No need to pay parking fines
 

As you may recall a few weeks, back in response to a question, I suggested that although the law was complex there was no need to pay most parking fines or, indeed, the Inland Revenue £100 fine for being late with a tax return. It looks like the Telegraph have picked up on this, though not from me clearly, and they published the following:


www.telegraph.co.uk
Sunday Telegraph
Christopher Booker's Notebook
13th February 2005

Pensioner challenges the power to penalise without trial Two years ago, when Robert de Crittenden, a pensioner, emerged from Sandwell council offices in the west Midlands, he was irritated to find a £30 fixed penalty ticket on his windscreen. He little realised he was embarking on a battle which calls into question the legality of the entire principle of automatic penalties, which now earn local authorities and government departments hundreds of millions of pounds a year.

As a student of constitutional law, Mr de Crittenden was aware that under the 1689 Bill of Rights, it is fundamental to British law that no one may be fined or financially penalised unless they have been convicted by a court. When he inquired into the power of traffic authorities to levy automatic fines, he found it had been created by the Road Traffic Act 1991, in contradiction of the Bill of Rights.

But Mr de Crittenden was also aware of the historic judgment in the "Metric Martyrs" case in 2002, in which Lord Justice Laws pronounced that there were certain "constitutional statutes", such as the Bill of Rights, which cannot be set aside by subsequent legislation unless this is specifically stated. This was crucial to the argument whereby Laws upheld the conviction of the Metric Martyrs.

The law making it a criminal offence to sell goods in pounds and ounces was issued under the European Communities Act 1972. But the Martyrs'
defence was that this had been overridden by the Weights and Measures Act 1985, which authorised continued selling in non-metric measures. By ancient tradition, when one Act says something different from another, the later Act, by the principle of "implied repeal", takes precedence.
But Laws ruled that, since the European Communities Act was a "constitutional statute", it could not be overridden by the 1985 Act, since this had not made the point explicit.

After conferring with the British Weights and Measures Association
(BWMA) and Neil Herron of the Metric Martyrs Defence Fund, Mr de Crittenden concluded that, if Lord Justice Laws was right, the 1991 Road Traffic Act could not implicitly repeal the relevant clause of the Bill of Rights, because, as Laws stated, this was a "constitutional statute".
Either the automatic penalty system was illegal; or Laws was wrong, in which case the Metric Martyrs should not have been found guilty.

Using this argument, Mr de Crittenden refused to pay his fine unless Sandwell took him to court. Two years later they have still not done so.
But the significance of his challenge can scarcely be overestimated.
Since his legal argument began to be widely circulated, ever more motorists have similarly refused to pay fixed penalties in towns all around the country - for example in Sunderland, where Mr de Crittenden was last week given another parking ticket, when he drove up to confer with Mr Herron in connection with this story.

The dilemma facing councils is stark. If they obey the law as it stands, they cannot impose parking tickets on hundreds of thousands of motorists without taking them to court. But if they do so, the court system would rapidly collapse. Furthermore the same applies to all the other official bodies that have jumped on the "fixed penalty" bandwagon, such as the Inland Revenue, which imposes an automatic £100 penalty for a late tax return.

If all these bodies imagine that, under the Laws judgment, they have a simple remedy - namely to rush through an Act of Parliament explicitly overruling the Bill of Rights - Mr de Crittenden has another trick up his sleeve. The Bill of Rights may have been enshrined in an Act of Parliament, but the Declaration of Rights on which it was based was a contract between the sovereign and the people. It is by that Declaration that the monarch occupies her throne and by which Parliament enjoys its power, and it cannot be repealed. Thus, if Laws is right, fixed penalties without conviction cannot be legalised. Either that, or the Metric Martyrs were innocent.

Anyone wishing to know more can contact the BWMA (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/exit...w.bwmaonline.c
om/) or the Metric Martyrs Defence Fund at PO Box 526, Sunderland SR1 3YS.

FFS -

You have parked where you shouldnt have - be it a double yellow or whatever.

Pay the penalty. You did wrong - so be a man and take the punishment!

Its F***ing ridiculous.

It's all about balance as far as I'm concerned. It would not do us any good to allow people to park anywhere without fear of the consequences, as it would cause traffic chaos. However, greedy councils shouldn't be allowed to charge exhorbitant parking fees, or impose illegal penalties, just to try and make up the shortfall in their badly managed budgets.

My local town centre is practically a ghost town, with shops closing at an alarming rate. Why? Because nobody wants to pay 65p to park for 20 minutes in a dingy, badly maintained, smelly, hang-out for local yobs/alcoholics/druggies.

I think you miss the point, it is the fine that is illegal.

That is what the law says you see and it is designed to stop some thug with a baseball bat from collecting fines from people and to give them the right to a defence when someone does try to fine them.

