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Road Safety Bill [HL]

My Lords, I apologise; I meant ““eight passengers”” or more. I am grateful to the noble Countess for clarifying that. I was seeking to identify that if the vehicle carries more than eight passengers, a public service vehicle licence is required. If the vehicle is to carry eight passengers or fewer, the private hire vehicle licence is the appropriate one. That is the one that applies to taxis and other private hire vehicles that can take only pre-booked hirings. Those licences are administered by the relevant local authority, which has discretion on which vehicles they will licence. It is therefore at present a matter for local decision. I think that the noble Lord is indicating that these local licensing authorities have some difficulty with regard to stretch limousines, which is why we need to address the issue. A vehicle can also carry these numbers of passengers if they are separate fares and are being carried,"““in the course of a business . . . of carrying passengers””." In that case, however, a public service vehicle operator’s licence would be issued by the traffic commissioner. So we are clear on the two categories of licence that are issued. As noble Lords will recognise, some stretch limousines arguably are constructed to carry more than eight passengers. However, because of the nature of their current construction, they are allowed to be registered for use on UK roads only if they carry no more than eight passengers. That is the restriction. To carry more than eight, they would need to comply with Schedule 6, on minibuses, of the Road Vehicles (Construction and Use) Regulations 1986. Vehicles of the stretched limousine type currently do not comply. In particular, they do comply with the minibus requirement because minibuses have emergency exits. One of the obvious problems that we have with stretch limousines is that they do not have any form of emergency exit. Schedule 6 could not be modified unilaterally so as to authorise non-conforming stretch limousines as a separate class without the absence of objections from right across the European Community. We think that that would be unlikely given the arrival shortly of a new European-type approval regime for large passenger vehicles which does not specifically provide for stretch limousines to the numbers that would be required. If constructed to meet the required standards, there is absolutely nothing to stop a limousine from operating as a public service vehicle. But it would need to meet the required standards. Some manufacturers are looking at how they can adapt their stretch limousines to meet the public service vehicle requirements, which would need to include some element of emergency exit. Because of the construction requirements I have just outlined, limousines on our roads today can in practice operate only as a vehicle constructed or adapted to carry eight passengers or fewer. They are not constructed to carry more. As I have already explained, vehicles adapted to carry eight passengers or fewer which are used for carrying passengers for hire or reward can be licensed by either the local authority or the traffic commissioner, depending on the type of operation undertaken. The type of operation envisaged by the noble Lords in the amendment—that is, a vehicle provided with a driver and arrangements for payment of fares made before the journey—is already provided for under the private hire vehicle licensing system. Creating two types of licence for the same type of operation would be far from ideal and create significant confusion and difficulties for both the licensing and the enforcement authorities. So we do not want two types of licence. We want to get the stretch limousines within the existing framework of licensing arrangements. We recognise that proper enforcement is an important issue on a number of safety grounds, not just in relation to the type of vehicle but also in terms of the type of driver. After all, the driver is responsible for a significant number of people in his charge. I should just say that the Vehicle and Operator Services Agency takes to court those operators found to be carrying nine or more passengers and thus operating illegally, and those cases are resulting in successful prosecutions. So we are concerned enough about the situation to seek to monitor the successful prosecution when these vehicles are being used illegally.