The RHA has revealed it’s shocked and disappointed by the Government proposal to allow foreign haulage companies to undertake unlimited work in the UK in two-week blocks.
The RHA has said it opposes this proposal because it believes more effective measures can be taken to deal with the shortage of lorry drivers and the supply chain crisis in the UK.
The association states that cabotage allows non-UK haulage companies to work in the UK while being based outside the UK. The companies and employees will reportedly pay no tax in the UK.
RHA has said its concerns are not about drivers from outside the UK working for UK companies, it’s the fact that this proposal outsources the whole haulage activity. This reportedly means that tax, safety regulation and national insurance obligations are all controlled outside the UK, when cabotage is unfettered in this way proposed by Government.
It will help deal with the crisis in haulage availability, for supermarkets especially, but RHA has said it will undermine the work being done to provide long-term solutions to deal with problems of lorry driver availability, pay and conditions.
RHA MD for Policy and Public Affairs, Rod McKenzie, said: “This proposal undermines the good work done already on training, testing of drivers and the improved pay and conditions we have started to see for drivers.”
The RHA has supported a range of measures, some which have been taken up, but key measures reportedly have not.
Two that have not been taken up are said to relate to temporarily adding non-UK drivers with valid qualifications to come to the UK and changes to Driver Certificates of Professional Competence administration that would retain UK drivers in work and allow retired or lapsed UK drivers to come back to driving for UK companies.
Rod continued: “These two measures proposed by the RHA (and others) would make a difference to the availability of lorry drivers for UK companies, it is a shame that the UK government has chosen not to proceed in a timely way on these measures and instead decided to offshore UK haulage work to unaccountable operators from outside the UK”.
