bigr250:
others telling everone you dont need to pay tax or parking tickets or insure your car under some aincient common law!!!
I’m sure it goes without saying, really, but any time Parliament legislates in an area, the resulting statute takes over from the former common law. Accordingly, the requirements to pay Vehicle Excise Duty, have third party insurance on a motor vehicle and pay police / traffic warden / council parking tickets have the weight of the law behind them.
Furthermore, as BBCÂ News reported in April, many much-vaunted ‘ancient laws’ have been thoroughly investigated by the Law Commission and found to be nothing more than urban legends. It is not necessarily legal for a man to pee on the rear wheel of his vehicle, nor for a pregnant woman to pee in a policeman’s helmet.
Purported ancient common law rights cannot usurp the express will of Parliament. Later law takes priority over earlier law without the earlier law having to be expressly repealed (the so-called doctrine of implied repeal). Implied repeal is not possible if the earlier law falls into a small group of laws recognised as constitutional in nature; in these circumstances the later law can only have effect if it expressly repeals the earlier law sufficiently to prevent any conflict. Details of this ‘constitutional law’ exception and the reasoning behind it can be found in the judgment of Laws LJ in Thoburn v Sunderland City Council [2002] EWHC (Admin) 195 (the ‘Metric Martyrs’ case), especially paragraphs 62 and 68-70.
Private parking tickets in England and Wales are another matter entirely. Unless they are on railway land, in which case they might have the weight of the Railway Bylaws behind them (with possible criminal conviction in a magistrates’ court if you don’t pay), they are, in essence, an unenforceable invoice and can safely be ignored. You will get various nastygrams threatening bailiffs, blackened credit histories and similar dire consequences, but they can’t do anything to you without winning a county court judgment. The chance of the parking company taking you to court over the alleged debt is very low - usually they move on to easier targets.
If you do get valid court papers (which means they are properly stamped by a court on the front page or contain valid login details for moneyclaim.gov.uk - some parking companies send out apparent claim forms that have not been through the courts), you cannot ignore the matter any longer. The case is probably still winnable, as the courts have held that in most circumstances, it is, indeed, an unenforceable debt. Arguably the best thing to do in these circumstances is to post at PePiPoo for advice.
The bogey in all this is clause 56 in the Protection of Freedoms Bill. With the end of private clamping in England and Wales in October, the private parking companies have no way of enforcing any parking restrictions. They have successfully lobbied for a clause in this Bill that would allow them to pursue the registered keeper of a vehicle for an alleged private parking debt without having to prove that the conditions attached to these powers have been met and without having to provide a dispute resolution service. If you are as outraged as I am about this, go to the Stop Clause 56 website for more details and a link to an e-petition, also tell your family and friends about this.
