hedgehog

As some are aware I have maintained, for some time now, that decriminalised parking fines (and a wide range of other fines) are illegal. It has been proving a useful defence to those willing to quote the Bill of Rights and it is starting to hit the media. With this in mind I thought some of you might be amused by the following from the Sunday Tele. which looks pretty much like an admission that they believe they have a serious problem:

Parking penalties may prove 'illegal and void'

A Commons select committee stands accused of making a tiny but telling change to its website, to get it off a legal hook which could cost local authorities billions of pounds. As announced last summer, the Commons Transport Committee is due to investigate the parking regimes handed over by the police to councils under the 1991 Road Traffic Act, which now account for a third of all the parking tickets issued each year to motorists.

In a statement on August 9, the Committee described these as "fines". Last week, the statement, still dated August 9, changed this to "charges". The significance of this may lie in evidence submitted to the MPs by Neil Herron, the campaigner who argues that most of these council schemes are illegal, because they rely on automatic fines without giving motorists the right to go to court. This is in breach of the 1689 Bill of Rights, which rules that penalties can only be imposed after conviction by a court.

What might seem only a historical curiosity has been made startlingly relevant, however, by the judgment given in 2002 by Lord Justice Laws in the case of the Metric Martyrs. The judge upheld their criminal convictions by ruling that "constitutional statutes" such as the Bill of Rights and the European Communities Act (under which the traders were found guilty) cannot be overruled by later legislation unless Parliament expressly wills it.

If Laws was right, the 1991 Road Traffic Act, which permits parking fines without reference to a court, is illegal. All the money paid by motorists since "decriminalised parking" came in should be paid back.

Faced with this challenge, the councils have come up with a specious defence. Parkwise, the body set up by 13 councils in Lancashire to run their parking schemes, concedes that the Bill of Rights only allows fines after "judgment of a court", but claims that its penalties are not "fines" but "charges" (although council websites still call them "fines"). This ignores the Bill of Rights itself, which rules that "all fines and forfeitures before conviction are illegal and void".

Seeing this express train roaring down on them, the Commons Transport Committee last Tuesday sneaked in that change from "fines" to "charges". The official explanation is that this is "more accurate", because it includes parking charges of all kinds. But if those MPs examine the Bill of Rights, they will see this change still does not let them off the hook. By any reading of the law, those billions of pounds raised by councils in automatic penalties must be regarded as "illegal and void".

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.../ixhome.html#1

alcazar

iTrader: (2)

Monty Burns voice: on; "Eeexcellent", rubs hands.
Monty Burns voice: off.

Perhaps we can see the end of some of the "fleece the motorist" schemes this Lying Labour B*stard government invented?

Alcazar

DJ73

so how can we claim the money back we've paid for parking fine's or has anyone tried yet ??

Suresh

The 1991 Road Traffic Act would be a Labour invention how exactly?

the moose

Don't let reason spoil their party, for heaven's sake!

warrenm2

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/h...cs/4450196.stm

RB170

I presume that this will also cover fines made by the Inland revenue for late return of a self assesment form

I want my £600 back, I was trying to argue this point but when they had to give me a £800 rebate, the ****ers took £600 off me.

It should also cover the £80 fines that the DVLA are trying to impose for late tax

hedgehog

It should also cover all these things though to date I am not actually aware of anyone fighting them on these fronts. Parking fines seem to be the big Bill of Rights battleground. Clearly in some cases you need to examine the law relating to the organisation and the fine very closely indeed, the tax man might have something else hidden away but as I understand it this is not thought to be the case. Might be worth at least putting it to them to see their reaction.

Leslie

More good information. Thank you Hedgehog.

Les

hedgehog

There was actually a little more on it yesterday as the Parking Adjudication people heard the case presented by Robin de Crittenden, who has made it his business to collect up a wide range of parking fines to try and get the matter into appeal in the courts. They haven't, as yet, given a judgement but are on a sticky wicket as Robin is well connected and supported. If they decide against him then the case will go through the courts and, if necessary, to the Lords. On the other hand if they decide for him then many people will assert that this means all deciminalised parking fines are, and have been, illegal and that precedent has, in a strange way, been set. Their only hope might be to decide for him and maintain that their decision sets no precedent, in legal terms it doesn't, and try to make everyone who wants to appeal go through individual cases with the adjudication service.

All told it is most entertaining to watch they trying to shore up an illegal money raising system that has been imposed upon us by people who we are supposed to have elected. Currently their only defence is to insist that no case has ever been won using the Bill of Rights defence. That I am aware of this is true just because no case using the Bill of Rights defence has ever been contested at appeal in case precedent be set. You can't win if the enemy never stand and fight and in this case all the enemy can do is run away and shout that you can't win in the hope that others will not join your army.

Now that the press are starting to pick up on it and also that motorists are starting to fight back in many areas the Bill of Rights will probably increase in profile. Because it makes so many "fines" illegal it might actually be easier for the government to let the parking thing drop, despite the massive cost, to avoid attracting attention to other things such as the income tax fine. However I am sure there will be a lot of spin, lying and corrupt dealing done in the political forum to try and make this go away but if it can make it to the Lords then I think they would look quite favourably upon the BoR defence, as we have seen of late they have actually shown themselves to be the last resting place of democracy in the UK and also the last line of defence against some form of police state where the state contrives to criminalise the generally law abiding citizen even when this criminalisation is against what used to be called the law.

Adrian F

Hence the fact that Labour have tried to destroy the House of the Lords. they dont want an independent second chamber they want a second house that just nods all their new legislation through!

Leslie

Goes without saying!

Les

Suresh

Too right too!
HoL is an unelected anachromism from the years when the landed gentry used their wealth and power to rule and suppress the masses. Keep in mind that the highly esteemed Mark Thatcher is a peer. Enuff said I think.

Replace it with an elected second chamber and then everyone is happy.

Suresh

CrisPDuk

What a load of bollocks, the House of Lords as it stood had a fine record of tempering the radical excesses of governments of either persuasion for one simple reason, they were unellected1
Once a person was elevated to the status of peer of the realm it was virtually impossible to have them removed, therefore being as a body, neither answerable nor beholden to any one party, the Lords have always felt free to judge as their conscience dictates, remember the Lords stood in the way of many of Thatcher's more extreme policies, just as they have attempted to curtail Bliar's blatant populism.

You only need to take a look a the corruption due to vested interests that is rife in the US Senate to see how an elected upper house patently does not work Take the Kennedy's for instance, the immediate descendants of a murdering drug dealer, who have bankrolled terrorism in our country for two decades, yet thanks to ownership of a large portion of the US media they are regarded as royalty