Oral evidence: Road freight supply chain, HC 828

Oral evidence, 26 January 2022.

Witness

Baroness Vere.

Chair

This is the Transport Select Committee’s final evidence session on the road freight supply chain, the inquiry we have been following. Last week, we were fortunate enough to visit Kent, which will no doubt come up in proceedings. By way of summary, given that this is our last session, we are looking today to explore driver supply numbers, including changes to testing, driver hours legislation and cabotage rules; driver retention, including pay, conditions and facilities; driver recruitment, including apprenticeship, diversity and the image of the sector; and the wider challenges facing the road freight supply chain, such as changes to border procedures, infrastructure and decarbonisation. We have one witness with us this morning. I ask the witness to introduce herself for the record.

Baroness Vere

I am Baroness Vere. I am the Minister for Roads, Buses and Places.

Chair

Good morning, Baroness Vere. Thank you very much for being with us again. This being our final evidence session, we are very keen to hear the Government’s perspective on road freight and the supply chain. We have a whole series of sections to go through. I will start by looking at the driver shortage issue. The numbers appear to be getting better, but I am keen to ask you whether you feel that the UK now has sufficient HGV driver numbers in place or whether we still have some way to go to plug the gap.

Baroness Vere

Thank you very much, Mr Merriman. It is a pleasure to be here, as ever. Your initial question is a good one. I could probably spend the entire hour talking about that. Within the Department for Transport, we are doing detailed modelling on what we think the driver shortage will be over time. There are various inputs to that modelling. Obviously, there are the 32 interventions that the Government have already done. There are things that the industry is doing. There is what we know about retirements and people deciding to leave the sector. We are also taking into account the fact that this is a very seasonal industry, so you see peaks leading up to Christmas. Going into the summer months, it comes down again. Although we believe that we will see significant easements throughout the course of this year—we think that the situation is getting better, and the industry is reporting to us that it is getting better—we do not think that the shortage will be substantially or completely resolved until 2023.

Chair

The Government have put in a series of measures. We have discussed their effectiveness with you before and will do so again. Is it the Government’s role to fix this?

Baroness Vere

The Government have a role to play, but this is a private sector. It involves owners and operators from the private sector and the customers are predominantly in the private sector, so the long-term solution lies with the industry and its customers, to ensure that the system is working as a whole. Of course, the Government supply certain things, such as driving licences and driving tests. The Government can do certain things on planning reform. We see it as a partnership, with us working together with the industry to take it forward. It is such a long-standing issue. When I look back to the TSC report of 2016, it fair takes my breath away how little has changed since then. So many of the things that were identified in 2016 remain the same today. I have challenged the industry about modernisation, but, as we all know, it is an extremely fragmented industry. It would make a fantastic business school case study of market power within the entire supply chain. There are very fragmented hauliers—there are 69,000 operators, but some very big players—and quite fragmented customers as well. However, there are some very big players. The haulage sector operates on very limited margins, which means that they do not invest in their people and we end up with the situation where they plan day to day, use agency workforce and do not think strategically and long term about the future.

Chair

We hoped that, in addition to you, we would hear from Sir Dave Lewis. There was some difficulty as to whether he would be able to attend. On 8 October 2021, the Government announced Sir Dave’s appointment as the UK Government’s supply chain adviser. When I emailed him to ask him whether he would be able to appear and to say that it would be a great opportunity, I got an out of office message back, saying, “I have now left my role.” Could you tell us a bit more about what Sir Dave did and why he is no longer in post?

Baroness Vere

Sir Dave was looking very broadly across all supply chain issues. Of course, road freight is just one element of that. We in the Department have been focusing very much on road freight. Sir Dave made some recommendations to the Prime Minister. I am happy to try to go into more detail in a letter following this meeting. To be absolutely honest, his expertise relates to the system as a whole and what can be done to improve resilience. That includes things much beyond road freight.

Chair

Did you have any meetings with Sir Dave during his tenure?

Baroness Vere

No.

Chair

I am trying to get a best idea from you as to what meaningful input he has actually made. He reported to the Cabinet Office, which goes across Government. BEIS, the DFT and various other Departments are linked to the supply chain system. What would you say his legacy will be?

Baroness Vere

You have hit the nail on the head there. Because not just road freight, but supply chains as a whole were such a serious issue for a period, the Cabinet Office was co-ordinating work between Transport, DWP, DFE, DHSC and DEFRA—everybody who has an interest in the supply chain as a whole. That is very much why Sir Dave was working with the Cabinet Office, not necessarily with DFT directly.

Chair

You have the largest stake in this, in the sense that it is the roads sector and your responsibility. It seems a bit surprising that you did not have a meeting with him to go through your expertise and what really needs to be done across Government. We will take your expression as the answer. Karl, do you want to come in at this juncture?

Karl McCartney

Sir Dave, as he is being called, has now left. Has anybody been procured and placed in that position to take over that role? If they have not been already, are they likely to be?

Baroness Vere

No, I don’t think so at all. It was a one-off. We needed some rapid work to improve our understanding of supply chains in the broadest sense. He did a good job, as far as I am aware, and he has made recommendations. I will try to provide more information on those in so far as they relate to road freight.

Karl McCartney

You mentioned that you will write us a letter. If he produced a report or something like that, do you think that perhaps we might be able to see it?

Baroness Vere

I will have to look at that.

Chris Loder

Good morning, Baroness Vere. Sir David has left. Who made the decision to appoint him in the first place?

Baroness Vere

I should imagine that it would have been somebody from either No. 10 or the Cabinet Office. It was a top-level interest.

Chris Loder

Sir Dave Lewis was previously chief executive of Tesco, an organisation that others—certainly some trade unions and so on—have spoken negatively about in terms of its overall manpower strategy, which could have contributed to some of the difficulties that we have seen over the past year or so. Are you aware whether anyone would have taken some of those things into account when appointing Sir Dave Lewis to that role?

Baroness Vere

I certainly cannot comment on that because I do not know. I do not think that we should necessarily put all the blame on any single retailer. There is an awful lot of work that needs to be done by the customers and by the hauliers. I cannot comment on Tesco directly.

Chris Loder

I would not want to point the blame at any one organisation, but it is fair to say that when an organisation makes a strategic decision that 20% of its workforce are, in effect, agency staff, where the retention rate is much poorer, that is a strategic decision for which the business needs to take responsibility.

Baroness Vere

I completely agree with that. In the dim and distant past, I worked in recruitment and in the agency sector, where you place short-term workers. It is very clear that, while there are some benefits and some people choose to be agency staff, long-term career progression and general wellbeing within the workforce can be diminished if you are an agency member of staff. The retailer will choose. If that was their strategic decision, that was their choice.

Chris Loder

And they must take responsibility when issues such as retention and other difficulties manifest themselves and we face some of the difficulties that we are having.

Baroness Vere

I agree with that. I would also say that before the pandemic I was getting interested in the role of road freight and the challenges it was facing. I wrote to the trade associations suggesting that we should really think about an industry-led charter that ties together the hauliers and the customers, such that the customers understand that, when they contract with a haulier, they need to think about what lies beneath that, how the terms and conditions of the employees are set out. I am not saying that it is modern slavery. Of course not. However, there is a responsibility for customers to know what is going on in their supply chain, what the pay and conditions are for the workers within it and whether or not those are fair. I think there is a role for some sort of charter that says, “This is good practice. This is how you should be treating your workers.” Unfortunately, that was not taken forward by the industry.

Chris Loder

Do you agree that it is a very sad state of affairs if the Government have to take the lead on a charter for the private sector to have to bear in mind the way it treats its staff? Don’t you think that that is a terrible thing to have do?

Baroness Vere

Over-regulating any sector is a very bad thing to do and usually leads to perverse incentives. The Government certainly do not want to do it, which is why we are so focused on working with the industry to help it to solve its problems.

