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12.20 pm
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Social Security (Mr. Roger Evans): I begin by dealing with the fundamental issue that has been put to me: the status of the document on the blueprint for the future of the Benefits Agency in Wales. I stress that it is a set of proposals--no more, no less. Ministers will in due time determine what, if anything, will be implemented. That is the first point that I wish to stress.
Secondly, the purpose of public officials--one of them, Mr. Ian Watson, was mentioned in a most unpleasant way by the hon. Member for Neath (Mr. Hain) earlier--
Mr. Evans:
No, I shall finish this before I deal with that particular point.
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The purpose of expert advice is to advise Government of the management arguments and to make proposals. I should make it clear that there was extensive in-house consultation before the publication of the documents for general consultation last week. The purpose of all this is to give advice, and in these days of open government, the cards are placed face upwards and everybody is given an opportunity to see what they are and to make something of them. No decisions have been made. It will be a question of consultation.
The third point that I wish to stress is that the hon. Member for Delyn (Mr. Hanson)--not only in the debate but by parliamentary question, which I am about to answer--asked a specific question: can we extend the consultation period, because the end of December is too short? I have listened to the arguments that he and other hon. Members made. I see the force of their arguments and am prepared to say here and now that we will extend the consultation period to the end of February. There will be further opportunity for the proposals to be examined in detail. Every hon. Member who is affected has either written to me or spoken in the debate--or no doubt will shortly if he or she has not done so. Individual representations and particular problems will be looked at individually before any decisions are made.
Mr. Evans:
I will give way at this point, but I have quite a lot to say and I have only eight minutes left.
Mr. Llwyd:
Will the Minister assure me that my three offices--Blaenau Ffestiniog, Llanwryst and Dolgellau--will not close on 2 January?
Mr. Evans:
Yes, is the simple answer.
Mr. John Morris:
We are very grateful to the Minister for the extension of the consultative period. It is very sensible and wise of the Minister. If it is extended to the end of February, when does he expect a decision to be made--before the election on 1 May or after?
Mr. Evans:
That will depend on the decision that is made at the time. I am not able to help further on that.
Mr. Hain:
Is the Minister saying that he will take personal responsibility for all the decisions, or are they the decisions of the Benefits Agency? My point about the Benefits Agency's director is that agencies have a lack of accountability to the House. If the Minister is taking personal responsibility, I withdraw my remark. If he is not, I do not.
Mr. Evans:
I suspect that the hon. Gentleman deeply shocked most of us with an attack on a public official on the basis of "Do the Tories' bidding, and if you do, you'll be sacked." I am, of course, delighted to hear that it was a misapprehension on the part of the hon. Gentleman. I shall clarify the situation for him, although I had hoped that it would have been understood by everybody. Mr. Watson and other public officials at the Benefits Agency are civil servants, and Ministers are accountable
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A number of strands in the argument have not been developed this morning. I do not say that that is not understandable in the sense that it is right and proper that individual constituency Members raise their constituency concerns, but there are a number of striking features.
Mr. Murphy:
Does the Minister agree with the Bishop of Monmouth that the closure of the benefits office in my constituency, which would also affect that constituency, would have an appalling impact on both of them?
Mr. Evans:
The views of the hon. Gentleman, and, indeed, the distinguished bishop, will be taken into account when the consultation period is concluded, when matters are evaluated and decisions made.
A number of factors were not mentioned this morning but have a significant effect on the Benefits Agency's business. The first and most significant is the introduction on 7 October of the jobseeker's allowance. Whatever the faults, strengths and triumphs of that system, the most important difference, for the purposes of this discussion, is that the allowance is available from jobcentres. There are 93 jobcentres in Wales.
The hon. Member for Delyn said that, under the proposals, the Benefits Agency would be withdrawn from his constituency. I remind him that there are four jobcentres in his constituency. If someone is part of the unemployed list, he or she will get the JSA from the jobcentre. Previously, 70 per cent. of the unemployed were on income support and would have had to visit a Benefits Agency office. Now the system has changed, and it is a fundamental change in the operation of the Benefits Agency.
