Earl Attlee
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Lord Clement-Jones (LD)
My Lords, I am sorry to interrupt. The Minister is clearly getting to the end of what he has to say. What raised my eyebrows reading Clause 129 is the fact that these powers have been given to the service police in the first place. What is the rationale for them having these powers in particular, how much mobile phone theft are the service police dealing with, and why are we putting them on all fours with the civilian police? The Minister will have noticed that I have not tried to amend Clause 128; all my focus is on the service police. If a military policeman turned up on my doorstep and asked to check out my house, I certainly would be rather concerned, hence the need for safeguards. But there seems to be no rationale for the service police being brought into this and being given these pretty extensive powers.
Earl Attlee (Con)
My Lords, the bad news is that not all service personnel are absolute angels: it could be one junior soldier stealing a mobile phone from another junior serviceman. These arrangements are very sensible, and I agree with everything that the Minister has had to say. My only question for him, while I am on my feet, is this: is there any evidence that the service police make mistakes on the procedures when they are exercising their powers? I am not aware of any problem.
Lord Katz (Lab)
I will take the last one first. I am not sure there is any evidence; I would have to look into that. To answer the more substantive intervention by the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, as to why service police need the powers to deal with electronically tracked stolen goods, while service police deal with crime in the defence context, it is important that they are equipped to respond effectively to current and future trends in criminal behaviour. Obviously, the provisions in the Bill help to ensure that service police can respond with lawful, fair and proportionate action, now and in the future, to the full spectrum of criminality that threatens the cohesion and operational effectiveness of our Armed Forces. These new powers will give officers more chance of quickly finding and retrieving stolen items that are electronically tracked at premises, and reduce the risk they are lost or moved on. Maybe put it down to an overabundance of caution but also an acknowledgement that crimes that affect and have to be investigated by civilian forces can also affect and be investigated by the Armed Forces.
Earl Attlee
“Traffic Regulation Dispensation Order(1) The Chief Officer of police may, on receipt of a notification of a proposed movement of a vehicle or trailer carrying a load of exceptional dimensions, grant a Traffic Regulation Dispensation Order (the Order) to an operator engaged in the movement or the escorting of the vehicle or trailer.(2) The Order can permit designated traffic regulations to be disregarded for the purposes of allowing the vehicle or trailer to negotiate the notified route.(3) The Secretary of State may make regulations designating which traffic regulations the Chief Officer of Police can relax.(4) The Chief Officer of Police may relax a traffic regulation for the whole of the movement or only at a specific point in the journey and different relaxations can be made for different traffic regulations.(5) The Order may impose conditions including the number of escort vehicles and attendants required, if any.(6) When considering whether or not to grant an order and the extent of the Order, the Chief Officer of Police may take into consideration the operator’s experience, resources and capability(7) The Chief Officer must link the Order to a specific notification of the movement of a vehicle or trailer carrying a load of exceptional dimensions but the Order can cover several movements under one notification(8) In this section “vehicle or trailer carrying a load of exceptional dimensions” means a vehicle or trailer the use of which is authorised by an order made under section 44(1)(d) of the Road Traffic Act 1988.(9) In this section “operator” means the person who is remunerating the driver of the vehicle carrying the load.”Member's explanatory statement
The amendment seeks to allow the police to authorise an abnormal load driver to break normal traffic rules in order the negotiate the chosen route for the load (for example, crossing double white lines and passing a traffic island on the wrong side).
Earl Attlee (Con)
My Lords, as well as moving my Amendment 403, I shall also speak to my Amendments 403A, 404, 413, 416D and 416M. We now come to amendments concerned with abnormal load movements and how the police manage them. At Second Reading, I outlined the problem, which is partly about certain officers taking unnecessary steps to justify their existence but mostly it is about the money. I understand that the video clip of my Second Reading speech has been shared through industry social media at least 15,000 times.
I am very grateful to the noble Lords, Lord Hanson and Lord Katz, for organising a meeting with the policy-determining Minister at the Home Office and appropriate officials and police representatives next week. This will be very helpful. This means that I can avoid wearying the Committee with several highly technical groups of amendments and instead have only one group.
