Official Report: Minutes of Evidence

The Chairperson (Mr Martin): I welcome David Boyles, who is the secretary of the Northern Ireland Approved Instructor Council (NIAIC). Virtually, we have Mark Shepherd, who is the assistant director, head of general insurance at the Association of British Insurers (ABI), and Ms Carly Brookfield, who is a representative of the Driving Instructors Association (DIA).

I seek the Committee's agreement that the evidence session is recorded by Hansard.

The Chairperson (Mr Martin): I invite the representatives to make an opening statement. That is usually up to 10 minutes, and I will probably have to hold you to that pretty tightly because we are under pressure at the Committee today. I am not sure how you have divided the labour on the opening presentation. You have 10 minutes regardless. I do not know whether you each want to do three minutes or how you want to run it. David, as you are in the room, I will hand over to you first.

Mr David Boyles (Northern Ireland Approved Instructor Council): OK. Thank you for inviting us here today. I am secretary of NIAIC. It was previously known as the Driving Instructors National Association Council (DINAC), which you may well have heard of before. DINAC was formed in 2008 and, in 2016, NIAIC took over. NIAIC is part of the stakeholder group that meets regularly with the Driver and Vehicle Agency (DVA) on industry matters. We represent a large majority of driving instructors and motorcycle instructors across Northern Ireland. We have approximately five associations.

The following points that we want to outline are of some concern to the council; on others, we look for clarification. It is our understanding that the Act was passed in 2016 and no confirmed consultation was given to NIAIC, prior to it being sent for the Act to be made, nor were we given any information that graduated driver licensing (GDL) was going to be sent live back in late January. We only heard about that when it came on the news.

I have three points today. The first concerns the minimum mandatory learning period. We feel that the six-month period is far too long and could be detrimental to rural community candidates who will sit driving tests. We feel that there should be some kind of dispensation for pupils from rural areas all across Northern Ireland who are quite capable and experienced enough to drive. They should be given some kind of leeway so that they do not have to wait six months.

My second point is to do with the pre-1 October driving licences. Let us say that a pupil fails their driving test come mid-March. During the COVID pandemic, there were occasions when pupils who were running out of time on their theory were given extra time to get the tests done. We feel that a pupil who fails their driving test in March should not automatically be sent to GDL and wait. That is because of the backlog in driving tests. We feel that they should not be harmed by waiting times or in a monetary way.

The third point relates to the logbook. We seek clarity from the Committee and from the Association of British Insurers on the signature that approved driving instructors (ADIs) will be asked to give. Will it be a signature of competence or a signature of completeness? Our fear is that, once a person has passed their driving test, should there be a fatal accident, there is a possibility that insurance companies could pass that responsibility back to driving instructors. We would like to know whether the driving instructor will have any liability.

Those are my three points. I will pass back to you now.

The Chairperson (Mr Martin): Thank you, David. We will continue with the presentation. That was very useful. As you will imagine, there will be some questions afterwards. Mark, do you want to share your thoughts with us?

Mr Mark Shepherd (Association of British Insurers): Yes. Thank you, Chair, and thank you for the opportunity to appear before you this morning. I represent the Association of British Insurers. We are a membership body that represents insurance, pensions and long-term savings providers across the UK. The majority of motor insurers that operate in Northern Ireland are members of the ABI.

We have set out our thoughts in our written evidence submission, so I will reaffirm our support for the introduction of graduated driver licensing. Our hope is that it will reduce the volume and severity of road traffic collisions, particularly those that involve young and newly qualified drivers. We believe that GDL in Northern Ireland has the potential to be an effective and evidence-based way to help young and newly qualified drivers to build driving experience on our roads and to do that in a safer environment than currently exists.

We believe strongly that improved road safety benefits everyone. It benefits inexperienced drivers and more experienced drivers on the road, as well as cyclists, pedestrians and other vulnerable road users. From the insurance industry's perspective, anything that reduces the frequency and severity of crashes is positive. Having fewer, less severe collisions means fewer claims, a reduced risk of injury and a safer environment overall.

In conclusion, we want GDL to succeed and, ultimately, to improve road safety outcomes. Our members will closely monitor the impact in Northern Ireland, and we look forward to continuing to engage with the Committee and the responsible Department as the policy is implemented. I will leave it there, Chair. I look forward to the discussion with the Committee.

The Chairperson (Mr Martin): Thank you very much, Mark. That was succinct. We love people being succinct at the Committee. There is no high benchmark for you, Carly, on this one. You are very welcome. Please share your thoughts with the Committee.

Ms Carly Brookfield (Driving Instructors Association): Thank you very much. I will try to be succinct, but I am not necessarily known for it. I have the benefit, though, of copying everybody else's homework now that Mark and David have gone before me.