Chair

Ruth, is your question about Dave Lewis as well?

Ruth Cadbury

Yes, in the context of the importance of the free flow of freight on our roads. Is that a priority for this Government?

Baroness Vere

Yes.

Ruth Cadbury

Where is that described? If we are not sure that we are going to see a report from Dave Lewis’s work, where do we see that level of priority in Government policy?

Baroness Vere

Because Dave Lewis worked with supply chains. I am responsible for the free flow of freight on our roads.

Ruth Cadbury

Right. Is the free flow—

Baroness Vere

It is the free flow part of this, in the global supply chain.

Ruth Cadbury

Is the free flow of freight on our roads an important part of the supply chain issue in the UK?

Baroness Vere

Yes. It is one of many important parts. There are ports, aviation, rail, the customers themselves and customs checks. There are all sorts of different things—a huge number of different things—that impact on the supply chain. This is just one of them.

Ruth Cadbury

Yes. You are confirming that it is important, but you did not meet the Prime Minister’s adviser. Thank you.

Chair

Baroness Vere, you referred to our report back in 2016 and the recommendations to try to increase the number of HGV drivers. Given what has happened over the last few months, do you think the sector is now doing enough to fix the driver shortage?

Baroness Vere

There is always more to be done. It is really clear. The sector is very large. It employs a vast number of people. For example, I have met DHL and seen what they are doing with their training academy. It is fantastic. It is great. They are getting in a diverse group of people to become HGV drivers. They are paying for their training and their CPC. That is really positive. There are some great beacons of hope. Of course, there are all sorts of different people, and others will not be doing as much. Potentially, they will still be relying solely on agency workers. Many employers give their drivers cash for overnight parking. I am sorry, but if I am a driver and I am given cash for overnight parking, I can keep the cash and park in a lay-by. There are lots of employment practices that need to be improved. This is a long-term issue. We will work with the sector to do it, but it has to step up.

Chair

This is a very wide question. Perhaps you could give a brief answer, even though it is very tempting to say more. What more can the sector do? What should it be doing? Bear in mind that we will drill into this as well, so just set the scene.

Baroness Vere

Do you want me to say one thing that I want the sector to do?

Chair

Yes. That would be a good way to answer the question.

Baroness Vere

Invest in your people. Why can’t you be like the bus sector and pay to train your people? Don’t expect them to pay for it themselves. Three grand before you even have a job is a lot of money.

Chair

Thank you. It was very good of you not to give a lengthy answer. We will go on to specific Government interventions next, but again perhaps you could set the scene. Are the Government considering further intervention? Are what has happened over the last few months and the actions that have been taken considered to be the jolt that was needed and it is now down to industry to crack on?

Baroness Vere

No. The Government are never going to say, “Job done,” on this one, because we have an awful lot still going on. You have seen the 32 interventions, which are short, medium and long term. They vary from economic interventions, such as suspending the HGV levy, through to the very small drivers’ hours extensions. The Government will continue to review everything. We have ongoing work with the lorry parking issue. It is quite a significant part of my focus at the moment.

Chair

Thank you for the openers. We will now drill into the status and success of the Government interventions. We will start with licensing and testing. I will hand over to Greg Smith.

Greg Smith

Good morning, Minister. In your previous answer, you alluded to the fact that the Government have made many interventions in recent months. I want to see where you feel we are as a result of some of those interventions—which ones have definitely worked, which ones have made some impact and which ones have made a big impact. Can we start with the changes to drivers’ hours rules? How big an impact have those changes had in recent months? Are you looking to retain those changes for the long term, or do the rules around driver hours need some tweaking?

Baroness Vere

None of the interventions that we have done has failed to meet my expectations. However, we have to be clear that some of the impacts of the interventions are very small, and necessarily so. Drivers’ hours is one of those. Cabotage is another. Those were tools and levers that we had, so we decided to use them. The drivers’ hours extension is extremely limited. Sometimes it is very much overblown as some sort of radical change to drivers’ hours. It is not. Of course, the restrictions on being able to use it are very clear. You have to be able to evidence a detriment. You have to evidence that there would be an improvement. You must not compromise driver safety. You have to agree it with the employee. Therefore, very few people are using it. That is okay, because the people who are using it can demonstrate all of those things and we know that it is working.

Greg Smith

I am not expecting a precise number, but roughly how many firms have—

Baroness Vere

I can give you a precise number.

Greg Smith

How many firms have taken the opportunity to extend their driver hours?

Baroness Vere

The latest one goes to 9 January. We had initial notification forms from 165 operators. There are 69,000 operators. However, we do not know how big the operators are. We would expect them to be in the perishable food industry or in places where there is just-in-time-type delivery and going from nine to 10 hours on a particular day will allow you to get the last delivery in. That is the sort of situation where we would expect it to be used.

Greg Smith

That is helpful. You mentioned cabotage just now. Can you give a similar update on the impact that the temporary changes relaxing cabotage have had on supply chains? How many operators are we aware of that have used those relaxations to move their staff and vehicles around? What impact have they had, even if it is a small one?

Baroness Vere

We should note that, prior to the pandemic, cabotage was only about 1% of tonne miles or 0.5% of tonnes lifted, so it was already a very small element. Sadly, I do not have the sort of detail that I think you want. Before the pandemic, it was equivalent to about 2,500 domestic drivers. At the moment, we are gathering information from our information and advice sites to try to understand which overseas drivers are on cabotage legs. Obviously, it is quite a difficult bit of information to find. We think it has had an impact, but we never thought it would be a massive impact. Again, it was a case of every little helps.

Greg Smith

Does the feedback that you have had from the industry indicate that it is clamouring to keep the relaxed rules, or is it something everyone is a bit quiet on?

Baroness Vere

Everyone is fairly quiet at the moment, because it does not run out until April. We will go out again in due course to see whether it needs to be extended. We are keeping it under review and have not made a decision on it. We also recognise that we are post the Christmas period now. It is much quieter out there, so there is less need for cabotage. I am not aware that there is a clamour to keep it at this time.

Greg Smith

I appreciate the point about April, but April is not that far away. Companies like to be able to plan. When do you think you will be in a position to give the industry some certainty on whether or not things will be extended beyond April?

Baroness Vere

This was a short-term intervention, for a limited period. I am content to leave it for a few more weeks before we approach industry again to see whether it is working.

Greg Smith

On the changes to testing, most people talk about the changes to pulling a trailer and so on, but they are much broader than that. Do you think that the changes that were put into the testing regime and the licensing regime in certain areas have had the biggest impact or the smallest impact?

Baroness Vere

From a Government perspective, on what the Government can immediately do directly, they have had a very significant impact. We know that the number of HGV tests in December went up by 73% between 2019 and 2021. That is a lot. Even at this time, we are currently on HGV driving test wait times of about three weeks, which is not too bad considering that you have to be trained anyway. We know that the demand is still there. I am going to be honest with you. One of the challenges is that the demand can be patchy, in that it is greater in some areas than in others. We need to look at making sure that we get the resources to the right places. For example, Bristol has a bit of a demand peak at the moment, which is why we are recruiting 40 additional driving examiners for HGV drivers. In general, I think the driving test changes have worked. They have done what it says on the tin. The Defence driving examiners we had until December did the trick. They have now gone back to their day job, which is fine. We managed to cope following that. In general, I commend everybody at DVSA on the work that they have done on this.

Greg Smith

Okay. The 73% increase is good news and clearly tells a story of a system that is getting back on its feet. How sustainable do you think it is going to be? Are we about to face a big trough again, with the Defence staff gone, demand still up and the Road Haulage Association saying that there is a driver shortage gap in the tens of thousands to be filled?

Baroness Vere

No.

