Magistrate resigns over Mark Phillips’s fine

Press, 13 April 1978, Page 8

Magistrate resigns over Mark Phillips’s fine

NZPA-Reuter London A woman magistrate is leaving the Bench after 21 years in protest against Captain Mark Phillips’s 5NZ27.50 speeding fine at Bow Street Court. Vowing that she should have fined Princess Anne’s husband up to SNZ27S, Mrs Vera Bray — a former councillor and magistrate in Bootle, Merseyside — said the case illustrated there was “one law for the rich and one law for the poor.” Her move came after a protest by a Labour M.P., Mr Sydney Tierney, that the fine imposed at Bow Street was too low. Mr Tierney, M.P. for Birmingham, Yardley,

raised the matter with the Home Secretary (Mr Merlyn Rees). In a letter, he said. “Nothing brings the operation of our laws into more disrespect than the discrepancies there are in imposing fines for similar offences in different parts of the country. “It is common knowledge that most magistrate’s courts who impose fines, have a minimum equal to one pound per mile over the restricted speed limit. “In this particular case it should h.-ve been £3O at least, notwithstanding the taking into account of a similar offence he com-

mitted in March 1977, for which he was fined £30.” However, Mrs Bray claimed that Captain Phillips should have been disqualified for the second speeding offence — driving at 97km/h in the middle of London six weeks ago. Mrs Bray, the only woman to have been Mayor of Bootle, said: “If that’s justice, I feel sorry for the injustices that have been done to people who have appeared before the bench at Bootle and in other parts of the county. “If that man had been in a Bootle court he would have been fined very heavily — I would have fined him £lOO or £150.”