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11.17 am
The Minister of State, Home Office (Mr. David Maclean): I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Wantage (Mr. Jackson) on his success in obtaining this debate, which raises an important issue. The Government recognise that the judicious use of speed cameras has a role in improving the effective and efficient policing of road traffic and in the promotion of road safety. There is not, therefore, a fundamental difference of view with my hon. Friend about the use of such cameras. The issue is how improvements in the use of cameras can best be made and how they can be funded. It is important therefore that the background to the issue is fully recognised.
The road traffic law review report, or North report, recommended in 1988 that the law should be changed to allow the use of cameras for enforcing road traffic law. The Government accepted that recommendation and the law was changed by the Road Traffic Act 1991. The changes came into effect on 1 July 1992. The Government have always supported the use of speed cameras as a means of enforcing speed limits and reducing casualties on our roads, and there has been a significant growth in their use.
Thames Valley police--the police force in my hon. Friend's constituency--and its highway authorities have been at the forefront of the development of cameras, on which I congratulate them. In 1994, Thames Valley police dealt with over 41,000 speeding offences that were detected by cameras. Only one and a half hours ago, I was at the police college in Bramshill. I hope that offences this year do not increase to 41,001 purely because of my driving along the M4 in the past hour. I shall pass any bills on to my hon. Friend.
In England and Wales in 1994, 156,000 traffic offences were dealt with following detection by camera. Some 74 per cent. of those were speeding offences and the balance were red light offences.
Despite those developments in the use of cameras, I recognise that their funding has always been a difficult issue. The funding arrangements are not fixed, but it was originally expected that the police would be responsible for the purchase and running costs of cameras, while the highway authority would be responsible for the installation and site maintenance. The Home Office circular that set out the arrangements, however, made it clear that other funding arrangements could be agreed between the police and the highway authorities. The provision for alternative funding arrangements recognised
that the highway authorities have a responsibility to promote road safety and that they might consider funding cameras.
The developments since the 1991 Act came into force have shown that highway authorities have so far funded the purchase of more cameras than the police service. The police funds for cameras come under the police forces' vehicle and minor works budget. The money available for forces in England and Wales to purchase cameras in 1995-96 is £150.8 million, of which the Home Office funds some 51 per cent. Of course, the police have many demands on their budgets and may not have been able to give the priority to the purchase and running of cameras that they would wish. The police services have difficult spending choices to make.
Against that background, I understand why a number of hon. Members have written to the Home Office to suggest that the fine income from cameras, or at least some of it, should be reinvested directly into the purchase and running of more cameras. My hon. Friend has explained in some detail why such a course would be beneficial. I have also recently received a detailed report from the chairman of the environment committee of the royal county of Berkshire about the hypothecation of speeding fines. I am very familiar with that issue and I know that the primary motive underlying such requests is the promotion of road safety. I have to say, however, that the matter is rather more complicated than it first appears. There are a number of difficulties with the idea of recycling fine income in the way proposed.
Mr. Robert Jackson:
Will my right hon. Friend give us the total amount of fine income that has been provided to the Treasury from this policy?
Mr. Maclean:
I cannot offhand. If I cannot supply my hon. Friend with the information by the end of the debate, I shall send it to him.
My hon. Friend mentioned hypothecation and I am glad that he recognises that there is a powerful case against the hypothecation of tax revenues, which my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State for the Home Department put in his letter. It can lead to waste and poor value for money in some of the areas that happen to be favoured by it.
There is another reason to be wary of proposals involving hypothecation. If Government revenue is hypothecated and is allowed to rise in an uncontrolled way, it will either drive up the total of public spending, which I am sure that my hon. Friend would not want to happen, or squeeze out other priorities. Again, neither he nor I would want that.
My hon. Friend mentioned his visit to Hampton Court palace. The Historic Royal Palaces agency is allowed to keep the gate fees from visitors who happen to go to Hampton Court, but that is not hypothecation. The fees that visitors pay are no more taxes than the charges for entering Madame Tussauds or the cost of tickets to the theatre, so the question of hypothecation does not arise.
It is true that we have allowed local authorities to retain the proceeds of penalty charges for parking fines, but changing the recipient of the income does not change its nature or classification. Local authorities still have to account for the revenue that they receive and the expenditure they incur. We have to take account of that expenditure in assessing priorities.
As my hon. Friend knows, the income from fines imposed by courts goes to the Consolidated Fund at the Exchequer. We believe that, in 1994, fine income from speed and red light cameras amounted to about
£8.7 million. The money, along with other income, is then allocated to spending, according to Government spending priorities.
Just because speed cameras can generate fine income for the Treasury, it does not follow automatically that some of that money should be reinvested in cameras. There are Government priorities that do not generate any income and funding for those has to come from somewhere and has to be taken care of in the national cake. The first point is, therefore, whether the cameras should have a greater priority in spending decisions and I shall return to that.
There are other equally serious difficulties in recycling speeding fine income. Foremost is the importance of never forgetting that speed cameras have been introduced to promote road safety, not to make money for anyone. They were not designed to generate income. It is essential that they are never seen as money-making machines, to be placed at honey spots on roads, where they can make money. They should be placed by roads where there is a danger or a risk, or where speed has to be reduced.