Greg Smith

You are confident that we are going to have a—

Baroness Vere

Yes. Some of the things that we have put in place do not come in immediately and need to come in later this year. For example, because we took out the reversing, coupling and uncoupling test and are putting that into the private sector, our HGV driving examiners will have more time. In order to do that, we need to move them from four tests a day to five tests a day, which has not even been done yet. That is more capacity. Obviously, the first thing that has to happen is that we need to accredit the private testers just for the reversing bit. Then that change will come in. I am content that our capacity will continue to increase. It will make up for the loss of the Defence driving examiners and deal with any demand that will be coming through the system.

Greg Smith

This question is to understand the effectiveness of some of the specific interventions that were made. There was a change to allow some temporary visas for drivers to come to the UK to work. How many were issued?

Baroness Vere

I do not have those numbers. They will be in the Home Office quarterly immigration statistics, which will be released shortly.

Greg Smith

Does the DFT have any inkling, from working with the Home Office across Government, joined-up Government, of the number of applications that were processed—not necessarily granted—as part of that?

Baroness Vere

I cannot help you there, Mr Smith.

Mr Bradshaw

Can I ask a question on that point?

Chair

I would like to probe there as well. To set the scene, if you think of all the domestic interventions that were made and then bring in the decision to allow more drivers from the EU, do you think that the latter part added much to the resolution?

Baroness Vere

We will need to wait for the Home Office stats to come through. The visas are available only to food drivers and fuel drivers. We should note that there is a very significant driver shortage in the rest of the EU as well, so I was not expecting the floodgates to open at any stage, ever.

Chair

Thank you. Ben, before I bring you in, I want to bring in Nav Mishra. Welcome to the Committee, Nav.

Navendu Mishra

Thank you, Chair. Good morning, Baroness. In October, the Government changed the cabotage rules in the UK, which has allowed companies from anywhere in the world to send lorries with foreign drivers to the UK to work unlimited hours, making unlimited deliveries, in any 14-day period. For that time, the drivers can sleep in their cabs, but after two weeks, when the 14-day period is up, they are supposed to leave the UK. Unite the union has established that there is no monitoring by the Department for Transport of how many companies and lorries have taken advantage of this policy. Without the DFT monitoring that, there could be a clear breach of UK employment law and driving regulations. Will the Department address the issue?

Baroness Vere

As I said earlier, the Department is gathering information from the information and advice sites about how extensively the extended cabotage rules are being used. I note that in normal circumstances you could have made two cabotage trips in seven days. We should remember that DVSA continues enforcement. DVSA is very good at intelligence-led and targeted enforcement and, dare I say it, tends to focus on foreign vehicles. The enforcement will always remain. DVSA will look at driving hours and whether or not drivers are working within the rules.

Navendu Mishra

If the Department is not sure how many visas have been issued, how is it targeting foreign vehicles and enforcing regulations?

Baroness Vere

The visa issue is not relevant to this. You can target a foreign vehicle because it has a foreign number plate.

Navendu Mishra

Do you have numbers for how many vehicles have had enforcement issued against them or been checked?

Baroness Vere

For what, in particular?

Navendu Mishra

Particularly under the regulation change.

Baroness Vere

No, but I can see whether we can find out. To be honest with you, it is such a very small part of the system that I imagine it will be very small, but I will see whether I can get something from DVSA. It is very focused on intelligence-led enforcement and I think that it works very well.

Navendu Mishra

I appreciate the point that you make, that it is a very small aspect of what the Department does. What is your assessment of the impact on road safety of drivers doing unlimited hours and unlimited deliveries in a 14-day period?

Baroness Vere

Why would they be doing unlimited hours? I do not understand.

Navendu Mishra

There was a regulation change in October, I believe.

Baroness Vere

But not for unlimited hours.

Navendu Mishra

My understanding is that it allows foreign drivers to make unlimited deliveries and to work unlimited hours in a 14-day period.

Baroness Vere

Rubbish.

Navendu Mishra

You are disputing that.

Baroness Vere

Yes. How can you do unlimited hours? You have to abide by the UK working hours regulations, of course. That’s it. Just because cabotage exists, it does not mean that when you enter the UK you do not have to abide by the rules and regulations of the UK, which include vehicle safety, driver safety and welfare. All of those things are exactly the same.

Navendu Mishra

Will your Department be able to share the data on the numbers with the Committee?

Baroness Vere

We will share whatever data we have. To be honest, if somebody has a drivers’ hours thing, we will not know whether or not they are on a cabotage leg. Why would you know that?

Navendu Mishra

Will you be able to share the monitoring data on how many companies and drivers have taken advantage of the change in policy?

Baroness Vere

I said earlier that we are going to get more data on cabotage. Will we know exactly how many cabotage legs have changed because we went from two cabotage legs in seven days up to an unlimited number in 14? No, we will never have that data. We might be able to get some sort of estimate. How would you know?

Chair

Just so that we are clear, my understanding is that there has been a change from seven days to 14 days. Then you have the end to the restriction on the number of pick-ups, but you are still subject to all of the other standards, including on hours, as beforehand.

Baroness Vere

Yes, always.

Chair

That was my understanding as well.

Baroness Vere

Always.

Mr Bradshaw

Can I come back briefly to the EU visa scheme, Minister? We have had one set of quarterly figures already, haven’t we, or are we still waiting for the first set of figures? The Times reported back in October that just 27 lorry drivers had applied under the scheme.

Baroness Vere

I cannot remember when the scheme came in, but it may well have been just 27. As I said, Mr Bradshaw, I was not expecting a tsunami of HGV drivers from the EU because they do not have any either.

Mr Bradshaw

Do you think it is just down to the shortage of drivers? We used to have a lot of drivers from the EU, didn’t we, particularly from eastern Europe? Why has it become less attractive for them to come here?

Baroness Vere

Because Poland has a shortage of 127,000 licence holders. Why would you come here, particularly in the short term? I also know that some people were looking at it and were more willing to pay people quite a lot of money. It was up to the market to decide whether or not they were going to try to get people through on those visas. It is not really going to shift the dial. It was a short-term and temporary fix, and a lever that we had available to us.

Mr Bradshaw

When you say they would not come in the short term, does that imply you thought that the period was too short, and that if they had been offered a longer period they might have been more interested?

Baroness Vere

Who knows? I have no particular view on it. I feel that we are not going to get a lot of EU drivers in the UK, and, in any event, we should be investing in and training our domestic workforce. It was up to 5,000 visas for very specific types of drivers and very specific types of companies. I do not know what the numbers will be in the end for how many we get, but it is not really going to shift the dial.

Chris Loder

From a slightly different perspective than my colleague, would you say, Baroness Vere, that where some businesses have decided to increase the number of agency staff it has meant that driving on those terms is now less appealing to those from outside the UK, and that could indeed be one of the reasons why they have chosen not to come here to help for the shorter term?

Baroness Vere

I think you have opened a slight can of worms there because it depends. For workers, agency work has become less attractive since the change in IR35. However, on the flip side, from a diversity perspective, one might imagine that for some people from non-traditional HGV driver demographic groups working for an agency might be a good thing. I am not sure that it would have any relationship to EU drivers.

Chris Loder

What do you think might be the good thing about it?

Baroness Vere

You can pick and choose when you work. Imagine if you were a mother and you wanted to become an HGV driver but you wanted the school holidays off. Working for an agency might allow you to do that. Working for a company would allow you to do that if they allowed you to do it, but that is another question.

Chair

Let’s move on to recruitment. To start off, I will hand back to Nav.

Navendu Mishra

What are the barriers preventing new people from becoming HGV drivers, Minister?

Baroness Vere

Cost.

Navendu Mishra

Cost of insurance? Training?

Baroness Vere

No, not insurance because the companies pay for the insurance. It is the cost of training. It is £3,000, at least.

Navendu Mishra

What are the Government doing to tackle that?

