Road Safety (Financial Penalty Deposit) (Appropriate Amount) Order 2009

This order is a crucial part of a package of statutory instruments that are currently being made to strengthen the existing system for dealing with road traffic offenders under the Road Safety Act 2006. The purpose of this order is to prescribe the amount of financial deposit that can be requested from an alleged offender by the police or by an examiner from the Department for Transport’s Vehicle and Operator Services Agency in respect of a fixed penalty offence or an intended court prosecution. To be clear, the legislation provides for such deposits to be requested only from alleged offenders who are unable to provide a satisfactory UK address. Deposits would not, and could not, be requested from alleged offenders who have a satisfactory UK address. For brevity, I shall call this group of alleged offenders ““non-UK-resident offenders””, although the scheme will apply to those who are resident in the UK but who do not have a satisfactory address, such as those offenders who do not have a fixed address. The point is that UK-resident road traffic offenders are already liable to receive a fixed penalty, or, in Scotland, a conditional offer, or face court prosecution in respect of a road traffic offence. If they fail to pay the fixed penalty or a court-imposed fine, enforcement action can be, and is, taken against them. The same is not currently true in respect of non-UK-resident offenders, because there is no mechanism for enforcing the payment of fixed penalties or court fines outside the UK. However, in future there will be because once all the relevant provisions of the Road Safety Act are in force and implemented, the enforcement agencies will already have collected the appropriate amount as a deposit, in advance. Although the principle of collecting payments at the roadside in respect of road traffic offences is novel in Britain, it has been in place elsewhere throughout Europe for many years. Its implementation in Britain will increase the effectiveness of our enforcement policy. To tackle the high levels of non-compliance, we have provided VOSA with an extra £24 million over the next three years to help it to boost further the levels of roadside enforcement activity. This extra expenditure, together with the order, will not only give VOSA an increased capability to detect offences, but an effective means of penalising all those so detected, whether resident in the UK or not. The fixed penalty offences in respect of which deposits can be requested are set out in the schedules to the order. A complete list of the offences to which the scheme applies, which includes the majority of road traffic offences that are subject to summary court proceedings, is set out in the related statutory instruments. The details of the circumstances in which a financial penalty deposit can be requested and the details of how such a deposit is subsequently to be processed are also set out in those instruments. The order says that, in the case of an offence for which the offender has been given a fixed penalty notice or, in Scotland, a conditional offer, the deposit amount that can be requested is the same as the level of the relevant fixed penalty, which may be £30, £60, £120 or £200. In the case of an offence that is to be prosecuted in court, the prescribed deposit amount is £300. The way in which the scheme works in respect of fixed penalties and conditional offers is that, at the end of the 28-day period, if the non-UK-resident offender has not elected to have a court hearing in respect of the fixed penalty or conditional offer, the deposit is converted into payment of the fixed penalty. If a court hearing is elected in respect of the fixed penalty or conditional offer, the deposit will continue to be held until the outcome of the proceedings. In circumstances where a case is taken to court, the financial penalty deposit will be used in payment of any court fine, leaving any balance to be refunded to the alleged offender. If the alleged offender is acquitted or not prosecuted within 12 months, or convicted but not fined, the deposit is refunded. The purpose of prescribing the appropriate amounts is to put the non-UK-resident offender in the same effective position as a UK-resident offender. In summary, the net effect of this order is to ensure that non-UK-resident offenders end up paying fixed penalties and court fines in respect of road traffic offences. I beg to move.