Making the punishment fit the crime
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The resignation of the Western Licensing Authority, following a letter from the Minister for Transport Industries to all the LAs expressing his disquiet that overloading offenders were not being adequately discouraged, shows how delicate is the relationship in this peculiarly British system.
Few people would wish to see the powers of the LAs curbed to the point where they became tools of the central authority, but this is a good moment to ask whether we should not have some consistent minimum level of law enforcement. This is admittedly difficult to codify, because circumstances alter cases, but both statistics and week by week observation support the view that Authorities in different areas operate in quite different ways. We have remarked before on the fact that the last annual report showed the West Midland LA to have imposed vastly more suspensions and revocations than all the other Authorities put together; and, to take another example, are Metropolitan operators really as free from black sheep as the relative rarity of Section 69 inquiries suggests?
The Minister is increasing the number of examiners but he has also said that he wishes to be sure that enforcement costs are bringing a good return. A redrawing of some traffic area boundaries is awaiting final decisions on local government reorganization, and in one area this has contributed to delay in appointing a new LA, so that one Authority has to look after two areas. When licensing started, the emphasis was on matching transport supply and demand; now the focus is on road safety, and it does not follow that the traditional system is equally suited to both tasks. It may be, for instance, that the Minister would find it difficult to justify the expense of LAs travelling to distant parts of their areas to hear cases which are predominantly disciplinary inquiries; Mahomet could instead come to the mountain. And there is certainly a good case for discouraging widely different standards of enforcement.