I am the chief executive of the Driving Instructors Association. We are the largest professional membership body in the United Kingdom, representing more than 10,000 individual members and 35,000 subscribers, who are all mainly rider and driver trainers. We are also a Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA) accredited provider of advanced driver testing and training. Therefore, we have quite a lot of insight into the world of driver testing, training and licensing. We are a first-tier stakeholder to the Department for Transport in the UK and DVSA.

We welcome Northern Ireland's progressive decision to introduce a GDL scheme. We particularly welcome the inclusion of pre-test development. In any discussion on GDL, one of the biggest criticisms that DIA, as a stakeholder, has had is that previous incarnations of schemes or proposals across the United Kingdom have looked at post-test restrictions but do not have a heavy focus on the big fix that we need to make to pre-test training and education.

However, there are some concerns that, if Northern Ireland wants to be truly progressive, it will not just copy the homework of other nations in how they have implemented it; rather it will go further than that and further than the 12-step pre-test programme, will learn lessons from the mistakes that have been made in schemes in Australia, New Zealand, North America, Sweden and elsewhere and will supplement what those regimes have done and fill in the gaps. One of the gaps that we have identified is a lack of a solid pre-test regime that focuses on driver behaviour and behavioural change techniques. Southern Ireland has a 12-step programme, but it does not really look at the higher levels of the goals for driver education (GDE) matrix. It is very much focused on the lower levels, with a little bit on driver behaviour. Northern Ireland could go further on that.

The DIA has created and is trialling a scheme in the UK that is funded by the Department for Transport. It is a modular pre-test programme for learning to drive. It does not just prescribe a curriculum of learning for the ADI and for the pupil; it also has systems of monitoring and assessing, including risk profiling, an online theory test and online modules. It is not just about asking a trainer to go out and do the practical bit. There is online learning support and testing on whether the learning is taking place. We suggest that some of those things could be adopted in the Northern Ireland scheme.

I would like Northern Ireland to counter the concerns around schemes that have been enacted worldwide: that they go so far but do not go far enough in that they do not prove to have long-term improvements in driving quality. They help with immediate novice-driver safety outcomes, but there is not enough evidence that they can improve driving quality, particularly among young drivers, once they are out of the process. We need to be careful of avoiding that and kicking the can down the road to when the restrictions come off.

Our other concern is that, in the post-test restricted period, there is no real prescription, as far as I can see — please feel free to correct me — for any training, education and monitoring to occur. It is a little bit of doing what we did before, in that we are going to switch off the licence restriction, but we are not necessarily going to monitor or ask the pupil to acquire further competency or to prove that in any way after we have taken the licence restriction off. That is of great concern to driver educators such as us.

Schemes are being developed in Northern Ireland, as well as milestones in the UK, that would be very beneficial. We have already spoken to the insurance industry about that, and several insurers are very interested in supporting that alongside government. It would be beneficial to bring those ideas and those platforms that have already been developed to the GDL stakeholder group, which, I know, is in full swing, and we have been asked to be part of it.

I would like to underline David's point: there is a concern among the wider instructor community about the lack of consultation. There was a consultation in 2016, but, naturally, we expected that there would be further consultation once the plans were to be brought into being. We expected that the ADIs would be heavily involved in that consultation — the driver educators who sit on the road every day with a young person; not me, not the insurers or not some of you around the table who are quite remote from that process. I would like to see that gap being addressed in any future development of a GDL scheme.

I have lots more to say, as you can probably tell, but being mindful of the time, I will leave it there.

The Chairperson (Mr Martin): Carly, you did really well. That is a silver star for you this morning.

I have two questions for our witnesses. I will address them as I go. The first one is for David, and I have one for Mark.

David, you highlighted the consultation, and Carly touched on it. The Committee's view is that GDL has a lot of positives. The Committee has said that at Committee Stage and in the Assembly. I will read an extract from Hansard to get your view on it. Mr Delaney, who is a senior official, said of GDL to the Committee:

Do you want to comment on that?

Mr Boyles: OK, but bear in mind that I am speaking on behalf of the council and not as an individual. Yes, there are regular meetings with the council, but not on GDL. We meet the DVA to discuss industry matters. I have been secretary for three or four years, and I believe that we have had two specific GDL meetings since 2024.

We have asked several questions and have asked for clarification, but I do not believe that we have been given exact information. I think that the council believes the same.

Whether it was DINAC or, as it is today, NIAIC, we have never seen — I have searched back through documents — the consultation paper that was presented for the Act. We do not know exactly what is in the Act. We are the gatekeepers; we are the people who provide the training, so we need more information. We need to be told what is in the Act, what is expected of us and what is expected of parents and students.

