London, UK: The Department for Transport has launched a consultation to amend cabotage rules for up to six months so that foreign drivers can make unlimited drops in the UK over two weeks.
Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said that “thousands more HGV deliveries could be made each month thanks to temporary changes to ‘cabotage’ to help ensure resilience of country’s supply chains”.
The proposals set out in the one-week consultation mean foreign operators that come into the country laden with goods can pick up and drop off goods an unlimited number of times for two weeks before they return home. Currently hauliers from the EU can only make up to two cabotage trips within seven days.
The DfT said that the relaxation would apply to all types of goods but is likely to be particularly beneficial to food supply chains and goods that come via ports, by ensuring lorries from abroad coming into the UK are used more efficiently, helping to tackle the temporary global supply chain pressures brought on by the pandemic and the global economy rebounding.
Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said: “The long-term answer to the supply chain issues we’re currently experiencing must be developing a high-skill, high-wage economy here in the UK.
“Alongside a raft of other measures to help the road haulage industry, we’ve streamlined the testing process and announced thousands of skills bootcamps to train new drivers. These measures are working – we’ve been seeing up to three times more applications for HGV driving licences than normal as well as a deserved rise in salaries.
The consultation to temporarily amend cabotage rules was launched on 14 October and will run until 21 October.
Rod McKenzie, policy director at the Road Haulage Association, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “We don’t want cabotage to sabotage our industry.”
He said: “I spoke to some of our members last night, they were appalled. Ridiculous, pathetic, gobsmacked, were some of their more broadcastable comments.
“The government has been talking about a high-wage, high-skill economy, and not pulling the lever marked ‘uncontrolled immigration’, and to them this is exactly what it looks like: allowing overseas haulage companies and drivers to come over for perhaps up to six months on a fortnightly basis to do unlimited work at low rates, undercutting UK hauliers who are facing an acute driver shortage, rising costs, staff wages.
“This is about taking work from British operators and drivers and giving it to Europeans who don’t pay tax here and pay peanuts to their drivers.”
Elizabeth de Jong, policy director at Logistics UK, said: “While the government’s cabotage proposals may help to mitigate the impact the shortage of HGV drivers is having on the UK economy, the measures must be time-limited to ensure the competition from EU businesses has a minimal impact on British haulage companies. This must be a short-term measure to support the economy while British drivers are recruited, trained and tested.”
Union Unite has warned that the government’s announcement that it intends to relax the cabotage rules will result in misery and exploitation.
Unite general secretary Sharon Graham said: “Poor pay and terrible conditions have forced UK drivers to leave the haulage industry and helped create this crisis.
“The government now proposes to allow overseas companies to force their drivers to stay in the UK making deliveries for two weeks without guaranteed safeguards like decent accommodation. This will do nothing to address the chronic problems we face.
“Instead of tackling low pay and poor conditions the government is instead sponsoring the exploitation of drivers and the undercutting of terms and conditions on Britain’s roads.”
Unite believes that the decision to change the cabotage rules is a direct result of the government’s failure to attract foreign drivers to voluntarily come to work in the UK on a temporary visa scheme. By relaxing the cabotage rules it will be European employers who can force their drivers to operate in the UK.
Unite national officer Adrian Jones said: “This is the latest in a long line of panic measures by the government to try to cope with the lorry driver shortage. Yet again they have ignored the long–term solutions of vastly improving pay and conditions needed to resolve the shortages.
“The bottom line is that unless European hauliers are prepared to invest in proper accommodation for their drivers they will be forced to live in their cabs for an entire fortnight. This will be a miserable, exhausting existence for them and once again raises safety issues for all UK road users.”
