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Session 2009 - 10 Publications on the internet Crime and Security Bill |
Crime and Security Bill |
The Committee consisted of the following Members:Alan Sandall,
Committee Clerk † attended
the
Committee WitnessesEdmund
King, President, The Automobile
Association Patrick Troy, Chief
Executive, British Parking
Association Councillor Shona Johnstone,
Member, Regeneration and Transport Board, Local Government
Association David Hanson MP, Minister
of State, Home Office Alan Campbell MP,
Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Home
Office Public Bill CommitteeThursday 28 January 2010(Afternoon)[Sir Nicholas Winterton in the Chair]Crime and Security Bill1
pm The
Committee deliberated in
private. 1.10
pm On
resuming—
Q191The
Chairman: I welcome our witnesses to this sitting of the
Crime and Security Public Bill Committee. You will be getting questions
from practically all the members of the Committee during your time with
us. Sadly, we have to complete this part of our sitting at 2.30 prompt.
Will our three witnesses please introduce themselves to members of the
Committee? Edmund
King: My name is Edmund King, and I am president of
the Automobile Association. I have been involved with monitoring
clamping on private land for far too long—well over 10 years. I
have made various documentaries on the issue, and representations to
Governments of all shapes over the years, so it is an issue in which I
have an immense interest.
The
Chairman: Before I turn to Councillor Shona Johnstone, I
have to say that Edmund King has anticipated what I was going to say
next about briefly indicating an overview. You started by indicating
the length of time you have been involved with the issue. Before I ask
Councillor Shona Johnstone to introduce herself, will you complete the
AA’s overview of the Bill in 60
seconds? Edmund
King: Our overview is that something desperately
needs to be done about wheel-clamping on private land. We get far too
many cases of pensioners and individuals being fined £400,
£500 or £600 for straying on to a bit of private land
that might not have been well signed. The punishment does not fit the
crime. In this Bill, licensing of companies itself will not, on its
own, make a difference. There are two crucial points. For the Bill to
be effective, the code of conduct, whereby you set levels of fines and
a means of operation, is absolutely crucial. Licensing itself is not.
Secondly, there really must be an independent appeals process as there
is with on-street parking, which works very effectively. If our members
get a ticket on the street, they can apply to the local authority. If
they are not satisfied with the response, they go to a parking
tribunal, and that works extremely well. For this legislation to work,
you need both those things in
place. Shona
Johnstone: I am Councillor Shona Johnstone, and I am
a county councillor in Cambridgeshire. I was the lead member for
environment and transport for some eight years, and introduced
decriminalised parking in Cambridge city. I sit on the Local Government
Association’s regeneration and transport board, and have done
since its inception.
Patrick
Troy: Good afternoon. I am Patrick Troy, chief
executive of the British Parking Association, which has established
what one might describe as some self-regulation in this field, because
we are very anxious to see regulation through Government in the area.
We have what we call an approved operator scheme, of which
the—dare I say it—good guys are members, but we are
concerned that the industry is beset with a poor media image, and that
a number of clamping companies, and companies that deal with ticketing
on private land, are not up to the same standard as members of the
scheme, so we are keen to see
movement.
Q192Tony
Baldry: My questions will be mainly for Professor King. I
must declare an interest. I, and I suspect like other members of the
Committee, am a member of the AA.
Clearly,
there is a public mischief that needs to be dealt with, otherwise we
would not be here, so I think that we can take that for granted. I
understand that whereas at present individuals are licensed, all the
Bill does is license
businesses. A
report issued last year
said: “The
Home Office wants to set a maximum penalty charge—likely to be
£135—to stop cowboy clampers fleecing the
public. Clamping
firms will also have to prove vehicles had breached parking
restrictions and will be forced to make warning signs more obvious and
visible.” A
Home Office press notice
stated: “Proposals
within the bill will make it mandatory for all wheel clamping
businesses to be licensed under the terms of a strict code of conduct.
The code will include a cap on fines, time limits on towing cars
unreasonably quickly after being clamped...Ministers are also
looking to introduce an independent appeals process for motorists who
feel unfairly penalised by firms and their
employees.” None
of that is in Bill. I was wondering, Professor King, whether the
AA’s lawyers could be kind and draft and send to us what the AA
feels should be in the Bill. I am sure we shall get undertakings from
Ministers, because they are decent guys, about the code of conduct and
so forth, but the Security Industry Authority is not a subject for the
Minister. Could you share with us, as soon as possible, what you
believe should be in the Bill, simply to deliver what
Ministers—if one believes their press, which I am sure one
does—want to
achieve? Edmund
King: I think that is vital, because without it this
is just an enabling Bill that will not necessarily change anything. It
will not work. If it is just about licensing a company, we licensed
individual clampers in 2005 and, frankly, it was a licence to print
money. Once they had a licence they could do what they wanted and if
the police were called, they said they had a
licence. We
have another concern about just licensing the business. From our
investigations of clamping companies over the years we have found that
once they are investigated by the media or organisations such as ours,
they often change the name of the company and their post office box
number, but tracking back, the same people—the same
individuals—are involved. We are concerned that even if the
company were licensed, once it breached the licence the people involved
would just fly by night, set up a new company and start operating
again. That has certainly been the practice in the past. We need
something to stop that happening.
