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Lord Davies of Oldham: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Earl for giving me the opportunity to look into the future and have a perspective that is much wider than our normal humble concerns. I do not always share his enormous enthusiasm for the technology of the future. In 30 years of loyally, and with great reward, driving Rover cars, the only time I ever had trouble with one was when I was driving past an RAF station on the A1 which succeeded in producing an electronic signal which cut out all Rover cars of that year and make that went past it. Consequently, the noble Earl is proposing this engineering monitoring system before a rather prejudiced Minister. Of course, I recognise that as technology moves on, these small imperfections are things of the past and will never happen again.
The installation of electronic recording devices to capture data on the behaviour of a driver of a road vehicle or certain functional parameters of the vehicle might bring great benefits to accident analysis. We recognise how that would improve our position on enhancing road safety.
The noble Earl will recognise that we cannot tread too heavily in this area without due care. There are human rights issues involved in being able to track vehicles in such a way. He hinted that there ought to be some international dimension to this from the point of view of the car manufacturers. There would certainly be a European perspective on this with regard to the human rights of the individual and the extent to which such devices could be used against the individual, contrary to basic rights. There are problems in this area, which the noble Earl needs to take on board. That is why we are not likely to move with great rapidity to amend this Bill, in any event, in such a controversial area.
However, there is significant international interest in such devices. In the United States, there has been consultation with vehicle manufacturers concerning the voluntary fitting of a standardised recorder. The European Commission has awarded a research contract to evaluate their potential usefulness. This research will consider the competing technologies, their compatibility with all classes of vehicle and their usefulness in accident reconstruction. It is a two-year programme, so it will be some time before we have the results, but the noble Earl will recognise that there is activity on an international level which may bring some of the benefits that he has identified.
We are awaiting the publication of the outcome of the US consultation on the standardised approach to this technology, particularly the views of the manufacturing industry. The noble Earl was kind enough to recognise the implications of his amendment for the industry. We intend to contribute to this international study and we are discussing this with European colleagues. We have already opened discussions at official level with the French
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Government, with a view to a joint programme of vehicle trials to evaluate the potential of accident data recorders.
This is an area fraught with difficulties; we have many matters to consider. I welcome the chance the noble Earl has given me to look into the future, but he will not mind if I concentrate principally on getting the Report stage of the Bill completed. I hope that he will withdraw the amendment.
Earl Attlee: My Lords, the Minister can be satisfied on his last point, because I have already said that I will not press the amendment.
I thought that in the Bill the alcolock was rather futuristic. It will be interesting to see what happens when that comes into play. I expect that it could have some snags. Was the Minister prejudiced regarding the technology behind the lorry road user charging scheme that has died a death?
The Minister also mentioned human rights. The same issues arise concerning lorry road user charging schemes and the wider road user charging. I hope that we will be talking about that a lot in the future.
My amendment was not intended to track; the accident data recorder specifically covered that point. Subsection (4) of the amendment refers to,
That is a very heavy application of the brakes, about as much as a vehicle can achieve. I am not suggesting in my amendment that we record all vehicle activity; I am suggesting recording the five minutes before an incident occurs.
I will look very carefully at what the Minister has said about what work is being done at a European level. In the mean time, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendments Nos. 67 to 70 not moved.]
Viscount Simon moved Amendment No. 70A:
"ROAD TRAFFIC OFFENCES: PROCEDURE
(1) Designated members of a relevant police authority shall, for the purposes of this section, have the powers and rights of audience of a Crown Prosecutor in relation to the prosecution of
(a) the offences listed in paragraphs 1, 3, 4 and 5 of Schedule 1 to the Prosecution of Offences Act 1985 (Specified Proceedings) Order 1999 (S.I. 1999/904);
(b) specified offences that cease to be specified when a magistrates' court begins to receive evidence in those proceedings where the defendant does not enter a plea.
(2) A designated member of a relevant police authority shall not have rights of audience when an offence ceases to be specified where the defendant enters a not guilty plea and the case proceeds to trial.
(3) A member of a relevant police authority shall be designated for the purposes of this section if that member is a recognised designated court presentation officer employed for that purpose."
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The noble Viscount said: My Lords, in Committee my noble friend the Minister did not like the wording of my amendment regarding police rights of audience in certain traffic offences. This amendment seeks to address those imperfections.
The Prosecution of Offences Act 1985 (Specified Proceedings) Order 1999, (SI 1999/904) specifies certain low level road traffic offences. The 1985 Act places the duty on the CPS, under statute, to take over the conduct in all criminal proceedings other than specified proceedings. Currently, therefore, the police have conduct of all specified proceedings unless these proceedings become de-specified. An offence will only become de-specified when the court begins to hear the evidence presented.
This happens in the following cases. First, where the court starts to hear the evidence in the event of the defendant pleading not guilty and the case proceeds to trial; and secondly, where the court starts to hear the evidence in the event of the defendant not entering a plea of any description. In these cases the court hears the evidence by way of statements read out either by the CPS lawyers or CPS staff memberswho are not lawyers but designated case workers.
I am sure that my noble friend would like to learn that the police have recruited a central resource pool of trained and experienced dedicated court presentation officers and it is hoped that these people will be given the same rights of audience as provided to the CPS non-legal staff under Section 7A of the Prosecution of Offences Act 1985. The cases where this would take place would be those non-contested, lower level road traffic offences as listed in the Specified Proceedings Order.
Safety camera offences and those subject to fixed penalty notices are a couple of areas of concern, where people might go scot-free if this change were to be rejected. It is therefore necessary for these court presenters to acquire those rights, as the police are seeking the use of more court space to optimise prosecution ability. The CPS, in turn, is questioning its role in the prosecution of these cases and the police are only able to present cases where there have been confirmed guilty pleas. In these cases the police present cases by means of reading out the statement of facts and not the statements themselves, which would require the CPS. The CPS would benefit from assistance in matters of non-contested cases with no plea entered at all in that as many as possible would be proved in absence at the first hearing by using these specialised dedicated court presenters.
To summarise, this would free the CPS for more serious roads policing cases in the knowledge that there are people, duly qualified by appropriate training, who can work effectively in minor cases. I beg to move.
Lord Bradshaw: My Lords, I rise briefly to support what the noble Viscount, Lord Simon, has said and I declare my interest as a member of the Thames Valley Police Authority. The Crown Prosecution Service is
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already burdened with more work than it can do so thatcertainly in the courts in the area to which I gocases are being presented by "journeymen lawyers", who are not members of the CPS, but people that the CPS buys in to do the work and they are often not as expert in matters as they might be. They are certainly not as expert in many matters which the police officersdealing in particular with traffic offences as we are discussing herewould be expert in.
In their haste to pass the Police and Criminal Evidence Act and the other reforms that the Government brought to bear on the criminal justice system, there were good reasons for taking away from the police the presentation of certain facts before the court. But where the matters are technical, and particularly in the circumstances which the noble Viscount, Lord Simon, outlined, there is a strong case for allowing the police to present the case rather thanas is the system nowwriting down the evidence for the CPS lawyer to read out. It is a convoluted system which is not in the interests of either the economy or justice.
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