Clause 68 - Civil penalties for road traffic contraventions
Traffic Management Bill
9:25 am
Mr John Mann (Bassetlaw, Labour)
Good morning, Mr. Beard.
I tabled the amendment partly as a probing amendment but also because of a major weakness in current legislation relating to car parking. The Road Traffic Act 1991 decriminalised parking offences and brought them within the civil enforcement system, and the clause seems to continue that. I ask the Minister to clarify whether the Government intend to continue to move towards civil rather than criminal enforcement and say whether he believes that the clause will worsen or improve the situation.
Under section 35A of the Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984, local authorities can contract out the management of off-road parking to private car parking firms. However, there is no provision in the Act for a local authority agent to take action on the local authority's behalf. While the Act refers specifically—for example, in section 33(7)—to the use of agents to manage a car-parking facility, it does not authorise a third party to pursue action through the criminal justice system.
Throughout the country there is an anomaly. It is an anomaly that needs to be removed and one that neither the Government nor the House of Commons want to see in part 6 of the Bill. Where a local authority car park is run by the local authority, the situation is straightforward: the parking adjudicator has some authority. Where it is run by a private operator, the private operator is taking people to criminal courts to raise revenue, revenue that goes, to judge from most of the contracts that I have seen, entirely to the private operator.
The use of the criminal law by a private operator is an anomaly. A private operator of a private car park can use civil law only, and thereby pursue a civil debt. In accordance with the principles of civil penalties for road traffic contraventions in existing law and in part 6 of the Bill, the notion that such disputes should be civil disputes is right and proper. One who objects to the facts of the situation can go before a county court, with no criminal impunity possible, and argue one's case, and the issue can be resolved in the normal manner in the civil courts. However, the anomaly with local authority car parks that are under private subcontracted operation is that the private operators are using criminal law in the same way as a local authority is empowered to do, rather than civil law. That puts pressure on the individual, because the threat of criminal action entices him to pay the sum demanded by the private operator.
It is an unreasonable and irrational anomaly. I seek the Minister's response to it and his assurance that the ability of private operators to use the criminal courts to enforce debt recovery will not be possible under the Bill.