Examination of witnesses
(Questions 452 - 459)
WEDNESDAY 9 DECEMBER
MR JOHN
STEVENS, MR
PAUL MANNING
and MR RICHARD
BRUNSTROM
Chairman
452. Gentlemen, we are delighted to see
you here this morning. Could I ask you if you would like to identify
yourselves for the record?
(Mr Stevens) John Stevens. Can I apologise on
behalf of Sir Paul Condon. He is unavailable this week. I am the
Deputy Commissioner and I come in his stead. Paul Manning is the
Assistant Commissioner in charge of 24-hour responsibility and,
as a result of that, traffic in London, but we are rather fortunate
to have him as Chairman of the ACPO Committee on Traffic which,
of course, makes him the service's leader in relation to that.
Richard Brunstrom is Assistant Chief Constable at Cleveland and
he also comes in the guise of ACPO Traffic.
453. Thank you very much indeed. Were there
any general remarks you wanted to make?
(Mr Stevens) Only to say that I will be dealing
with the London issues as far as I can, obviously on occasions
looking to Mr Manning who has that specific responsibility. I
believe Mr Manning will be dealing with the national issues in
relation to traffic and traffic management and the like.
454. Let us kick off with the MPS report
which has issued almost 127,000 "driver reported" fixed
penalty notices in 1997 which was the unauthorised use of bus
lanes. Have you made any estimate of the number of such offences
that went unpunished during that year?
(Mr Stevens) There are a number of offences that
have gone unpunished as far as the bus lanes are concerned. It
is estimated by the bus companies that £17 million is wasted
by the lack of enforcement on bus lanes. However, there is new
technology coming on-stream in terms of cameras and which will
allow us to make more enforcement of those bus lanes. In relation
to enforcement there is a rule that says that perhaps one in eight
cameras should be in use and should be used for enforcement. We
have to say that we have got to a situation of one in 20 being
used in London which perhaps should not be given for public consumption.
455. Believe me, Mr Stevens, everything
that you say in this room is for public consumption and one in
20 is a pretty horrifying figure.
(Mr Stevens) It is, and that is in relation to
speed cameras, but of course that relates to the picture as a
whole. The reason for that is resources. We will be asking for
some kind of administration charge in relation to that. So we
have got to a situation where 30,000 cases are taken forward.
If there was one in eight in terms of the speed cameras there
would be 68,000 cases taken forward. There is some light at the
end of the tunnel in terms of technology that is going to be used
by the Metropolitan Police which will speed these things through.
At the moment it is a manual system which takes some time, but
it is something that obviously causes concern.
456. Has ACPO made any representation to
the Home Office about that?
(Mr Manning) About the recovery of administrative
charges? Yes, we have. We have requested this charge be available
in order to recover the costs of processing the offender for a
fixed penalty ticket. This is a technology issue and Mr Brunstrom
leads on that but he will also bring us into the issues with regard
to the disparity between proceeding with a fixed penalty ticket
as opposed to taking the offender before the Magistrates' Court.
(Mr Brunstrom) I am the Chairman of the ACPO Sub-Committee
that deals with traffic enforcement technology. The biggest problem
that we face at the moment is our inability to recover our costs
through the fixed penalty system. If we take the process through
the Magistrates' Court we always have been able traditionally
to recover our costs, so a fine is applied and conviction results
and in addition to that we can request our costs. That makes the
exercise effectively cost neutral to an enforcement agency, in
this case the police service in a criminal matter. Unfortunately,
the way in which the 1991 Act has been drafted and the regulations
thereunder which encourage, quite properly, the police service
to use the fixed penalty route—and there is a financial
advantage to the offender of accepting a fixed penalty—means
we are not able to recover our costs. That has the disastrous
effect of haemorrhaging police resources. We cannot give the level
of enforcement that we believe road safety deserves despite the
fact that we have the technology. We do have the technology and
it works extremely well. We have very very slick systems for processing,
but the net result is that this costs the police service approximately
£20 per fixed penalty.
457. Did you make that point when the 1991
Act was going through the House?
(Mr Brunstrom) I was not personally involved at
that time, Chairman.
458. You must have evidence from ACPO that
they did or did not.
(Mr Brunstrom) Quite so, Chairman. The police
service has been pursuing this point fruitlessly for the best
part of a decade. Our particular role in traffic issues is road
safety. We can demonstrate categorically that were we able to
recover our costs without extra resources from the Treasury we
would be able to deliver very significant reductions in road crash
casualties, of the order of 25 per cent in a handful of years
which we think at the moment means between saving one and two
million hospital bed nights per year at a cost of £8,000
per night. You are talking about savings in the order of billions
of pounds which we cannot deliver at the moment despite the fact
that we know that we could because we cannot recover our costs.
Mr Donohoe
459. Is there not a new generation of camera
coming on-stream? It is made in my constituency. I am told 14,000
of them are ready for use now. Your proposition was having cameras
in these units will increase markedly and they will become more
mobile to the point where they can be shifted very easily.
(Mr Brunstrom) Absolutely. We have some superb
technology and it is improving all the time and cameras are growing
in number throughout the country because local authorities who
fund the majority——
| 
