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Road Safety Bill [Lords]

As the hon. Member for Glasgow, South (Mr. Harris) has said, the debate has been consensual, and party politics should not divide us in this policy area. I will focus on one specific area in the hope that the Minister will see fit to table amendments to deal with a serious road safety problem brought to my attention by Bedfordshire police. At the moment, many drivers routinely commit large numbers of moving road traffic offences that principally involve speeding, but that also include dangerous driving such as jumping red lights. They get away with it because their vehicle details are incorrectly registered. That matter involves blatant discrimination. Law-abiding members of the public who correctly register their vehicles rightly pay the penalty of the law when speed cameras or police officers catch them, while people who incorrectly register their vehicles get away with driving extremely dangerously. In my constituency, for example, the A505, which runs from south of Leighton Buzzard to north of Dunstable has a 50 mph speed limit, but drivers have recently been recorded driving at speeds of up to 119 mph on that road. One driver did 82 mph in a built-up area in Dunstable, where there is a 30 mph speed limit, while another jumped a red light six seconds after the light had turned red. I can also show the Minister ample photographic evidence of drivers making rude gestures to speed cameras because they know that they cannot be touched as the law currently stands. Since I raised the matter in an Adjournment debate on 8 December, five people have been involved in fatal accidents and three people have been seriously injured in incidents in Bedfordshire involving cars with incorrectly registered details. The tragedy is that some cars have been caught doing outrageous speeds on many occasions—one vehicle has been clocked by speed cameras on 73 occasions and a motor bike has been caught 61 times. It is obvious that death and serious injury could be prevented if the police were able to act on the ample evidence provided by speed cameras. To give the Minister an idea of the scale of the problem, Bedfordshire police recorded 1,000 offences in December this year on which no action could be taken because it was impossible to trace the vehicles concerned. Those offences resulted in more than £30,000 of outstanding fines, many of which have lapsed under the six-month rule. The public expenditure implications are important, and I am sure that the Minister wants all fines to be collected. Several hon. Members have mentioned PACTS. After my Adjournment debate on 8 December, the director of PACTS, Robert Gifford, pointed out in a letter that"““You are quite correct that this is a significant issue both for police resources and for road safety. As the Road Safety Bill will be returning to the House of Commons in the New Year, there may be an opportunity to raise these issues at Committee stage.””" I am happy to show the Minister that letter. I would like to quote a couple of paragraphs from a letter written by the chief constable of Bedfordshire police, Gillian Parker. I want to place on the record my admiration for her in pursuing this issue. I am grateful to her and to her officers for all the work that they have put into trying to bring it to the Government’s attention. Mrs. Parker writes as follows:"““Most vehicles involved in these offences are registered with false details, or to a false or non-existent address. This makes the process of identifying the registered keeper and the driver virtually impossible.""Even when these vehicles are stopped as a result of PNC markers placed upon them, the driver is able to provide identification and gives a plausible account as to who the registered keeper is. The evidence is usually insufficient to enable positive action to be taken and we are left no further forward in identifying the true offender in relation to the offences outstanding.””" She continues:"““Advice has been sought from CPS and our local judiciary, there is agreement that to apply the Section 3 test to speeding offences, that is to suggest speeding per se also represents careless and inconsiderate driving, would be inappropriate and unlikely to succeed in court. As a result we are powerless to seize these vehicles under this legislation.""When our offenders are stopped they usually hold driving licences and insurance, albeit registered to false addresses. Therefore, we cannot use the powers under The Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005.””" When I spoke in the House on this subject on 8 December, I quoted similar stories from the police forces of Cambridgeshire, Essex, Greater Manchester— interestingly, the local police force of the Minister who responded—Suffolk and Thames Valley. Today, I can tell the House that I have additional information from the police forces of Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire, Humberside, Lincolnshire, Wiltshire and Warwickshire, which are facing the same problem. That is 12 police forces in total. That does not mean that the other 31 police forces are happy with the current law, but merely that we have not yet managed to get responses from them. Let me quote the comments of some of those other police forces in case the Minister