I remind the Committee that I own and operate a tank transporter on behalf of the REME Museum; Ministers have full details. I have not been personally affected by the problems that I will seek to address.
Before going any further, I would like to say a word about traffic officers. We should all be really grateful to these officers, who work tirelessly to improve road safety. I have never been proceeded against for a traffic offence, but I can understand how irritating that must be. However, prosecutions and enforcement action are necessary to reduce casualties on the road. We must also remember that it is traffic police officers who have to attend the scene of devastating road traffic accidents.
There are 43 police forces in England and Wales, and my amendments concern only about eight, which I will politely describe as being errant. The 35 others operate the legislation known as the special types general order—SDGO—as intended. They are not a problem, and they should be proud of their work. The legislation is fit for purpose so long as all involved act in good faith.
Guess which police force does not do so and seeks to lead the others astray? As I explained at Second Reading, West Midlands Police—WMP—has increased its income from escorting abnormal loads from £14,000 to £1.1 million in five years. Not surprisingly, West Midlands Police is stalling on FoI requests from industry, as is West Yorkshire Police. WMP and about seven others are persecuting and harassing the heavy haulage industry when it is not necessary or proportionate. If it were, we would see the excellent commercial vehicle unit of the Metropolitan Police adopting the same tactics and policies. We do not. The Met’s income from escorting abnormal loads has remained static and modest.
The tactics employed by West Midlands Police are the ones that you would expect to see used by a corrupt police force in a slowly developing country. These include seeking unnecessary technical details that can later be checked for preciseness, deliberately misquoting or misapplying regulations, and prohibiting vehicle movements when there is no power to do so. By unnecessarily insisting that each abnormal load notification refers to only one vehicle registration number, the number of abnormal load notifications, but not movements, has increased by about 100% nationally. The regulations have not changed; this is purely the result of a few junior police officers screwing up the system.
I produced a report—it was dated 10 May 2024, so I am not jumping on the bandwagon—in which I stated, on my personal honour as a Member of your Lordships’ House, that I personally witnessed officers of the West Midlands Police harass drivers and crew of one of the most professional heavy haulage companies in the land. They did this by checking every conceivable document and measuring and examining everything possible. I knew that they would be doing this, because I was told that they had done it on each of the preceding three days.
Such excessive and overzealous checks are interfering with the smooth running of the heavy haulage industry, which is racking up significant extra costs in all the wasted time spent responding to these demands. Some businesses are having to take on extra staff just to deal with the bureaucracy generated by these police forces. I look forward to the contribution of the noble Lord, Faulkner of Worcester. As I said, these repetitive checks are largely unnecessary and serve only to justify the productivity-reducing activities of the police officers involved.
The Committee may ask itself why the industry does not just complain to the IOPC. I am sorry to say that the IOPC is not well placed to understand these technical issues. Furthermore, for reasons of resources and practicality, the IOPC has to refer relatively minor matters back to the professional standards department of the police force that gave rise to the industry complaint.
It is obvious that such a complaint being referred back to West Midlands Police would have no effect, as that police force is hopelessly compromised by the amount of money involved, and, as we have seen recently, it is dysfunctional. I am sure that I do not need to remind your Lordships that, in addition to my concerns, we have all seen this week that the Home Secretary has lost confidence in the Chief Constable of West Midlands Police, and I support her.
Even at the highest level, West Midlands Police officers appear to be unable to separate fact from fiction. In my dealings with the Assistant Chief Constable of West Midlands Police, Mike O’Hara, it appears that he has done nothing about the documentary evidence that I presented to him setting out that something is going very seriously wrong with its internal procedures. I can privately share the evidence with your Lordships.
The Committee may also ask why the industry does not resort to judicial review. The answer is that it did about 12 months ago. Unfortunately, as the Committee will understand, the judicial system is collapsing, because both this Government and the previous Government have not properly resourced it. It also appears to be overwhelmed by numerous people-type cases, often involving convention rights. As a result, JRs of a commercial nature are not being considered by the court with any great priority.
