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P CASE FOUR
Page 24
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Hearings on driver fitness will not be private
LGV DRIVERS cannot insist that hearings about their professional fitness as drivers should be heard in private after a TC ruled that the Data Protection Act did not afford this privilege, North-Western Traffic Commissioner Beverley Bell concluded that consideration of whether vocational driving licence holders (ie truck and bus drivers) arc fit to continue to hold such licences should be heard at public inquiry unless there are very sensitive issues.
The TC had initially adjourned consideration of whether two Stagecoach bus drivers continue to be fit to hold PSV driving licences while the legal department of the Department for Transport (DfT) was asked to review whether it is lawful for driver conduct hearings before TCs to be in public. It had been argued that the evidence the drivers would give was "personal data", which under the Data Protection Act should not be disseminated to the public. Neither should any decision made by the TC be made public (`DfT to consider whether driver conduct hearings can be public', CM 15 November 2007).
However, the TC decided to hear the matters in public and not refer the issue to the DIT's legal department.
She said that in eight years as TC she relied upon the exemption in the act that enabled the disclosure of data for the purpose of legal proceedings. She pointed out that the Human Rights Act generally laid down that legal proceedings should be heard in public and it was a general principle of English common law. The only evidence she would hear in private would be intimate personal financial information, commercially sensitive information and information obtained confidentially.