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Lords amendments Nos. 53 to 57 agreed to, the Commons being willing to waive their privileges in respect of Lords amendment No. 56.
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Lords amendment: No. 58
Mr. McNulty: I beg to move, That this House agrees with the Lords in the said amendment.
Mr. Deputy Speaker: With this we will consider Lords amendments Nos. 61, 62, 65, 68, 69 and 102.
Mr. McNulty: Lords amendments Nos. 58, 61 and 102 address a problem with an overlap between powers for fixed penalty notices in the Bill and in the London Local Authorities and Transport for London Act 2003. These overlapping offences relate to the placing of skips and scaffolding under the Highways Act 1980 on the highway. The amendments provide flexibility to deal with the possible problem of having two separate regimes for the same offences. They also deal with the potential problem that the amounts of the overlapping penalties in London could be different from those set outside London, so there is a power to set different rates for different areas in England and Wales, including within and outside London.
Clauses 63 to 66 provide powers for different charging regimes for the occupation of the highway by skips, scaffolding and building materials. These charges could be based on either the occupation overrunning agreed deadlines or the entire period of occupation—lane rental, as it is commonly known.
Lords amendments Nos. 62, 65, 68 and 69 together enable regulations to make provision so that where a series of skips, scaffolding or materials are placed one after the other, they may be treated as constituting a single occupation for the purposes of calculating how long they have been in place and thus what charge has to be paid.
Lords amendment No. 62 inserts new subsections 17A and 17B into section 140A of the Highways Act 1980. This enables regulations to provide that the series of deposits of skips may be treated as a single one. Lords amendment No. 65 carries that provision across so that the same arrangements apply to lane rental charging schemes covering skips. Lords amendment No. 68 does the same in relation to overrun charging for scaffolding and building materials. Finally, Lords amendment No. 69 applies the provision to lane rental schemes for scaffolding and building materials.
Given that all those amendments were agreed in the House of Lords, I urge the House to support them. They satisfactorily fill the gaps in the original Bill. I commend the amendments in all their glory on skips, scaffolds and building materials to the House.
Lords amendment agreed to.
Lords amendments Nos. 59 to 70 agreed to.
Lords amendment: No. 71.
Mr. Jamieson: I beg to move, That this House agrees with the Lords in the said amendment.
Mr. Deputy Speaker: With this it will be convenient to consider Lords amendments Nos. 72 and amendment (a) thereto, 73 to 76, 78 to 90, 103, 104, 107 and 108.
Mr. Jamieson:
Among other things, the amendments fulfil the commitment that we made on Report to provide for publication of guidance to local authorities
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on the exercise of their civil enforcement duties. I recall that the Opposition made this suggestion in Committee and we, rightly, acceded to their request, although afterwards hon. Members accused us of doing a U-turn. Nevertheless, the Lords have put all that right.
Lords amendments Nos. 71 to 74 amend clause 76, so that a vehicle cannot be immobilised for contravening the conditions of use of a paid-for parking bay until a period of 15 minutes has elapsed from the time that a penalty charge notice for the contravention was issued. They ensure that a vehicle cannot be clamped while the driver goes off to look for change for the machine to pay for parking. They preserve the existing 15-minute grace period against being clamped for overstaying the time paid for.
Lords amendment No. 75 amends clause 77 to enable regulations to be made providing that mitigating circumstances are a ground for appeal to an adjudicator against the imposition of a penalty charge and that, on such an appeal, the adjudicator's function is to decide whether or not to refer the matter back to the enforcement authority for reconsideration. That would effectively give adjudicators a supervisory role over the way in which enforcing authorities exercise their discretion in cases where there are mitigating circumstances.
Lords amendment No. 76 is a minor operational amendment to clause 77. It provides for enforcing authorities to report to the appropriate national authority rather than the Lord Chancellor on the discharge by adjudicators of their functions. That is in line with the current arrangements under section 73 of the Road Traffic Act 1991.