I now turn to the issue of police escort charges. There are no regulations about how much a police force can charge for providing a police escort and in what circumstances. Nearly every day, West Midlands Police will charge several different heavy hauliers for a minimum six-hour shift, even though the actual time spent escorting the load could be as short as 30 minutes. It will use the same team of officers for each job. The charge is £2,500 per time, which far exceeds the total cost of the heavy haulage itself, which commands only about £2,000 per day. My Amendment 413 would require the Secretary of State to make regulations about charging for police escorts, and it is expected largely to deal with the behaviour issues. It is very strongly supported by the industry.
If the Minister wants to claim that this is an operational matter for the police, surely the same should apply to firearms licensing fees. That is what is behind my probing Amendment 414, which I hope that the Minister will not accept.
In most police forces, the officers or officials who make the decision about whether a load needs to be escorted by the police are not the ones who pick up the overtime payments. In West Midlands Police, they very much are. My Amendment 416M would prevent this.
Earl Attlee
“(7A) An Order granted under subsection (1) must be considered a “lawful authority or excuse” under section 137(1) of the Highways Act 1980 (penalty for wilful obstruction).”
Lord Faulkner of Worcester (Lab)
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, on tabling these important amendments, on working so hard on this clause over many years and on speaking so persuasively about it tonight. I have added my name to Amendment 413, as has his noble friend, the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay, who unfortunately cannot be here today.
A sector that makes particular use of abnormal load road movements is that of our heritage railways. I remind the Committee of my interest as president of the Heritage Railway Association. The movement of most heritage rolling stock between railways, whether historic steam or diesel locomotives or vintage carriages, is undertaken by road on low-loaders. Most commonly, this takes place in connection with gala events featuring visiting locomotives, but it also occurs when items of rolling stock are transported for specialist maintenance or overhaul.
Such road movements, classified as abnormal loads, are undertaken by specialist haulage contractors, sometimes accompanied by an escort vehicle. A number of police forces, though not all, as the noble Earl explained, but particularly the Staffordshire, West Midlands and West Yorkshire forces, now make charges for escorting abnormal loads within their constabulary area. These are typically between £2,500 and £5,000 per trip, but they can be higher and exceed the haulier’s charges, with some charges in excess of £7,000. Charges are also levied in Derbyshire, Greater Manchester, South Yorkshire and parts of Scotland. This is seriously disrupting the business activities of heritage railways and adding significantly to their costs in an already challenging economic and business climate.
The reasons for the escort charges do not appear to have ever been explained and there is widespread inconsistency, with some forces making charges and others not. Most determine whether a police escort is required based on weight—say, a gross weight of 80 to 100-plus tonnes—though some determine it on length: for example, 28 metres from the front to the rear of a lorry. Crucially, no national policy or framework regulates how or when police forces may charge for escorting or authorising these essential movements. This inconsistency results in these arbitrary and often excessive fees in certain police force areas. In some cases, an escort is required only for a few miles to a county boundary, with the rest of the journey then being unescorted. To avoid charges, some hauliers are now having to take massive detours around a police force area, which of course adds mileage and cost, and increases the negative environmental impact.
The National Police Chiefs’ Council has issued guidance that, while intended to provide consistency and clarification, still leaves decisions on the provision of escorts and charging to individual forces, as police forces are autonomous bodies. Several heritage railways and their haulage contractors have written to those police forces that make charges, but no changes to their charging regimes have been forthcoming. I could quote many examples but, given the lateness of the hour, I do not intend to mention more than one.
This is evidence from Noel Hartley, the operations manager of the Keighley & Worth Valley Railway. He says:
“The KWVR is suffering significantly from movements out of Ingrow—
that is the intermediate station on the line—
“in West Yorkshire and is deciding not to run certain events or we are no longer able to make enthusiast events a gold standard because we simply can’t justify the charges … For a return movement of a visiting loco it’s nearly costing five and a half thousand pounds on top of the movement costs. For an event with gross revenue of £80 or £90,000 it just isn’t feasible to stand these sort of costs which can wipe out a significant amount of the profit … In addition to the facts of police charges, the hauliers are trying to mitigate the costs of charges by avoiding the routes where they are charging—
which I referred to a moment ago. He continues:
“This means that some lorries can be diverted up to 100 miles to avoid these areas. This means that the police charges are avoided but there is still an impact on costs due to additional fuel required”.
