Schedule 7 - Minor and consequential amendments
Domestic Violence, Crime and Victims Bill [Lords]
4:00 pm
Mrs Cheryl Gillan (Shadow Minister, Home, Constitutional & Legal Affairs; Chesham and Amersham, Conservative)
I need further and better particulars from the Minister on the proposals. Notwithstanding that, I should like to place it on the record that I am grateful to him, and through him I thank his officials, who have tried to do the impossible in bringing me up
to speed on these late-tabled amendments. They are a credit to the Home Office and to the Minister.
On a reading of the summary of the responses to the Home Office consultation paper, it seems that despite more than 1,000 people accessing the information on the internet, the Minister received only 106 responses. However, in the executive summary, he makes it clear that a majority of the respondents tended to concentrate on the proposal to add the surcharge on criminal convictions and the fixed penalty notices for disorder and road traffic offences, and many focused exclusively on speeding.
Is the Minister willing to publish the 106 responses in full, so we can better understand the response to the consultation? Although he acknowledges that a few respondents misunderstood the proposals, many others concentrated on specific issues that concerned them. I have a sneaking suspicion that most of the 106 responses focused on the matter with which we have been preoccupied today. It would be helpful if, when we return to this matter on Report, the responses could be made available in full to the Committee. That should not be too difficult a job for the Department; it is just a matter of photocopying them and placing them in the Library. It would help us better to understand how the Department arrived at its thinking, because the Minister has pressed ahead, despite all the publicity and the obvious public outrage caused by the proposals around the speed camera element.
I should also like to know not only what the Minister understands the term ''persistent offender'' to mean, as Opposition Members have asked, but what he understands a ''serious and persistent offender'' to be. The Government's position is also outlined on page 5 of the response document:
''The surcharge on motoring Fixed Penalty Notices will only apply to serious and persistent offenders.''
A persistent offender may have been done twice by a speed camera, but if they had been going only 3 mph above the speed limit, would that be serious? The response document does not say ''serious or persistent offender'', but refers to a ''serious and persistent offender''. I would like to probe the Minister on his understanding of the term ''serious''.
It is obvious to me that a serious offender would be somebody going at 110 mph in a 30 mph zone. The offence of a close relation of mine who was caught doing 34 mph in a 30 mph zone at 2 o'clock in the morning was not serious, although I have to say that it was persistent, because he was done twice.