Local Transport Bill [HL]

moved Amendment No. 81: 81: Clause 100, page 77, line 3, at end insert— ““( ) Section 173 of the above Act (penalty charges) is amended as follows— (a) for subsection (3)(a) substitute— ““(a) owner of the vehicle;””; (b) after subsection (3) insert— ““(3A) In this section ““owner”” means the person by whom the vehicle is kept which, in the case of a vehicle registered under the Vehicle Excise and Registration Act 1994 (c. 22), is presumed (unless the contrary is proved) to be the person in whose name the vehicle is registered;””.”” The noble Lord said: This amendment is designed to ensure that the Bill follows the well established principle of owner liability as opposed to registered keeper liability when it comes to pursuing money owing under the road pricing schemes. The amendment preserves the legal right for a motorist to put in a defence that he or she was not the owner of the vehicle at the time that the road traffic offence may have been committed. This would occur when the vehicle owner has sold the vehicle but the DVLA has not yet updated its records and registered the new keeper details against the vehicle registration number. I gather that this can often take up to six weeks as, apparently, the DVLA has more than 6 million changes of keeper to register each year. The principle is already enshrined in the Traffic Management Act 2004 and related secondary legislation. This amendment would do no more than bring local road pricing schemes in line with all other legislation for road traffic offences, including parking, bus lanes and other road traffic offences. For instance, in both parking and bus lane enforcement, there is an initial presumption that the keeper registered at DVLA is the owner. However, if the registered keeper can show that he was not the owner at the time of the contravention, he will not be liable for the penalty; it will be the liability of the actual owner. At the moment, unfortunately, the Transport Act 2000 is based on a registered keeper liability, as opposed to an owner liability for farms, which can cause problems for car owners and, indeed, for car hire businesses. Not much more needs to be said about the amendment, which is very simple and would merely bring the legislation into line with other traffic legislation vis-à-vis the liability for farms. I beg to move.