Clause 11 - Offence of giving false particulars on sale for salvage
Vehicles (Crime) Bill
8:30 pm
Mr Andrew Miller (Ellesmere Port and Neston, Labour)
I rise to clarify a point for the record. Clause 11 sets out a specific offence and, to avoid ambiguity in the minds of police officers and others concerned with offences that might result in a car being wrecked, I want my hon. Friend the Minister of State to confirm that the clause does not mean that a person who sells a wrecked motor car to a salvage operator cannot be charged with other offences. In such circumstances, a charge of, for example, misleading the police in the course of their inquiries and other charges might be appropriate. I have dealt with many cases in which vehicles have been illegitimately disposed of to disguise evidence when people have been involved in crashes that caused death or serious injury, and it is worth asking my hon. Friend to put on the record the fact that the provision does not preclude other offences relating to vehicles.
Mr Michael Fabricant (Lichfield, Conservative)
I welcome the clause—it echoes the North Yorkshire County Council Act 1991 and the Medway Council and Kent County Council Bills—which makes it an offence for someone who sells a vehicle to a salvage operator to fail to give information or give a false name and address. However, I question the level of the fine at level 3. The Minister has said clearly that there should be different levels so that someone who does not provide information or does not comply with the Bill innocently is fined at one level. He justified the level 5 fine by saying that it was right to impose a higher level when someone deliberately provided false information. Yet clause 11 states:
Any person who, on selling a motor vehicle to a person who is in the course of carrying on business as a motor salvage operator ... gives that person a false name or address shall be guilty of an offence.
That is quite right, but someone who gives a false name and address is clearly committing an offence with intent. The Minister of State defended the consistency of the Bill and argued correctly just before 7 o'clock that there should be two levels of fine, depending on whether someone committed an offence with intent or unwittingly. However, someone who gives a false name and address does so deliberately to commit a crime. It is right that clause 11 is in the Bill, but it should have teeth. The fine should be at a high enough level to provide those teeth, and it is questionable whether level 3 is high enough.
Mr John Bercow (Buckingham, Conservative)
There is, as my hon. Friend poignantly observes, a distinction between intention to commit a serious crime and negligence. There is common ground between the Opposition and the Government because the Minister of State said that failing through negligence, incompetence, oversight or inattention, or a combination of all four, to provide requisite information is a lesser offence and should not be on a par with an intention to commit a serious offence. However, as my hon. Friend helpfully said, it could be argued that that was what was involved. When my hon. Friends and I were considering the Bill, we did not feel strongly enough to table an amendment on the issue. We tabled a great many amendments to other clauses, so we cannot be accused of insufficient tabling. However, there is an issue here: somebody who gives a false name and address is likely to be doing so as protection against discovery in relation to another crime. A deliberate intention to mislead, or arguably to defraud, is a serious matter. I do not use the word ``defraud'' lightly; I use it advisedly. Therefore, the Minister owes us an explanation of his judgment on the point before we give our assent to the clause.
Mr Charles Clarke (Minister of State, Home Office; Norwich South, Labour)
I am delighted to give my hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston the precise reassurances that he seeks in the most flowery terms I possibly can. Nothing in the Bill precludes dealing with other offences as they occur. For reasons that I shall give in a moment, it is necessary to have this offence, but there is no preclusion, and I am glad that he has given me the chance to make that clear.
The clause makes it a summary offence for someone to give a false name or address to a salvage dealer when purchasing a vehicle. I emphasise ``to a salvage dealer'', not to the police or a local authority. The idea, and perhaps this will help to clarify the point helpfully raised by the hon. Member for Buckingham, is to deter people from, for example, falsely reporting that their car has been stolen in order to claim on the insurance, when in fact they have secretly sold it to a salvage dealer. It will also help to ensure the integrity of the salvage dealer's records. As we discussed earlier, salvage dealers will be obliged by regulation to keep full and accurate records that may be inspected by the police.
The judgment that we have made, and this addresses the point made by the hon. Member for Lichfield, is that giving a false name or address to a salvage dealer is a qualitatively different offence from giving a false name or address to the police or a local authority when they are collecting data as outlined in the Bill. It is still an offence, but at a qualitatively different level, which is why we have selected level 3. I should make it clear that level 3 applies only if no other offences have been committed. If someone commits other offences, such as giving a false name and address to people other than a salvage dealer, that may be taken into account.
I have dealt with the issue of the appropriate level of fine for an offence in three Standing Committees, without having the benefit of the knowledge that the hon. Member for Vale of York derived from her Scottish experience. As a non-lawyer, I confess frankly to the hon. Member for Buckingham that I find myself forced back to the point that one is making a balanced judgment of what is more or less serious. We chose level 3 because it seems to us that it is a less serious offence to give a false name or address to a salvage dealer than to give false information to the police or a local authority.
Mr Michael Fabricant (Lichfield, Conservative)
If the object of the exercise is to commit a crime, I am not sure that it is morally less of an offence to give false information to a salvage dealer than to a police officer. To use the Minister's example, a crime committed against an insurance company is still a crime. As my hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham pointed out, this is not a question of negligence; this is a question of deliberately setting out to give false information for financial gain. For that reason, it is irrelevant whether one gives false information to a salvage dealer, a police office or anyone else.
Mr Charles Clarke (Minister of State, Home Office; Norwich South, Labour)
That is simply a repetition of the argument. I understand it, and I shall address it in a second when I conclude, after giving way again to the hon. Member for Buckingham.
Mr John Bercow (Buckingham, Conservative)
The Minister of State will probably accuse me of repetition, but, not surprisingly, my hon. Friend and I largely approach the matter from a similar perspective. That is healthy. If we did not, the Minister of State would accuse us of inconsistency and cutting across one another.
Is the Minister of State making a value judgment about the perceived status of individuals depending on the profession in which they are engaged? Although that is often done in debate, it is dangerous. Is he not guilty of a certain sort of professional, as opposed to social, snobbery?
Mr Charles Clarke (Minister of State, Home Office; Norwich South, Labour)
Certainly not snobbery—in no way. I am making a value judgment. We make value judgments every second when we consider amendments. Should we treat someone who gives a false name or address to a salvage dealer in the same way as someone who gives a false name or address to the police? The value judgment that I make is that we should ascribe different values to them, as we do in many things that we do. I agree that, in a philosophical sense, one is almost splitting hairs as regards the direction that one takes.
I am giving my explanation, which I believe is consistent and reasonable. The hon. Gentleman must decide whether he wants to vote against the clause that creates this offence. If he wants to, perhaps he will table an amendment on Report on the level of the offence so that we can have a debate around that, but I urge the Committee to agree that the clause stand part of the Bill.
Mr John Bercow (Buckingham, Conservative)
I have noted what the Minister of State said. He is right to say that we can, if we wish, raise the matter at a later stage. My hon. Friends and I may choose to do so.
Mr John Bercow (Buckingham, Conservative)
``Absolutely'', says my hon. Friend, with gusto and enthusiasm from a sedentary position. We may return to these matters at a later stage, but I—I feel sure that my hon. Friends will take a similar view—am not inclined to prevent the approval of the clause at this stage.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 11 ordered to stand part of the Bill.