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Unemployment is no cause for loss of hgv licence
Page 20
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• A • Government Minister has told road haulage employers they must train more lorry driver recruits. Employers cannot complain at lack of drivers unless they bear a fair share of responsibility for training, Environment Under Secretary Mr Keith Speed has said in the Commons. And he urged employers to make it accepted practice to allow potential employees to use a lorry for taking the hgv licence test.
Mr Speed was speaking in a late-night Commons debate on Monday in which MPs claimed that lorry drivers faced joblessness because of anomalies in the legislation. Mr Speed explained that under transitional arrangements made when hgv licensing was introduced, anyone who had driven a lorry to which the scheme applied for periods amounting to six months in the year ended February I 1970 could claim to be issued with an hgv driver's licence without a test, although he would have to pass a medical examination.
Mr Ted Garrett (Labour, Wallsend) and Mr Julius Silverman (Labour, Birmingham Aston) had said that drivers who fell "on the wrong side of the borderline" and could not benefit from the claiming rule because they did not have the necessary six months driving experience, faced difficulties in getting the training they needed to take the test. Mr Garrett told the Minister that one of his northeast constituents had been made redundant in March last year because there was shortage of work, and had been unable to get another job. Mr Garrett added: "As he was unable to obtain a job as a driver within six months his driving licence automatically expired in accordance with a provision of the 1969 Act. To follow the employment in which he has spent most of his working life he must therefore obtain a new licence". The man had asked the Northern Traffic Commissioners whether he could appeal but they had told him the statute clearly provided that no appeal was possible. Mr Garrett declared: "Thus there existed a situation in which Mr Neale and many other drivers throughout the country through no fault of their own are debarred from earning a living in a profession in which they have spent most of their working lives".
Confusion
Johnny Johnson writes: The issue raised by Mr Garrett appears to have received little clarification from Mr Speed's answer. Matters are further complicated by the MP's reference to an anomaly in "the 1969 Act", an Act which does not exist. Further, he said that his constituent had lost his licence after being out of work for six months in 1972; but as the man could not satisfy the LA that he had had the necessary experience for a licence under the transitional arrangements and had never passed the prescribed test, he could hardly have been in possession of a licence.
Mr Garrett then says that the Northern Traffic Commissioners had told him that no appeal was possible. In fact, hgv licensing is not a matter for the Traffic Commissioners but for the Licensing Authority. A little research would surely have revealed Section 118(2) of the Road Traffic Act 1972, which allows an aggrieved applicant for an hgv licence the right of appeal to a magistrates' court. Similar legislation has been on the statute book since the hgv licensing scheme was introduced.
Replying to Mr Garrett, Mr Speed apparently assumed that the subject under discussion was principally the issue of a transitional licence, and that the man had failed to supply evidence that he was in the habit of driving vehicles of the appropriate class for six months during the year ended February 1 1970, and was therefore not entitled to an hgv licence as of right.
Unfortunately he failed to make clear to Mr Garrett — and to numerous puzzled transport people — the fact that an LA has no power to revoke an hgv licence merely on the grounds that the holder has not driven such vehicles for six months — or six years, come to that. The LA may suspend or revoke an hgv licence if, by reason of the person's conduct as a driver of a motor vehicle, or of physical disability, he feels that the holder is not a fit person to hold such a licence— and that is the only reason for such action. Mr Garrett should have been referred to Section 115 of the 1972 Road Traffic Act where this is explained.