Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government, further to the reply by Lord Popat on 5 March (HL Deb, col 431) that enforcement of the law relating to HGVs in London involved 4,000 targeted stops resulting in the issuing of 2,000 roadworthiness prohibitions and more than 1,000 fixed penalty notices, detection of 1,500 drivers’ offences and seizure of over 50 vehicles, how many of those offences resulted in court appearances of the drivers or transport managers of the firms concerned; how many were fined; and how many received custodial sentences.

The imposition of a fixed penalty notice is a fixed tariff fine that provides an appropriate forfeit without the need for incurring the cost of a court appearance. So all of the fixed penalty notices represent fines. Likewise the roadworthiness prohibitions imposed all require a fee to be paid to remove them in addition to any cost incurred to address the faults that caused vehicle to be subjected to the embargo.

The Department for Transport has not collected specific figures for court appearances and sentences related to offences detected by the taskforce.