Government Will Not Retreat on Disqualification
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FROM OUR PARLIAMENTARY CORRESPONDENT
THE Government will not give way in face of the opposition to the disqualification provisions in the Road Traffic Bill. Lord Hailsham made this plain when the Bill—a slightly modified version of the measure which failed to reach the Statute Book last Session—was given its Second Reading in the House of Lords. He admitted that in some cases disqualification after a third offence would cause hardship, but defended the Government's attitude as "rational."
You would never get a situation in which quite serious offences were the subject of actual disqualification so long as you left a complete discretion to the magistrates, said Lord Hailsham. On the other hand the Government thought that to impose an automatic disqualification in the case of most offences would be far too harsh.
Therefore, we had the system in the Bill under which a limited discretion was left to the magistrates for " special reasons' not to endorse, and under which the disqualification was not imposed on a whole range of offences "all of a more serious kind than they are sometimes represented to be," until after the third offence within a limited period of time.
"If you impose restrictions you must police them; and, in the end, after repeated offences, the only sanction which is going to do the least bit of good is the sanction of disqualification. For that reason, as I say, it has to be applied at some stage automatically."
That was the philosophy of the Bill, went on Lord Hailsham. The Government had had to steer a course between deeply felt opinions of a more extreme kind, but had tried throughout to follow a practical course which would be justified on principle.
Urging the House to "adhere to its previous decisions,Lord Hailsham said that they should seek to take the opinion of the Commons before they seriously diverged from the decisions they had taken.
The effect of the Bill on drivers of commercial vehicles which, almost without exception, carried a quite unrealistic speed limit worried Lord Hawk.
"Nearly every commercial driver, spends most of his time on the open road travelling at speeds higher, sometimes considerably higher, than the legal speed limit," he said. " If he did not do this the trade of the country would be severely held up.
"I do not think it is right or honest to include in the Bill a provision designed to secure the disqualification of commercial drivers for doing what they have always done, What they have to do if they want to do their jobs properly, and that which I do not think the Government want them to cease to do."
"Give Courts Discretion" He suggested that the courts should have full discretion on whether to endorse or not to endorse for offences., thus making them rank for disqualification—at the present moment the implication was that they were to endorse in every case.
Lord Merrivale asked whether the question of endorsement could he left to the courts without special reasons being invoked, failing this, whether the scope of special reasons could be enlarged or extended to include circumstances relating to the offender.
A plea for speeding, to be deleted from the offences which ranked for disqualification came from Lord Brentford. If serious offences which ought to rank for disqualification had been committed while a person had been speeding, he could always be prosecuted for the other offences, but it was unnecessary that the comparatively minor offence of speeding should rank for disqualification.
Support for the Government proposals came from Lord Molson. He conceded that it was possible, in certain circum
stances, that a driver might be convicted of three comparatively trivial offences within three years, and be automatically disqualified. But, confronted by the indulgence that had been shown by magistrates and juries to those guilty of these offences. he felt that the Government proposals were necessary and, if any progress were to be made in this matter, inevitable.
Too Much Overloading
• Outspoken comments by Licensing Authorities about the preValence of the overloading of commercial vehicles were mentioned by Lord Lucas of Chilworth. It might not be possible to do much about this in the Bill, but he thought that the Ministry should try, by regulations, to secure better control over the loading of goods vehicles and the overloading of passenger vehicles.
Lord Airedale expressed the hope that the Government would introduce an amendment to the Bill to ensure that heavy vehicles with high ground clearance should be fitted with side and rear bumpers. If they did not he would do his best to draft a suitable amendment.
Lord Chesham, Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Transport, who opened the debate, made special mention of the new clause dealing with hover vehicles. This was an interim measure, for the Government felt it would be quite • wrong to attempt to make any detailed provision about their use on the road at present,
"The next few years are obviously going to see a good deal of development of this type of vehicle," he said, "and it is not at all clear at the moment what sort of vehicles may appear and have occasion to travel on or .along roads."
He believed that small hover vehicles were already being used for transporting goods in places like muddy building sites, where wheeled vehicles would be useless, and no doubt there would shortly be other versions of them which would be capable of being used on the public highway.
Blackwall Tunnel Scheme
A ONE-WAY traffic experiment is to be tried at the southern approaches to the Blackwall Tunnel, starting on November 27 and continuing for six months.