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Mr. Greg Knight (East Yorkshire) (Con): The McNulty tax.
Mr. Chope: My right hon. Friend is right—there is a certain ring to the ''McNulty tax''.
As the Minister said, the main part of this debate concerns new clause 9, which I intend to press to a Division, so I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Mr. Knight: I rise to ask a general question that relates to road works in the widest sense. If the Minister cannot respond immediately, I should grateful for a reply before the Committee finishes its deliberations. I have always been curious about my question, but I am not sure what the answer is, not having worked for a utility company or been an engineer. Is it the case that in all new developments the utility services are not now placed under the carriageway? If not, why not? If so, when was that requirement introduced, and is it mandatory in all developments? Does the Minister share my view that if that requirement is not mandatory, it should be? It is surely cheaper and far less disruptive for the utility companies to do maintenance work by digging up someone's front garden than by digging up the carriageway of a road. In addition, if those working for the utilities do not have vehicles above them,
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damage is less likely to be caused. My question is a genuine question. I do not seek to make any party political point; I just wondered what the position was.
Mr. McNulty: That is an entirely fair point. As Minister with responsibility for planning last year and as Under-Secretary of State for Transport this year, I confess that the answer is not deep in the bowels of my head—if that is not overly mixing metaphors. I undertake to write to the right hon. Gentleman before the Committee has finished its proceedings to let him know the answer.
Question put, That the clause stand part of the Bill:—
The Committee divided: Ayes 8, Noes 4.
Division No. 31]
AYES
Bayley, Hugh
Borrow, Mr. David
McNulty, Mr. Tony
Merron, Gillian
Miller, Mr. Andrew
Thurso, John
Ward, Claire
White, Brian
NOES
Chope, Mr. Christopher
Knight, Mr. Greg
Redwood, Mr. John
Wilshire, Mr. David
Question accordingly agreed to.
Clause 39 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Schedule 1
Increase in maximum fines for
certain summary offences under the 1991 act
11 am
Question proposed, That this schedule be the First schedule to the Bill.
Mr. Wilshire: As I run my eye down this list, and I remind the Committee that I am not a lawyer and do not have all the relevant offences or sections of particular Acts in my mind, it seems to me that on occasion someone who is not so cluttered up with the minutiae can see things that the lawyer does not. I would like the Minister to comment on a couple of matters in the schedule. I am sure that my colleagues and others will raise other issues.
Let us put aside the argument about how great the fines should be and run our eyes down to line 15 of page 57, which refers to section 65(6) and relates to penalties for:
''Interference with safety measures taken by undertaker''.
As a layman, I can see the sense in saying that some action ought to be taken if somebody interferes with safety measures. There are other instances such as that in the schedule. If the Minister were to give me the full details, I would say that if we were going to have such offences and levels of fines they should perhaps refer to such instances. However, I find a couple of the provisions mysterious. Line 10 of page 57 refers to section 57(4) and:
''Failure to give notice in accordance with s.57 (notice of emergency works)''.
I can conceive of a situation where the emergency comes to mind rather than the requirements of section
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57(4). If we are dealing with a gas leak, I think that I would rather have someone do something about the escaping gas than have bureaucrats worry about who they should give notice, on what form, and where they have to deliver it.
It seems unreasonable to say that one should decide not to worry about the leaking gas until one has done the paperwork or else receive a level 4 fine of £2,500. One should be congratulated for doing things in the right order. The concept of saying that someone has failed to give notice of emergency works per se and ought to be punished by that sort of a fine is unreasonable, particularly as the Minister said as a general statement of policy that all offences should be prosecuted. Even under extenuating circumstances, the Minister's dictum is that all offences should be prosecuted. I think that is what he said; he would perhaps like to modify his views. It seems quite absurd that people who put safety first without doing the paperwork will find themselves in that sort of a situation.
I find it even more extraordinary that line 12 refers to section 60(3):
''Failure to comply with duty under s.60(1) (general duty of undertakers to co-operate)''.
