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Lord Renton: My Lords, my noble friends Lady Anelay of St Johns and Lord Carlisle of Bucklow have drawn our attention to a confusing situation, caused
 
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mainly by the amendments moved in another place that the Government are asking your Lordships to accept this evening.

I am moved to draw attention, perhaps prematurely, to Amendment No. 8, which includes two new clauses to be added to the Criminal Justice Act 2003. The one that surprises and worries me is new Clause 161B, which deals with the amount of the surcharge. The Secretary of State will specify it by order. We find in the next subsection that the order may provide for the amount to depend on the offence or offences committed, how the offender is otherwise dealt with and the age of the offender.

In effect, the Secretary of State will be able to legislate in important ways on a matter that, essentially, should be dealt with in the Bill, rather than being delegated to him. We are not sure from new Clause 161B whether the Secretary of State will have the power to apply his recommendations to individual cases. I hope not. That would be the wrong way to legislate.

I sympathise greatly with the noble Baroness, Lady Scotland of Asthal. She has been given an impossible task. Theoretically, we are on the way to Royal Assent to this complicated Bill, but I hope that, somehow or another, it may not be passed in this Session. It should be thought out again and reconsidered in the next Session.

Lord Mayhew of Twysden: My Lords, one always tries to be charitable on such occasions, but the best that I can do is to call the proposals half-baked.

We are told that the Magistrates' Association opposes the proposals. I can see why. It would be helpful to be told what it said in response to the consultation. I cannot remember, but I imagine that the magistrates objected to being treated as tax collectors for the Government, who would be able thereafter to apply to matters outside the purview of magistrates the product of the so-called surcharge. Why is it called a surcharge? Why is it not called a penalty? That is what it is. What is it a surcharge on? It is a surcharge on a penalty that the magistrate thinks it right to impose.

I thought that those of us who took an interest in penal matters were agreed that custody should be avoided if other penalties were available and that financial penalties should be assessed according, in part, to the means of the offender. We all know how keenly the public feel that punishments should be appropriately severe, though not inappropriately severe. If, in a particular case, a court—any court—decides to respond to the offender's guilt by imposing a fine, it will do so by reference to his means and his ability to pay. We do not know what the Secretary of State will, by order, fix as the level of the surcharge. Presumably, it will be significant. The consequence will be that magistrates will reduce the amount of fines, to take account of the additional liability to pay the surcharge. If that is so, there will be a great deal of
 
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dissatisfaction among people who say that the fine is insufficient. Should not the Government better think about all that again?

Baroness Walmsley: My Lords, the Home Office must have a very large and dusty box of Christmas baubles in its attic. It seems to raid that box very frequently and hang them on any unsuspecting passing Bill. These amendments fall within that category. So disconnected is the issue of these surcharges from the substance of the original Bill that I notice that the Government have had to introduce Amendment No. 101 to change the Title of the Bill.

Turning now to the substance of these amendments, while we support the Government's wish to provide more adequately for Victim Support and commend the work of the Victim Support organisations, we have our reservations about the detail of the proposals to surcharge, in particular, motorists convicted of speeding. We do not, however, support any campaign against speed cameras in general. They have an important role to play in road safety as long as there is sound evidence for the location of their deployment.

We are concerned, first, that when the Home Secretary first proposed this measure, he suggested that the victim fund would be paid for by the mugger and not by the motorist. Then, lo and behold, we find a proposal introduced in another place to surcharge the motorist. When challenged on that by my honourable friend the Member for Somerton and Frome in another place, the Minister, Paul Goggins, claimed that it would apply only to serious or persistent offenders.

Now I come to our second concern, which is clearly shared by many other Members of your Lordships' House. Mr Goggins's definition of a persistent offender is someone who already has some points on his licence. That might be for an infringement of a very minor kind, as described by other noble Lords, or perhaps an infringement of a speed limit that occurred two years and 11 months ago. Indeed, it is quite possible for someone to commit two offences of that kind within 50 yards of road if he is caught on two cameras in the same journey. In my view, that does not make him a persistent offender. One of the proposed amendments would give the court a certain amount of discretion that might deal with anomalies of that kind.