I stress that there are 93 jobcentres in Wales, which are more evenly and widely spread and more numerous than the existing Benefits Agency offices that we have been talking about. In some cases, the number of callers to Benefits Agency offices will drop. I have had one example in another part of the United Kingdom where the number of callers during October dropped down to about 15 per cent. of what they were. The statistics are only recently available--
Mr. Rowlands:
Fifty per cent. or 15 per cent.?
Mr. Evans:
Down from 700-odd callers to just about 100 in a month. That was the result of a particularly large employment case load for that particular Benefits Agency office.
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I stress that the figures in Wales do not appear to be anything like as striking, but there will be a reduction in the caller load, which will affect some offices more than others, simply as a result of the service being streamlined and delivered through jobcentres. That is an important factor that responsible public officials have to bear in mind when advising Ministers on the importance and significance of particular Benefits Agency offices.
The second management issue, which is also extremely important, is the roll-out of the benefit payment card, which is under way and should be completed by 1999. A computer change in the central system will effect the payment, and then the customer or claimant--whatever one prefers to call them--can go to the local sub-post office, perhaps in rural Wales, and draw the amount awarded, whatever it may be. We do not have the current system of individual personal girocheques and order books, which have to be kept available in a wide range of offices. That in itself will have some influence on the way in which the Benefits Agency operates.
I use as an example a social fund loan. Hon. Members commented about doing things by telephone, and some things have to be done by post and by telephone in some circumstances, but what really matters is that, if someone has a benefit payments card, he or she does not have to collect the giro or the order book. It is simply a matter of authorising payment under the card. That is an advance in the way of doing business, and it will produce a better service.
A number of trends are significant. I shall deal first with the use of telephones. The right hon. and learned Member for Aberavon (Mr. Morris) said that telephones are no substitute for the vulnerable who are in difficulty. I respectfully agree with him, but that does not alter the fact that an increasing number of members of the public who come in contact with, and make claims on, the agency prefer to use the telephone. We can, of course, have an argument as to precisely what the quantification of that is. The hon. Member for Ynys Mon (Mr. Jones) mentioned 4 million telephone calls and 1.7 million personal calls. There is a tendency for personal calls not to increase quite apart from the introduction of jobseekers' allowance. In some offices, quite apart from JSA, the number of callers is diminishing quite rapidly.
There are two other factors, and I have literally only half a minute to deal with them. The 34 caller units in Wales are not linked, any more than the benefit bus or the old freeline, with the computer system to authorise payment there and then. That is obviously a matter of concern and--
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Geoffrey Lofthouse):
Order. Time is up.
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Mr. Steve Norris (Epping Forest):
First, I congratulate warmly my hon. Friend the Minister for Transport in London, the hon. Member for Battersea (Mr. Bowis), on his appointment. I imagine that it must have been a matter of great regret to him to leave the Department of Health, where he had had an extremely distinguished tenure of office, to come to the Department of Transport. I know that the people of London believe that my hon. Friend has made an enormously valuable contribution already to transport matters in the short time that he has been in his present post.
I know also that he will find the job, to my sure and certain knowledge, one of the most fascinating that is available to any Minister of the Crown, not least because he is dealing very much with real issues. The issue which I wish to raise is probably one of the least readily penetrable of all the titles of Adjournment debates that one sees on the Order Paper, but it deals with a very real issue.
I say by way of outline that, under the Road Traffic Act 1991, parking offences in London were decriminalised. The scheme has been working extremely successfully during the past few years. I pay tribute to the work of Nick Lester, the parking director for London, who had the responsibility of co-ordinating the activities of 33 individual London boroughs, drawing them into some coherent whole and establishing a framework for parking policy in London, one which has proved to be enormously workable and effective. Bearing in mind the huge pressures on London, which my hon. Friend will recognise in representing Battersea, it is fair to say that London's control of parking is a remarkable success.