Baroness Vere

The Government do not propose that they pick up the tab for that. It should, as I have said numerous times, be up to the industry to invest more in its people. However, the Government have put in place some very positive interventions. I was really pleased with my colleagues from the Department for Education who managed to find £34 million, and we are investing that in boot camps for 11,000 HGV drivers. It will be completely free to people. They were announced back in December. We expect the first tranche to come out of the system in March. Twenty-one colleges and independent providers are involved in the programme. It is a 16-week training programme. It includes the cost of driver CPC licensing and drivers’ medicals, and there is a guaranteed job interview at the end. That is great for 11,000 workers. Would I like the Government to be training all workers in the HGV sector? Absolutely not, but we had a crunch, and the DFE came up trumps by putting in place the boot camps very quickly, so that was really positive. The other win that we have had with the DFE is apprenticeships. We have managed to increase, both for the large goods vehicle apprenticeships and for the urban driver apprenticeships, the amounts to £7,000 and £5,000 respectively, which is good for the larger companies that pay the apprenticeship levy and will encourage them to take on more apprentices. Those are the sorts of things that the Government are doing. At the heart of all of this, we need investment in people by the industry, as a normal private sector would do.

Navendu Mishra

Mr Bradshaw made the point about 27 visas issued from the European Union. You made the point that we need to make sure that we train the domestic workforce to support the sector.

Baroness Vere

Correct.

Navendu Mishra

On the new generation of people coming into the industry, diversity is an issue in the road freight sector. You gave an example of the gender issue earlier. Why have attempts to improve diversity not been more successful in the sector?

Baroness Vere

What attempts would they be? The sector has to do a little bit more to do that. You are absolutely right, Mr Mishra. Drivers tend to be older, whiter, and maler. We need to think about how we widen the community of drivers. That is why the Government are working very closely with the sector on the year of logistics, a year-long programme that will highlight all of the different jobs you can have in logistics as a whole—not just HGV driving but all sorts of fantastic jobs in logistics. We will be launching that alongside the industry in a few, let’s say, months. One of the key strands of that work is how we tackle the lack of diversity. Here is an interesting stat; I think it is interesting. Did you know that 14.4% of people who take their LGV test are female? That is quite high. Only 1.5% of actual drivers are female. Where have all the women gone? Why did they not want to stay? We need to sort it out. Diversity is a key point and a really good one to raise.

Navendu Mishra

You said a few months. Are we expecting that programme this year?

Baroness Vere

Goodness, yes. I want to say April, but I will get into trouble.

Navendu Mishra

This year. Okay.

Chair

You won’t get into trouble. You said April.

Baroness Vere

It may be slightly before that or slightly after that. I am trying to say that it is not a million miles away.

Grahame Morris

Good morning, Baroness Vere. In fact, with some of the answers that you gave to my colleagues earlier, you have covered the ground and some of the questions I wanted to raise in relation to current entry points in apprenticeships and boot camps. I wonder if I might take the opportunity to try to clarify my understanding of some of your earlier answers in relation to barriers to increasing the number of drivers that we have in the sector. I wonder if I might help you out. The Road Haulage Association sent us a note in relation to the EU visas. You mentioned there were 5,000 that the Department initially made available. The Road Haulage Association think around 200 have been issued in the latest tranche. I do not know whether that figure is accurate. You said that you did not think it would be a game changer, so I wonder why the Department made 5,000 visas available originally. Was that just a contingency?

Baroness Vere

Why not? I appreciate the input from the Road Haulage Association, whose lobbying over the last 18 months has focused entirely on getting EU visas, and now they are complaining that they are not being taken up. I sat in a room and said to them that I did not think the visa thing would work, and, lo and behold, we can see that we do not have a huge number coming in. Had the Road Haulage Association not spent all of their lobbying power on something that was not going to work, we might have looked at other solutions.

Grahame Morris

Minister, I am not here as an advocate for the Road Haulage Association.

Baroness Vere

No, but I hope they are watching.

Grahame Morris

I am simply sharing some information furnished to the Committee, for your comment on the numbers. That is all. Can I ask you something else about some of your earlier answers to my colleagues in relation to addressing the driver shortage? I am not talking about bringing in drivers from the EU but rather recruitment and retention of drivers to increase the number. I hate to mention it by name, but the same organisation says there is a shortage of about 85,000 in the sector. You mentioned that there were some consultations or discussions with employers about changes to conditions, and I am particularly thinking about changes to drivers’ hours because I was under the impression that was a time-limited change until April. That is still the case, isn’t it? Were the discussions with employers you mentioned earlier just informal soundings or a more formal consultation?

Baroness Vere

We have had all sorts of consultations on various things. The current extension to drivers’ hours runs out on 10 February, so it is a very short one. It started on 12 January. The reason for it was that Omicron suddenly arrived. The good thing is that HGV drivers do not get Omicron as much as other people. Fingers crossed that everything is okay. I have ongoing conversations with all sorts of people in the sector. We have formal consultations on our driving licence changes and driving test changes. We have had 9,100 responses. We have a very close relationship with all sorts of different people, and we welcome feedback and ideas.

Grahame Morris

Yes, with the employers. I respectfully point out that my own union, Unite, which represents many of the drivers in the sector, is very concerned about long, excessive hours; excessive and irregular shift patterns; and the lack of welfare and parking facilities, which indeed the Committee saw quite recently on its visit to Dover. They are significant factors in contributing to driver shortages now and before the pandemic. I want to stress that extending drivers’ hours even temporarily will have a negative effect on recruitment. That is the opinion of my trade union.

Baroness Vere

I respectfully disagree with your trade union on that issue, although I agree with it on other issues about working conditions, lorry parking and all the other things that impact retention. As I have tried to explain, the extension to drivers’ hours is tiny and, in any event, simply matches what British drivers’ hours rules are. Not every truck—

Grahame Morris

I do not want to go down the path about cabotage and EU visas. These are quite important points in addressing the skills shortage in this sector. I was very interested in what you said about costs and investing in people. I was very interested that you mentioned your visit to DHL to see the facilities there, and you were advocating employers paying for training. It is quite clear from evidence we have had from organisations representing training providers that the agency people are often paying for their own training, and that is a disincentive. I am pleased to hear your remarks in that regard.

Baroness Vere

It is not just agency people paying for their own training; it is anybody, even if you want to go and work for one of the big firms. That is the issue. Yes, I agree.

Chair

How long are skills boot camps likely to be made available? Is it going to continue as a positive route into the sector, as far as you are concerned?

Baroness Vere

At the moment, we have 11,000 places. That take-up will come through. We have had good demand. I do not know how long the total programme will be at 11,000 places. I can find out and get back to you. At the moment, we are just looking at 11,000 places, and I cannot prejudge any decision as to whether the Government would then permanently put that into place. It might be for the sector to think about.

Chair

I would be interested in your observations as to what reasons the Government might continue with it if at the moment they do not know.

Baroness Vere

It could be that we focus it on a particular type of driver or whatever, going back to Mr Mishra’s point. Who knows? Let’s see.

Chair

It could be tailored perhaps to look at diversity where there need to be certain—

Baroness Vere

I am slightly riffing. You might want to look at it on income or things like that.

Chair

I would be really interested in your thoughts on it when you write. You talked about the impact of the cost being £3,000. Do you think there is a need to change the rules for the industry if they will not do it themselves and fund it themselves, rather than expecting the drivers to do so?

Baroness Vere

It would be disappointing if we had to end up in those circumstances. It really would be. There are a number of things that need to be fixed. Driver training is one of them. The availability of lorry parking is another, particularly if employers do not properly fund drivers to be able to pay to park safely overnight. I would not want to say that we would do it. It would be quite a significant step, but I want to see some change from the industry.

Chair

The reason I say that is that some might say that when the issue of shortages came up the first reaction from the Road Haulage Association tended to be, “Let’s look to abroad and at the bygone days of cheaper foreign labour,” which, as you have mentioned, does not really exist any more because there are shortages across Europe. It seems that something needs to be brought in by Government to change the culture, which always tends to be a race to the bottom on pay rather than, if you pay people more, more people might want to come into the industry.

