I want to point out something that has come out in the course of our debate and really does need either explanation or further thinking through by the Government. May I say, without rancour, that I strongly object to any suggestion that this careful scrutiny is intended to string out our proceedings. It is not. These penalty notices are very sensible in many ways, but unless they are done fairly they are a significant infringement on the liberty of the subject, and it is important to get them right. There will probably be tranches of the Bill in which we will have fewer points to raise—I hope that that will be the case—but these are important matters.

I found what the Parliamentary Secretary said pretty astonishing, and I would like a proper explanation. If I have understood him correctly, he said that penalty notices and warning notices will normally be given together. I totally see that that might happen if one goes back to the police station, because the officer in charge will be au fait with where the next opportunity for trial is likely to be, and the system will work perfectly well. We are legislating for circumstances in which police officers will go out equipped with a pocketbook that enables them to issue a penalty notice then and there. The notion that those pocketbooks can be prepared in a way that indicates the date and place of trial seems to be much less practical. If the system is to work in those circumstances, it makes sense that the penalty notice should be issued, the citizen should respond by saying that he wishes to be tried, and the warning notice should then be issued, sensibly constituting the equivalent of a summons under the magistrates court.

So far, fair and good, but the way in which the clause is structured suggests that someone who has been given a warning notice—albeit he has already been given a penalty notice and said that he wants to be tried—must make another request to be tried, or at least that, if the warning notice is to be treated as a properly served summons, he must make that request, because subsection (3), which enables the warning notice to be treated as a properly served summons, applies only where a person who has been given a warning notice makes the request. It does not say, ``has made a request to be tried.'' Some thought needs to be given to that, both for good drafting purposes and for the protection of the citizen.