Indiscriminate parking tickets "erode trust between citizen and state" - Ball

1.32.38am BST (GMT +0100) Wed 16th Jul 2008

Another Penalty Charge Notice issued in Ealing

In a speech during last night's meeting of Ealing Council, Liberal Democrat Councillor for Ealing Common and parliamentary campaigner for Ealing Central and Acton Jon Ball has hit out at the indiscriminate way that Ealing Council is issuing parking tickets for both parking and moving traffic offences and the poor attitude that it shows to residents who appeal. He warned that this threatens to erode the trust between the citizen and the state.

In the debate in Ealing Town Hall's Council Chamber, Cllr Ball said:

"A number of residents - and non-residents who happened to drive through Ealing for that matter - have approached me recently to complain about penalty charge notices issued by Ealing. The circumstances in each case were different, but the common factors were that the motorists did not feel they had done anything sufficiently harmful to others to deserve a penalty and they felt powerless to do anything about it because of the way Ealing's Parking Services operate.

"Law-abiding motorists are made to feel that they are assumed to be criminals trying to lie their way out of tickets when they attempt to set the record straight. Partly this is due to process issues such as losing the 50% discount by appealing. But partly it is a problem of an institutional attitude within Parking Services - every citizen is guilty until proven innocent.

"In some cases, there are also problems of competence. For instance, a former member of this Council received a ticket for parking in a 30-minute bay in Woodville Road. It turned out that in the process of marking up the new Car Club bays, this adjacent bay had been lost by accident despite no order having been made to change it. The resident had to get to the level of digging through the wording of the traffic orders himself to get to the bottom of this one! Not something that the average member of the public would have the patience to do!

"Some members may have read today's Metro which reports the Conservative Leader of Swindon Council as describing speed cameras as "a blatant tax on the motorist" and proposing to turn those in Swindon off. This is all part of the same backlash against an increasingly overpowerful state that is taking hold right across the country.

"Focussing on offences within the Council's sphere, yes it is lawful to issue someone a Penalty Charge Notice for straying into a deserted bus lane for a few yards on a Sunday morning. And we have the camera technology to allow the evidence to be gathered to ticket this.

"But in the old days before the decriminalisation of these matters, would a police officer exercising reasonable discretion take any action on this, beyond perhaps a gentle warning? And does enforcing this achieve any benefit to society beyond helping to fill the hole in the Parking Account?

"What the issuing of thousands of tickets like this does is to erode the delicate trust between the citizen and the state, which relies on the citizen understanding that the state exercises power only for the common good. This is a balance that we disturb at our peril."