'Retrain guilty drivers' plan
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EDrivers guilty of serious offences may have to attend an eight-hour retraining class, under a scheme, expected to be law by 1988 and to be announced by the Government early next year, reports the Daily Mail. Dr Peter North, Principal of Jesus College, Oxford, and head of the Traffic Law Review Body, has visited California and Germany to study their driver retraining schemes. In California, drivers have the choice of a heavy fine or retraining. In Germany the scheme is said to have helped reduce road deaths by 52%.
• Independent tribunals are likely to push the courts into the background in industrial disputes under a Labour government, according to a report in the Birmingham Post.
The paper reports that shadow employment secretary John Prescott made clear his party's determination to reverse the huge increase in the use of the courts by aggrieved employers and union members. He told the National Union of Seamen that he wanted to extend institutions like the Advisory Conciliation and Arbitration Service and there were four main options.
Prescott dismissed the first two: keeping the status quo and removing the law totally from industrial relations. He cast doubt on a specialist labour court.
Putting the case for independent bodies to be given wide-ranging new responsibilities, he proposed that the High Court he barred from considering an industrial wrangle until it had been aired in front of such a body.
"'The Law Society is backing demands by the Institute of Chartered Accountants for a government inquiry into circumstances under which the professions should be able to limit their Liability for negligence, reports the Daily Telegraph.