Road Safety Bill [HL]

I go straight to the specific questions asked by the noble Lord, Lord Hanningfield, and my noble friend Lord Berkeley. Why does Clause 38 extend to all countries and not just to Europe? If Clause 38 restricted disclosure to Europe, the UK could not exchange outside that boundary without amending legislation. The present medium of exchange is the EUCARIS system. But we do not want to preclude the ability to exchange outside the EU in the future. Japan and the USA are major exporters of vehicles to the UK and the USA has already shown an interest in EUCARIS. The noble Lord, Lord Hanningfield, also asked what protection the British driver has against misuse of data by a foreign body. Any country with which we exchange information must have secure systems in place. That would be part of any agreement. In doing that, we would ensure that the principles contained in the Data Protection Act would be followed to ensure that information was not improperly released to third parties. Such provision is contained in the EUCARIS treaty which the clause will allow us to ratify. The noble Lord, Lord Hanningfield, and my noble friend Lord Berkeley also asked why we pass vehicle information to countries which do not reciprocate: that there is no one-way link on driver information. The United Kingdom has a one-way link to Northern Ireland, the Channel Islands, the Isle of Man, the Republic of Ireland and Gibraltar. Those countries have asked for a link to the United Kingdom and are able to check for stolen, scrapped vehicles being imported. There are benefits to the public and the insurance industry by closing the loophole for the traffic of stolen vehicles. Countries may also choose to have only one-way links to EUCARIS as that is a cheaper option and is effective if the traffic of vehicles is only one way. Sometimes that option is used while waiting to accede to the EUCARIS treaty. The benefits of EUCARIS can be used to persuade ministries that the system is successful in fighting against vehicle crime and fraud. The noble Lord, Lord Hanningfield, made the point that not all EU countries had signed up. Currently, the EU Commission is looking at using the EUCARIS system as the technical solution for exchanging information between all EU countries. The noble Lord also asked what the Government are doing to prevent overseas vehicles circulating in the United Kingdom without being registered or licensed. Vehicles that are licensed and registered overseas can be used on UK roads for up to six months, whether continuous or otherwise within a period of 12 months. After that, they are subject to enforcement action for evasion of vehicle excise duty. If they are not licensed in their country of origin, enforcement action can be taken at any time. We have recently reached agreement with the Republic of Ireland to check the status of Irish registered vehicles in the UK. Discussions are being held with Sweden, Lithuania and Poland to begin a pilot to take action against any vehicles not properly registered in those countries circulating in the UK. I was also asked about enforcement and stolen foreign vehicles detected by the DVLA. Those cases are passed to the police for investigation. I hope that that meets some of the questions that Members of the Committee have asked on this clause.