As my hon. Friend knows, part of the 1991 Act was the introduction of the parking appeals service. It is a mechanism by which there can be appeal against the issue of parking notices by those who feel that they were not justified. It is essentially a two-part process. There is appeal in the first instance to the local borough. If the local borough that issues the ticket in the first place insists on the ticket remaining in force, there is then an appeal to the parking appeals service, a specialist tribunal of adjudicators that considers appeals against the liability to pay a penalty charge.
From the inception of the service, the chief adjudicator has been Caroline Sheppard, whom I have known since she first took up office, before the scheme was formally instituted. She has done an excellent job in gathering around her a marvellously eclectic mix of adjudicators. They are all extremely well legally qualified and they come from a range of backgrounds. That means that parking adjudication is practical, rapid and effective.
My hon. Friend will not have had in his postbag--nor did I over the many years when I was the responsible Minister, during which time the 1991 Act was in force--any complaints from members of the public in a city of nearly 8 million people about the way in which the parking system works. I think that it is perceived that the system is fair. It is fundamental to the scheme that the public have confidence in it, and that they do perceive it to be fair. I fear that a recent case in the Court of Appeal may mean that the benefits of the 1991 Act will be substantially undermined. That is what I want to describe.
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In October, the Court of Appeal made a decision that gave guidelines on the definition of keeping a vehicle. That resulted in a curious state of affairs, in that individuals who take their cars to a garage for repair and subsequently find themselves liable for a penalty charge notice--in other words, a parking ticket--that had been issued on the vehicle because the garage had, unbeknown to the owner, left the car in a position where it incurred the penalty, find themselves facing substantial charges.
The issue came before one of the parking adjudicators, who had to determine appeals under the Act. He consolidated a number of different cases. One case involved the London borough of Bromley, where a garage habitually left its clients' vehicles in the street outside the premises. Many members of the public received notices requiring them to pay the penalty. I know that my hon. Friends the Members for Beckenham (Mr. Merchant) and for Ravensbourne (Sir J. Hunt) have been in correspondence about the matter.
There was also a case in the London borough of Hammersmith and Fulham. A vehicle had been left with a garage for a considerable period, and ultimately it was disposed of. It is ironic that my hon. Friend the Minister will know the third case extremely well. I understand that the person involved is one of his constituents. I am sorry if that causes my hon. Friend any embarrassment. As my hon. Friend will know, the lady concerned left her car with a garage for three weeks for repair. When she collected the car, she found herself facing £240 in penalty charge notices.
To underline the fact that the three cases to which I have referred are not the totality of the problem, I understand that the adjudicators have received about 100 appeals where this situation has occurred.
It must be obvious that, when the 1991 Act was introduced, it was never intended that a member of the public should pay for parking tickets incurred by a garage that leaves vehicles clogging the surrounding streets. It was of course intended that local authorities should be able to collect the penalties due from whomever was responsible for committing the offence, without motorists passing the buck from one to another.
The Act therefore made the owner liable for payment of penalties issued in respect of the vehicle. However, under the Act, the expression "owner" is defined in the same way as it is defined in the Road Traffic Offenders Act 1988, which relates to criminal offences, and the Vehicles Excise and Regulations Act 1994, which governs the Driving and Vehicle Licensing Agency.
For the purpose of all these Acts, an owner is the person by whom the vehicle is kept. So, in the garage parking cases, the adjudicator highlighted the difficulty that there is no statutory definition of a keeper. He said that it was a matter of fact and degree. He considered that the length of time for which a vehicle is in someone's possession is an important element in deciding who is the keeper of the vehicle, but suggested that other factors might have a bearing on the issue.
In the case of the garages, the adjudicator concluded that, as the garage was clearly in possession of the vehicle under a contractual agreement, it could be subject to a workman's lien, in so far as the owner of the vehicle had no right to remove it until the repair bill had been paid. That relationship obviously affected the keeping of the
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The adjudicator explained that he was mindful of the purposes of the relevant legislation, particularly the Secretary of State's traffic management and parking guidance, which was issued by the Department when introducing the legislation. A passage in the guidance reads:
In both the 1991 and 1988 Acts, there is a presumption that the person who is registered as the keeper at the DVLA is the de facto keeper of the vehicle. The Court of Appeal said that, where that presumption exists, local authorities, parking adjudicators, and presumably magistrates when dealing with criminal jurisdiction, must go first to the person named as the keeper on the DVLA register, and then decide whether there has been a disposition or acquisition of the vehicle that would render a change of registration at the DVLA necessary. That implies that, even if an authority knows perfectly well that a vehicle is in someone else's keeping--it may even have issued that person with a resident's parking permit--it has to ignore that information, and approach the registered owner at the DVLA.
