Motor Vehicles (Driving Licences) (Amendment) (No. 2) Regulations 2025

Debate between Viscount Goschen and Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill

Monday 19th May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords for their consideration of these draft regulations. Having listened closely to the concerns expressed, I will respond to the points raised.

The noble Lord, Lord Moylan, started with the state of the roads and potholes. I admire his brave actions in driving around the roads of Oxfordshire at the weekend. He says the Government are doing nothing about it. That is far from true. The Government announced a £1.6 billion investment in the state of the roads and remedying potholes only in April. Incidentally, the damage to the roads is an exponential function of vehicle weight. A heavy lorry does far more damage to a road surface than an electric car, or indeed one of these vehicles at 4.25 tonnes rather than 3.5 tonnes. The noble Lord noted that he accepts the principle of these regulations on safety grounds.

The message to synthetic and alternative fuel manufacturers is not that they do not matter—what they are doing is valuable. The noble Lord knows, and he quoted paragraph 5.6, that it reduces carbon emissions, but in the end does not eliminate them.

The noble Lord is—or his party and the previous Government were—committed to decarbonising transport. Earlier this afternoon my noble friend Lord Katz answered the noble Lord’s question with the quotation:

“I believe that the struggle for decarbonised transport, clean development and clean air is as important as the struggle for clean water was in the 19th century”.


They are the words of Grant Shapps, the former Conservative Transport Secretary, and were as apposite a response to the earlier question as they are now to this debate. Decarbonisation is really important and prioritising vehicles that have zero emissions is really important for this Government.

The noble Lord also referred to driving tests, and he is right that the position that this Government inherited was dreadful—there were many, many people waiting for them. I have already answered questions in this House about reducing waiting times and recruiting more instructors, but it will take time to do that because remedying this position is not immediate. The Government’s aim is to reduce waiting times to seven weeks by summer 2026, and we will achieve that.

The noble Viscount, Lord Goschen, referred to the effects of kinetic energy. He is right that mass matters in road accidents, but the Government have looked into this quite seriously and the available data suggests that 3.5 tonne to 4.25 tonne electric vehicles are no more likely than their 3.5 tonne petrol and diesel equivalents to be involved in collisions.

[Viscount Goschen (Con)]

My Lords, I was not making that point at all. I was saying that if the noble Lord’s ministerial car broke down at a roundabout and he was hit from behind by a 3.5 tonne vehicle and a colleague was hit by a 4.25 tonne vehicle, the latter would involve 20% more energy transfer and therefore 20% more potential for severity. Would he accept the simple physics of the argument? I am not suggesting that one is more likely to have an accident than the other.