Clause 11 - Financial penalty deposits
Road Safety Bill [Lords]
Public Bill Committees, 23 March 2006, 10:15 am
Stephen Hammond (Wimbledon, Conservative)
We are fully with the Government on the clause. It is right and goes to the heart of the current problem that my hon. Friend the Member for North-West Norfolk described, when occasionally serial offenders or offenders who are stopped in the United Kingdom are either issued with fixed penalty notices or fines and do not pay them, or indeed are from overseas and do not pay them.
The amendments would first place criteria under proposed section 90A(2) to the Road Traffic Offenders Act 1988 that examiners must have reason to believe are true. That would give them more latitude than the Government have done. The provision is aimed not only at those from overseas who do not wish to comply with our laws, but at the group to which my hon. Friend the Member for North Shropshire (Mr. Paterson) referred in his remarks on clause 1—individuals who seek continually to flout the motoring laws of our country, causing much danger to other people on the roads.
There is a small group of persistent and continual offenders. We want to help the Government and to make sure that the Bill attacks those people. Proposed paragraph (c) to section 90A(2) to the 1988 Act states:
“the motor vehicle is not registered in the United Kingdom”.
That would cover not only foreign vehicles that may be flouting the law, but the huge number of people, representing up to 5 per cent. of the vehicles on our roads, who drive cars without a licence. It should be clear that such people can be caught. We think that the amendment would clarify what I think is the intention of paragraph (a).
The amendment would move much of what is in proposed subsection (4) into our new subsection (2)(d) to cover not only overseas offenders, but UK citizens who have been persistently problematic, as they are either not resident at the address they have given or not there when the police call. It would give the police far greater power to attack that group of consistent and persistent offenders. I hope that the Government recognise the intention of the amendment: to give the police greater powers to impose fixed penalty notices on such offenders.