These are the principles upon which our freedom is based, the freedom you have to post on here without a member of the administration coming to your door and taking you to a concentration came because "you did wrong - so be a man and take the punishment."

Perhaps in your eyes all laws are equal but some are more equal than others? Step right over there beside Stalin and Hitler.

The point is that the punishment may itself be illegal!

:rolleyes:

[Tommy Cooper]
I came back to the car the other day and there was a sticker on the windscreen. It said "Parking Fine" which was nice! :D
[/Tommy Cooper]

the only thing that needs changing is the law needs to be altered to allow for the collection of fines without this problem.

shouldnt be seen as a chance for people to "get off" in the meantime.

Okay I know this thread is about the law itself, but the above point is a valid one. No wonder high street businesses are going under everywhere, specifically the independent outfits who do not have the backing of the bigger chain stores. Why should I have to pay anything between 40p and £1 to park for an hour when I can go to an out of town retail park and park for free. It really p*sses me off the amount of money local councils think they can extort out of people to park. It's not as though I don't pay enough in council tax. The final straw for me was the introduction of pay and display machines where you have to put in your reg. no. to stop you giving you ticket to someone else if you only have to stop for 10 mins. How stingy is that!

Surely the point is that the law cant simply be changed; the 1689 Bill of Rights cant be repealed.

The Labour government need to brush up on the Bill fo Rights/Declaration of Rights before they remove our right to jury trial too.

Simon

To be fair I wouldn't park there if it were free :D

It is a very good point made by Hedgehog. They certainly should not be taking money off us if it is not legal to do so.

If that sort of thing is just nodded through you can be sure that there will be worse in the future. We must ensure that we do not lose our legal protections or it will not be long before we are living under a dictatorship. Penalties etc must be exacted from us in a fully legal manner.

Les

... and that means that all people who have been fined for parking *offenses* will be entitled to their money back .... I could see this one going on and on .... serves em right ..... money grabbing wotsits!

Dave

PS: and it is all about money at the end of the day - it has nowt to do with 'parking sensibly' or 'congestion'!

Post 163 here might give you some hints about "congestion." I have had this information confirmed from other sources, including a road designer who was told to design congestion into the road system for a new shopping centre:

http://bbs.scoobynet.co.uk/showthrea...=394502&page=9

Of course we do need a penalty for someone who breaks the law but it makes a mockery of the law if the current administration design "traps" into our road systems and then use illegal methods to extract cash from motorists.

I personally don't think it is about the cash but rather about the control, soon they will have electronic control of our cars for example.

Westminster Council must be rather nervous about this. More than half of their income is from parking, a large part of which is from fines.

If they cannot give out fines anymore, Westminster council tax will have to rise massively.

Maybe the residents need to worry, rather than the council...

OK, so if they cannot demand a fixed penalty, does this mean that they are in effect "demanding money with menaces" and should be reported to the police?
...or does it depend on how the letter/notice thingy is worded?

J.

Hedgehog; a few years ago the average speed of traffic through Sheffield was substantially slower than through London City! Sheffield City Council had boasted a couple of years previously, when Supertram construction started, that theyd make Sheffield extremely difficult to drive through and cause congestion, so we may as well get used to public transport now..... B*stards.

Simon

It isn't just parking tickets by the way... speeding fines also come under this unconstitutional act...

If you accept an on-the-spot fine the Policemen demanding it are breaking the law... and then there are the people being fined for late tax returns, and how about ASBO fines?

Or the act to allow the police to enforce spot fines for being drunk in town... the list goes on...

Think about this, our personal freedom is being impinged upon, and if anyone says "it doesn't bother me as I don't do anything illegal" is being incredibly short-sighted.

Im going to give this a go then - got a ticket today in High Wycombe for staying too long in a car park, even though I'd paid. :( - was in a work Transit van, so cant get into the multistories.

Would this not also apply to speeding fines as theyre fixed penalty too?

The difference is with police fines (fixed penalty or disorder penalty) is that the person receiving them does not have to pay. They can elect to go to court instead.

Anyone got any links to anymore info on this??

I was issued with a ticket today, and Im unsure whether to pay it then contest it, or not pay and contest it??

cheers!

What was it for? Issued by whom?

Issued by "Wycombe District Council" for "parking longer than permitted" - basically I was in the working in a store in High Wycombe installing a new server - no loading bays near, so parked in the only none-multistory carpark nearby (which was upto 2hrs), and just returned after 2hrs and paid for another 2. When I returned after 4 I had a ticket, but as I cant get into mulitstories I didnt have too much choice...

Fine is 30quid paid within 24hrs, 40quid within 1 week or 60quid. Im thinking of paying the 30quid to be on the safe-side, then writing a letter explaining that the ticket is illegal, and if this is the case then I want a refund.

Will also mention the distinct lack of loading areas.

Any advice on some good wording for this??

cheers!