New Clause 3
Road Safety Bill [Lords]
9:00 am
Stephen Hammond (Shadow Minister, Transport; Wimbledon, Conservative)
Conservative Members give new clause 3 a cautious welcome. I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for making available to me some of the briefings that he has had from various organisations. As he rightly said, the new clause is designed to tighten up procedures and end an anomaly by giving police officers rights of audience when offenders do not turn up. Where no plea has been entered, and the prosecution believes that the case could be proved at first hearing, court presentation officers should have the right of audience.
As the hon. Gentleman said, such an arrangement would have the advantage of relieving an overworked CPS. If the new clause came into effect, the CPS would deal with traffic offences only where more serious, non-specified crimes took place or where cases relating to specified crimes had been adjourned for trial. As the hon. Gentleman said, the CPS was previously needed in such cases simply because the courts were required to hear a statement of evidence. Such statements would be read out by the CPS, so the case could be presented and proved only by the CPS.
The new clause would make it the norm for court presentation officers to be used for all minor offences. It would remove the anomalous power of individual courts not to grant rights of audience. I note from the hon. Gentleman’s comments and from representations from the police that the police are pressing for the right of audience in such cases.
I looked at the contrary argument, which seems to be that a person who is absent has no defence. They would therefore require an independent prosecution, and that would be of the highest importance in such cases. As the hon. Gentleman said, however, why should the whole process be held up by people who are, in effect, thumbing their noses at the system and saying, “We are not going to attend court”? As we and the Minister have said throughout, we aim to deal with the hard core of offenders, and non-attendees at court are often the very serial offenders we are talking about.
Therefore, we give the new clause a cautious welcome. I say cautious because no one should assume from our support for extending the rights of audience in this specific case that we would necessarily support extensions elsewhere. In this case, however, such an extension would end an anomaly.