Clause 29 - Breach of duty to give information as to identity of driver etc.
Road Safety Bill [Lords]
5:45 pm
Greg Knight (East Yorkshire, Conservative)
I understand why the Government want the provision in the Bill. If a motorist was exceeding the speed limit greatly and was aware that a speed camera had been triggered, he might decide that, if he claimed that he did not know who was driving, it would be worth three points rather than his admitting that he was driving and probably receiving six points for the much more serious offence of greatly exceeding the speed limit. I understand why the Government want to plug the gap, but I cannot understand why they are not willing to adopt the flexible approach suggested by my hon. Friend the Member for Wimbledon to allow the courts to judge the case on its merits.
When the House debated the Bill in the previous Parliament, which fell because of the election, I drew the attention of the Committee to an incident that involved the Conservative candidates for the European Parliament during the previous European elections in my county. They were lent two jeep vehicles by a party supporter to use during their campaigning. The insurance was such that it covered anyone driving for the campaign. The vehicles were chopped and changed between the candidates and campaign managers. Three weeks later, a ticket arrived on the desk of the owner of the vehicles because one of the jeeps had triggered a speed camera. An offence had been committed but, at that stage, no one was sure who had been driving the jeep in question when it triggered the speed camera. I must say that the triggering was minimal; it was three or four miles over the speed limit.
Let us consider the circumstances in which the owner genuinely did not know who was driving the car. Clearly, he owned the vehicle and must shoulder some responsibility, but it seems unfair that the owner must take six points when, if the culprit had come forward, the culprit would have received only three points. The Minister is taking matters too much the other way. He is correcting a loophole in the law but, by making the offence carry more points than a motorist may receive in certain cases, he has gone too far.