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Mr. Jamieson: The right hon. Member for East Yorkshire has provided some good counter-arguments to the hon. Member for Christchurch. Far be it from me to intervene in this Conservative spat. The right hon. Gentleman raises a good point. One of the difficulties would be that the driving licence would have to be regularly updated, which would require the licence to be taken to some point where the information could be re-encrypted. If that was not done regularly, the offences would not be kept up to date. Someone who picks up a lot of offences would not be spotted. It is an interesting idea.
I can see the other difficulty. I know that the right hon. Gentleman has a penchant for classic cars. There could be an imposition on owners of classic cars to have all these devices fitted. I dare say that many of his good friends in the classic car fraternity—I have some interest in classic cars myself—would have a view on the proposals of the hon. Member for Christchurch.
The hon. Member for Christchurch made a serious point; unlicensed and uninsured driving is a problem on our roads. In a few years' time, the ANPR system will be able to pick up from the DVLA computer and cross-reference whether the keeper of the vehicle has a current licence.
In 80 per cent. of cases the keeper is the person who is driving the vehicle. In a couple of years' time it will be possible for a police officer at the side of the road to check the car's MOT record and to know whether it is taxed and insured. He will also be able to check whether the keeper has a current licence. That does not mean that the keeper will be driving that vehicle but, in most cases, it will be that person. That will be a further device for the police to use. They will not have to stop the car but can use this new technology to make those checks in an instant. If it is appropriate they will be able to pull the car over. At present they tend to use good sense, judgment and hunches about a driver. In future they will have that contemporaneous information to assist them to make the decision.
John Thurso (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD): Might I just explore what the Minister just said? He said that when automatic licence plate readers come in, the police will be able to see whether the keeper of the vehicle has a licence. Presumably if they see that he does not they will stop the vehicle; otherwise there is not much point in having that ability. First, what will they do with all the cars that are registered to companies? Secondly, what happens in a case like mine? For historic reasons, I am the keeper of a vehicle that belongs to my wife. I never drive it. It is her car and she drives it. Would she be repeatedly stopped if I did not have a licence?
Mr. Jamieson: First, the technology for the ANPR system is currently under way. It will soon carry more information that can be accessed. The police will still use good sense. They will not stop every vehicle because the keeper does not have a licence. Clearly members of the family could be driving the vehicle. I
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do not think that the keeper has to hold a licence. Anyone can be the keeper of a vehicle. If the police had spotted someone who was driving in an unusual way or had committed an offence, this might be additional, good-quality information about the driver to help them decide whether to pull him over.
Obviously if they could see from their computer records that a car was not taxed or insured and the keeper did not have a current licence, it would be blue light time and they would pull the person over. However, the keeper of the vehicle not having a licence would not be sufficient grounds to pull someone over, especially if the vehicle was registered to a company. For example, in the case of a hire vehicle, it is fairly obvious that the person driving it is not the keeper.
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Nevertheless, the additional good-quality information provided will help enforcement agencies gradually squeeze down the number of people who can drive on the road while they are either unlicensed or uninsured and ensure that the rest of us can go about our daily business and drive safely on the roads.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 9 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Schedule 3
Endorsement: all drivers
Mr. Jamieson: I beg to move amendment No. 30, in schedule 3, page 78, line 32, leave out '77(2)' and insert '77A(2)'.
The Chairman: With this it will be convenient to discuss Government amendments Nos. 31 to 33.
Mr. Jamieson: When Bills are drafted, their complexity occasionally leads to minor drafting errors, and such errors occur in schedules 3 and 4 to the Bill. Amendments Nos. 30 and 31 make corrections to schedule 3, which contains legislative amendments enabling endorsement of driving licences rather than counterparts for all offenders. Much of the schedule is concerned with removing all references to the counterpart.
On two occasions—once in paragraph 66 of schedule 3, and once in paragraph 69, both of which amend the Road Traffic (New Drivers) Act 1995—reference is made to section 77(2) of the Road Traffic Offenders Act 1988. Those references should be to section 77A(2). Section 77 of the 1988 Act is omitted by paragraph 52 of schedule 3 as it relates to the system of endorsement based on the counterpart, which is being replaced. Under the new system of endorsement, it is the driving record, not the counterpart, that will be endorsed, and that is provided for in the new section 77A inserted by paragraph 26 of schedule 2.
