Speeding fines will help victims

Motorists who persistently break the law and earn penalty points will pay higher fines towards compensation for victims of crime under a new bill passed in Parliament today.

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Motorists who persistently break the law and earn penalty points will pay higher fines towards compensation for victims of crime.

Any motorist that receives more than one set of penalty points within three years, most likely for speeding offences, could have to pay surcharges on top of any fixed fine under the Domestic Violence, Crime and Victims Bill.

The Home Office says it will only target the most serious and persistent speeders but has yet to set out how offences will be graded, when the new fines will be introduced or how high they will be.

The extra penalties will be put into a fund used to compensate the victims of a range of crimes, from rape to road traffic accidents.

The Department for Transport is working with the Home Office to establish a new graduated system of speeding penalties that better reflect the seriousness of offences. It is proposed that first-time offenders caught only slightly over a limit could be given the option of taking a speed-awareness course instead of penalty points.