§ Miss McIntoshTo ask the Secretary of State for Transport what assessment he has made of the impact of the working time directive on the transport industry; and if he will make a statement. [106408]
§ Mr. JamiesonTransport workers will be subject to the original working time directive (93/104/EC), as amended by 2000/34/EC, by August 2003. The Department of Trade and Industry published a draft impact assessment on 31 October 2002 along with a consultation document covering all the sectors excluded from the original Directive. This draft will now be revisited following comments received from the consultation exercise that closed on 31 January.
My Department has recently consulted on implementing a separate directive on the working time of mobile workers in the aviation sector (2000/79/EC) and will be finalising its cost assessment based on the responses we received on our consultation. We will also consult both sides of industry on the likely impact of the directive for mobile workers in the road transport sector (2002/15/EC). A draft regulatory impact assessment will be published later this year, alongside a formal consultation document on our proposals.