As a magistrate of more than 25 years, I am exasperated by talk of a black hole in the nation’s finances when a solution is at hand (‘We had no alternative’: Reeves defends her budget to the CBI, 25 November). Take a motorist caught doing 26 in a 20mph zone. In the traffic court, we’d fine someone on benefits, who pleads guilty, around £150 in total, or roughly 100% of a week’s income. But if the motorist is, say, a top-flight footballer, the total would be around £950; potentially 0.000009% of a week’s income.
Why the glaring disproportionality? Because our legal advisers insist we can’t breach an arbitrary £1,000 fine ceiling, which has existed since the year dot.
We have a new justice secretary, so I wrote, setting this out. Two months later came a cut-and-paste reply (to the wrong address) from the Department for Transport, informing me “this government takes road safety seriously”.
I’m baffled. My letter was nothing to do with road safety, and the justice department appears unwilling to fill the black hole by making speeding fines fair and realistic.
By a back-of-the-envelope calculation, an extra £350m could be collected annually, painlessly (those with the broadest shoulders etc) and proportionally.
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