Latest / Early Edition with Ryan Bridge / Claire Buckley: Independent Victims Advocate on the government cracking down on overdue court fines

Transcript

Claire Buckley: Independent Victims Advocate on the government cracking down on overdue court fines · Early Edition with Ryan Bridge

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: If you've got overdue court fines, maybe take the bus
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: to work. Today, every single bailiff in the country is
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: going to spend their days scanning plates of parked cars
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: to find out who owes money to the Ministry of Justice.
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: This is a real thing. They've put a press release
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: out about it. If you're overdue, expect to get your
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: vehicle clamped or even towed and sold. Clear Buckley is
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: independent victim's advocate with me this morning, Clear, Good morning.
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: Good morning, Ryan.
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: Is this a good idea? Is this going to get
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: us the money that we need to pay the victims?
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: No, not even remotely. We've got around about five hundred
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: million you will take outstanding, and this isn't going to
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: bring in the money to the victims. It's probably going
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: to bring in maybe some money from fines. But most
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: of your smart criminals now don't have their cars registered
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: in their own names. This isn't the first time the
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: government has done this, and so if you're going to
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: do this kind of thing, certainly a don't advertise it
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: and be remember that actually you're not going to capture
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: what you're think you're going to capture because smart people
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: don't register their cars and there own names anymore.
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: The government reckons that they have done. I mean, it's
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: a good point. Government reckons that have done their homework.
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: They reckon. Last time they did this with some technology,
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: they've got four million in fines and reparations returned.
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: So on five hundred million dollars is four million dollar
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  Speaker 2: return I suppose isn't too bad, not quite one percent.
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: But what are they time? What do they do clear?
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: What's what's your idea?
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: I still think that there's avenues that they can be
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: exploring that are along the lines of electronic checking, you know,
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: getting into their bank accounts and tapping benefits and things
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: like that, that they're not using those anywhere near frequently enough.
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: And you've got to remember that of this five hundred million,
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: only one hundred of it is actually owed to victims directly.
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: And of course we would love to see that one
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: hundred million dollars come back to the victims, but not
• 2:01
  Speaker 2: at the cost of bailiff's not doing some of the
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: other things that bailiffs should be doing today.
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: Is it prioritized? Do the victims get the money first
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: before I'm assuming it's the government or other agencies or
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: other victims are the non individual victims.
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: So it's victims are heavily prioritized.
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: Okay, so one hundred million dollars is what we need,
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: and you're saying, go in and take it out of
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: their benefits, go in and take it out of their
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: pay whatever you need to do get the money.
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: Yes, absolutely, I just don't think that this is a
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: particularly good use of the human resource of using when
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: there's electronic ways of doing it. Using a human to
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: go out and scan number plates, there's lots of better
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: uses of our bailiff's time and not using them to
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: do this kind of work just seems straight out like
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: this is a really good pr exercise and probably not
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: particularly focused on whether or not the victims are going
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: to be getting their money back.
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: Walking around like parking wardens. Clear, good to have your
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: the show this morning, Clear Buckley, Victim's advocate. For more
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: from Early Edition with Ryan Bridge, Listen live to News
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: Talks it'd be from five am weekdays, or follow the
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: podcast on iHeartRadio.