

Thirdly, could the hon. Gentleman say, particularly in relation to hours of work, whether the examiners are free to inspect the wage sheets as well as log sheets? This would be one way of making sure that drivers are not working overtime, because we know that these figures can be concealed in other ways. It is often said that the penalties imposed are regarded as normal business expenses. Does the hon. Gentleman take that view? If he does, can anything be done to emphasise the importance of causing penalties to be imposed which produce the results intended? Are steps taken to publicise those penalties which are adequate and severe enough in the hope that some operators will regard it as worth while keeping within the law?

In the present circumstances, if each of the inspectors that we have tested 10 vehicles a day for seven days a week it would take three years to test the whole of the goods vehicle fleet, by which time a further 150,000 vehicles would be coming on the road. In the "Panorama" broadcast to which I referred one of the drivers commented at the end on the position as he saw it. It seemed to me to be a fair commentary on the position as it seems to be. He was asked whether anything could be done about pirate operators. He said that it was a hard point to answer and added: I mean it's gone on and gone on and I suppose it will go on, no matter what we say and what we don't say. It will still carry on. Is that the Parliamentary Secretary's view? If it is not, what is going to be done about this serious problem?

10.49 p.m.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Transport (Mr. T. G. D. Galbraith)

On the face of it, tonight's debate should be rather narrow in scope, because goods vehicle licensing regulations in the strict sense are concerned only with minor matters, such as the procedures and forms to be used in applying for carriers' licences, the fees to be paid, and so on. It has never been suggested, as far as I know, that the enforcement of these regulations set major problems. As I expected, the hon. Member for Stockton-on-Tees (Mr. W. T. Rodgers) is not really concerned with the procedural details but is concerned with the wider matters involving the enforcement of much of the Road Traffic Act and the subordinate regulations as they affect goods vehicles. I think that I can say that the theme of the hon. Member's speech was safety in the operation of commercial vehicles. I am glad that he has raised the matter tonight and given me the opportunity of saying something about it. It is a subject in which the public are considerably interested.

I admit at once that the enforcement of safety sets us difficult problems. This is at least partly because in matters of safety, where safety of life and limb is concerned, one can never be fully satisfied with anything less than the highest standards. Nevertheless, it is necessary to maintain a sense of proportion, and I should like to repeat, as has been pointed out on a number of previous occasions, that goods vehicles over 1½ tons in weight have less accidents per mile than any other class of vehicle on the road. Whatever, therefore, may be the defects of some goods vehicles, or the misbehaviour of some of their drivers, as a class they achieve better results, from the point of view of safety, than anyone else, even including private cars. Statistics show that the average heavy goods vehicle travels between 300,000 and 400,000 miles without being involved in an accident.

That is a good record, but it gives no ground for complacency. There are some owners who misuse their vehicles, and there are some drivers who exceed their hours. Our task must be to find out these people and make them adopt the high standard of the rest of the industry, and so improve the accident record still further. In this task, what is often forgotten is that there are agencies other than the licensing authorities which are doing a good job.

First and foremost, there are the police. They have the responsibility for enforcing, for example, the general traffic laws, checking speeding and preventing dangerous driving—two of the most fertile causes of accidents. Then there are the highway authorities, which also have an important part to play in regulating the safe use of commercial vehicles. For, as the law is at present drafted, it is mainly their responsibility to check overloading. I know that the hon. Gentleman did not want to spend much time on that aspect, so I will not do so, either, but I must say that normally, the highway authorities appoint their inspectors of weights and measures to do this for them.

I should, perhaps, say that, contrary to the impression gained from an article in The Times of 5th November, 1963, it is wrong to suppose that a carrier can be convicted repeatedly for overloading and only suffer a nominal fine. Second offences—and I must say a word about fines in general—are subject to fines of up to £50, and a persistent offender could have his licence revoked under paragraph 1(b) of the Fourteenth Schedule to the Road Traffic Act, 1960, which is something that I am sure the licensing authorities and the highway authorities are alive to.

