Clause 40 - Fixed penalty offences
Traffic Management Bill
2:30 pm
Mr Tony McNulty (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Department for Transport; Harrow East, Labour)
It is a pleasure to be under your tutelage once again, Mr. Beard, but I hope—I mean this in the nicest sense—we will not be under it for too much longer.
The points made by the hon. Member for Christchurch (Mr. Chope) are entirely fair. I hope that I can address them. Amendment No. 45 refers to section 166 of the 1991 Act, which provides that when an offence is committed with the consent or connivance of, or owing to the neglect of, a director, manager, secretary, partner or similar officer of the body corporate or partnership—I mean of the body corporate—the individual as well as the body corporate or partnership is guilty of an offence.
Clause 40 inserts new section 95A(2) in the 1991 Act, which provides that in such cases the offence would not be dealt with by means of fixed penalty notice, but through the courts. It is important to recognise the two-tier approach of the fixed penalty notice and due course through the courts. Amendment No. 45 would allow such offences to be subject to fixed penalty notices after all.
The distinction that the hon. Gentleman seeks to draw out of me is essentially—not entirely—between the noticing offences that are subject to fixed penalties, which we discussed this morning, and the more serious ones that are not.
I am sure that that is not the thrust of the hon. Gentleman's amendment No. 45, but some offences might involve circumstances in which the negligence of an individual contributes to the death of a worker on the site of a works or road works. I am sure that nobody would think that a fixed penalty notice deals with that appropriately.