Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Jake Berry and Mark Spencer

Thursday 30th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mark Spencer]

I thank the hon. Member for that question. Again, she highlights how important this is. I think farming is challenging enough, frankly, without our putting false barriers in place across the border between England and Scotland. We need to co-operate across the Union and make sure that farmers and food producers on both sides of the border have the opportunity to access the market without barriers.

[Sir Jake Berry (Rossendale and Darwen) (Con)]

As you know, Mr Speaker, the west Pennine moors have a lot of tenant farmers. Does the Minister share my concern that we are seeing an increasing use of mandatory rounds in relation to development, often for solar or tree planting, to break both business farm tenancies and agricultural tenancies that have inheritance attached to them? If he does share that concern, what is the Department going to do about it?

[Mark Spencer]

I thank my right hon. Friend for his question. We have been working with Baroness Rock, who has been doing a review of farm-based tenancies, and we will respond to that review very soon. We want to support tenants up and down this country, particularly in Cumbria, and I hope to visit that part of the country in the very near future to see at first hand what is happening on those hills.

Road Traffic Offences (Sentencing)

Debate between Jake Berry and Mark Spencer

Thursday 16th May 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Spencer]

I am grateful for that intervention. I was just coming to that point.

I suppose the challenge is that the law is in chunks—careless driving, death by careless driving, dangerous driving, death by dangerous driving—and there are very tight boundaries. There is no sliding scale of punishment. I believe that lack of flexibility is what drives the CPS sometimes not to go for the more serious chunk, but to satisfy itself with a conviction lower down the scale because it can be sure of obtaining one. That needs addressing, and the only way to do that is to have a review of what laws are in place and whether those tools need adapting. Within the current law the tools are available to make those serious prosecutions, but at the moment the CPS is not minded to go for those serious convictions, whether that is because of the chunking of the convictions or the lack of a sliding scale. That is what needs addressing.

As a point of interest, the Nottingham Post reported that in Nottinghamshire, 58,373 speeding tickets were issued in 2011-12. That shows that our police force is out there, robustly enforcing speeding offences.

[Jake Berry (Rossendale and Darwen) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that speed cameras have a bit of a bad reputation? They are almost regarded as a cash machine only to be used by the police. Would he, like me, be encouraged by the increased use of speed awareness courses, which are a restorative way of combating speeding rather than simply going straight for the points and fines, and would he hope that that would be extended across the UK?

[Mr Spencer]

I would agree with that. We must remember that the purpose of speed cameras is not to catch people; it is not to get cash out of drivers. It is to prevent them from being killed or seriously injured. I get many letters from constituents asking for the police to go into their village—I hesitate to use the words “speed trap” because it gives the wrong impression, but that is what they often ask for. They want the police to enforce speed limits to ensure that people driving through their villages and towns do not break the speed limit, particularly outside primary schools and other local schools. That gives me confidence that we are on the right side of the argument—that our constituents want enforcement of speed limits and want the law to be obeyed. However, they want a balance between serious and minor offences. The perception is that there is not that balance at the moment.

If I may summarise, my No. 1 request is to remove the anomaly of driving bans coinciding with prison sentences. If a person is convicted of an offence, serves time in jail and receives a driving ban, the start of the driving ban should be postponed until their release from prison, so that there is that extra removal from our roads for those who have been convicted of a driving offence. Secondly, I want to encourage the CPS and the police to use all the tools at their disposal. I am sure the Department would be more than happy to receive representations from the CPS or the police if they have reservations about some of those tools. I would encourage the CPS and the police to be more diligent and look at going for more serious convictions if they feel they can gather the evidence to get those convictions. They should not simply lay the burden of keeping up the number of convictions on the minor offences.

There have been some terrible accidents in which people have been injured, and some fairly high-profile ones which reached the media. Bradley Wiggins, our Olympic and Tour de France-winning cyclist, was a victim of a cycling accident in which he was knocked off not far from your constituency, Mr Deputy Speaker. We do not want to be knocking off our potential Olympians, to say the least. That case drives home the fact that people out there, pedestrians and cyclists especially, are at risk of serious injury, and when that tragedy happens, we look to the law to recompense us for that injury and to give us the justice that we deserve.