Schedule 3 - Schedule 4B to the New Roads and
Traffic Management Bill
3:00 pm
Mr Greg Knight (East Yorkshire, Conservative)
I seek information from the Minister on the schedule. Paragraphs 4(2) and 5(1) refer to the penalty period and to
''the day on which the notice is given.''
When the Minister draws up the regulations or the guidelines, will he clarify what the words ''notice is given'' mean? Do they mean the date when the notice is issued or the date when the notice is received, or deemed to have been received, by the person alleged to have committed an offence? I hope that it means the latter if the notice is not served personally, because if the notice is issued on, say, Maundy Thursday, the person to whom it is addressed may not receive it until well over a week later because of the Easter holiday.
That takes me to paragraph 6, which refers to a person being served with a fixed penalty notice. What in the regulations or guidance will the Minister say is service? When I had my law practice, we operated under the strict rule that if we were acting on behalf of a plaintiff and were instructed to serve a writ on a defendant, we had to serve the writ. That meant the solicitor or his articled clerk going out, usually at teatime, to the defendant's address and knocking on his door. If his wife answered the door, the solicitor had to ask to see the defendant and, as soon as he saw him, physically touch him with the document. What the defendant then did with the document did not matter: he could throw it away, throw it at the person who had served it or put it under the windscreen wiper of his car. He had been served. The solicitor had touched him with the document and had therefore given him the opportunity to respond to it.
Does service mean that in the schedule? I am becoming increasingly concerned that these days a growing number of bodies seem to think that, if a document is put in a post box with a postage stamp affixed to it, that is service and it is deemed to be operative from the next day. For the last three weeks, I have sent post to my constituents in House of Commons envelopes with a first-class stamp, and they have not received it the following day. In some
cases, the post has taken three days to arrive. I cannot see how, when one is alleging that someone has committed an offence, one can simply put the fixed penalty ticket in a letter box and assume that the person receives it the following day: it may take two or three days to arrive. Proof of service should be a requirement of the person issuing the ticket.
One cannot even rely on Departments if one is seeking to serve something through the post. A few years back, I needed to have a motor vehicle document altered, so I posted it to the DVLA in Nottingham, to the address in the phone book. Having heard nothing for five weeks, I telephoned and was told, ''We've left that office. We now occupy new premises.'' I said, ''Surely you've got your post on divert.'' I should have thought that a Department of government would at least have done that, but it had not bothered to do so. The document was lost, and I had to make a declaration. I do not want to hear the Minister say that partnerships and those doing this sort of work should make sure that they read their post every day, because Departments do not do it and do not even notify the public when they change their address.