Clause 3 - Graduated fixed penalties
Road Safety Bill [Lords]
4:30 pm
Greg Knight (East Yorkshire, Conservative)
I was reflecting on what we are letting ourselves in for if we accept clause 3. Will the Minister give us some idea of the scope and nature of the orders that will flow from the clauses 3 and 4? I have no difficulty at all with the status quo, whereby a police officer trained in the rules of evidence can give out a fixed penalty ticket in certain circumstances where he feels that an offence has been committed. The clause breaks new ground, however, in that an element of flexibility has been introduced. To some extent, that will lead to a subtle shift in the behaviour of the police in which they will move from being mere enforcers of the law to acting to some extent as a judge of the situation. As I understand it officers will, for the first time, have the precise level of sentence in their own hands.
Although I support the principle of flexibility, I am just a little concerned about how such provision will operate in practice. Will the police officer carry in his car or in a box on his bike a range of tickets with different penalties? Or will he have a box to tick when he fills out the ticket for a motorist who he believes has committed an offence? Is the heat of the moment the best time for the police officer to make that judgment? There is a real risk that where a motorist who has been stopped for an offence is truculent or bellicose, the police officer may decide to ratchet up the level of penalty, although the offence does not warrant it, merely because he has experienced a degree of friction with the motorist.
Hitherto, the Government attitude has been that the motorist can take it or leave it; he can accept what is in the fixed penalty ticket or he can go to court. However, that answer is not entirely satisfactory. Has the Minister considered that point? If not, will he do so before the orders are made? Is there not a case for having the police officer issue an open ticket—a ticket recording the offence and inviting the motorist to tell the officer what mitigating circumstances there are, if any? Within 14 days of such a ticket being issued, someone else in authority could decide what grading the ticket should have. A person behind a desk seeing both the facts as alleged by the police officer and any comments in mitigation by the motorist would be better placed to determine the grading. I wonder whether the Minister has reflected on that possibility.
Clearly, we do not want motorists arguing by the side of the road with a police officer. We do not want motorists saying, “No, I should be graded down one,” and the officer saying, “No, I think that you should be graded higher.” I wonder whether a system in which that is done at base will remove the risk. The police officer could simply issue a ticket and say, “Within 14 days you will know full details of the impact of the ticket. Is there anything that you want to say?” That could be fairer, and it is more likely to be just. If the motorist decides at the end of the day to take the matter to court, the prosecution will make great play with asking, “What did the defendant say when the accusation was first put to him? What did he say in answer to the allegation?” The prosecution will not ask, “What is he saying now, in court?” If the motorist is invited to have his say there and then, when he is stopped by the police officer, and the police officer puts that in his notebook, it is more likely to lead to a just outcome.
Those concerns are relevant to cases in which the ticket is issued by a police officer, but how much more relevant are they when the scope is widened, as the Minister said, and a non-police officer issues the ticket? What if it is issued by a vehicle examiner who has no experience or knowledge of the rules of evidence? Should not he be encouraged to note down what the driver has to say at the time of the offence, before the grading of the penalty is determined?