Schedule 5 - Schedule 22A to the Highways Act 1980
Traffic Management Bill
5:30 pm
Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch, Conservative)
The point made in response to my hon. Friend's question underlines our concern about the use of fixed penalty offences in cases where the offence may well be subject to mitigation. If one is responsible for a skip and has lit it, but the lights are removed, an absolute offence, subject to a fixed penalty, has been committed. In such circumstances, if there was a prosecution, there would have been a proper investigation and the prosecution probably would not have proceeded when it realised that it was not the fault of the owner because the lights had been removed. That is an example of the inflexibility that is introduced as soon as there are fixed-penalty offences.