Clause 11 - Offence of giving false particulars on sale for salvage
Vehicles (Crime) Bill
8:30 pm
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.