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Attlee rebuffed in Lords
Page 6
Page 7
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ovr,U Opposition front
bench spokesman Earl Attlee has
1, upbraided the
government's sto ___J
newalling on calls to re-pay the £2m worth Of stowaway fines handed over by international operators caught with illegal immigrants on their trucks.
Following a campaign briefing from Commercial Motor, Attlee challenged the government's Parliamentary UnderSecretary of State for the Home Office in the House of
Lords, Lord Filkin, to give the money back. In a urgently tabled question Attlee demanded: "Why in the aftermath of the International Roth case, are they treating those who paid their civil penalties for carrying clandestine entrants differently from those that did notP" However, his request was rebuffed by Filkin during the ensuing debate, who stated: "The civil penalty regime that operated until 8 December 2002 was not found to be unlawful by the Roth judgment. Consequently, penalties issued under the regime were lawfully imposed.
"Where penalties have been paid, liability has been accepted and the government are under no obligation to return them."
More controversially Filkin added there "have been persistent high levels of evidence that transport operators have allowed their vehicles to come into the country without checks having been put in place".
The response has left Earl Attlee fuming. 'The govern ment's position on this is totally untenable. It seems to me that ministers are prepared to treat lorry drivers and operators as either stupid, lazy or dishon est—which they are not.
"One wonders if the government will now adopt the same policy, whereby those people who paid a fine were considered guilty, while those that refused to pay were ultimately let off, to the process of parole for normal criminals.
"In the 'real world' no-one gets parole unless they admit their crime and show remorse.
But in the case of stowaway fines those operators who quite rightly stood their ground and refused to pay have not been pursued. The government's logic on this matter defies belief."
Freight Transport Association parliamentary affairs advisor David Russell agrees: "It's clear from the debate that there's a fundamental lack of
justice here—and everyone in the debate recognised that apart from the government minister. It's just illogical."
This is the second time the government has refused to yield on its decision not to repay the £2m in stowaway fines already collected.
Replying to a previous question in the House of Commons from Shadow Asylum Minister Humfrey Malins, again posed after a CM briefing, Home Office Minister Beverley Hughes insisted the government had "no obligation" to return the 12m already paid as payment showed liability ( CM23-29 January).