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Skye Law
Fordside House, BROADFORD, Isle of Skye, Scotland
Tel/Fax: +44 (0) 1471 822 307

PRESS ALERT: 23 March 2009 - Immediate – Cameras & Motorway Speed Limits

LEGAL DEMOLITION OF UK SPEED CAMERAS BEGINS THIS COMING THURSDAY 26th MARCH
ROBBIE the PICT TACKLES ‘CASH-HARVESTERS’ & ‘IMITATION MOTORWAYS’

10.30 in the High Court of Appeal in Edinburgh. Three Law Lords will hear the UK’s first authoritative test case challenging the legal validity of all ‘speeedmeter’ and speed camera evidence.

Following an allegation of driving at 85mph on the A74(M) near Annan, Robbie the Pict, founder of the SKAT Legal Group and currently a community lawyer working from this office on Skye, researched the legal paperwork and found that not only was there no Motorway in place but the Parliamentary Orders required to prescribe speed devices as lawful had not been raised. This means that information from speedmeters and cameras is not admissible in Court as evidence.

The implications of both points of appeal are enormous. After having tested speed devices, the failure by the Home Office to send an approval note to Parliament to be published as a prescription Order [ in legal parlance to become a ‘Statutory Instrument’ (S.I.)] dates back to July 1992 and means that some £600m in fines or prosecutions have been unlawfully extorted since that date.

The lack of proper Motorway status is equally serious. If the proper ‘Special Road Scheme’ (another ‘S.I.’) is not in place, a road is left in legal limbo as unregulated tarmac, similar to an airport runway. Motorways, and their 70mph speed limits, must be based upon the Secretary of State’s Parliamentary paperwork and again the necessary authority is missing. This appears to be true throughout the whole of Scotland which means that any conviction for supposed ‘speeding’ on any Scottish Motorway since it opened is unsound. In short, Scotland has no lawful Motorway speed limits.

Advocate Claire Mitchell will argue Robbie’s case, lest the Court remembers Robbie’s last criticism of civil servants failing to properly raise S.I.s which was in the case of the A87 tolling regime to Skye.

RtP’s Solicitor George Mathers of Aberdeen said “I have considered the two arguments at length and recognise them as sound. Robbie has my full support in this public-interest challenge.”

RtP said “We hope the Courts will simply apply the law of the land. As with the tolls, the public are being wrongly accused. At present in Scotland the government is using unlawful cameras to act as cash harvesters on imitation motorways. If it wants to use criminal prosecution to control traffic it must put its own legal house in order first. First they need a lawful speed limit, and then admissible evidence. You cannot accuse the public of crimes based on shabby and incompetent ministerial or departmental paperwork.”

Editors’ Note: RtP will be at the Crypt Café beneath St Giles Cathedral at about 9am. Barrister Michael Shrimpton, who is running the same argument for Robbie at the High Court in London, hopes to attend. RtP will be rejoining Counsel in Court about 9.30am. Argument is set down for a day. Given the legal complexities, a judgment on the day is unlikely, but possible. RtP mobile 07 789 335 330.
ENDS. Many thanks. Evening post-match drinx etc.: Harry’s Bar, 7b Randolph Place, 539 8100, 9pm. Dancing to the wonderful Rab Howatt Band.