Cameras form part of the law enforcement methods used by the police and it is vital that the public recognise the reasons why cameras are deployed and continue to support their use. The impersonal enforcement of traffic law by technology makes it all the more important that the road safety purpose of cameras is understood and supported by the public. Indeed, that is a part of policing by consent. Public opinion surveys have shown that speed cameras have good public support at present. That is only so because they understand why they are being used. The reasons are better understood and the public know that there is a road safety purpose. If there were any suggestion that the cameras were being introduced merely to generate income and that those operating them had a vested interest in the fine income, it could undermine support.
Mr. Jackson:
My right hon. Friend will realise that I recognised that point in my speech. I hope that he will comment on my suggestion that the principle of the 1984 Act could be followed as an answer to it.
Mr. Maclean:
My hon. Friend has made an interesting suggestion. Later I will tell him what we are considering and he might not be disappointed by our approach. I wanted to stress some of my fears. We must be careful about using this interesting and helpful technology, which can benefit the police and generate fine income, but, and this is of prime importance, can also reduce accidents, casualties and deaths on our roads and lead to a safer and better environment. It is a goose that is laying a golden egg by delivering, not money, but a safer and better road system. We must be careful to do nothing that kills off those benefits.
My hon. Friend is also motivated by a concern to promote road safety, and that is the purpose of the police and the local authorities in his constituency. It is no idle speculation to say, however, that using cameras to generate income puts at risk the road safety objective.
There is already evidence of that in Canada. The former local authority in Ontario recently used speed cameras in a way that was seen by the public as purely for income generation. They turned against the cameras and in the local election the Opposition promised to ban them. They won and speed cameras have now been banned in Ontario.
It is not too far fetched to say that there is a lesson to be learnt from Ontario. Retaining public support is vital. We should retain public support in the way in which cameras are deployed. They are not deployed simply to catch speeders and collect their fines. The approach is to focus on accident black spots, where the greatest saving in lives and injuries can be made. Moreover, the use of speed cameras is signed to warn motorists that they face detection, because we want to see motorists complying with the law rather than having to enforce it. We put up signs to warn motorists rather than just sneakily catching them out. Enforcement is the last, but necessary, resort. Again, that is part of policing by consent.
But there is, of course, a dilemma within that approach if the police or highway authority want to rely on fine income for their camera operations. The more successful they are at getting the public to comply with speed limits, the less income they receive. There are ways in which that problem can be lessened, but it is, nevertheless, a point that needs to be borne in mind by those who advocate hypothecation of fine income from speed cameras. It is necessary to take a long-term view of the funding issue and not base a strategy on the immediate effects and results of camera technology.
From what I have said, I know that my hon. Friend will appreciate that there are real difficulties in simply adopting a policy of recycling fine income from speed cameras. We need a considered strategy that does not put the road safety objective at risk. It must also show how best to use the cameras efficiently and effectively. The one thing of which we are currently certain is that there should not be a direct link between fine income and funding. That would undermine the road safety objective of the cameras. The funding of cameras and the enforcement of the law must be seen to be impartial. They must be separated. I know that the traffic committee of the Association of Chief Police Officers in England and Wales shares that concern.
We have not been idle. The Government have been active in our assessment of the use of camera technology for enforcing road traffic law. The review of road traffic policing, which formed part of the review of police core and ancillary tasks, considered the role of camera technology. It recommended that the funding arrangements for the cameras should be re-examined. The review group, which included the chairman and secretary of ACPO's traffic committee, also recognised the importance of not having a link between the funding of cameras and the fine income. The Government have accepted the recommendation to re-examine the current funding arrangements.
I mentioned earlier that we need to see whether cameras should be given a higher priority in spending decisions. To do that, we need to establish clearly the costs and benefits associated with their use. Much of the support for their increased use has grown from their perceived effectiveness in reducing average speeds and the level of casualties at or near their sites. It is certainly true that much of the research undertaken on particular schemes has shown good results. For example, the Department of
Transport's study of camera sites in west London shows that cameras there helped to reduce road deaths and serious casualties in the area by more than a third in their first full year of operation. Those casualties fell from 297 to 187. It is also worth noting that, in the same period, drivers' journey times improved.
But some other evidence of the cameras' success is more anecdotal and scattered. We know that the success of cameras has not been universal. The review of road traffic policing noted that more evidence needed to be collected on the effectiveness of cameras. It seems clear that much depends on the way in which the cameras are used. That covers not only their deployment but the supporting legal and penalty structure for dealing with offenders. It could also include the question whether the use of cameras has reached a saturation point at which the public consider their use to be oppressive. Nor do we know what the longer-term projections may show about the success of cameras.
Much has been made of the idea that the costs of cameras are outweighed by their benefits. Some of their benefits have been identified and costed. The savings in casualties can be costed using the Department of Transport standard costings: a fatality costs £784,000 and a serious injury £89,000. But other savings have not been fully calculated, such as the savings in police time and other savings to the health service.
On the other hand, there is the question of cost. The cost of operating the cameras has been calculated in some individual operations, but it is common to overlook the fact that there are costs over and above the capital and police running costs of a system. In particular, there are the costs to the courts of dealing with an offender, either by fixed penalty or by prosecution. Where prosecution is involved, there can also be a cost for the Crown Prosecution Service.
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