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Paul Goggins: The hon. Lady talks about assumptions, and she previously gave us a number of quotes, which I shall come to shortly, in relation to the consultation.

Only when someone commits a second endorsable road traffic offence within three years will they become liable to pay the surcharge, and the regulations will make it clear that the further road traffic offence must be endorsable. Let us be clear what we mean when we talk about endorsable motoring offences. We are not talking about people who have a brake light out, people who park on the hard shoulder or those who do not have a working car horn. Those offences are not endorsable.

We are talking about people who, for example, travel at 50 mph in a 30 mph zone; people who go through red traffic lights, endangering people's lives; and people who overtake on pedestrian crossings. Those are endorsable offences, and they are very serious matters indeed. That is why introducing the surcharge after the second endorsable offence is a fair method. Drivers will receive a warning. If they offend again, they will be required to pay the surcharge. Whatever the outcome of the Department for Transport's review of penalty points, it will be clear that the second endorsable offence, not the value of the penalty points, will attract the surcharge. The number of occasions on which an offence is committed will be considered.

Amendment No. 65 would completely remove those who commit serious and persistent road traffic offences from liability for the surcharge. Under amendment No. 11, the surcharge could be applied only to someone who had been disqualified from driving. Both those amendments would smash into the provisions as currently drafted.

Sometimes in debates in the House and in conversations outside it is suggested that, somehow, people who commit an endorsable motoring offence are not really offenders. They are offenders, and many people commit such serious offences. The hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs. Gillan) cited several responses to the consultation and I read a comment in this morning's newspapers by a spokesman for the motoring lobby describing speeding as a "victimless
 
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crime". In some senses, the hon. Member for Christchurch (Mr. Chope) echoed that sentiment. How can it be argued that a speeding motorist commits a victimless crime? Speeding contributes to 36,000 serious injuries a year, and people who speed cause 3,400 fatalities on our roads every year. Some 85 per cent. of people who are hit by motor vehicles travelling at 40 mph are killed. The impact on a pedestrian is a third greater if the speed of a vehicle increases from 30 to 35 mph. These are serious matters.

Mr. Llwyd: Will the Minister explain what the Home Secretary meant when he said on Second Reading that he would consider introducing

"a levy of £10 on fixed penalty notices for serious repeat offenders, as opposed to general fixed penalty notices"?

That does not seem to be what the Minister is saying. The Home Secretary went on to say:

"We will link the levy to the higher number of points added to people's licences, so the system will be fair to everybody."—[Official Report, 14 June 2004; Vol. 422, c. 540.]

The Minister will correct me if I am wrong, but I did not think that higher points were applied to fixed penalty notices by definition—that is complete nonsense.

Paul Goggins: The important part of my right hon. Friend's comments is the word "repeat". He was rightly making the point that the scheme would apply if a person committed an endorsable offence a further time. The provision sends the important message that we want to reduce the incidence of speeding and road traffic offences, and the impact that such offences have on victims.

Mrs. Gillan: I am beginning to get really worried. I understood that the surcharge would go into a victims fund to be spent on victims generally. The Minister now says that the surcharge is supposed to hit motorists hard to stop them speeding. He cannot have it both ways. Is the surcharge a revenue-raising measure for the victims fund, or another attack on motorists using a heavy-handed tool to try to bring them in line?

Paul Goggins: It is possible to achieve both things. The surcharge will help victims, and if motorists pay attention to the message that goes out and fewer of them are caught speeding, there will be fewer victims of speeding. The hon. Lady suggests that there is a contradiction, but both benefits are possible, so that is not the case. If the accusation is that we are surcharging offenders to provide additional support to victims, I am happy to plead guilty. It is important for people who commit such serious offences to support victims in the way we suggest.

We are responding to organisations such as Greater Manchester police, who do a good job policing my constituency and many others. I do not think that the scheme will be a nice little earner, as it has been described today. The money raised will go to the victims fund. That will be welcomed by the victims of not only motoring offences but sexual offences and domestic violence, about whom we talked earlier.

The Bill allows us to convert fines and surcharges into work; the enabling powers are included in the Courts Act 2003, although they are still being piloting. We intend to convert fines to work only if there is absolutely no other way of extracting the money from an offender.
 