The Chairperson (Mr Martin): I will keep reading from the Hansard report. Mr Delaney said:

Is that factually correct?

Mr Boyles: That is factually correct. We knew that GDL was coming, but we did not know when it was going to be implemented or when it was going to be announced. Correct me if I am wrong on the date, but, on the morning of 27 January, I woke up —.

The Chairperson (Mr Martin): Did you hear about it on 'Good Morning Ulster'?

Mr Boyles: No. I woke up at 5.30 am, and my phone had blown up. People were texting me, asking, "David, what's this all about?". We knew nothing about it. We did not know that it was going to be published and announced that day. If we had been given a day's head notice, we could have pre-empted it, but we were not.

The Chairperson (Mr Martin): It is probably safe to say that the Committee would have liked to have a day's notice as well, but we have run through that at length. I am not sure whether you saw that Committee session.

Mr Boyles: I have seen the minutes.

The Chairperson (Mr Martin): That is fine. Thank you for that; it was very useful.

My second question is for Mark. At the same Committee session, when talking about insurance premiums and information on them, Dr Hughes said that the insurers:

In paragraph 3.4 of your written evidence, you were reasonably careful to say:

The official said that, if you reduce the number of collisions, insurance will go down. That seems to run contrary to your evidence to us. I am not questioning either, but I am asking for your view on that. Let us assume that GDL will have an impact. They were crystal clear that, if we do that, it will lead to reduced premiums. Is that factually correct? Is it partially correct? How would you respond to that?

Mr Shepherd: I would phrase it slightly differently. If GDL can reduce the frequency and severity of collisions, that is likely to help reduce insurance claims costs. I am not going to sit here and make a commitment about future insurance premiums, because of some of the factors that you have outlined, which we put in our written evidence. There are a lot of other things that could happen and other issues — in the UK, globally and locally in Northern Ireland — that will have push and pull factors on motor insurance premiums. All other things being equal, if you reduce the cost of claims and the number of claims that are facing motor insurers, in a competitive market, you can expect to see that flow through into how insurers quote and price that insurance.

The Chairperson (Mr Martin): That is very useful, Mark. If the number of collisions is reduced, insurance premiums will come down: is that fact correct? From your first answer, I sense that there is more to it, because there is a formula for supply and cost-push and so on. The officials were clear that GDL would have an impact on it. They felt that collisions would be reduced, which is supported by the evidence, and I do not dispute that. However, I am asking you, as an expert in that area, whether, if collisions are reduced as a consequence of the introduction of GDL, there will be reduced insurance premiums for people in Northern Ireland. Can you stand over that?

Mr Shepherd: Not necessarily. I will frame it with an example from another area. Over the past few years, England and Wales have introduced a number of reforms through the Civil Liability Act to reduce the compensation for lower-value soft tissue injuries, such as whiplash, caused by road traffic accidents. All other things being equal, that impact would have reduced insurance premiums, but there have been a lot of other factors over the past three years. The war in Ukraine has affected supply chains. There has been general inflation. At the moment, we have a situation in the Middle East that will affect inflation and transport costs. In isolation, what the official said about it reducing insurance costs is fine, but there is a range of other factors that will or can impact on the costs and, therefore, the premiums that are charged. It is very hard to view one policy in isolation from everything else.

The Chairperson (Mr Martin): It is probably not quite fair to say that GDL reduces premiums. Again, as reported in Hansard, I quoted this from the Department's website to the official:

Is it fair to say that, in essence, there are more factors to insurance premiums than simply collision risk?

Mr Shepherd: Absolutely. I will give the example of the performance and repair of the vehicle, which has changed over the past 10 years. If you took a car to a garage 10 years ago to have a damaged bumper replaced, it was considerably cheaper to repair it then than it is now because of the sensors, cameras and park assist in the bumper, and that factor can be extrapolated over a wide range of different car parts.

The Chairperson (Mr Martin): The number of mechanics who are available is also relevant.

Mr Shepherd: Absolutely. The capacity is a factor. There is a wide range of factors. Unfortunately, it is not simple to extrapolate from one policy change to the insurance costs, given the other factors that are at play.

The Chairperson (Mr Martin): Thank you, Mark. I am conscious that we need to get to the other members.

Mr Stewart: Thanks for the presentation, folks. I have a question for each of you.

First, thank you for coming today, David. I will echo your point that it is deeply concerning that you were not consulted again prior to the announcement. That is not me being petty or party political. It would have been logistically advantageous for those with vested stakeholder interests in what was going to be announced to be given a heads-up to prepare for a statement and begin to prepare their people to roll out the process that is coming down the road, especially when a hard and fast deadline of October this year has been set.

