Clause 7 - Driving record
Road Safety Bill
9:25 am
Mr Christopher Chope (Shadow Minister, Environment and Transport; Christchurch, Conservative)
I begin by thanking the Minister for raising those two issues on a point of order. It is still clear that £20 million could have been reinvested in road safety in that period, but instead it went to the Treasury—not to Hansard. The Minister would have more excuse for muddling up the Treasury and Hansard if he had attended the splendid Chamber of Shipping dinner last night, to which he had been invited. However, sadly, I think for the third time in as many years, the ministerial invitee failed to attend. I am told that the organisers knew yesterday that the Minister would not attend. The excuse given was that he was so busy with the Bill. Opposition Members, and I include in that the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (John Thurso), must take some credit for the fact that our incisive amendments are keeping the Minister so busy burning the midnight oil that he does not have time to attend such dinners.
It is interesting that the Government amendment has crept in just in time only because we adjourned when we did on Thursday. I am glad that the Government have been able to table it today, instead of having to leave it until Report, as happens with so many Government amendments.
Amendment No. 25 is a probing amendment to discover why the Government feel the need to include fixed penalty clerks as a specific breed of person who can have access to all our driving records. It has always been my understanding that they work for the Court Service. In that case, surely they should be covered by paragraph (a), which refers to courts. In accordance with their terms and conditions of service fixed penalty clerks will no doubt have to sign confidentiality statements and be subject to the discipline of the Court Service. I see no problem with that.
Constables are covered by paragraph (b). Setting up a separate category for fixed penalty clerks seems to widen the ambit unnecessarily. Will the Minister tell us whether he has it in mind to privatise the fixed penalty clerk service—for example, so that separate, free-standing contractors can deal with the issues—and why that category of people will be elevated as set out in paragraph (c)?
The other amendment covers paragraph (e), which deals with other prescribed persons. I suspect that in looking at how to deal with that amendment, the Minister's advisers decided that there was a lacuna in the clause which needed attention anyway, hence the Government amendment. Who do the Government have in mind for the category of other prescribed persons? That raises a real issue about misuse of official information. It was only last weekend that the Daily Echo, a splendid newspaper that circulates in my constituency, carried a report of a special constable who had been convicted of gaining access to Criminal Records Bureau information. She had used her position as a special constable to find out more about the people who worked alongside her in her main job as a pump attendant at a petrol filling station.
The fact that a special constable was able to access and use that information is concerning enough, but she was brought to justice largely because it was possible to track down the person who used the information; there are specific lines of responsibility, and a limited number of people have access to Criminal Records Bureau information. I am concerned that if information on driving records can be accessed so easily by people in officialdom, it will be difficult to track down the perpetrator of any misuse of that information. Without the effective deterrent of detection, it is likely that the misuse of such information will continue to increase.
Although my example concerns someone with their own motive for gaining access, perhaps out of spite or simple interest, people who access such information could use it for their own profit by providing it to the press and so on. It would be unhealthy if a whole host of fixed penalty clerks and other prescribed persons spent their day trawling through the records to see whether they could find anything interesting about anybody, which they might be able to supply to the press for profit. I hope that the Minister will be able to allay some of our concerns about the clause.