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The hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham was right to cite £1.6 million as the cost of administering the fund, but that will be the cost of administering the whole fund, not just the bit relating to motoring offences, so the money will pay for a larger administrative task than she might have thought. Of course we will bear down on the cost of administration when we can, but we think that the administrative costs are worth bearing in pursuit of our objective.

I do not think that I will persuade the right hon. and learned Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham to change his mind. Some parts of the Bill apply to England and Wales and others apply to Northern Ireland. There are varying powers in various parts of the Bill. On the negative procedure, the powers in section 53 of the Road Traffic Offenders Act 1988 are not used in secret, even if they are employed by negative resolution. There is a responsibility under section 88 of the 1988 Act to consult representative organisations when secondary legislation is made. That consultation will take place.

There has been considerable debate about how we define the word "persistent" and what we mean by the word "repeat". Frankly, twice is once too many. The issue is deeply serious. If someone who travels at 50 mph in a 30 mph zone twice in three years or who goes through a red light and then overtakes on a pedestrian crossing twice in three years merely faces a modest surcharge on their fixed penalty notice, and not the consequences that could have arisen had they knocked down a child or severely injured someone, that is a price worth paying.

Mr. Grieve: The Minister knows that if the police consider that the facts surrounding a speeding offence are such that the person should be brought before the court rather than receive a fixed penalty notice, they have the power to do that. By the very action of issuing and agreeing to a fixed penalty notice, the police signify that they consider the offence to be at the bottom end of seriousness; otherwise, the fixed penalty notice would not operate.

Paul Goggins: The hon. Gentleman knows the arguments on fixed penalty notices. Part of the reason for them is to deliver fast and efficient justice, but of course people can be prosecuted and taken to court if the circumstances demand it.

Mr. Tim Boswell (Daventry) (Con): Will the Minister consider the situation, which is not untypical, although I cannot claim to have been involved in it myself, of someone who commits two offences or is given two tickets on the same day and on the same stretch of road because he has triggered a camera twice, as opposed to the scenario that he describes? How can that be called a persistent offence?

Paul Goggins: Because he has done it twice. We have discussed whether persistent means twice or more often, but twice is once too often, whether it is on the same day or over a period of three years. If all someone has at the end of committing those serious offences is a small
 
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surcharge, and not the consequence of knocking down and killing a child, he has got off lightly. Having said that, I ask for the amendment to be withdrawn.

Mrs. Gillan: I feel a bit sorry for the Minister because he put up a bit of a fight, but his position is indefensible, and he knows it. The hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath) was right in what he said in support of the amendments and I invite him to join us in the Lobby—or perhaps he will invite us to join him in the Lobby if I withdraw amendment No. 65 and allow amendment No. 11 to stand as our test.

My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Mr. Hogg) made his usual valuable contribution to the passage of legislation. Frankly, the Minister is trying to get at the lower end of the scale because that is where the volume and numbers are and where the money can be raked in. The points about no relationship between the quality of the offence and the fund were valid.

The Minister ignored our concerns about the negative resolution. The proposal imposes taxation without limit and representation.

There is no safeguard on the level at which the Government could set the fine. The Minister failed to address my point that the Home Secretary said that the surcharge would be £10, whereas he himself said that it would be £5. There is already confusion about the proposal before we have even reached square one.

4.45 pm

A Government who ignore the views of the Police Federation, the Magistrates Association, various police forces and motorists' organisations should think twice. Speeding fines are widely viewed as stealth taxes and are not always a means of improving road safety. Indeed, the revenue generated from motorists is not put towards road safety. Very little of the income generated by fines for motoring offences or duties on vehicle excise, fuel and insurance is spent on road safety or even on the general upkeep of roads. The motorist is therefore already getting poor value for money from the Government, even before this new stealth tax is introduced. The majority of people who will pay into the victims fund are otherwise law-abiding individuals. With the possible exception of the driver who went down the road and triggered a camera twice, they are tax and insurance-paying motorists. They have been caught in the headlights of the Minister and the Home Secretary, who think that they have a captive audience. Ministers are leading the fatted lamb to the slaughter, and once again they believe that the motorist can pay for other people's crimes. The criminals are laughing, but the motorists have been caught, so I urge my hon. Friends and other Members to join us in the Lobby and vote against this preposterous measure.

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