Clause 3 - Graduated fixed penalties
Road Safety Bill [Lords]
12:15 pm
Owen Paterson (Shadow Minister, Transport; North Shropshire, Conservative)
Following our bitter disappointment that the amendments to clause 2 did not quite make it, we move on to clause 3. Again, the Opposition approve generally of what the Government are trying to do. I think that it was my right hon. Friend the Member for East Yorkshire who spoke on Second Reading about flexibility. We think that it is sensible to vary fixed penalties according to certain conditions, as proposed by the clause.
My party believes that there is a small number of what my right hon. Friend called, I think, bad hats—a hard core on which we should help the Government to bear down. The trick is not to go overboard on the vast majority of drivers who are hard-working, conscientious people, trying to get from A to B. While looking at some of the press reports, I found one of a completely ridiculous case in Fife, where a 38-year-old was found doing 85 mph in a 30 mph zone, causing the deaths of two people. In another case, in Lewisham, an uninsured 16-year-old drove an illegal car and killed two people.