West Midlands Police, about which we have heard a lot from the noble Earl, Lord Attlee—and a force which is much in the news this week for other reasons—is the main culprit, which hauliers avoid, because it charges for escorts on so-called straight-line routes.
Mr Hartley points out that the areas particularly affected are railways in West Yorkshire and the Midlands —that includes Kidderminster, Burton, Ecclesbourne and Chesterfield—but south Wales and east Lancashire are also affected by having to make huge detours to avoid travelling within the territory of the least helpful and most expensive police forces.
The lengths to which hauliers are having to go to in order to avoid charges mean that there is an impact on the amount of emissions produced from road transport. This could be avoided; it amounts to thousands of additional and unnecessary miles per year.
At a time when the heritage railway sector is struggling with increases in costs, not only from general utility increases and staff costs—plus the tripling of the cost of coal—these police escort charges are compounding the problem and sometimes making it impossible for railways to provide that unique visitor experience for which our country is admired all over the world.
Overall, these excessive and inconsistent charges create uncertainty, delays and significant financial pressure for heritage railways, which, as I have said many times in your Lordships’ House, are a key part of the UK’s visitor economy and in many cases are the primary, anchor tourist attractions within their areas, generating significant economic and employment benefits for their regions. I congratulate the noble Earl, and I support his amendment.
Lord Garnier (Con)
My Lords, I want to speak briefly to the amendment that my noble friend Lord Attlee spent about 15 seconds talking about; that is, his Amendment 414. At the outset of his remarks, I was worried that he might be positively going to support his own amendment, but he very quickly said that he hoped that the Minister would not accept it, and so do I.
If one looks at the draft of Amendment 414, one sees that it is designed to allow chief officers of police to set and vary any fee payable for shotguns and firearms. It is not quite clear from the draft of the proposed new clause whether this would, if enacted, cover just England and Wales, or whether it would cover England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. If the latter, that would be 45 separate chief officers of police who may well decide to set separate fees for each of the 45 police territorial areas; if it is only England and Wales, there would be 43, and that is bad enough.
I declare an interest as a holder of a shotgun certificate. While I admire, in every possible way, the chief constable of my own police area, I do not wish him to have the ability to set the level of the firearm certificate fee. It is a tax, and if it is not a tax, it is a fee that should be set by one person who is accountable to Parliament; namely, the Secretary of State. I think I need to say no more, not least because my noble friend Lord Attlee encouraged me greatly by saying precisely very little about the amendment himself.
Earl Attlee (Con)
My Lords, the only purpose of Amendment 414 is to stop the Minister saying it is an operational matter for the police. If police charges for abnormal load escorts are operational matters for the police, surely firearms licensing charges are. We have been screwing down the cost of a firearms certificate, which means that police forces are not able to do as good a job as they would like. The cost of a firearms certificate is less than the cost of the visit to the dentist.
Earl Attlee (Con)
I am grateful for the response of all noble Lords, including the Minister. On the NPCC guidance, a lot of work was done by Chief Superintendent Marc Clothier of the National Police Chiefs’ Council. He has done a great job and is highly regarded in industry. There is a lot of collaboration with industry and about 35 police forces are strictly adhering to the guidance. The problem is that a few are not, and the Minister, as he admitted, has no power to tell police forces what they should be doing. The only way the Minister can do it is by agreeing my Amendment 413.
The Minister said, quite correctly, that we can amend STGO—the 2003 order—if necessary, but that order is made under Section 44 of the Road Traffic Act and all it does is allow the Minister to make an order to allow the movement of a load that cannot comply with the construction and use regulations. It will not allow the Minister to make an order about charging regimes or the relaxation of traffic regulations.
The Minister thought that my Amendment 413 would have no flexibility. It actually has a provision for flexibility where, if it is necessary in certain circumstances to diverge from any regulations, you can go back to the Secretary of State—in other words, a Home Office official—and get permission to do something slightly different. But I am very grateful for the Minister’s response and I hope we can have a successful meeting next week. In the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.