Lords amendments Nos. 78 to 87 serve to improve clause 83. They extend the prohibition on parking in a special enforcement area to cases where a footway, cycle track or verge has been lowered to assist cyclists entering or leaving the carriageway. The prohibition on parking will now also apply where the level of the carriageway has been raised to meet the level of the footway, cycle track or verge to assist pedestrians and cyclists. Most significantly, the prohibition will now apply to special enforcement areas both inside and outside London.
Lords amendment No. 88 inserts a new clause enabling the appropriate national authority to publish guidance to local authorities on any matters relating to their functions in connection with the civil enforcement of traffic contraventions. Authorities will be required to have regard to this statutory guidance. Inclusion of the new clause on guidance fulfils a commitment that we gave on Report in the Commons.
Mr. Chope: I am grateful to the Minister for tabling this amendment. Can he assure us that it will be implemented quickly? Injustices are perpetrated every day and millions of drivers are suffering—
Bob Russell (Colchester) (LD): Millions?
Mr. Chope:
Yes, millions of drivers are suffering persecution at the hands of wardens. We need the code of guidance soon.
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Mr. Jamieson: Earlier this afternoon, your predecessor in the Chair asked us to be moderate and temperate in our language, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Talk of "millions" and "persecution" does not fall into that category. The hon. Gentleman is guilty of hyperbole, but that is not unusual for him. I assume that the Bill will receive Royal Assent shortly, and we will bring in the measures as soon as is practicable.
Lords amendments Nos. 89 and 90 to clause 85 serve to implement a recommendation of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee of the House of Lords that regulations made by the Lord Chancellor on representations and appeals would be subject to parliamentary approval under the affirmative procedure. We are happy to accept that recommendation.
Lords amendments Nos. 103 and 104 add six additional signs to be subject to civil enforcement to the table at paragraph 9 of schedule 7 to the Bill. Five of those are concerned with enforcement of cycle lanes and cycle tracks. The other will enable civil enforcement of bus prohibitions.
Lords amendments Nos. 107 and 108 serve to give effect to the recommendation of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee of the House of Lords that guidance by the appropriate national authority on the levels of penalty charges to be set by enforcing authorities outside London should be included in an order.
Mr. Greg Knight: I urge the Minister and the House to accept amendment (a) to Lords amendment No. 72. That amendment, as the Minister has said, would allow the affixing of an immobilisation device if a motorist overstayed by 15 minutes the time for which he had paid on a parking meter. Although that is a small protection, many of us feel that the imposition of an £80 ticket is of itself a sufficient penalty, so is it fair and reasonable for a motorist who overstays by a short time to find that the vehicle is immobilised and a further fee is payable before he can drive his car away?
On criminal matters, many of us are reassured because the police have the rules of justice and evidence instilled in them. However, we are less happy about traffic wardens enforcing civil penalties because they do not have the same thorough training as the police and some people would say that they are not of the same calibre as police officers. Indeed, they are under pressure to raise money. As we pointed out earlier, a report in one London local newspaper stated:
"Traffic warden boss says he hates drivers . . . An APCOA boss in charge of training Camden's traffic wardens has admitted he hates motorists—saying they deserve parking tickets because they are lazy. Citing controversial new government proposals which could beef up wardens' duties"—
"he added, 'We will now get the power and respect we deserve'. His comments were made to an undercover Ham & High reporter at a job interview for prospective wardens in Kentish Town."
The article also points out that Camden council
"rakes in £23 million a year from parking, clamping fines"
and the money it raises from meters.
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Should a pensioner collecting a prescription for his invalid wife, who puts his money in the parking meter but is delayed both at the doctor's and at the chemist and comes back 16 minutes late, have his vehicle immobilised? Is that fair? Is that justice? We do not think so. Nor do we think that the modest relaxation to one hour proposed in our amendment would undermine the rule of law. Parking fines in this country are already among the highest in the world, so I hope that the Minister will accept our amendment.
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