Clause 26 - Notification requirements: Part II
Vehicles (Crime) Bill
11:00 am
Mr John Bercow (Buckingham, Conservative)
As the Committee will be aware and you will certainly have fully digested, Mr. Wells, clause 26 deals with the notification requirements of those who seek registration as registration plate suppliers. There seems to be some inconsistency in the clause. The Bill contains a requirement to register—that is, after all, the principle of the Bill—and a specific offence of trading as a registration plate supplier without being registered. The perpetrator of that offence is liable to a fine of up to £5,000. The central principle of our amendments is that, if we are to reflect the importance of registration and to penalise non-compliance, it is curious to treat lightly the provision of inadequate or out-of-date information. The unamended clause is in danger of doing that.
The clause deals specifically with changes to the details in the register. At present, any change must be notified within 28 days. I invite the Committee to consider whether that is right. Is it a proper time scale? Do Ministers concede that, as in other parts of the Bill where time periods are specified, there is necessarily an element of arbitrariness involved? I say that in no uncritical vein. We have to choose what seems to be a reasonable time, but there is nothing absolute or sacrosanct about one period rather than another.
My concern and that of my hon. Friends is that the Bill should be effective in achieving its purpose. I hope that we have provided sufficient evidence of our bona fides for the Minister to accept that my motives in this matter are good, as are those of my hon. Friends. I am concerned that the provision as it stands is too lax.
I see no good reason why a registered business that is obviously aware of its legal obligations cannot notify the central authority of relevant changes within 14 days. A period of 28 days seems to leave the system open to abuse. If the requirement were 14 rather than 28 days, the provision could be properly and reasonably applied. There may be extenuating or mitigating circumstances which prevent the provision of the amended information within that time scale. The principle of reasonableness is contained elsewhere in the Bill and Ministers regularly assert it when they are in any way criticised. If we are to be strong-minded about the provision that businesses should be required to notify the authority of any changes, we should ensure that there is a reasonable, but not excessive, period of time within which those changes should be notified.
If it is proper to apply a severe penalty for people who do not register—we suggest that the penalty should be up to £5,000—why should failure to notify the authority of changes to the information required on the register be subject to a lesser penalty? It is surely wrong that failure to keep the details up to date should be punishable by anything less than a maximum fine of £5,000. Having inaccurate details on the register is the equivalent of not being registered at all and should be dealt with as such.
This information is of significance not only to two parties. As several hon. Members have pointed out, it is of significance not only to the plate supplier providing the information and the central authority that processes and retains it, but to third parties who seek the information and who, as I understand it, would ordinarily be entitled to receive it. Unless they are in a category of persons who are not eligible to receive it, they will get the information.
It would be damaging for third parties to receive inaccurate and misleading information that caused them to make commercial errors and perhaps to incur financial loss. In those circumstances, the merit of the individual's being registered is not at all clear. People might almost be better off not knowing that the individual is registered than finding that material facts relating to the registration are incorrect. So, equivalence of treatment is the principle that should inform us and it is certainly the principle that lies behind the amendments. If it is right to make registration compulsory, and failure to register punishable, it is surely right to require people to register accurately and make failure to do that equally punishable. The punishment that my hon. Friends and I propose of a fine of up to £5,000 is precisely that. It is a maximum fine and, as the Minister explained in a different context earlier, it would be open to the courts to impose a lesser penalty if they wished.
Finally, I emphasise that it is odd that selling or supplying plates for illegal use is a lesser offence than failure to register as a business. It is the process of supplying plates that facilitates crime so, if anything, it should be treated more seriously than merely failing to register. We have proposed a notification period of 14 days to tighten up the regulations, while also raising the level of the fine from a maximum of £1,000 to a maximum of £5,000. That seems to me to be a reasonable proposition. I hope that the Minister will see some merit in it. I would be genuinely interested to hear other Committee members' comments and, above all, fascinated to learn the response of the Minister on the Treasury Bench.
Mr. Chidgey rose—