In some cases, indeed, if there is a conspiracy between an employer and his men, for example, to breach the hours requirements, penalties may be much higher and, for some offences, driving licences may be forfeited. The fines imposed by magistrates vary widely, according to the circumstances of the case, from a few shillings to hundreds or even thousands of £s, and it is difficult to give an average that would be meaningful, but, undoubtedly they are a satisfactory deterrent—

Mr. W. T. Rodgers

Would the hon. Gentleman agree that suspensions are very rare, as the report shows, and does he not feel that this instrument might be used more by licensing authorities in the case of very persistent offenders?

Mr. Galbraith

If the hon. Gentleman will wait for a minute or two, I hope to deal with that point. It is an important point.

There is another way of dealing with overloading which is, perhaps, not far round the corner. The hon. Member asked what we were doing. One thing is the new plating scheme which my right hon. Friend's Department will develop shortly and which has already been the subject of discussion with represen- tatives of the industry. Not only will this make much closer control of overloading possible, but it will determine power-to-weight ratios for goods vehicles. It will also help to reduce one of the most irritating and dangerous features of motoring, namely, the lorry which goes uphill much too slowly for the rest of the traffic. I will not say more than that about overloading.

A matter in which the hon. Member was particularly interested was driving for an excessive number of hours. As he said, there have been several recent articles in the Press on this subject. Public anxiety was highlighted by the multiple crashes on motorways in January. It was suggested in some quarters that the cause of those crashes was tiredness due to the drivers being too long at the wheel. As, however, my right hon. Friend pointed out, police investigation failed to find evidence that those lorry drivers had been driving for excessive hours. Undoubtedly, however, some drivers drive longer than they should.

But to supervise every one of the 600 million journeys undertaken annually by goods vehicles is clearly out of the question for any inspectorate, whatever its size. Licensing authorities carry out this side of their duties of checking hours with the aid of non-technical traffic examiners, of whom there are about 140. Their number has been increased to keep in step with the growth of the number of commercial vehicles. They are not a specially recruited grade but are men with an aptitude for the work selected from other grades. At the levels at which they are paid, we have not found any lack of men willing and suitable to do the work.

The hon. Member suggested that we should, perhaps, have more examiners. He will be glad to know that we are taking a fresh look at the whole problem and, clearly, would not wish to rule out the need for more traffic examiners. As I have said, however, the size of an inspectorate to cover every vehicle would be legion. The real problem, therefore, is to know how many we should regard as being enough. One idea which is sometimes mentioned for dealing with this problem of hours, and by which) am not very attracted, is the suggestion that special Government forms should be used. This shows a misunderstanding of the checking procedure. The main method of enforcement is to watch vehicles on the road and then to check against a driver's records. If the two do not tally, an offence has clearly been committed and can be seen to have been committed.

The hon. Member asked about traffic examiners and whether they should have acess to wages records as distinct from the statutory records of hours. The examiners do not have this access and it is a point which we are bearing in mind in our current studies of enforcement. It is not, however, clear that an extra power would in the end be very helpful, as there are various ways of disguising the reasons for extra payment to drivers. It is, however, a matter which we are considering.

I turn now to the problem of vehicle maintenance. The licensing authorities have a staff of highly-qualified vehicle examiners to carry out inspections. They are specially recruited through the Civil Service Commissioners and they are trained automobile engineers of high standard. As the hon. Member said, these examiners have found a high proportion of the goods vehicles which they have inspected to be defective, and the licensing authorities have referred to this fact in their annual reports.