Baroness Vere

It would be quite interventionist though, wouldn’t it, Mr Merriman?

Chair

It certainly would. The question is, given that you mentioned our report back in 2016, whether you are comfortable that the industry can mend its own platform.

Baroness Vere

It should have the incentive to do so, otherwise, clearly, other options might be looked at.

Chair

Yes, incentives. If the incentives are not tempting enough, more stick maybe. Ruth, do you want to come in before I go to retention?

Ruth Cadbury

Moving on to drivers returning to the sector, because that is an element of the skills shortage that could be addressed, I and maybe others were approached by an experienced driver, currently on universal credit, but wanting to get back into HGV driving. He needed to renew his driver certificate of professional competence and applied for one of the boot camps. He was asked to complete a 27-page personality assessment, the first time he has ever had to do that after many years of driving. He could not get on the boot camp and was failed, and reckons about 75% to 80% of current HGV drivers would fail that test. We sought to ask what the pass/fail point was and what the criteria for passing the 27-page personality assessment would be, and he thinks it was written by someone who has never been in an HGV cab in their life. Once he has that certificate, he can walk straight into work and get off universal credit. What analysis have you done of the barriers and opportunities for drivers getting back in, and whether the boot camps are the way to go, particularly a free course for someone on benefits? Have you looked at the applications and whether the people you want are not just applying but also getting on to these courses?

Baroness Vere

I too heard about this gentleman. He is clearly getting about a bit. I do not understand why he is applying to a boot camp if he has an HGV licence.

Ruth Cadbury

He needs to renew his certificate.

Baroness Vere

In which case he should just go to Jobcentre Plus and they will put him—

Ruth Cadbury

But they referred him.

Baroness Vere

Then it was Jobcentre Plus that referred him in the wrong direction. If he already has his HGV licence, he just needs his driver CPC. By the way, there are very few people—we are literally talking a couple of hundred—who are unemployed and hold an HGV licence. If he just needs his DCPC, JCP should direct him towards the adult education something—I can’t remember what it is called; fund?—and they will pay for him to get his driver CPC. He does not need to go to the boot camp because he has his licence.

Ruth Cadbury

Okay, but is a 27-page personality assessment what you would expect to get on a boot camp?

Baroness Vere

I don’t know. I have not seen it.

Ruth Cadbury

Maybe you should have a look. This was one of the contractors in the boot camp project.

Baroness Vere

I should imagine that there needs to be an application form. I do not know what is on the application form. People will have views about whether the application form is appropriate or not, but the reality is that the providers went through a rigorous assessment programme that involved people from the industry. Some people will disagree that an application form is 27 pages long. Maybe there are three questions per page. I do not think it matters how long it is. The reality is: are we getting people interested in the boot camps, and are we getting people on the boot camps? The answer is yes.

Greg Smith

A lot of the issues we have just been discussing are going to be inextricably linked to this. Given the huge cost of becoming an HGV driver in the first place—personal cost, as you have rightly said—why do you think that so many are going through that, spending all that money, getting their various qualifications, certificates, a job, and then quite quickly leaving the profession?

Baroness Vere

It is a very interesting question. The reality, and the good news, is that HGV drivers can earn £50,000 a year. Eventually, the initial cost of £3,000 falls away, but you have to have your driver CPC renewed every five years. It may just be, as we have talked about today, that for some people at certain times in their life it is not compatible. It can be quite a hard life, so we will always see people who decide to leave the industry after a certain period of time. To pick up what Ms Cadbury was talking about, returners are really important. We know that there are 1 million people with HGV licences. I have written to each and every one of them and asked them to come back. It is not a shortage of licensed people; it is a shortage of people willing to work in the industry. I am sure we will come to lorry parking forthwith. Pay is now less of an issue, but it is clearly something that the system needs to look at. As to conditions, if I was in the industry, I would be looking very hard at what average shifts look like and at what different types of contracts you have for different types of work. You need to attract different types of people who want to work different hours; that is the really important part. What are the challenges when you are out on the road? You must have the patience of a saint if you are an HGV driver, quite frankly. Not only do you have challenges of periodic congestion, but you have a general unwelcomeness, shall we say, from the general public—sometimes they do not like HGVs going through their road—and the issue of lorry parking.

Greg Smith

Can we unpack what you feel needs to change? I am not asking what the Government need to do because I sense from some of your previous answers that we might be on a similar page about not being instinctive regulators or going for the interventionist route. For the drivers many of us spoke to in Thurrock and Kent last week, there is a huge range in what a normal day looks like to different people. While I sensed from some of those we spoke to that there is a big shift away from the overnighters and the jobs that take them away from home for one, two, three whole weeks at a time to more local routes, the total range of what is on the job market cannot be the problem because there is movement within it. Where is the issue across all of those different types of employment, from the different vehicles, the dirty loads, as some of them called it, to the clean transport? What is it that really needs to change?

Baroness Vere

I think the sector as a whole has an image problem. It is not portrayed as something that is regarded as a skilled and professional role. I think it is. It is a skilled and professional role. It comes down to ensuring that the people who employ drivers, and then contract with their employers, treat their drivers with respect. I am not entirely sure that that level of respect necessarily comes through. I do not know if, when you were in Kent, you went to the Ashford international truck stop. You did not? It is amazing.

Ruth Cadbury

It is.

Baroness Vere

It is so amazing. That is the level of respect that I would like to give our truckers, but I do not want the Government to have to go round and put Ashford international truck stop equivalents across the country. Somehow, we need to make sure that there is enough pressure from the sector and the demand, because the employers are paying for these services, to put those sorts of things into place. If I was a trucker, I would spend every night there.

Chair

I hope to go to the Ashford one. We went to see two of Moto’s facilities—one that you would regard as positive and the other one with work to do. I do not think Moto runs the Ashford one, so that is why.

Baroness Vere

No, they do not.

Greg Smith

There is a natural problem though, isn’t there? Yes, we did not see Ashford. I totally accept that it is a wonderful place. I might not holiday there, but I am sure it is a fantastic facility, but that is not normal, is it? We saw some service stations that were perfectly functional but not great. We saw one of the lay-bys where lots of them stop and where the Chairman had a bit of an incident.

Baroness Vere

Oh dear.

Greg Smith

The normality at the sort of facilities that employers are asking their drivers to stop in is not the model of virtue that you signal in Ashford, is it?

Baroness Vere

No, absolutely not. I believe I saw a photograph on Twitter of the Chair next to a Portaloo. It really is mixed. That is exactly why the Government have commissioned a review of lorry parking. The commission has been done. The work is under way. There will be a detailed report that will probably do what you did in Kent, but do it more broadly, to truly understand where the facilities are and where we are lacking things. The reality is that it is a hugely complex picture. Some people want overnight parking. It has to be safe, secure, and well lit, potentially with power so that they can keep refrigerated units on overnight without keeping the engines running. There are other people who need time for breaks. We have mandated breaks that have to happen. It is matching those two different needs and providing the sorts of welfare that we would expect for drivers. Of course, demand will not be uniform across the country. There will be travel corridors where you need more than others. We are going to do this work, which I think will be fascinating. We have £32.5 million. We need a planning system that works, and then we have to match all that together with the private sector and pull some levers, which we kind of do because we own the leaseholds for some of the SRN MSAs. That might be a way forward. There is a lot of work to do, but we are absolutely up for that challenge.

Greg Smith

Okay, I think we have slightly strayed into an area that I was not going to focus on.

Baroness Vere

Sorry.

Chair

We are now going to focus on facilities with Karl McCartney.

Karl McCartney

Thank you very much, Chair. Baroness, you have covered some of the ground that I was going to cover.

Baroness Vere

Sorry.