What on earth is a general duty to co-operate? Who knows what general duties are? What is co-operation? If somebody, somewhere, wants to raise another stealth tax and decides that they will take action under the terms of a general duty to co-operate, the fine is £5,000 for not co-operating. That is absurd. Some of the offences that seem reasonable to me and get a level 4 fine could be quite serious.
Mr. Knight: My hon. Friend is a Whip. I would have thought that he would have fully appreciated the general duty to co-operate.
Mr. Wilshire: Is my right hon. Friend inviting me to fine him £5,000 for being a little late this morning? My colleagues in the Whips Office would be delighted if I came back bearing that amount of money in the course of a morning's activities.
To pick on an issue such as a general duty to co-operate for the highest level of fine—£5,000—is to get our priorities dreadfully mixed up. There are safety issues, works issues, and issues relating to interfering with other people's equipment, none of which necessarily attracts that size of fine. Can the Minister justify including those offences in the schedule at all, let alone the level of fine to which he wants us to agree?
Mr. Chope: Will the Minister explain what he believes to be the appropriate role for a street works authority? Bodies such as disability pressure groups have made representations asking why the requirements to ensure that the street works are safe are not also incumbent on the street works authority when it is responsible for the works. That concerns the Royal National Institute of the Blind, in particular, and I would be grateful if the Minister would take the opportunity presented by this short debate to explain the Government's thinking on safety and on blind people in particular when they are confronted by street works that have been carried out by the street works authority or the street works authority contractor, and
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which are unsafe, not properly guarded and in other ways in breach of the offences under the schedule. Those offences should apply to the authority or contractor, except that they do not.
Mr. McNulty: There is nothing new in the schedule, which is simply a list of offences listed in the 1991 Act, which was passed by a Conservative Government who thought that it was entirely appropriate at the time, and the relative increases in the levels of fine that each offence will accrue. A simple reading of the original Act will show how irrelevant—the most polite word possible—contributions to this debate have been. How could anyone disagree with section 65(6)—
''Interference with safety measures taken by undertaker''—
which the hon. Member for Spelthorne picked up on? How can anyone disagree that that should be the larger charge? The principal Act states that an offence is committed:
''If a person without lawful authority or excuse . . . takes down, alters or removes any fence, barrier, traffic sign or light erected or placed in pursuance of subsection (1) or (2) above, or . . . extinguishes a light so placed''
obviously for safety reasons. How can anyone object to that? It is easy to pull a phrase from the schedule without referring to the original Act and have light, if not terribly witty, fun with it. Ultimately, however, the fun is at the expense of the Government of the party of the hon. Member for Spelthorne and at the offences that they determined were appropriate in 1991. We agree with that list of offences, and are not changing them for the purposes of the schedule. We are merely changing the levels of fine for the reasons that I gave earlier, and we are changing no more than that.
Mr. Chope: Will the Minister give way?
Mr. McNulty: I will, but if the intervention is as useful as the last couple of minutes were, it will not be much good.
Mr. Chope: I am disappointed that the Minister thinks it useless to refer to the very genuine concerns of the RNIB about the need for a level playing field when protecting street works and preventing danger to blind and partially sighted pedestrians. Surely the provision should apply to all authorities. The Minister's last point was to ridicule the concerns that my hon. Friend the Member for Spelthorne rightly expressed. There is all the difference in the world between the contents of this schedule and the schedule to the 1991 Act, taking into account the fixed penalty regime that is to follow. Under the 1991 Act, the maximum penalties were not automatic, but they were subject to the discretion of the magistrates. If the lighting around a structure on the highway was removed by vandals, the person responsible for the lighting could be prosecuted under the 1991 Act, but if he could show that despite his best endeavours the lighting had been removed by vandals, probably no penalty would be imposed—indeed, he might not even be prosecuted. Under the regime that the Minister is linking in with schedule 1—the fixed penalty notice regime—if the lighting around some street works was removed by vandals, it would not be a question of whether a prosecution would be reasonable or what level of fine would be appropriate; the fixed penalty
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notice regime would click in, and the local authority would be able to say, ''That is another £500. Let's tick that one off, and put the money in the coffers.'' That is why the substantially increased—
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