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§ Ms Patricia Hewitt (Leicester, West)I propose to speak for about 10 minutes and then, with your permission, Mr. Deputy Speaker, I shall allow my hon. Friends the Members for Hendon (Mr. Dismore) and for Barrow and Furness (Mr. Hutton) to make brief contributions before the Minister replies.
This debate is a memorial to one of my constituents, Chantel Crofts Botterill, who was killed by a car driver last September. Chantel died on a Sunday afternoon. She had gone out with two of her sisters and a friend. They were walking along the pavement of one of the main residential roads in my constituency, Fosse Road South, when Chantel wanted to try out her friend's new bike. She hopped on and rode for a few yards, still on the pavement, which at that point was raised well above the road and guarded from it by a metal railing. She rode for only a few minutes until she was hit by a car that had swerved off the road, careered on to the pavement and smashed through the railings into her. She died instantly. She was 15.
Chantel's parents, Gail and Ronald Botterill, are here for this debate. I pay tribute to their courage and to the courage that so many other bereaved parents and families have shown in coping with their loss. I am a mother as well as a Member of Parliament and can imagine nothing worse than to lose a child. I honour and share the Botterills' determination to do everything they can to prevent other families from suffering as they have suffered.
My constituents have launched a petition and have already gathered hundreds of signatures. They want—we all want—roads that are safe for our children. They want, and we should all want, laws that hold drivers responsible for their actions, and provide proper support for the families of people killed on the roads.
Chantel was unique in her life, but she was not unique in the manner of her dying. In 1996, the last year for which we have statistics, 186 cyclists and 995 pedestrians were killed by car drivers—that is 1,181 men, women and children. Like most right hon. and hon. Members, I drive a car. It is an enormous personal convenience and I would not want to be without it, but I also know that a car is not merely a personal convenience, but a lethal weapon. A family saloon travelling at 35 mph has 90 times the power of a shotgun blast and at 40 mph a car that hits a pedestrian or cyclist will almost always kill.
The driver who killed Chantel has been charged with causing death by careless driving while under the influence of alcohol. It took several months for that charge to be brought—several months of delay that added to my constituents' distress.
I raised the case with the Director of Public Prosecutions and, finally, a senior Crown prosecutor reviewed it and agreed the charge. As the driver will be committed for trial next Monday, I will say no more about that prosecution, except to stress how rarely that charge is used. In 1995, of a total of 3,274 deaths in road crashes, there were only 13 charges for murder and manslaughter, and 369 for causing death by dangerous driving or careless driving while under the influence. In the majority of cases—seven out of eight—the horror of a death on the 344 roads is followed by nothing more than a charge of careless driving and, if the driver is convicted, a fine of a few hundred pounds and the imposition of a few penalty points.
An inspector of the Leicestershire constabulary, with whom I have liaised on the death of Chantel, reminded me yesterday of the conviction in Loughborough magistrates court of a driver who killed two people in a crash on the A1. He was charged with and convicted of careless driving and was punished—if we can call it that—with a fine of £250, £120 costs and six penalty points. That is why we need a change in road traffic law.
These are not tragic accidents, as we so often refer to them, but the predictable result of criminal offences. Driving too fast, which is the cause of at least one in three road accidents and more than 1,000 deaths a year, running through a red light and accelerating across a pedestrian crossing are not acts of unfortunate carelessness, but crimes that will obviously, in many cases, kill or injure an innocent person. However, at present, the law leaves the police, the prosecuting authorities and, above all, the families of victims in an intolerable position. If the authorities believe that they cannot prove dangerous driving—and it is difficult as the law stands to do so—and if there is no evidence that the driver was using drink or drugs, they are left with nothing else than bringing a charge of careless driving, with the derisory penalties that usually follow a conviction.
§ Mr. Brian Cotter (Weston-super-Mare)I wish to offer my support. Relatives of victims in my constituency have pointed out to me exactly what the hon. Lady is saying. They are left grieving, because they do not feel that they have had restitution.
§ Ms HewittI am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that support.
Drivers will not take bad driving seriously when the courts and the law do not. For that reason, we need a new offence of causing death by negligence, as is the case in Germany, or causing death by driving—motor manslaughter—as in California.