Karl McCartney

That’s fine. We will delve down into it. I want to quickly go back on some of the stats that you found interesting, which I did as well. It was the phraseology. You said 14.5% of tests were taken by female drivers? Were they also passed?

Baroness Vere

Are you casting aspersions against female drivers?

Karl McCartney

No, it is because the next question, which I am about to ask, relates to that.

Baroness Vere

I do not know.

Karl McCartney

Could you let us know that in the future?

Baroness Vere

Absolutely. I am not sure if it is gendered, between—

Karl McCartney

That is what I wanted to—

Baroness Vere

—male and female, but I think we need to find out, don’t we?

Karl McCartney

Indeed. Thank you. Why do you believe the UK, maybe compared with other European countries, does not have sufficient decent facilities for all HGV drivers?

Baroness Vere

It is very challenging and multifaceted. I talked about public perception. When I was in a county in the far south-east of England, which shall remain nameless but might be Kent, I got a lot of pressure from them asking whether they could have more enforcement powers and whether they could whack bigger fines on people who are parked where they should not be. The corollary to that is that, if they are parked up where they should not be, where are they going to park and what plans does Kent have for introducing lorry parks? They meet very substantial local resistance. This is one of the challenges we face. It is exactly like housing, where everyone wants more but not in their back yard.

Karl McCartney

You mentioned planning restrictions Are the Government—this may be an oxymoron—doing cross-departmental working? Are we going to see planning restrictions perhaps removed for facilities? Some of the conversations we had with drivers were that the places that have good facilities were full by 5 o’clock in the afternoon.

Baroness Vere

Yes.

Karl McCartney

If each of those was allowed to have compulsorily purchased an area that allowed 250 more lorries to park at each one of them, is that not one of the simplest and cheapest options to providing HGV drivers with facilities that they want to use?

Baroness Vere

I would not rule it out. I am not ruling anything out when it comes to lorry parking. It is very complicated. We have reviewed our national planning policy framework, which is a DLUHC bag, to try to recognise the importance of parking facilities, particularly in places in the midlands for example, where there are fantastic big warehouses that you can barely see until you are right on top of them because they are painted so well, but they often do not have enough associated parking facilities. There must be a way, if we are going to have a lot more logistics centres, to loop that into the planning permission somehow. I do not know, but we want to think about lots of different ways. I also want to think about what National Highways can do. When we do a road enhancement, we can take land to do the road enhancement, but we cannot take land for anything else. We have to hand back the temporary sites that we might have to build a road enhancement. Is there more that we can do when we change roads?

Karl McCartney

In the report that you just mentioned that is being done, which you said is going to be very exciting and interesting—I am sure it is and we cannot wait to see it as well—will there be outline steps that the Government can take to remove barriers for private interest to build and upgrade motorway service areas particularly?

Baroness Vere

That is the work we are doing in our Department. The report is much more of a needs assessment, to get a better understanding of where we are; which ones are full at 5 o’clock, which ones are, quite frankly, worse for wear. We will be looking at potentially introducing standards, bronze, silver, gold or whatever you want to call it. Let’s start giving reassurance to drivers that when they turn up they know what to expect. Let’s also understand that there are some good apps out there to book parking spaces and see availability online. There is much more the industry can do from a digital perspective to get information through to drivers to make it easier for them.

Karl McCartney

You mentioned distribution centres and logistics centres; we can call them what we like. What assessments have you or your Department made of the quality of the facilities available to HGV drivers at those distribution centres, noting that we have had evidence that it is sort of, “Roll in, get the stuff off, roll out very quickly,” whereas actually drivers have to take breaks?

Baroness Vere

We have not made a direct assessment of that. I wrote to them all about two years ago and told them off for not letting people wash their hands and take a comfort break.

Karl McCartney

Did they take that well?

Baroness Vere

The good thing is the drivers at least had something to wave at people and say, “Excuse me, I have a legal right to be able to use these facilities.” It will be an important part of the mix. It is private sector. If I was somebody running it, I would want to do the right thing. It does not cost millions of pounds to make it a bit better for drivers.

Karl McCartney

This is my final question, and you probably know where this one is going to come from.

Baroness Vere

No.

Karl McCartney

We are talking about the supply chain and the lack of drivers. If, instead of three lorry journeys, you have the option, which your Department has had for 14 years, of two with an extra-long trailer that is computerised, why isn’t the Denby trailer being given permits to go on the road?

Baroness Vere

The Denby trailer is my favourite topic, Mr McCartney.

Karl McCartney

It is my favourite, too.

Baroness Vere

As you know, we are doing a technical assessment, which is the first step that we must go through in order to fully understand the impact of putting a 25.25 metre, 60-tonne lorry on the road.

Karl McCartney

Indeed. There are now five European countries that allow it on the road.

Baroness Vere

That is great to know.

Karl McCartney

It is. It would be good if we were the sixth. Thank you, Chair.

Chair

Okay, thank you, Mr Denby. Simon is next and then Ben. Then I want to ask about planning.

Simon Jupp

Good morning, Minister.

Baroness Vere

Good morning.

Simon Jupp

You touched on lay-bys earlier. It is no doubt a very exciting proposition for many drivers, but the standard of them is woefully lacking in many places. Whose responsibility is it to ensure the safety of drivers forced to park in lay-bys?

Baroness Vere

That is a tricky one.

Simon Jupp

Isn’t it? What would be your guess? Obviously, we understand it is a guess. Which bodies may oversee these facilities in different places?

Baroness Vere

Which sort of facilities?

Simon Jupp

In lay-bys.

Baroness Vere

But what facilities do you have in a lay-by?

Simon Jupp

In some cases, a toilet that is nearly on its side, as we found last week in Kent.

Baroness Vere

Yes, that would be the local authority.

Simon Jupp

Overall, the land itself would, presumably, be local authority as well, or Highways England.

Baroness Vere

Depending on who owns the road.

Simon Jupp

There is a bit of a patchwork quilt of regulation, isn’t there?

Baroness Vere

Not really because there are only two people who own roads here—National Highways or the local authority.

Simon Jupp

But in terms of understanding which, where, who and what, it is a bit confusing, isn’t it?

Baroness Vere

Not really. Lay-bys are for certain types of uses, and there are a lot of them, but they should not be for overnight stays.

Simon Jupp

They should not be for overnight stays—

Baroness Vere

No, you can get fined £300.

Simon Jupp

—but they are used for overnight stays.

Baroness Vere

They should not be. You can be fined £300.

Simon Jupp

But, of course, some drivers seem to be in the position where they have to stay in lay-bys.

Baroness Vere

That is why we go back to lorry parking. I agree.

Simon Jupp

With that, taking away Highways England for a moment, if it is down to local authorities, do you think they have enough money in their budgets to maintain lay-bys?

Baroness Vere

I cannot remember how much roads maintenance is. I want to say £5.6 billion over three years. The roads maintenance budget is well known, and it—

Simon Jupp

It fluctuates from year to year, doesn’t it? Devon County Council, my local council, gets a different amount of money. Two years ago, it was £76 million. It is now almost £20 million less than that.

Baroness Vere

We are into roads maintenance. Okay. There was a year, last year—

Simon Jupp

I understand we had an outlier year.

Baroness Vere

You had an outlier year. The good thing about your current settlement is that it is three years. You have visibility. If there is one thing that local authorities say to me about roads maintenance, it is, “Let us plan,” because they can be efficient. That is where that maintenance will come from.

Simon Jupp

They can now plan to address the problems. The problem I see at the moment—and we saw it in Kent last week when the Chair had an unfortunate incident with his foot, but we also see it more widely driving up and down the country—is that lay-bys are closed and coned off in places like Devon and the far south-west, where there are not as many facilities for drivers. What can be done to help solve that problem, and who is monitoring the issue? Local authorities’ budgets have been cut quite a lot in recent years across the board, not just in transport, so who is monitoring this?