My honourable friend suggested that a more appropriate definition of someone who should be surcharged would be someone who had been disqualified from driving for a serious or a series of motoring offences. Sadly, as the Minister has confirmed again today, the Government do not agree.

On these Benches, we believe that it is important to have public support for the law. Since about 1.5 million endorsable speeding offences occur every year, I fear that this measure will only reinforce the public's view that the Government see speed cameras more as a convenient cash cow than as a serious attempt to improve road safety. That would be a great pity. Cannot the Minister give us any comfort about the definition of those to whom these surcharges would apply?
 
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Another thing that worries me is the link between the amount of support available for victims and how law-abiding motorists are. I certainly echo the concern of the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, in that respect. The public prefer to see a link between the punishment and the crime. I also echo the words of the noble Lord, Lord Carlisle, on that matter. He had it absolutely right.

We do not support the Government's amendment. We support many of the amendments that have been put down to try to neutralise some of the effects of them.

Lord Donaldson of Lymington: My Lords, unlike any speaker in the House on this topic, including the Minister, I have an interest to declare. I have paid a fixed penalty within the past three years for speeding. I am very aggrieved about that, but that is beside the point.

First, I want totally to support everything that the noble Lord, Lord Carlisle, said. It is a very startling innovation that is really outside the scope of the Bill. Well, it would be outside the scope of the Bill but for the change in the Long Title, which is remarkable in itself.

I turn now to the suggestion that magistrates will reduce the fine to take account of the surcharge. We are not dealing with the gaming Bill at the moment, but I would take a small bet that they will, notwithstanding that in new subsection (4A) at the top of page 5, they are told that they cannot do that. Of course, it would be quite impossible to prove whether they have or have not. In the interests of justice, as they see it—probably rightly see it—I fancy that they will.

The objection here is one that I have had to the Home Secretary's activities over quite a long period of time; namely, that he wishes to take away the discretion of the court at all levels to decide the appropriate penalty. He has introduced minimum sentences for other offences, subject to some slight get-out clause. Now he will do the same here.

It may be said that a surcharge is not the same as a penalty, but it certainly is from the point of view of the repeat offender, as I fear I may become before I get to the end of the three years.

Baroness Scotland of Asthal: My Lords, I hope to reassure the noble and learned Lord that even if he were to become a repeat offender, which I am sure he will not because of the salutary effect of having received his penalty already, the penalty that will be imposed on him is likely to be within his ability to pay.

Perhaps I may straight away tell noble Lords the sort of figures that we have in mind. For fixed penalty notices, including penalty notices for disorder, up to £80, the proposed surcharge level is between £5 and £10. For a fixed penalty notice, including penalty notices of disorder, which are imposed between £81 and £200, the proposed surcharge is £10. For a fine of up to £1,000, the proposed surcharge is £15. For all community penalties and fines of more than £1,000, the proposed surcharge is £30. The surcharge is £30 for
 
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a custodial sentence that is suspended. It is also £30 for an immediate custodial sentence. Noble Lords will see that the amounts that we propose are of a relatively modest nature.

I hope that noble Lords will understand that we have tried in recent years to ensure that the victim is put very much at the heart of those proceedings. The victim has often felt—certainly this is something that a number of victims' organisations have told me—very much the "forgotten guest at the feast", the unregarded. We would very much like to change that. Huge amounts of effort and money are currently going into victim services. I am not just talking about the increase from £10.7 million to £30 million that is given to Victim Support.

In all, the Government, I believe, spend in excess of £600 million on various different services for the benefit of victims. But there is clearly much more that can be done. I have said already that we do not believe that road traffic offences are victimless crimes. I very much welcome the comments made by the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, in support of that sentiment.

The best way of avoiding victims would be of course for civil obedience to break out. No surcharges would be payable because no one will have committed any offences. If that were to happen, I can assure noble Lords that no one would be happier than the Government. We would not have victims; we would not have those who were adversely affected; and we would not have to try to care for them in the way that we now do because they would not have so suffered.

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