Education and Skills Bill

These amendments would mean that all money received by local authorities as a result of penalty notices would have to be paid directly to the Secretary of State. Should the financial penalties we have provided for in the Bill be used, it is important that the money received from them can be used to cover the costs of administering the notices so that funding for that is not diverted from other services. It is usual practice for money received by government from the payment of fines to be used in this way. It is also important that it can be used only to administer the process and that income accumulated from fines cannot be used to raise money for the local authority. That is why we will specify in regulations that the only functions this money can be used for would be administering penalty notices. Where money is not needed for this purpose it will have to be paid to the Secretary of State. However, before the Treasury gets too enthusiastic, I should stress that we do not expect those sums to be great because by 2013 virtually all young people will be engaging successfully in education and training—so successfully, we hope, that they may not even have time to take their driving tests, and the income from parking fines might be accordingly reduced.