Mr Boyles: Yes.

The Deputy Chairperson (Mr Stewart): Is the sector ready? I am sure that you have done a lot of preparatory work on the back of that announcement. Would you be in a better position had you been given a heads-up several months or weeks before the announcement to get the logistics and personnel in place?

Mr Boyles: At present, the industry is nowhere near ready to implement GDL. It is as simple as that. We will be nowhere near ready to implement GDL until we know the finer facts of what is in the document and what the instructors will be expected to do. We also need to know the legality of GDL as well.

The Deputy Chairperson (Mr Stewart): I find that deeply concerning but not surprising, especially when there was a 10-year period of hiatus after the passing of the legislation. The Department could well have given you the heads-up, weeks, months or even years in advance. It could have done a collaborative roll-out ahead of it, given that you and your members are key aspects.

Mr Boyles: We have requested seminars from the DVA, to take place between now and 1 October, to inform the instructors of exactly what is going to happen and how it is going to work, but no dates have been set at present.

The Deputy Chairperson (Mr Stewart): OK. It is deeply concerning, but it is not surprising, given what we have seen so far.

We have put questions to the Department and its officials on the policy, the roll-out and the timing etc. We are not experts in the field, but you and Carly are. What questions are your members asking about the ambiguity around this? You have outlined some of them.

Mr Boyles: The biggest issue and worry for driving instructors, who, as I said, are the gatekeepers of producing safe and responsible driving, is the signature. Earlier this week, I asked Mark's partner whether they could give us clarification on the liability aspect of the signature. I hoped that Mark would answer that, but he has not. I still have not received an email telling me whether or not instructors are going to be liable after they have signed the document. If we do not get clarification on that, ADIs and the industry cannot support the GDL system. I cannot pass this on to the members or instructors and say, "Guys, this is the scenario: if you sign off a logbook and one of your pupils has a fatal crash after passing their driving test, we cannot guarantee that you are not going to be held liable by the insurance companies".

Ms Brookfield: May I interject on that insurance point? I have some direct experience on that.

The Deputy Chairperson (Mr Stewart): Go ahead.

Ms Brookfield: DIA is the largest provider of professional indemnity and public liability to the industry. We have a £25 million cover. We are covering more members and approved instructors than any single insurer, and we buy that as a group policy, which we operate for all our members. That clearly would be a concern for us and a question for our insurers and the insurance industry, and it would be a consideration for us when we are considering claims against the policy as well. It would have been useful to have that conversation with entities such as us that are well known for having that provision.

The Deputy Chairperson (Mr Stewart): OK. Is it fair to say then that those conversations have not been happening in the liaison group meetings that are apparently taking place with you on GDL?

Ms Brookfield: Yes.

I have another point to make quickly on motorway driving. You are going to deregulate motorways. When we did that in the UK in 2017, that caused some problems with the ability for ADIs to do that without having additional training. We have a platform that was developed to give that training to trainers, pupils and parents. I do not see any plans for similar training as a microcosm within your whole macro approach to GDL in Northern Ireland; that is something that would be useful.

The Deputy Chairperson (Mr Stewart): That is another point that I was going to ask about, Carly. Maybe you would both like to comment on this before I turn to Mark. Someone's indemnity and insurance premiums are based on the type of instruction that they give to those who are learning now. With lessons on motorways being introduced, have those premiums been assessed as to how they might change?

Mr Boyles: No.

Ms Brookfield: They were assessed at the time of the 2017 deregulation in the UK. With our premiums being the most comprehensive and us being a single investor in that product, we had a bit more scope to be able to say, "Incorporate that, and we will withstand the risk and the increased pricing to the risk as well".

The development of the GDL scheme as a whole in Northern Ireland gives me concern. In reality, I am not as bothered about the motorways bit, but its implementation is still something that should be discussed in a wider context with the industry, as there are a lot of risks and a lot of ways of mitigating and managing those risks. The wider piece of the ADI being an official gatekeeper really does need some urgent discussion. If there is a concern from the insurance industry and from those of us who operate policies at great cost to us — not necessarily at great cost to our members because we do not pass on all those costs — it is how we would actually factor that into our new policies.

Mr Stewart: OK. I will finish with this point. This is meant to be a good-news story, and it is a good-news story. It is meant to be about protecting young people's lives on the road, but that fact has been lost in the confusion, in the lack of management and engagement with stakeholders and in the rush to get the announcement out the door without bringing people along. My final question to you both, before I ask Mark a question, is this: do you think that the current time frame is reasonable and achievable, given the clear questions and logistical issues that you have outlined today?

