French driver in British jail row
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• A French haulier is protesting to France's transport minister after one of his drivers was jailed by a British court because he could not pay an onthe-spot fine.
Michel Giraud, owner of haulier Transport Giraud of Paris, says UK justice for foreign truck drivers is harsh compared with the way UK drivers are treated on the Continent.
The driver spent two nights in prison last week after Hemel Hempstead magistrates ordered him to pay a £1,600 fine immediately or go to jail for 30 days. He had been convicted of two overloading and three driving-hours offences.
The court heard pleas from the company's representatives that they had no time to transfer the money — which had to be cash or a banker's order — at such short notice. They say the driver was given no breathing space between being stopped by police on Wednesday morning, put before magistrates in the afternoon and imprisoned in the evening.
It was Friday morning before the company's Dover-based agent, Joelie Crowley, and legal adviser Cohn Ward, who specialises in foreign driver cases, could raise the cash and arrange for the driver to be freed. Ward says he had to pay the fine out of his own pocket.
Home Office guidelines to magistrates say foreign hauliers convicted of offences here should be Oven time to pay fines. If they are not paid, customs men are generally authorised to stop the company's trucks entering the UK.
Last year a Home Office departmental circular suggested to magistrates alternative ways of enforcing fines on foreign hauliers: these are only guidelines, however, and are not mandatory.
The incident shows signs of sparking off a minor diplomatic row. Ward has spoken to the French consul in this country while Giraud telexed a protest to the French transport minister in Paris.
Transport laywer Jonathan Lawton, who works for the French Chamber of Commerce in London, has already said that the treatment of French drivers in this country is scandalous (CM 22-28 September). "If you were an English driver on the Continent this would not happen," he says.
Crowley says the driver, Dominic Leneutre, speaks little English and was distressed by his experience. "I understand that courts have to be tough because so many accidents are happening," she says, "but to put someone in prison is too hard a measure. It looks to the French people like fines are harsh in proportion to the offence."
Ward says he will arrange an appeal against the sentence.