Amendments Nos. 32 and 33 seek to correct drafting errors in schedule 4 to the Bill. The schedule relates to the law on driving instruction, and the amendments
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concern the ongoing conditions of registration for non-disabled persons and disabled driving instructors, which have been incorrectly cross-referenced.
I apologise to members of the Committee for those errors, and I hope that, with that explanation, they will accept the amendment.
Amendment agreed to.
Amendment made: No. 31, in schedule 3, page 79, line 39, leave out '77(2)' and insert '77A(2)'.— [Mr. Jamieson.]
Question proposed, That the schedule, as amended, be the Third schedule to the Bill.
Mr. Chope: The Minister says that schedule 3 will not come into operation for some years; I think that he said five or more. However, when it comes into operation, how will the individual driver know what is on his licence? As the Minister said, the licence will effectively be a smartcard containing encrypted information. Unless one has means of de-encrypting such information at home, how will one know, for example, that when a licence is subject to penalty points and sent off to the DVLA, the information is put on the licence accurately?
That is sometimes relevant in the context of totting-up. One cannot be subject to disqualification for 12 points on a licence unless the subsequent offences took place after previous penalties. So it is possible, in certain circumstances, to have 12 points or more on one's licence without being subject to disqualification because of the order in which offences were committed, compared with the order in which the convictions came.
At present, one can look at one's licence and see the information and, if there is a court appearance, one's adviser can look at the licence outside court. However, what will happen in future in relation to the information on the licences? How will people know that information? I hope that the Minister will be able to clarify that.
Later in our scrutiny of the Bill, we will consider whether old driving licences should have to be surrendered. It is implicit in what the Minister has already said that people with old-style driving licences will not have to submit them and exchange them for the brand-new driving licence without a counterpart until that system comes into operation, and that, in the interim, they will not have to change them for the newer licence with the counterpart. I understand that any requirement that there should be a mass return of old licences to the Department will not take effect until schedule 3 is operative.
John Thurso: If one looks at the use of card technology in the financial services industry, one sees that as the technology has become ever more complex, so the ability of people determined to commit fraud has also become more complex. For example, there is a whole battery of crimes to do with bank cards that did not exist 20 or 30 years ago, and there is sophisticated technology for reading and amending those kinds of cards. Has any risk assessment been
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carried out in relation to the new licence that will be issued when the licence with counterpart is dropped? Do the Government intend, between now and the introduction of the new licence, to undertake some sort of risk assessment of the opportunity for fraud or criminal behaviour in respect of such cards?
Mr. Jamieson: The hon. Member for Christchurch raised an important issue. The new licence will be a card, and no record will be shown on it. In that respect, it will be similar to a debit or credit card, which shows nothing that one can check. However, one can put a credit or debit card into a machine and enter a PIN code, and it will provide a reading of part or all of one's account. Thanks to the wonders of modern technology, one can now do all one's banking by accessing a computer, including finding out detailed information about the bank account, and even paying bills and transferring money from one account to another. I usually find myself transferring money from my account to my son's account, which is one of the hazards of being a parent.
The systems have not been set up yet, but such things should be equally possible with the new licence. We anticipate that there will be secure systems, similar to the current banking systems, where the user has to put in a series of commands to the computer that only he or she knows about, unless they are foolish enough to share them with others; I certainly do not share those commands with my son. There would be careful encryption of the information, so that only the person entitled to it could access it.
That would be one method of accessing the information—the individual interrogating the computer using the appropriate information such as PIN numbers, as for a bank account—but there would still be the facility, if someone had forgotten or lost their record, to write to the Department or to make a telephone call. However, with the telephone call, there would have to be a procedure with a series of checks prior to the information being given out, as for a telephone call to one's bank. It would therefore be perfectly possible for someone to make those checks with the new system.
One downside of the current system is that people lose or misplace their counterparts. I dare say that if I were asked now where my counterpart was, I could find it at home, but I do not instantly know where. I know where my licence is, but I do not instantly know where the counterpart is, and that applies to many people. Proper checks and security will be in place, and people will be able to check, through old as well as new technology, the information on their licence.
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