Mr Boyles: As long as instructors are informed about all aspects of GDL — what is expected of the instructor, what is expected of the pupil and what is expected of the parents — and we can get all that information out to the industry, which I do not think that we can, there is a slim possibility that instructors can be ready for 1 October.

Mr Stewart: Carly, is that your assessment, too?

Ms Brookfield: I would go wider than that. We represent driver trainers across all licence categories and driving contexts. We interact an awful lot with parents as well. There is not just a dissemination gap, whereby instructors were not involved in the conversation as early as they should have been in order to help to identify and mitigate the risks with the scheme; there is a training gap. That is not being detrimental to ADIs; that is just our knowledge. We are the largest provider of continuing professional development in the UK for driver trainers of all types, and we know that knowledge gaps exist in the current ADI qualification and how ADIs train. A knowledge gap will exist in implementation of GDL. If you want GDL to be done well, you have to tackle that knowledge gap in ADIs, parents and pupils. That is a big training need to be gotten on top of before October.

It is just about possible to do that, with the right investment of time and resources. Resources already exist, built by the DIA, the DVSA or our partners. There is a scheme in Northern Ireland for the post-test side called Vision Zero, which could be an adjunct to stuff that we have already done in the pre-test universe. You have to come and speak to us, guys, about what is already there. Instead of reinventing the wheel and attracting vast expense by going to other people to start from scratch, using the stuff that already exists would be cost- and time-effective. However, the conversation about doing that has to start now, because to get the learning out to instructors, parents and pupils, and to get them onboard with it, will be a much longer cycle than has, I think, been anticipated.

Mr Stewart: OK. Thank you, Carly. On the back of this session, the Committee will, hopefully, get some of the clarity that you need ahead of it, because I am deeply concerned about the time frame and lack of engagement.

Mark, the primary aim of the legislation and the announcement is to save lives and protect people on the roads. One of the side issues is the hope that it will reduce premiums here, particularly for young drivers. I do not want to make you the personification of the industry, but you are that here today. The premiums that young people in Northern Ireland pay are disgusting — utterly disgusting. I get 17-, 18- and 19-year-olds coming to me saying that they are being quoted £4,000 per year to drive a car that is worth 500 quid. I find that scandalous from an industry that makes tens of billions of pounds of profit every single year.

Paragraph 4.1 of your written submission states that the ABI does not currently publish average figures broken down by region or age. We know, anecdotally, that premiums in Northern Ireland are vastly higher, and that premiums for young people are vastly higher than those for others. How will we be able to tell the impact of GDL, if premiums are not broken down by region and age, given that it is aimed directly at young people in Northern Ireland?

Mr Shepherd: I appreciate the concern that young people have about the cost of their motor insurance. There are a host of reasons for those costs. Insurers see a higher frequency of claims from younger drivers: for example, those aged between 17 and 20. When claims are made involving drivers aged from 17 to 20, they are, on average, much more costly, and there are various reasons for that. That is reflected in the premiums that are charged by age. There is a wide range of other factors, including location. You mentioned Northern Ireland having a particular issue. Part of that is down to the injury compensation that the Northern Ireland civil justice system provides, which is, on average, far higher and far more generous than that in England and Wales. The claim costs that face insurers for young drivers in Northern Ireland feed through to the premiums that are charged.

I will address your point about breaking down premium data by region. Given that the ABI is a trade association representing insurers, we need to be particularly careful about the commercial sensitivities of any more granular split of premium data that we publish, particularly if we are providing premium information for a region where there are fewer providers, as is the case in Northern Ireland. We need to make sure that providers are not using that published data to identify particular trends with their major competitors that could then affect how they price or make pricing decisions. We have agreed to look at what is possible, and I am happy to come back to the Committee with an update on what data we might be able to start publishing. For example, we are looking at whether we are able to publish, annually, data that is broken down by region — Northern Ireland, Scotland, England and Wales — rather than doing so quarterly, which is what we do UK-wide. We might be able to publish it with more of a delay so that it is less sensitive to pricing decisions and market dynamics. That is where we are. I am being open and honest about that.

My job would be much easier if we were able to have Northern Ireland-specific data, and that is what we aim to have. However, we need to make sure that we do that in the right way so that we do not impact those commercial sensitivities and, indeed, so that we do not cross a boundary and, as certain Committees have accused us of in the past, act like a cartel. We do not want to put information out there that suggests that all premiums should move in a certain way when that is not what should happen. It will be about market dynamics: the impact of GDL, and insurers making individual commercial decisions on how they price for that.