The issue crosses departmental boundaries, but I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will be able to tell us when the badly needed review of the Road Traffic Act 1988 will take place, and will assure the House that Ministers will seriously consider the changes that I and other hon. Members have proposed. I hope, too, that the forthcoming White Paper on transport will contain comprehensive proposals for cutting drivers' speed. In the meantime, will my hon. Friend ensure first, that, in future, the statistics for convictions for careless driving offences distinguish those in which a death or serious injury has been caused?
My second concern is with sentencing. I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Hendon will take up the issue shortly. I strongly support the North committee's recommendation, made many years ago and sadly not implemented, that the courts should be able and, indeed, required to take account of the consequences of the road traffic offence in determining sentence.
I welcome the Court of Appeal's decision this morning in one particular case, but I think that we need to go further. Any conviction for a road traffic offence where someone has suffered death or serious injury should, in 345 my view, require the courts to disqualify the driver for a minimum period of five years. No driver who has killed and been convicted of a road traffic offence should be able to drive himself away from court.
The third issue that I wish to raise briefly is drug-driving. The previous Conservative Government took many steps, which we all welcome, to reduce the incidence of drink-driving and to make drivers understand the seriousness of it; of course, there is still more to be done on that. I believe that we need a parallel effort on drug-driving. I welcome the recent announcement by the Minister for Roads, Baroness Hayman, about the trial of a roadside drug-testing kit. We should require the police, in cases where there has been a death or serious injury, routinely to test the driver for drugs. We also need a clear standard for drug use which is equivalent to the legal limit on alcohol. If a blood or urine test shows that the driver has been using an illegal drug, that of itself should constitute unfitness to drive within the terms of section 3A of the Road Traffic Act.
Finally, there is the issue of support for families—the secondary victims, as Mr. and Mrs. Botterill call themselves. On the various occasions when I have been burgled, I have received without any prompting a letter from Victim Support. I have not felt the need to use it, but I have known that Victim Support was there if I needed it. I was appalled to discover that Mr. and Mrs. Botterill have received no such offer of help. They were not given the support that would, for example, have been received by the family of someone who had been murdered. Whatever the law says, from Mr. and Mrs. Botterill's point of view, their daughter has been murdered.
I do not know whether such support would best be provided by Victim Support or by organisations such as RoadPeace and BRAKE, which do excellent work. However, I know—I hope that the Minister will ensure that this takes place—that all police forces should notify the support services when there is a fatal road crash and ensure that the bereaved receive proper advice and information.
The Government were elected on a promise to be tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime. My hon. Friends and I want to hear from the Minister that the Government will be equally tough on car crime, and ensure that the rights of car drivers are properly matched by their responsibilities. That is the least that we can do for Chantel, for all the other innocent people who have been killed by car drivers, and for the families who have been left to grieve.
§ Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Michael J. Martin)Order. It is clear from what the hon. Lady has said that the tragic case to which she referred is sub judice. Under the rules of the House, Members should not debate that case, which is shortly to be dealt with in the courts.
§ Mr. John Hutton (Barrow and Furness)First, I express my gratitude to my hon. Friend the Member for Leicester, West (Ms Hewitt) and the Minister for allowing 346 me to make a short contribution to this important debate. I echo and support my hon. Friend's call for a review of certain aspects of the Road Traffic Act 1988.
I shall confine my remarks to section 3 of the Act and the offence of careless driving. I ask my hon. Friend the Minister to respond to two points, if he can. First, an inadequate range of options is available to the magistrates courts when they are sentencing in careless driving cases. Under current legislation, there is the ability only to disqualify a driver, at the magistrates' discretion. There is no mandatory disqualification and no mandatory requirement for a convicted careless driver to undergo a compulsory road driving test again. That is a mistake. It is a gap in the law and I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will consider whether that gap can be closed.
Secondly, I strongly support my hon. Friend's recommendation that the Minister should take the opportunity to look again at the North committee's report, which recommended that magistrates courts should have the power to take into account the consequences of careless driving. One of my constituents was killed last October—a three-year-old girl, Wallis Fenton—by an act of careless driving. My constituents' reaction to the sentence imposed in that case has been general concern that magistrates do not have a broad enough range of sentencing options that properly reflect the importance of human life and punish careless drivers appropriately.