Q193Tony
Baldry: I return to my original point. The AA has big
resources. Could your lawyers and your legal team give some thought to
what you feel should be put in the
Bill? Edmund
King: We can certainly give some thought to the areas
that we would like covered. Regarding how it would fit with the Bill, I
am afraid that even at the AA we do not quite have the legal expertise
to do that, but we could outline the elements we feel should be
covered, such as a maximum fine, for example, and the way that people
can pay. Currently, people are forced to pay cash. Clampers in
Doncaster wanted to take a three-year-old girl hostage until her mother
went and got cash. There are all sorts of things that we would like to
see in the Bill. Whether they are practical I do not know, but I would
be willing to put those areas to the
Committee.
Tony
Baldry: If you come up with the areas, we will do our best
to draft suitable amendments at least to test in Committee the extent
to which we can include in the Bill the things Ministers are purporting
to try to
achieve.
The
Chairman: May I say, Mr. King, that if you
supply information it must be available to all Committee members? If
you sent it to the Clerk of the Committee, that would be appropriate.
Copies will then be provided for every member of the Committee,
including the
Chairman.
Q194Tom
Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD): Mr.
King, have you just said—albeit couched in diplomatic
terms—that the measures will not work and will be bureaucratic
and a fudge? Should we not do it properly and look instead at only
allowing local authorities, or people they have subcontracted, to carry
out the work? I am interested in Councillor Johnstone’s response
to that, and Mr. Troy’s, because I am sure that his
association would not support that proposal, although he has a local
authority background and may view it more sympathetically from that
point of
view. Edmund
King: We put other proposals to the Home Office that
we felt would be more effective, but they were turned down. One was
that you license the land rather than the companies. That is something
that local authorities could have potentially carried out; they license
other things, such as licensed premises, pubs and so on. There would
then have been some control. If you license the land and there are
abuses, you can withdraw the licence from that piece of land. We
believe that would have been more effective. We are where we are with
the Bill, and we would certainly like to see action that takes effect.
In our view, no, the Bill is not perfect, but it is better than
nothing. If we can build into the Bill safeguards on things such as a
code of conduct and independent appeals, I think it could
work. Shona
Johnstone: The main issue for me and the local
government world, if we were to operate the sort of licensing system
that you are suggesting, would be how it might be resourced and the
priorities we would give to resourcing it as against resourcing public
land, particularly highway land. Perhaps there is an alternative way.
Very few local authorities use immobilisation, because for most of them
the issue is keeping traffic moving, and if you immobilise a vehicle,
it completely defeats the object. But there is a code of conduct on
parking policy enforcement that we abide by, and using that on private
land might be an alternative way forward.
Patrick
Troy: I agree with the general sentiment. I have a
local authority background; indeed, half the British Parking
Association’s members are local authorities, so there is a lot
of synergy between what goes on in the local authority sector and what
goes on in the private sector. However, my main concern is that the
Bill does not address the whole issue, which is parking on private
land. Clamping is one means of controlling parking on private land.
There are a number of others, the main one being ticketing, which is a
growing area, where private companies issue tickets to vehicles parked
unlawfully. We need to tackle the problem of parking on private land
and how it is regulated. Clamping is just one element. That is what I
would like to see the focus upon, as well as the issue of an
independent appeals system. You are absolutely right to draw attention
to that, because the independent appeals system needs to apply equally
to someone who is clamped, someone who has been ticketed or someone who
has been
removed.
Q195Tom
Brake: Are you saying in effect that if this goes ahead,
all that will happen is that people who were clamping before will
switch to ticketing, so the problem will remain as big as
ever? Patrick
Troy: I think there is a real danger of that and that
we are distorting the market. The BPA is an accredited trade
association, by which I mean that we are accredited by the Driver and
Vehicle Licensing Agency in respect of the ticketing side. That means
that our members must comply with our code of practice to gain access
to the DVLA, or keep a record in order for them to conduct their
business. At the moment, there is no regulation of clamping companies,
so they sit outside that area. As a result, some ticketing companies
start to think about clamping because they will be unregulated. My
concern is that if you simply start regulating clamping and
forget about the ticketing side, you will see a movement back and
forth. The whole needs to be
addressed.
Q196James
Brokenshire (Hornchurch) (Con): I want to take a slightly
different line of questioning on enforcement. For the licensing regime
as contemplated by the Bill to work, it would have to be enforced in
some way. The presumption is that it would be through the SIA, but
there is also a clear overlap with the work of trading standards. How
would the panel envisage the current proposals being practically
enforced? Would they actually be enforced as
anticipated? Edmund
King: That is a very important question. Currently,
there is no enforcement at all. Some trading standards officers take an
interest and some do not; the situation is, therefore, quite haphazard.
Under the Bill, as I see it, if a company did not have a licence, it
would be a criminal offence for it to clamp. Therefore, an individual
motorist could ask to see the licence and if the company did not have
it, the individual could call the police. Apart from that, I do not
think that enforcement is inherent in the
proposals. Shona
Johnstone: Issues around enforcement might replicate
the position of local authorities with the independent appeals process.
That would be the line that local government would, ideally, like to
see taken.
Patrick
Troy: The enforcement side is absolutely critical. We
recognise that with our scheme we are moving forward significantly, as
we speak, to include additional compliance auditing of our members, to
ensure that
they comply with our code, and to ensure that we have in place what we
are calling a series of sanctions—operators that do not come up
to scratch and breach our code would have sanctions against them, which
could result ultimately in expulsion. The solution is to base the model
on the DVLA-accredited trade association status, where the SIA engages
an accredited trade association, with a code of practice, which can
demonstrate that that association is properly ensuring that each
operator is compliant and that it is taking action when operators do
not comply. That seems to be one way of enforcing the scheme without
expecting the SIA to step in on every
detail.
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| ©Parliamentary copyright 2010 | Prepared 29 January 2010 |