Mr Stewart: Thanks, Mark. You are a very good spokesperson on behalf of the industry, and I am sure that it will be glad that you have been able to be that today. The reality is that it is incredibly convenient for insurers that, while the costs continue to go up, so, too, do the profits. One of the biggest suppliers here has made £1·09 billion while young people's car insurance premiums continue to rise ridiculously. I take your points about commercial sensitivities, but, leaving those aside, it is essential, in order to be able to analyse over a period how impactful — hopefully positively — GDL has been on young people's insurance premiums, that that data is broken down by region of Northern Ireland and by age. Otherwise, ultimately, we will not have a clue about the impact of GDL, and we may well continue to see premiums skyrocket, which none of us wants.

Mr Dunne: Thanks, everyone, for your presentation. Some of this is alarming, particularly what David said about feeling that the sector has effectively been kept in the dark. We concur with those feelings: we were equally kept in the dark and heard about this through the radio waves. That is alarming. When the DVA as here, its senior officials were adamant — very confident, I think it is fair to say — that the October deadline will be met. I recall asking them specifically about that. Although there is such optimism, given that, until very recently, it was a challenge to get practical tests and vehicle tests — there was a big backlog — we will keep a close eye on that. There is certainly room for improvement.

What will be the impact on the cost of lessons for young drivers, either negative or positive? I would also like a wee bit more clarity about the module process. I understand that there are 14 modules. Does that equal a minimum of 14 lessons?

Mr Boyles: Our understanding is that the modules are to do with the pupil. We are hearing that the pupil will have to purchase an app for £17. Our understanding is that it is then the responsibility of the pupil to go through those modules. They cannot book a driving test until they have completed each of those 14 modules. We, as instructors, do not get to see the modules. We are not 100% certain what will be on the instructor side; we are not sure whether the instructor will get to see. In the past few days, I received an email calling me to a meeting to be given a demonstration on how far they have got with that and for us to have a little bit of an interactive play with it. Until we have seen that, we cannot make any assumption.

The average price of a driving lesson today is £40 to £45 an hour. If you are now going to ask driving instructors to train two different types of pupils for the first six months, the following has to be borne in mind. For the first six months, we will be training two types of pupils: one at the 45 mph speed limit and one at the signposted speed limit. There will be a lot more work involved in that for driving instructors, because we will have to be a lot more aware of who we are training. It will not be too difficult — instructors will be able to do it — but the issue is whether prices will go up. I cannot say that they will, but potentially they will, especially as we will have to go on to the faster roads — dual carriageways and motorways — where the risk is a lot higher. The DVA has stated that only an ADI can train somebody on a motorway. Obviously, there will be a cost effect there. Again, we do not know whether our insurance companies will increase our premiums due to the higher speeds. Have they reduced premiums because we go up to only 45 mph? Who knows? Will they now increase premiums because we will go up to 60 mph and 70 mph? More than likely, which means that there will be a cost to instructors, so potentially lesson prices will go up.

Mr Dunne: The motorway training is optional for a young person. Is that correct?

Mr Boyles: I believe that it is optional. I think that we will find that quite a few test centres in Northern Ireland do not have motorways available to them because they are in rural areas. The Newtownards to Bangor carriageway is a 70 mph road, so, yes, the Newtownards test centre, for example, would be able to get up to speed there. The normal hourly lesson may have to go to an hour and a half in order to train pupils.

Mr Dunne: Yes. It is alarming that it seems that the Minister has, effectively, gone out on a solo driving lesson in making this announcement and has not, to date, taken the sector with her. That is concerning, given that we are now only six or seven months from the kick-off date. As a Committee, we will keep a close eye on that. Ultimately, we all want to see a reduction in the number of road deaths. The figures speak for themselves: I believe that we have had 18 deaths already this year in Northern Ireland, which is alarming. Any initiative to improve safety is to be welcomed.

I have a question for you, Carly, on your experience of global examples, some of which have been mentioned. People often ask about the best aspects. Are there any bits from around the world that you would strongly recommend are not introduced in Northern Ireland?

Ms Brookfield: Yes, definitely. The best systems have a pre-test modular approach to learning. That is what we drew the Milestones project from in the UK. We developed it to be better than even the approaches that were already in train globally. In Northern Ireland, you have prescribed a 14-step programme. Ireland has a 12-step programme. The Milestone programme has six modules, but it actually covers all those 14 steps in six. It focuses on not putting more financial and time burdens on either the instructor or pupil by utilising e-learning and e-theory testing, with remote invigilation for secure testing so that it does not become easily corrupted. I would like to see those other elements being looked at for adoption in the Northern Ireland scheme. Northern Ireland has the potential to do something even more groundbreaking than anything that has come before, but I would not like to see a rush to introduce something at the cost of doing something amazing. I would like to see more focus on what happens in that learning environment. David is right to acknowledge that there might be an increased time burden for instructors, but he and his colleagues have not yet had the opportunity to discuss that, work that through and understand it in order to be able to give a solid answer on what it will look like.