The Court of Appeal applied that principle, and decided that a garage having a vehicle for a short time does not constitute an appropriate disposition to merit a change of registration at the DVLA. The registered owner would be liable for parking tickets incurred by the garage.
If I allowed my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Sir I. Patnick)--a jewel in the Sheffield crown, if I may say so--to drive my extremely valuable car, although he would think that I had taken leave of my senses, he would not constitute a "keeper" for the purposes of the 1991 Act merely because he happened to be driving the car at the time. If he incurred a ticket while driving my car, responsibility for paying it would be a matter between him and me.
The point about the workman's lien is that I would not be able to take my car away from the garage until I had paid for the work done. The relationship between the person who has control of the vehicle and the registered owner--the "keeper" for DVLA purposes--is quite different. That is the nub of the case.
I do not pretend that this is an easy matter. Nor am I asking my hon. Friend the Minister to come up with an instant solution. I am drawing the problem to his attention, and am asking him to take on board the issues involved. I know that he will be keen to do so, because he represents a London constituency.
I shall give examples from cases that have recently come before adjudicators for a decision as to who is liable for payment. In one case, the registered keeper was in prison, but the vehicle was kept by someone else for the duration of the prison sentence. In another case, the vehicle belonged to a parent who lived outside London, but was kept and used by an offspring in London. Another vehicle was owned by a couple, but was registered in the name of one of them. On the break-up of the relationship, it was taken and kept by the other one at an address that was unknown to the initial owner.
The registered owner of another vehicle went abroad and allowed a relative to keep and use it while he was away. Two families swapped vehicles for a time, because the ever-increasing family needed the use of the people carrier, whereas the other family was reduced to two elderly parents who preferred to use a smaller sports or family car.
Those are real, practical cases, and such events happen every day in this city. Surely Parliament intended that the people who keep and use the vehicle, not the registered owner, should be liable for parking tickets. The Court of Appeal test of the imaginary instantaneous registration, far from helping, merely complicates the issue.
Problems should be identified at an early stage. I accept that the Court of Appeal was faced with tricky law, and that my hon. Friend will not have an instant answer. These problems were recognised by Parliament and the Department of Transport, because they allowed the presumption of keepership created by DVLA registration to be rebutted by evidence provided to parking adjudicators or magistrates to show that, notwithstanding the DVLA register, the vehicle was kept by someone else. That practical concept should be capable of interpretation by the parking appeals system.
As the parking adjudicator in the garage case emphasised, whether a person is the keeper of a vehicle at a particular time is, ultimately, a matter of fact and degree. The High Court agreed with him that the matter should be determined by the adjudicator, but the Court of Appeal's decision to overturn the initial decision has strengthened the DVLA presumption of keepership, and has imposed a stringent test for parking adjudicators and the courts.
12.30 pm
"Local authorities should ensure that the new system of parking control is effective in their areas so that it makes a significant contribution to helping the movement of traffic, reducing accidents and improving the environment and managing the overall level of traffic".
The adjudicator also took account of the part of the guidance that places local authorities under a duty to act fairly. He made it clear that whether a person is the keeper of a vehicle should be construed in the spirit of traffic management issues.
the presumption in section 82(3). One then considers what ought to be the position at the time of the offence if there were instantaneous registration"--
that interesting concept was introduced for the purposes of this judgment--
"of a material disposition or acquisition."
How do parking adjudicators, local authorities, the police or magistrates apply that test? Must they decide whether the vehicle has been sold or bought? If "owner" means the person by whom a vehicle is kept, should they consider whether the keepership of the vehicle is being disposed of or acquired? How do they decide who should be registered?
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