Baroness Vere

The conditions of roads are monitored nationally. The stats came out two months ago.

Simon Jupp

The condition of roads is one thing. Does that also cover lay-bys? If so, what is the measurement of when something is acceptable?

Baroness Vere

I will have to write on that, I am afraid.

Simon Jupp

That would be great. It would be much appreciated. Overall, are the Government happy with the current level of informal HGV parking facilities?

Baroness Vere

I do not want any informal HGV parking, and so on.

Simon Jupp

In order to solve that, you would have to have a massive intervention, wouldn’t you? It would have to be huge.

Baroness Vere

We need the private sector to step up. We need to reform the planning system. We need to ensure that people can actually pay for it. There are lots of issues to fix.

Simon Jupp

What action are you considering taking to address what some, including myself, would describe as substandard HGV informal parking, in lay-bys and things like that?

Baroness Vere

To be honest, there is a lot of work going on in the Department at the moment thinking about how we can address this. One of the things that I really have to get a grip on is the responsibility and accountability of local authorities. As you pointed out, they often are the people who manage roads. They are the ones who will grant planning permission, and sometimes do not. We need to reach a new agreement with local authorities, particularly those in areas where there is a real deficit in parking, which our review will find, and see how we are going to address it. Each area will probably have its own solution because all areas are definitely not the same.

Simon Jupp

Absolutely. I take your point. It is a point well made. You mentioned the three-year settlement for roads maintenance. If that is deemed not enough by a local authority that is trying its very best to maintain standards on local roads and address some of the problems that we have just discussed in this exchange, how does it then come back to the Department and say, “Can we have some more please?” Is there any mechanism to do that?

Baroness Vere

There is no mechanism to do that. The settlements are fixed by the Treasury.

Simon Jupp

What is the input from your Department to those discussions? Surely, the Treasury does not just write down some random numbers on a piece of paper.

Baroness Vere

The Government always make a very strong case to the Treasury for all of our priorities.

Simon Jupp

If a local authority said that it cannot afford to maintain some of those particular resources locally—some of the issues we have just covered—surely there is a mechanism for it to say to the DFT to tap on the Treasury’s door, which is a very busy door, I grant you, and for it to say, “We need more money for this, otherwise we are not going to be able to meet the standards that you expect of us.”

Baroness Vere

The Department is always willing to hear from local authorities, but we expect them to manage with the budget that has been set. There should be no expectation that there will be any further funding. The spending review was relatively recent.

Simon Jupp

All right. I do not want to repeat myself, so I will hand back to the Chair.

Chair

Simon, thank you. I want to come in on this as well, but let me bring in Ben first of all.

Mr Bradshaw

Do we know whether lorry drivers are, in practice, fined for overnighting in lay-bys where they should not?

Baroness Vere

I do not know. I do not know if we collate the stats. I imagine they sit at local authority level because they would be FPNs. Yes, they can be fined.

Mr Bradshaw

It would be rather unfair, given that 39% of lorry drivers cannot get into an official site overnight, to fine them when they have to park somewhere.

Baroness Vere

Yes, but remember that many lorry drivers will be working for companies that have a transport manager who plans their routes, so actually sometimes it is not the driver’s fault at all; it is the fault of the transport manager who did not plan the route properly.

Mr Bradshaw

Can I ask you about political philosophy? You said to the Chair earlier, “That would be very interventionist.” I was not sure whether you were being serious or ironic. Do you accept that where there is market failure there needs to be intervention?

Baroness Vere

Yes, but only as a last resort.

Mr Bradshaw

Okay. Have you spoken to your DCLG colleagues about the planning system and the need to make it more difficult for local authorities to—

Baroness Vere

Yes, we are in conversations with DLUHC.

Mr Bradshaw

You would like to see the planning system change to make it easier for companies to provide parking.

Baroness Vere

Yes, we would. Paragraph 109 was revised fairly recently. One of the issues may not be the planning system, but the implementation of the current planning system. That is our conversation with the local authority. Are they putting in place the current planning guidance?

Mr Bradshaw

We heard that local authorities were often turning down applications, only for the developer to win on appeal, which is a very common experience we all have with housing in our own constituencies and costs everyone a lot of money unnecessarily, whereas, if the guidance changed and made it more obvious that this was part of a strategic need in the country and local authorities should grant these permissions, it would be more difficult for them to turn them down in the first place.

Baroness Vere

Yes, I accept that. We will go away and look at it again. It is one of the workstreams that we have ongoing. It is a key part of the lorry parking strategy to try to figure out what the barriers are, to try to get more people to open.

Mr Bradshaw

One of the things that we heard very starkly from a number of drivers, and from the industry when they spoke to us, is that the difference between this country and the continent, in many cases, is that the provision of facilities on the continent is the responsibility of Government, either local, regional or national, and the facilities are therefore much better. You seem to be ideologically opposed to any Government or public intervention in the provision of facilities or the regulation or the setting of standards for them. You are confident that simply leaving it to the market is going to be enough.

Baroness Vere

That is not what I said at all. I am not an ideologue; I am a pragmatist. I said in an earlier answer that we would certainly look at setting standards—maybe not Government setting standards. I am not happy to say how many beefburgers should be sold, but there must be some way of working with the industry so that people know this is an X star. When you drive in France on their privatised roads, you have the aires. You know what you are going to get when you go to an aire, and you know what you are going to get when you go to one of the big service stations. They are of a standard. We are probably missing at least a minimum standard, but I think some people should be able to exceed a minimum standard. I am definitely not ruling out the setting of standards and all sorts of other interventions, but I want to make it absolutely clear that we will only intervene when there is definite evidence of market failure, otherwise we end up in the situation where we have the drivers’ hours limits—the driving hours limits—which everyone now thinks are targets. It should not be that everyone is driving up to the maximum driving hours. We set them as maximums, rather like a speed limit. I try to tell my children that it is a limit, not a target.

Mr Bradshaw

What does the Government setting the standards look like in practice to you?

Baroness Vere

I do not know yet because we are working on it.

Chair

Thanks, Ben. To come back to this and perhaps to finish off on it and clarify because I know there has been some sniggering among the Conservative members—

Baroness Vere

What happened?

Chair

—about which one of them can reveal it? They are obviously running a book. When we visited Moto, they were kind enough to allow us to stop off at a lay-by, and it was an absolute mess. I got off the minibus and stood in human excrement. We mentioned the Portaloo that was on its side. Everyone was very sympathetic towards me, as you can tell. That is the reality. What was interesting is that the driver of our minibus, who is a Kent resident, told us that those lay-bys are pretty much always full of lorries. If there are fines in place, they do not seem to be working. When we spoke to the drivers—Moto was excellent and allowed us to speak to the drivers in their service stations—they told us that in some instances their employer would not give them the money to park. Even if there was a space, which is a challenge anyway, their employer might be telling them, “No, we are not paying you.” I suppose it comes back to Ben’s point; it seems like there needs to be more intervention to make this fit for purpose. The ultimate implication of all of this is that we do not get our fuel delivered to our forecourt, and then all of a sudden it is the Government’s fault because people are getting very cross.

Baroness Vere

I agree. It is very disappointing to hear that some people do not even get paid at all. Did you speak to Kent County Council? It is responsible for enforcement and could use the money that it would get from enforcement to clean up the lay-bys.

Chair

That is very interesting because probably a lot of those lay-bys are National Highways, so I do not know whether Kent County Council has a policy of only doing that on its roads. The mess is the responsibility of a local authority because it is down to waste and environment, which will be the district council. In a way, that is the issue: there are all these different agencies with some responsibility, but there is no overall fix. I want to ask you about cost because you talked about the Treasury and getting funding. There was an intervention to improve lorry parking facilities towards the end of last year, but it was only £32 million. Do you think that money is enough to deliver a solution?

