Gimmicks no substitute

In a democracy any extension of police powers must be subject to rigorous scrutiny. But the Home Office is justifying plans to allow officers to fingerprint drivers at the roadside because so many people lie.

It is claimed that about 60 per cent of drivers currently stopped by the police give incorrect information about who they are.

In those circumstances it is perfectly reasonable for the police to use technology to help establish exactly who they are dealing with. But it begs another question. In the past police have used the vast computerised bank of information held on all licensed and taxed cars and their registered owners.

If the police are unable to identify 60 per cent of those who are stopped at the roadside, or to recognise immediately they are being given false information, it suggests there is a vast ocean of untaxed, unregistered and uninsured vehicles and drivers on our roads.

And you are not going to catch them with speed cameras. The only way you catch them is with police officers in cars: traffic officers. Remember them? This virtually extinct brand of copper was felt by many forces to be unnecessary thanks to a reliance on speed cameras.

Unfortunately for that theory, speed cameras don’t catch drunk drivers, and unregistered uninsured drivers are highly unlikely to respond to letters telling them they have been fined. Ironically, speed cameras only catch the generally law abiding; people in normal society who pay their car tax and insurance and register their vehicles.

The real villains driving around are impervious to speed cameras. Only police officers in cars pose any threat to them. New gimmicks like roadside fingerprint devices are all very well, but they are useless without more regular police patrols on our roads.

Public pays price of Olympic fiasco

The bill for the London Olympics in six years’ time has shot up by 40 per cent in the past 15 months to £3.3 billion. There are predictions that we could be on our way to hosting the world’s most expensive sporting event in history, with an eventual price tag of £10 billion. The trouble is, no-one really knows.

Yet again, in pursuit of a headline to offset all the bad news, this Labour government has signed an open cheque that will have to be paid for by the people of this country.

Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell still cannot even guess at the cost of security for the Games, the cost of regenerating the area around the East London Olympic village, or even if the builders will have to pay VAT. If this Government was a business it would have gone bust years ago. Instead, it relies on us to bail it out, again.