or any other Member thinks that the problem is peculiar to Bedfordshire police, which it certainly is not. Nottinghamshire police says:"““I agree with the Bedfordshire legal advisors and other Forces that this legislation—" that is, section 59 of the Police Reform Act 2002—"““is not appropriate to deal with this type of offence and offender. S.59 relates specifically to vehicles being used in a manner causing alarm, distress or annoyance. Therefore, if we cannot show the alarm etc, we have lost the powers. Unlawful use does not necessarily involve problems caused directly to members of the public. This legislation was introduced to combat the problems caused by the ‘boy racers’, around towns and cities in particular. I am surprised that the Home Office even suggested this.””" Humberside police says:"““I agree that the Police Reform Act Powers are insufficient in this respect. While all powers have to be proportionate, the ease with which the non-compliant can continue to evade justice is alarming and unfair for the rest of us.””" Derbyshire police says:"““Section 59 of the Police Reform Act 2002 is not appropriate as it relates to confiscating vehicles which are causing alarm, distress or annoyance.””" Lastly, Wiltshire police says:"““If we rigorously made every possible attempt to trace some of these registered keepers and nominated drivers I agree with your comments that we would be left with a paper trail with no realistic prospect of tracing/convicting the offender on many occasions.””" I apologise for quoting at length from different police forces but I hope that the quotes show the scale of the problem. Although hon. Members could be forgiven for believing that Bedfordshire police might not be fully competent—they are—I hope that the fact that 12 police forces have gone on record to say that the law is inadequate to tackle the problem will convince the Minister that we need to sit down together to examine the issue more seriously. The Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, the hon. Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham) tried to convince me during my Adjournment debate on 8 December that section 59 of the Police Reform Act 2002 gave the police adequate powers. I asked the chief constable of Bedfordshire to raise that with the head of the Association of Chief Police Officers’ road policing business area. I am sorry to say that all that has happened is that the relevant chief constable raised the matter with the Home Office, which gave the same advice as the Under-Secretary was given when he replied to the Adjournment debate on 8 December. The Under-Secretary also said that powers under the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005 could be used to deal with the problem. As I have already said when referring to the comments of the chief constable of Bedfordshire, the powers in the Bill to seize vehicles apply only if valid driving licences and insurance cannot be produced. In most of the Bedfordshire cases, that does not apply and drivers have been able to produce valid documents. That means that highly dangerous offences continue to be committed time and again, and the police can do nothing about it. I have raised the matter with Conservative Front Benchers and we are prepared to table amendments to deal with the problem. It would be regrettable if we had to do that. As I said at the beginning of my remarks, it would show the House of Commons at its worst if we divided on party political lines about the matter. Party politics should not come into it. It should be a case of sitting down together and ascertaining why the current law is unsatisfactory. In my Adjournment debate on 8 December, we had the absurd and almost comical position whereby the Under-Secretary stood at the Dispatch Box to tell me that the powers were adequate while, above him, in the Public Gallery, two serving officers from Bedfordshire police shook their heads as he spoke. It is incumbent on us all to listen to serving police officers who deal with the matter day in, day out and desperately want it to be resolved. Problems also exist with the requirements that we make of people when they register their vehicles. I do not know whether the Minister is familiar with the address of 25 Duke street in Chelmsford. There is no particular reason why he should be. However, it is well known not only to Essex police but to Bedfordshire police and, indeed, to many police forces in the eastern region because it is purely a drop-off postal address, at which many vehicles are registered. It is an address of convenience. When the police turn up there, they have no hope of apprehending the relevant driver. There are therefore problems with the registration of vehicles. I had the opportunity to speak to the Minister briefly before the debate and I shall listen carefully to his winding-up remarks. I genuinely believe that there is a misunderstanding on the part of some civil servants in the Home Office. I appreciate that Ministers must take advice and listen to their civil servants, but I hope that I have given enough evidence to show that the police need extra powers to seize vehicles, the owners of which have committed multiple offences of driving at outrageously dangerous speeds, and to tackle the problem. I greatly look forward to the Minister’s response.