We worry a little bit too much in driver education, certainly in the UK, about accessibility, including cost accessibility. We think about the cost burden, including the hourly lesson cost. We ask pupils to do more and make sure that mum and dad can have more involvement, because that will help to reduce cost and increase exposure. However, we forget that the output of allowing accessibility on a cost basis, and making that more important to some degree, results in road accidents that cost £16·9 billion every year. We need to get more serious about what we need to do to reduce that ultimate cost and not be overly concerned that driving lessons are too expensive or with getting mum and dad to do more in order to reduce the cost impact. Mum and dad are novices in driver education. I have concerns, as do my colleagues, about any GDL scheme that relies on parents signing off on competency.

In the Northern Ireland scheme, there is a prescription that the accompanying driver — mum or dad or anyone over 21 with three years' experience, blahdy-blah — will have the ability to sign off on the modules. If they are just signing off on a task being completed — for example, saying, "We did some roundabouts today" — or on an hours-based process, that, to some degree, is fine. However, if you are expecting that accompanying driver to sign off that the person acquired competency in those areas, you should know that they are a total novice, unless they are an approved driving instructor. More thought needs to be given to the point that, yes, there might have to be more instructor time, which comes at a cost, but that that is better than allowing a novice to be trained by a novice and a novice signing off a novice, and thereby kicking the can — the risk — down the road.

Mr Dunne: OK. Thanks, folks.

Mr Harvey: Thank you, all. You made three points at the start, David. You first was that you think that six months is too long. What would be a reasonable time frame? You also mentioned rural areas. Why do you differentiate between rural areas and urban areas?

Mr Boyles: The biggest thing that instructors are talking about, especially at council level, is based on the fact that we have on the council a mix of different instructors from different areas. People who come from rural backgrounds tend to have worked on farms, have driven quads and have good motor skills. Generally, those types of clients do not need very many lessons to learn to drive. They pick it up really quickly, because they have the initial skills already. Northern Ireland is a motor sport country. Everybody knows somebody who is into motor sport. Kids here race go-karts and motorbikes — they do all sorts of such things — so they have more of the skills compared with kids in the rest of the UK, where the percentage of people who do those things is not as big. City people do not tend to have the same skills as country people. In our experience, somebody from the country may need half as many driving lessons as a city person. That is not to discriminate against anybody.

What we are trying to say is that some kind of system needs to be put in place that will allow pupils who are competent — that competence has to be checked in some way — to reduce the six-month waiting period. Why should they have to sit and wait? I do not how many of the members here have kids, but, if you ask young people to sit and wait for six months before they can do a driving test, will they go to a driving instructor from day 1, or will they wait until the fourth month to go to an instructor? Will they do all their early training, and get all their muscle memory, with their parents and then come to an instructor? Is GDL not supposed to mean that they start with a driving instructor from day 1 and work through the whole process: the modules, the theory and the driving? We do not feel that they will come to driving instructors within those first six months. That is the opinion of the council.

Mr Harvey: That is interesting.

Mr Boyles: We have seen or heard nothing that says that people have to start with an instructor within that six-month period. It could be that they come to us with two weeks to go, already having booked a driving test, and the instructor is expected to sign that off.

Mr Harvey: As regards the logbook, you mentioned competence, completeness and the worry about responsibility. Surely, end responsibility remains with the examiner rather than the instructor.

Mr Boyles: That is our thought. Once a person has passed that test, is the examiner liable, or will the examiner be ring-fenced and it will come back to instructors? It has never, ever been a question before, but, now, an instructor will have to sign off. We understand that two signatures will be needed: one for the modules and one for the learning phase. If instructors are to sign off on that learning phase, are we signing off —? Mark has not answered that question. I ask this question, again: will any liability come back to driving instructors?

Mr Shepherd: I am very happy to come in on that, Chair.

Mr Boyles: Yes, please.

Mr Shepherd: I did not want to interrupt Committee members asking questions. Given that a question from another witness has come directly at me, however, I thought that I should come in on it.

This week was the first that we heard of that issue. It is not a concern of which we had been aware. We do not see any basis in law for an insurer to find a driving instructor liable if, for example, someone passes their test and then causes an accident, just as a driving examiner would not currently be pursued by insurers after someone passes their test. We do not see a basis for that in law. I would be very happy to pick up on that with you, David, and to give consideration to it, if there is any legal advice or a legal basis from which that concern is emanating. We had not been aware of that before you raised it with us directly earlier this week, and we do not see a basis for it in law for it.

Mr Boyles: I can take that back to the council. I think that that will put a lot of the council's fears to rest.

