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Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.--[Mr. Burns.]
11.4 am
Mr. Robert Jackson (Wantage): I thank my hon. Friend the Minister for rushing back to be here for this debate, which has been brought forward somewhat. I congratulate his driver on getting him here along the M4 through the Thames Valley police area. In view of the subject matter of the debate, I hope that he did not drive too fast past any speed cameras.
In only a few minutes, I do not have time to address the criticisms of those who are opposed to speed cameras. I know that some people feel that there is something sneaky about them and that the increasingly widespread employment of that kind of technology in law enforcement is a threat to privacy. I respect those concerns. Doubtless, as we see more use of cameras generally for law enforcement--I think it is a policy of the Home Office to promote their use--the House will need to reconsider the privacy issues that are raised. However, when we passed the Road Traffic Act 1991, we approved the principle of using speed cameras to detect speeding motorists and I dare say the issues of principle were fully considered at that time.
We should not misjudge public opinion. Individuals who are caught speeding are often irritated and even angry. There was an article in one of the Sunday newspapers a few months ago by a journalist who had been caught speeding not once but twice in the same afternoon in Oxfordshire. He resented that and took advantage of his position as a columnist to complain about it. Opinion polls that ask people about the issue as an abstract proposition, and not in the immediate context of having just been detected speeding, show strong positive public support for speed cameras. For example, the 1993 Lex report on motoring asked those interviewed their attitude to the statement:
Why is there public support for speed cameras? I think they are simply common sense. People know by instinct the high cost, to individuals, families and society as a whole, of road accidents, and they know by instinct that there is a connection between road accidents and speeding.
The practical question is whether speed cameras make a difference. They have been in operation in Germany, the Netherlands and some states of Australia for a number of years. They have also been in operation in this country since the implementation of the Road Traffic Act 1991, notably in Oxfordshire where three years ago a special initiative to introduce the cameras was adopted jointly by the Thames Valley police and Oxfordshire county council. I wish to pay public tribute to the two officials most closely involved, Chief Superintendent Peter Viner of the Thames Valley police, and David Hook, the county engineer.
Our experience in Oxfordshire demonstrates that speed cameras are effective in reducing accident rates. Since the cameras were introduced, accidents at camera sites have fallen by 36 per cent., casualties are down by 31 per cent. and serious and fatal accidents are down by 23 per cent.
The gains to the individuals and the families who have been spared death or maiming are obvious. The House always has a duty to recognise the wider social and economic gains. The Thames Valley police have given me an estimate that a mere 1 mph reduction in overall speeds would give the NHS at least £31 million a year to spend on other things. Social services would have to pay less to victims or their families by way of benefits and disability allowances. The emergency services would require less resources if there were fewer accidents to clear up. On the wider economic front, congestion costs on the roads would be reduced and fewer accidents would mean that less output would be lost from the economy.
The principle of speed cameras is right and the evidence justifies the view that the House took in 1991 when it voted for its introduction. The problem is essentially one of implementation and there we come to the problem of financing, which is what I am mainly concerned with today.
Although speed cameras are being slowly introduced around the country, the fact is that, because of pressure on their budgets which I do not expect to be relaxed in the near future, few police forces can afford to introduce speed cameras, their related equipment and the civilian staff to process the data. The Thames Valley police and Oxfordshire county council, working together, have put over £500,000 into their scheme, but that is still exceptional across the country. If the policy is to be implemented on the appropriate scale and the full benefits reaped, there has to be more financial support or stronger financial incentives to encourage the authorities responsible for road safety to introduce and operate it.
The obvious way forward is to tap some of the funds that are generated by fine income for the introduction of speed cameras. Thames Valley police currently operate no more than 16 cameras at over 200 locations in their police area. That generates an income from fixed-penalty fines of some £2 million a year. The money goes, in toto, to the Treasury. None of it is, at present, directly available to sustain the arrangements that generate that income.
Against that background, I and other Oxfordshire Members have been pressing the Home Office and the Treasury for action to enable some of the resources generated by the policy to be used to finance it. I do not know whether the Home Office has some concealed doubts about the principle of the speed cameras policy. If it does, I hope that it will say so and justify those doubts. If it does not regard road safety as a priority, it should say so and explain why; and ditto if it has any doubts about the efficacy of speed cameras in promoting road safety or, indeed, about the principle of remote surveillance.
Meanwhile, the Home Office is presenting the problem as essentially one of Treasury doctrine, specifically the Treasury doctrine against hypothecation. Of course, there is a good case against hypothecation. It was summed up in a recent letter on the subject from my right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary to my right hon. Friend the Member for Witney (Mr. Hurd) which, in connection with speed cameras, argued:
I do not accept the validity of the second part of that sentence, which suggests that there might be problems in financing other essential elements of public spending but I recognise that the first part, about possible waste and poor value for money, has a point. On the other hand, there is also no doubt that the lack of finance is preventing the full realisation of the speed camera policy with all its potential economic and social gains. That, too, needs to be fed into the equation and balanced against the anti-hypothecation doctrine, which I do not believe can, or should be, regarded as an absolute that blocks all progress.
Meanwhile, it cannot be said that the Treasury is incapable of striking such a balance between its doctrine and practical common sense. The Road Traffic Act 1991 provided that the enforcement income arising from parking offences in the 34 London boroughs could be retained by those boroughs. That policy has now been extended across the whole country. Indeed, I understand that Oxfordshire county council is considering the introduction of such a scheme in Oxford city. If measures against illegal parking can be financed by retaining the income from fixed penalties, I ask myself, why can the operation of speed cameras not be so financed?
Let me give another, perhaps somewhat more remote, instance. In the summer, I and other members of the all-party arts and heritage group had the privilege and pleasure of visiting Hampton Court, which has been transformed over the past 10 years by the work of the Historic Royal Palaces agency. That achievement was possible only because the Treasury has been prepared to relax its hypothecation doctrine and allow the agency to retain the gate fee from visitors, thus giving it and its staff both a financial incentive to attract visitors and the means by which to make the palaces more attractive to visitors. That was a welcome instance of a relaxation of Treasury doctrine in the direction of common sense and an interesting parallel with the case that we are considering today.
I understand very well that there would be legitimate grounds for complaint if speed cameras were to come to be regarded by local authorities and the police as an additional source of revenue. There would be real problems if the public were to come to believe that that was how they were regarded. Welcome as it might be to Oxfordshire's hard-pressed schools if some of the money generated by speeding fines in the county of Oxfordshire could be spent on them, it would be a mistaken approach. We need a financial system which allows the police and local authorities to retain enough of the fine income generated by speed cameras to cover the cost of their introduction and operation. In that respect, section 55 of the Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984 could be a model. It requires that any surplus income from fines for parking offences over the costs of policing them has to be declared annually and its expenditure has to be ring-fenced.
"cameras to catch people speeding or going through red lights are an important contribution to road safety".
Some 86 per cent. of those asked agreed with that statement. A recent survey by the firm Autoglass found that six out of 10 drivers thought that speeding was as socially unacceptable as drink-driving.
"the earmarking of revenues, or hypothecation, could lead to waste and poor value for money in the areas it happened to favour, and to problems in financing other essential elements of public spending."
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