There is a gap in section 3 of the Road Traffic Act. Careless drivers are not currently subject to appropriate sanctions and penalties. I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will be able to say something encouraging about his review of road traffic legislation in this respect.
§ Mr. Andrew Dismore (Hendon)I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Leicester, West (Ms Hewitt) on securing this important debate. During 20 years' experience as a personal injury lawyer, I have seen many bereaved families who have suffered tragedies, and I have heard them express their feelings of injustice, both in civil and criminal law.
All the points that my hon. Friend has made are illustrated by the case of the Asamoah family. Hans Asamoah was killed tragically on 22 September 1996. His mother is listening to the debate.
The facts are that a car driven by Nicholas Tunstall crashed. Hans, a passenger, was thrown out of the car and killed instantly. Tunstall decamped and gave a false name at the hospital. He initially falsely claimed to have been a passenger; he refused a blood test. He showed no remorse. When charged with causing death by dangerous driving, he pleaded not guilty at the Crown court. After half an hour, the jury found him guilty. He was found to have had two and a half times the alcohol limit and to have been using cannabis. The car had been driven at 70 mph in a 30 mph limit.
On 5 February 1998, the case came to sentencing at the Crown court. Mrs. Asamoah had previously been promised that she would be informed that it would be necessary for her to attend court. Instead, she was told that she need not go. A letter was read out in court from the parents of another victim. Tunstall was sentenced to 240 hours' community service.
Mrs. Asamoah first heard of the result when she read it in The Sun. Fortunately, she is a determined woman. Her distress, although it was compounded by the result, 347 led her to take up the matter with me and the Attorney-General, who, I am pleased to say, referred the matter to the Court of Appeal, which heard the case yesterday. I am also pleased to say that the Court of Appeal increased the sentence to one of three and a half years' imprisonment, with a five-year ban and an obligation to undergo a re-test, as suggested by my hon. Friend the Member for Leicester, West. Mrs. Asamoah now feels that justice has been done. However, no sentence, lenient or harsh, can ease her pain and bring her son back.
The lessons from the case are clear. It is not only a matter of changing the law. We must also ensure that sentencing policies are carried out fully and are brought to the attention of the court, in the same way in which the Court of Appeal made its recommendations yesterday. The Crown Prosecution Service must adopt a more aggressive line in these matters. As my hon. Friend has said, the victims must have their views taken into account and heard. They must be treated with consideration and tact, and they must be given proper information about what is going on.
§ The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Mike O'Brien)I begin by saying how moved I was, and how sorry to hear the description given by my hon. Friend the Member for Leicester, West (Ms Hewitt) of the tragic circumstances of the death of Chantel Crofts. When listening to my hon. Friend, I realised that I knew the relevant part of Leicester reasonably well. I know Fosse Road South, which is to the west side of Narborough road, where the incident happened.
Like my hon. Friend, I am a parent. I have two young children. I agree with her that I cannot imagine anything worse than the loss of one of my children. I convey my sympathy and sincere condolences to Chantel's parents, Mr. and Mrs. Botterill, and to her sisters and brothers at this difficult time for them. I also convey condolences to Mrs. Asamoah, in the case raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Hendon (Mr. Dismore). Similarly, I offer condolences to the family involved in the case raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Barrow and Furness (Mr. Hutton).
I cannot comment on the circumstances of the individual case raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Leicester, West (Ms Hewitt) because, as Mr. Deputy Speaker rightly said, it is sub judice and it would be improper for a Minister to comment on the circumstances at this time. However, I am concerned at the delay that she mentioned and I will ask for a report seeking reasons for that.
My hon. Friend the Member for Leicester, West made various proposals for legislative change in her usual persuasive style, and I will consider them. These are important issues and we want to ensure that we get it right. Criminals who use cars are criminals none the less, and we intend to ensure that our response is firm and tough. As my hon. Friend requested, I will liaise with colleagues in other Departments, particularly the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions, on how we can tackle road safety issues more effectively. I undertake also to write to my hon. Friend about the proposal that the police should have available 348 to them the pamphlet from BRAKE, and that the support services should be notified of the possible need to help bereaved families in circumstances such as this.