Perhaps at this point I might take up the hon. Member's suggestion that those reports should be more highly standardised. The main statistical returns are, of course, in standard form. I am not clear what more could be done, but I will look at the matter again in the light of what the hon. Member has said. I must, however, point out, as, I am sure, the hon. Member will be aware, that these authorities are independent statutory bodies and it would clearly be wrong for my right hon. Friend to attempt to bind licensing authorities in detail as to what they may or may not say in their reports. I do not think that my right hon. Friend could prevent them from making the sort of remarks of which the hon. Member complained. These reports show that results vary in different parts of the country; but, on average, about one-third of the vehicles checked are found to have some defect, and 8 to 9 per cent. to have defects which render them potentially dangerous. It must be remembered that checks of this kind are usually arranged to catch the likely offender, so these figures may not represent the state of the vehicle population as a whole. Nevertheless, they give no cause for satisfaction, and we have already taken action to try to put matters right.

As I said, the vehicle examiner force has been increased, and, as my right hon. Friend announced yesterday, an intensive campaign of roadside spot checks is to be mounted during the summer months.

The hon. Gentleman asked me to say a few words about this campaign. These spot checks will generally be carried out by inspection teams operating on every working day in each of the 12 traffic areas. There are also to be a series of two-day "blitzes" around large towns where co-ordinated teams will examine a high proportion of the heavy goods vehicles using the approach roads. The teams will serve prohibition notices on all unfit goods vehicles which they find. The essential purpose of serving these notices, of course, is to prevent the use of a vehicle in a dangerous condition. However, the sudden banning of an unfit vehicle may very well cause the owner a great deal of commercial inconvenience, so that it is also a useful weapon of enforcement.

I should, perhaps, say that our primary aim in this campaign, as, indeed, in all enforcement, is not to punish bad behaviour but to deter it. For this reason, we are giving full and fair warning of our intentions and the areas which will be affected, including the large towns, and I have no doubt that this will lead to a very considerable improvement.

Ultimately, of course, we aim to supplement, but not to supersede, roadside checks by regular annual testing of heavy goods vehicles on similar lines to the tests already applied to the older vehicles of unladen weight up to 30 cwts.

Mr. Charles A. Howell (Birmingham, Perry Barr)

Will the teams have the right to stop vehicles on the road?

Mr. Galbraith

No; it is necessary to have the co-operation of the police to do that. I am sorry I did not mention that, and I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for reminding me.

It is not always realised that this scheme of annual testing covers light goods vehicles as well as private cars, and light vehicles constitute well over half the goods vehicle fleet. Comprehensive testing of heavy vehicles requires special equipment and techniques beyond the scope of most existing test stations, so that it is not possible to extend the existing scheme as it stands. But even with things as they are, the traffic and vehicle examiners are a pretty formidable enforcement body. In numbers they equal the police force of a city such as Cardiff, and they exceed in number the total factory inspectorate of my right hon. Friend the Minister of Labour. They secure about 20,000 convictions a year, and they serve prohibitions on over 30,000 vehicles as well.

As I have explained, the licensing authorities have power to revoke or suspend carrier licences, but they use these powers sparingly, partly because revoking a licence is a serious step affecting the livelihood, possibly, of both employer and employee, and partly because the Road Traffic Act restricts the use of revocation to cases involving repeated or serious offences. Last year, as the hon. Gentleman knows, there were 13 revocations and 19 suspensions. But perhaps the main reason for not revoking is that the licensing authority often finds that for operators whose conduct is marginally bad a warning, with the threat of ultimately losing the licence, is enough to produce markedly improved behaviour.

The hon. Gentleman did not wish to deal with the economic aspects of the licensing authorities' functions, so I shall say nothing about that. As he knows, the whole system is being surveyed by the Geddes Committee, and what will come out of that, nobody knows at present. One thing I can say—I want to say this very firmly—is that, though the future is uncertain, as always the licensing authorities are carrying out the enforcement procedure with the highest sense of public service.

The Question having been proposed after Ten o clock and the debate having continued for half an hour, Mr. SPEAKER adjourned the House, without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order.

Adjourned at five minutes past Eleven o'clock.