Road Safety Bill [HL]

I am grateful to the Minister. I had not intended to make exactly that point; it is complex. Could this be carefully thought about in the department before Report? The circumstances that worry me are rather different. I am concerned that such requests for information on the driver normally arrive by post. In less than perfectly organised households and government departments, things that arrive by post sometimes lie a long time unanswered. Often it is not deliberate, but a slip. If there is a perfectly innocent mistake and no reply is forthcoming can the Minister assure the House that the penalty will not apply? I think that it does. Can he clarify it—should there not be, and is there not, a difference between something that happens through complete inadvertence and something that happens through deliberate withholding of information, or worse still the giving of dishonest information? I have had to read the form recently, and it says clearly that anyone who knowingly gives false information commits a different and much more serious offence, which would rightly be dealt with seriously, even to the extent of perverting the course of justice. There is a lot to look into here, and those of us who are showing concern are anxious that the courts should be able to show some distinction between innocent carelessness and guilty wrongdoing.