Traffic Management (Northern Ireland) Order 2005

I made it clear that for the enforcement of illegal parking the norm will not be clamping and removal; it will be the issuing of a penalty notice. The issue of clamping and removal will arise only following the regulations that I have just referred to, which we do not have at the moment, if a number of penalties are outstanding on a vehicle, or if that vehicle hits the threshold of the totality of penalties and is found. People do not realise these days that digital technology has it all. All our number plates are photographed. It is exactly the same as the congestion charge; it works. I have been sent the letter with the photograph of my car number plate when I forgot to pay my charge one Monday. It is there. Our number plates are the test, and therefore if penalties are not paid there is no short cut; you lose your vehicle. Losing your motor and your wheels is quite a big sanction to most people. By and large, they will pay the penalties. It would be even better if they did not park illegally and cause congestion and road safety hazards in the first place. There must be proper accountability. The conditions of the contract will specify the role and responsibility of the contractor and the department. The contract will allow sanctions to be taken against the contractor if he fails to discharge his responsibilities. The chief executive of the department’s road service is the agency accounting officer, and the chief executive is accountable to the Minister in charge of that department. I am covering myself a little, but this issue affects more people in a sensitive way than most of the other issues that we have touched on today. The regulations must be made to prescribe the conditions that must be satisfied before the powers to clamp or remove vehicles can be used for recovery purposes—the level of debt or the number of charges. This works elsewhere, by the way. I do not know anything about the television programme, but some authorities in this country have stopped clamping for enforcement and do it for non-payment of fines, because they realise that can be a perverse thing and can turn the motorist against them. We do not want to turn the motorist against us—we want the motorist on our side, because they can flow freely in the cars to and from and in and out of cities. We hope that not much land is required, but when we lift the cars we must put them somewhere, and land will be required for pounds—as in car pounds. As for Schedule 1 offences, it is not the department’s intention to add to the list at present. It covers a range of waiting and parking restrictions and stationary offences. The order prescribes for the enforcement of certain stationary offences and civil enforcement of moving traffic offences. A feasibility study is being undertaken at the moment on civil enforcement of moving traffic contraventions in bus lanes, for example. The traffic attendants will be responsible only for parking; they will not have the powers for directing traffic and so on, even in emergencies—that is the job of the police. Their functions are prescribed for which they can be properly trained. Do the penalties imposed correspond to those for offences in Great Britain? The answer is yes—and I hope that that satisfies the noble Baroness. It is not a way of raising money, by the way; the first year the scheme will cost more than £2 million, so it is not a money-raising scheme. People who park legally have nothing to fear, but we must make out of pocket those who park illegally, so that it does not pay to do so. The traffic attendants will be given specific confrontation training—in the jargon. They are fellow citizens doing a very worthwhile job for their community, keeping the roads free and keeping them safer. One thing that I did not say and which it is important to put on record, although no one has specifically raised it, is that at no time will anyone in Northern Ireland ever be asked by anybody in authority regarding this scheme to pay cash or by credit card to a person in the street for either collecting or unclamping their car. If ever they are asked to pay by anybody, that person is a criminal, because they are nothing to do with the scheme. The payments will all be made to the appropriate departments, specified offices and to public civil servants. The clampers, the attendants and the company will not be collecting money in the street off motorists. So there is no bonus for the crooks, spivs and gangsters to move into this, because there is no money in it. I cannot make it clearer than that. I have probably been a bit bolder than I should have been, but it is best not to sugar-coat these things so that people are left in no doubt.