Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what her Department's policy is on the use of (a) dashboard camera, (b) CCTV and (c) helmet camera footage for speeding penalties; and whether a driver subject to a potential speeding penalty should be permitted to review the footage before making the choice about whether to plead guilty or go to court.

Unless it is unlawful for some other reason, the police can use any equipment they wish to help detect offences. How the police enforce road traffic law, including speeding offences, and the type of equipment they may use is an operational matter for the police.

However, equipment used by the police to capture evidence of speeding that can be prosecuted in court is type approved by government. This “Type Approval” process involves equipment being subject to rigorous field and laboratory testing to ensure the accuracy and reliability of their speed measurements and to prevent the possibility of spurious speed measurements being produced. This includes a requirement for primary and secondary speed measurement verification. Secondary legislation also prescribes how the camera will perform the speed measurement.

Type approval guarantees that a device is accurate, precise, reliable and consistent so that its evidence can be relied on. Evidence from a type approved device can therefore also reasonably be used to support the offer of a fixed penalty and will be available for use in a prosecution should the fixed penalty offer not be accepted. At this stage no devices described by the member have been submitted for Type Approval.

The provision of any dashboard, CCTV and helmet camera footage in respect of a potential speeding offence is an operational matter for the police.