My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords for their contributions. We have potentially gone slightly beyond the relatively minor changes that are before the Committee today, but I am always very happy to answer as many questions as I can and to write with detailed follow-up afterwards.
The consultation was fairly significant and widely publicised among trainers and driving instructors. We received 1,276 responses, and the consultation was open for six week. I therefore feel that we got a good understanding of how people feel about the changes.
I will focus most on the licence upgrade, because I think that issue is causing more angst than that of motorcycles, but we will see how we do. Some 26% felt that road safety would be reduced, but we dug into the response and a fair amount of the concern could be a misunderstanding of the proposals. Some respondents expressed concern about drivers switching between automatic transmission and split gearboxes, but these are used in larger vehicles and you can already drive a larger vehicle if you have a manual entitlement for a car. So this is filling in the gap in the middle. I do not know whether noble Lords have ever driven a minibus. I have, and it is not difficult; it is perfectly easy. Changing gear on a minibus is the same as changing gear on a car. It is right that, if you are driving a larger vehicle, you may need to have a particular test, but it is not the case that the reason for that test is to make sure that you can cope with the gearbox—because the gearbox is no different. We dug down in a bit more detail, and no specific evidence was provided to indicate that this change or the change in 2014—which was much bigger than the change before the Committee today—would reduce, or has reduced, road safety.
I could talk about road safety for hours because it is a very difficult subject when it comes to data. If any noble Lords are feeling a bit bored this weekend, I encourage them to look at my appearance in front of the SLSC, where I went into some detail about how I feel about road safety and about the data we are and are not able to collect, and how we fill in those gaps.
It was the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, or perhaps the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, who seemed to say that, because there is no evidence and nothing that we could point a finger at, that was somehow terrible. That is a good thing. If you cannot point your finger at something and say that it has made it worse, that is a good thing. That is how much of road safety works. Road safety is incremental. There are very few changes
in the road safety world that you could implement tomorrow and then look at the stats the following year and say “Yeah. That’s when we did that, and look what happened.” Road safety does not work like that. It is a hugely complicated environment involving drivers, vehicles, roads and enforcement. We are very focused on road safety, and when we make any change, such as the one that we are making here today, we are very cognisant of our responsibilities. We drill down into the data. There is no data from STATS19 that not being able to operate a gearbox, fumbling with the gear or using the incorrect gear is a contributory factor; it is not something that happens to qualified drivers with a manual licence.
We recognise people’s concern. What we then have to do is understand where the concern is coming from and whether it is based on evidence. In this case, we have done the same for much bigger vehicles, since 2014. Therefore, without evidence that there is a negative impact on road safety, we feel content bringing the measure in, because it has significant advantages.
We are cognisant of and always grateful for feedback from the SLSC, and we did make changes to the EM. When I went to the SLSC, I committed that, from now on, my Explanatory Memorandums will be perfect, every time. Obviously, this one was written some time ago, and so I could not say that about it. I appreciate it when people say that we have not put enough in our Explanatory Memorandum. It is never our intention to do that. Therefore, I have put in place various steps within the department to make sure that our Explanatory Memorandums are perfect in the future.
The noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, raised driving overseas, and I will focus my comments on these changes. They have already been implemented in the EU, in November 2020, and we are not aware that there has been any impact on road safety there. Of course, most EU countries—in fact, nearly all of them—have a worse safety record than we do. I would not expect these regulations to have any implications on travelling.
As the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, mentioned, there are changes to the number of tests that would be needed. To be honest, we would not know what entitlement somebody had before they came in to take a C1 manual test, so it is difficult to figure out exactly how many test times would be freed. We think it is about 500, which is nothing in the context; it does not make a difference to anything.
We expect there to be more people taking the A2 motorcycle test, which is a good thing, because it provides a level of rigour that you do not get from the CBT, which you take for smaller motorbikes. I will write to the noble Lord on the exact waiting times for the different categories, but I reassure him that it is nothing like as bad for motorcycles as it is for private cars. I am content that more people taking their A2 test will not have a big impact on the DVSA backlog.
Voluntary minibus drivers can have MiDAS training, which is the Minibus Driver Awareness Scheme. Many voluntary organisations do that, and it is administered by the wonderful Community Transport Association. We do not think this will impact the number of minibus drivers. Indeed, it might be positive, because somebody
with a manual car licence, who happens to take an automatic, might have more flexibility in the vehicles they drive. We are not aware of any impact on volunteer drivers. There will be a review of these regulations in three years.
I will finish on my favourite topic of e-scooters, which noble Lords will be able to discuss with me tomorrow—I am extremely excited about that. Specific regulations were passed for e-scooters. My noble friend Lady McIntosh may recall that, in the summer of 2020, we passed regulations allowing e-scooter trials to go ahead. It remains the case that a private e-scooter cannot be used on a public road or pavement; it cannot be and should not be. I agree with the noble Baroness—I would lock them all up immediately. It is a matter of enforcement, I agree, but we have 31 trials around the country. No doubt noble Lords will come back to this tomorrow. We need robust enforcement, because you should not use a private e-scooter on a public road; you can have it confiscated, be fined and get points on your licence.
Having said that, we will look at the trials very deeply. We believe that micromobility has benefits for the future and therefore will consider what to do going forward. I am looking forward to the Question for Short Debate tomorrow, when noble Lords will have the opportunity to spend an hour speaking—perhaps without interruption from mobile phones, as now—about e-scooters. I recognise there are significant concerns about them in your Lordships’ House and I am happy to answer them. As a Government, we need to think carefully about how we are going to mitigate them.
I will write with a bit more information on some of the issues raised today, but I hope noble Lords will appreciate that these changes will update existing legislation to account for small developments in technology. The changes are relatively minor. We do not believe that there will be a negative impact on road safety but that there will be a positive impact on business and other organisations.