Baroness Vere

Until we understand exactly what the solution is, I cannot say whether that funding is enough or not. That is the work we have under way at the moment. I agree with you that there are lots of players in this particular field, which is why the Government see that they have a role to try at least to get some sort of direction on lorry parking. Defining exactly how that role plays out is what we are working on at the moment.

Chair

Moto was telling us about services that it had delivered in Rugby, but it had taken 13 years to be able to deliver them. A lot of that was down to the planning system. It had cost £40 million just to create 100 spaces. If you compare that with the £32 million that the Government are putting in, it is not going to touch the sides.

Baroness Vere

I know.

Chair

Those 100 spaces were full within two days.

Baroness Vere

The big challenge is that the business model for lorry parking is quite interesting. Laying hardstanding is expensive. You have to compare that with how much revenue you will get from it and the opportunity cost for HGV parking rather than people in cars who are likely potentially to spend more and turn over more quickly. The economic model is quite challenging.

Chair

Obviously, there are plans to reform the planning system. We were told that there are a number of district councils on the key route towards Dover, and those district councils do not have anything in their own local plans, so it is very difficult for the motorway service station providers to be able to win, certainly, the initial rounds on planning. Are you confident that, when planning reform comes in, there will be better provision on a strategic asset basis for the provision of motorway service stations?

Baroness Vere

Because we have two lots of players—local authorities and National Highways—we have to look at the impact of planning and the potential impact of changes to planning on both of them. With so many different things in transport, it often comes down to political will at local authority level. Sometimes, for all the will in the world, that does not happen, and you cannot get things through.

Chair

Doesn’t that mean that there is a requirement on Government and Parliament to change legislation to ensure that these things are not left to local whim. As you rightly say, locally, these parks are not popular, and therefore it is very difficult for district councils to be able to deliver them. Doesn’t it need the Government to come to their aid?

Baroness Vere

You may well be right.

Chair

You talked about leases. We were given an example by Moto where they have been trying to do it for years with the Government. I think they mentioned five years with the Department. They will not invest in a site because the lease is about to run out.

Baroness Vere

When is it about to run out?

Chair

By the end of the decade. What private company would invest when the landlord is not willing to turn the lease over?

Baroness Vere

Absolutely. I am well aware of this. It is not quite right; we are not in endgame detailed negotiations. It is the case that, first of all, the Government need to decide whether we definitely want to roll over existing leases or re-tender the lease. This is a Government freehold. Do we want to lease to the same provider? Probably. We absolutely have to check that it is the right value for money for taxpayers. In terms of negotiating, what do we want the new lease to look like and what conditions do we want to put on that lease? That is a quite a significant piece of work that officials are working on at the moment. I completely accept Moto’s point that they need certainty in order to invest. To a certain extent, the Government need to come to a view as to what we want them to invest in. We know that we need EV chargers, we need lorry parking, we need to make sure that appropriate facilities are on site, and all sorts of different things. We do not want to be overly prescriptive because we need them to innovate and we want them to be able to bring forward other things that you might have at a motorway service area that are beneficial to HGV drivers and private car drivers.

Chair

Bringing all of this together—recruitment, retention and facilities—we certainly hear from a lot of drivers that it is the facilities, and lack of, that put them off either staying or joining, so would the Government consider a levy situation? Given that a lot of the blame seems to be put down to the retail sector and the big high streets in terms of their margins and looking to get away with the bare minimum, and there are smaller road haulage operators employing drivers, it is very difficult to put the whole thing together. Would the Government consider saying to the industry as a whole, “You either get your house in order and stop blaming each other, or we will put a levy over the top of you and, effectively, tax you as a whole sector, and then we will put it in place ourselves”? Ultimately, people blame the Government when the fuel does not end up at the forecourt. Is that the kind of radical recommendation we should be making to you?

Baroness Vere

It is definitely something that has crossed my mind, but it is not something that one would want to do as a first step.

Chair

We have seen this before with something like the sugar tax where you say to the industry, “Do something about it or else,” and they do something about it. It works.

Baroness Vere

I have mulled it. It is quite radical. One would not want to see it happen, but goodness, industry, sort your life out.

Chair

Food for thought for us when it comes to our recommendations. Let’s move on to decarbonisation. Robert Largan will start us off.

Robert Largan

Thank you, Chair, and good morning, Baroness Vere. It is always a pleasure to have you in front of the Committee. Given everything we have been hearing about the enormous pressures on road haulage and road freight and the need to decarbonise the transport sector, what steps are the Government taking to encourage a modal shift towards rail freight?

Baroness Vere

Well, we have a fair amount of focus on rail freight at the moment. As you may know, we are working on the future of freight strategy, which is looking at all the different ways of carrying freight, and connectivity between them. It is being advised by something called the Freight Council, which is lots of CEOs of very large logistics companies. They are looking at rail freight, road freight—the whole lot—and at how we might get shift. In terms of rail freight directly, rail freight is very useful for certain types of goods, and very much depends on the interconnectivity between road and rail. We have invested £235 million on the rail freight network, and we have the mode shift something grant, which subsidises various loads to go from road to rail. We are very keen for that shift to happen, but we recognise that, for much of what goes on the road, rail freight is not suitable.

Robert Largan

I understand that there is a lot of freight that, even if it has to go by rail part of the way, the last part of the journey will have to be by road, and shorter journeys would make no sense. In my experience, from talking to a lot of businesses that are desperate to do more rail freight, and which even have their own railhead, they are still forced to rely on huge amounts of HGVs because there simply are not the slots.

Baroness Vere

The rail paths.

Robert Largan

They are not available. They cannot get them through Network Rail.

Baroness Vere

That is why one of the benefits of the Williams-Shapps plan for rail and Great British Railways will be a much better guiding mind looking at the system as a whole. I agree with you that there should be a huge opportunity, given how much we are spending on the railways, for rail freight. It could be that as passenger demand adjusts, which may be regionally—I am not saying it is going to adjust across the whole country—we could use the extra paths that are freed up for more rail freight. Therefore, the next issue becomes connectivity with the railhead.

Robert Largan

Yes. Was there much input from the road side of DFT to the integrated rail plan and the decision to go ahead with HS2, which is also increasing rail capacity and will free up more freight capacity? One would assume that your side of DFT was strongly encouraging that extra investment in rail capacity to make the shift easier.

Baroness Vere

To a certain extent, although I do not think that we are going to see the sorts of shifts that would move the dial particularly. It is always going to be a few percentage points. We are not going to get a substantial and very significant shift to rail, but where we can get a shift to rail, the Government are happy to support it.

Robert Largan

On the point you mentioned about railheads and access to them, I have seen quite a few businesses that are close to railheads that they do not own, which other businesses own, but they would be desperate to be able to use them. Is there anything the Government can do perhaps to issue guidance or to encourage more working together and allow businesses to collaborate using local railheads? Is that something that is being looked at?

Baroness Vere

I will definitely take that to the Department and see if it is part of the future of freight strategy. I am afraid you are at the limits of my knowledge on rail.

Ruth Cadbury

How do the Government expect HGVs to be powered in 20 years’ time?

Baroness Vere

If we are talking about HGVs that are under 26 tonnes, we have said that we will have no new diesel HGVs from 2035. For the rest of the HGVs, we have said that there will be no sale of new diesel HGVs from 2040. How they will be powered will very much depend on where they are located and what they are carrying. At the moment, we are looking at three ways. We have invested in zero-emission HGV trials. We are looking at battery electric, hydrogen fuel cell and catenary systems. I do not know whether catenary systems will ever work. Maybe they will, but only on certain routes. I certainly have a keen interest in seeing how we can develop hydrogen. From a battery electric perspective, buses are doing well in leading the way, and that will drive, hopefully, more development in the HGV space. We have not quite managed to crack hydrogen yet, and a multisector solution will be needed. We are technology agnostic. We just know that we want to go in that direction.