Schedule 1 - Increase in maximum fines for
Traffic Management Bill
11:00 am
Mr Tony McNulty (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Department for Transport; Harrow East, Labour)
There is nothing new in the schedule, which is simply a list of offences listed in the 1991 Act, which was passed by a Conservative Government who thought that it was entirely appropriate at the time, and the relative increases in the levels of fine that each offence will accrue. A simple reading of the original Act will show how irrelevant—the most polite word possible—contributions to this debate have been. How could anyone disagree with section 65(6)—
''Interference with safety measures taken by undertaker''—
which the hon. Member for Spelthorne picked up on? How can anyone disagree that that should be the larger charge? The principal Act states that an offence is committed:
''If a person without lawful authority or excuse . . . takes down, alters or removes any fence, barrier, traffic sign or light erected or placed in pursuance of subsection (1) or (2) above, or . . . extinguishes a light so placed''
obviously for safety reasons. How can anyone object to that? It is easy to pull a phrase from the schedule without referring to the original Act and have light, if not terribly witty, fun with it. Ultimately, however, the fun is at the expense of the Government of the party of the hon. Member for Spelthorne and at the offences that they determined were appropriate in 1991. We agree with that list of offences, and are not changing them for the purposes of the schedule. We are merely changing the levels of fine for the reasons that I gave earlier, and we are changing no more than that.