Ms Brookfield: May I ask Mark for a quick point of clarification? Mark, what do you feel about the impact of negligence claims on the professional indemnity policy for instructors and the potential for the number of those to increase? They may not be successful, but there is still a cost resource to a claim and there may be potential for it to increase. Even if it is just a claim, there is a cost to the administrative process, which can push up premiums for people such as us.

Mr Shepherd: At the moment, driving instructors have professional indemnity insurance and there is a risk of claims being made against them if, for example, they have acted negligently. That risk will continue, and it may be greater if they have to teach on more road conditions or on different types of roads — I am not sure. As I understand it, however, that threshold of negligence would, again, need to be reached. Remember that that professional indemnity insurance is in place to cover the driving instructor in the event that someone who is learning from them takes action against them for acting negligently. It is important to have that protection. If GDL increases that risk, there is a chance that that will be reflected in premiums. Just as we will need to see what the impact of GDL will be on young drivers, we will need to see what its impact will be on driving instructors.

Ms Brookfield: I totally respect that, Mark. I asked that question in particular not just because we are a major policyholder but because, in the UK, we see longer waiting times for tests and the frustration of pupils when they fail a test and have to face going back into the system to get another test. That frustration is boiling over, and instructors, rather than the fact that the agency is failing to provide tests, are being blamed. That has a link, anecdotal as it is, to a rise in complaints about instructors. We represent members in cases of complaints and at tribunals and, particularly in cases of malicious complaints, we see a link between that and a pupil who has failed a test making what could be construed as a malicious complaint against the instructor, including things that the pupil has made up, although the core complaint, really, is, "You didn't help me to pass that test, and now I've got to go back into the system". Sorry to be the doomsayer — I prefer to see myself as a cynical optimist than a pessimist — but I want us to be aware of the risks of that happening and, in a GDL scenario, where there is sign-off by the instructor, the instructor potentially being exposed to the risk of the pupil thinking, "I'm going to get you this way as well".

The Chairperson (Mr Martin): I will save you from answering that question, Mark. As much as the Committee wishes to facilitate discussion, we are incredibly conscious of time.

Ms Brookfield: Apologies. I just wanted to raise that point for consideration.

The Chairperson (Mr Martin): That is absolutely fine, Carly. It will be recorded in Hansard, and I am sure that Mark will come back to you on it. I know that Mark is also going to pick up on some issues with David offline. Mark, perhaps you could bottom out your position on driving instructors, competence and what you were talking about in response to that very useful question from David. It would be useful if you could fire that response to the Committee at some point, so that we are sighted on it. There is not necessarily a rush on that — I think that you guys are going to take that up offline — but it would be really useful. I had a couple more questions, but I will probably not ask them because I am so conscious of time. I will let Harry in very quickly.

Mr Harvey: This is just to finish off, Chair. I appreciate all the answers. David, in your introductory remarks, you did not mention motorways, so obviously that does not really concern you and you are reasonably OK about it. However, I have concerns. I feel that, if the speed limits increase, every driver should be given an opportunity to get to a motorway and be assessed on judging speeds, distances etc.

Mr Boyles: Yes. Initially, I had five questions, but, when I heard that we had only 10 minutes, I went back to the council, and we ruled out a couple of those questions. One of the questions that we ruled out was on the 45 mph speed limit and pre- and post-1 October driving licence holders. We feel that, if a driving instructor has to train two types of pupils at two different speeds, that could cause a lot of confusion. We understand that pre-1 October licence holders are restricted, by legislation, to 45 mph and cannot exceed that. Let us say, for instance, that that pupil gets to February or the beginning of March and has not done their driving test. If they get a driving test booked but it is for 2 April, what speed do we teach them at? Will we, as qualified driving instructors and gatekeepers of road safety, be given special dispensation to teach all pupils to drive at the speed limit posted?

Mr Harvey: You should be; yes.

The Chairperson (Mr Martin): It is good question, David. I am conscious that, because of the way that this session has worked, you had very limited time to present the issues. If you want to, put something on those concerns in writing and send it to the Committee. That is a really good example of such a concern. We will send your questions to the Department and get you some answers on them. We are all very conscious that there are a number of outstanding questions and a particularly tight time frame, which puts pressure on you especially.

I thank Mark, Carly and David for coming along. It was a really interesting session that covered GDL and associated issues in some detail. If you have any concerns, particularly with GDL, that you want to put in writing to the Committee, you can do that, and we will take them up with the Department on your behalf in order to bottom them out. We want GDL to work in order to protect people in Northern Ireland and to make Northern Ireland safer. We just have to get it right. Thank you very much for your time, folks. We really appreciate you joining us today.