That said, I shall now seek to address the broader issues. This involves difficult and complex issues of charging and sentencing, and I hope that I can address them with a degree of sensitivity, which is important in cases such as this. Sometimes, those who kill on the roads are punished only by relatively low fines. My hon. Friend the Member for Barrow and Furness described circumstances in which offenders have been charged with careless driving.
I can well understand the deep anger and frustration felt by relatives who have lost a loved one and who believe that the person responsible has not been adequately punished. Such cases pose particular difficulties for the court. No one can dispute the seriousness of the consequences when death is the result of a crash, but the criminal law must consider the extent of the offender's culpability. The difficulty in these cases is that the offender has, in law, acted carelessly rather than intentionally, but the consequences of his act are disproportionately serious.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Leicester, West said, this whole subject was looked at in depth by the North committee in 1988. The report concluded that it would be wrong to impose on a driver severe penalties for tragic consequences if his actions amounted to carelessness.
The Government must ensure that the courts have the powers they need to deal with the offenders who appear before them. That is certainly our responsibility. It is the responsibility of the courts to deal with the cases that come before them and to decide on the appropriate sentence in each case. We believe that the law should provide appropriate sanctions to enable the courts to deal severely with instances of bad driving that are worse than careless, and where the offender bears a greater responsibility for his actions.
As hon. Members will know, there is a graduated scale of penalties. Careless driving carries a maximum fine of £2,500 and an obligatory endorsement of the offender's driving licence. Driving while disqualified and drink-driving both carry maximum penalties of six months' imprisonment, a £5,000 fine and an obligatory disqualification from driving. More serious driving offences rightly carry more severe penalties. The maximum penalty for dangerous driving is two years' imprisonment and for causing death by dangerous driving or driving while under the influence of drink or drugs, the maximum penalty is 10 years' imprisonment. The courts may disqualify the offender from driving a motor vehicle for a period of disqualification up to life. That framework gives courts the powers to impose severe penalties on those who commit the most serious driving offences.
§ Ms HewittOf course I accept that the gradation of sentences according to the severity of the offence provides part of the framework for the sentencing process. However, does my hon. Friend support, as I do, the recommendation of the North report that the
courts should be able to take consequences into account in sentencing for all the general bad driving offences"?349 In that way, in an offence such as careless driving, the consequences can be taken into account.
§ Mr. O'BrienWe have to look at the issue of consequences and intention. We must be aware that a judge may have to consider whether a person is to be sentenced for unforeseen and clearly unintentional consequences. The courts have to balance that carefully when they make a decision in such cases. The prosecution will have to decide at the beginning of the process how it is to view the case, and ensure that the court is able to make the right judgment on the appropriate penalty.
The "causing death" offences were first introduced in 1956 because there were concerns that juries were unwilling to convict drivers for manslaughter. The offences were redefined in 1972 and again in 1988. In 1991, a new offence of causing death by careless driving while under the influence of drink or drugs was created. In 1993, the maximum penalties for causing death by dangerous driving or while under the influence of drugs or alcohol were doubled from five to 10 years' imprisonment.
The current framework is broadly based on the North report, which addressed in great depth concerns that the law relating to road traffic accidents had not developed in a satisfactory manner. A number of factors were given detailed consideration, including the possibility of a new offence of causing death by careless driving. The report concluded that it would be wrong to visit on a driver severe penalties for unforeseen tragic consequences if his or her actions were careless.
§ Mr. Ben Bradshaw (Exeter)My hon. Friend talks about unforeseen consequences. Surely, as my hon. Friend the Member for Leicester, West said, a motor vehicle is a lethal weapon. How can my hon. Friend call the possible fatal consequences of bad driving unforeseen? Every driver should be aware that such a consequence is foreseen if they drive badly.
§ Mr. O'BrienMy hon. Friend misunderstands me. Any driver of a motor vehicle has to be aware that he is driving a potentially lethal weapon. If consequences occur that are the result of him behaving in a way that could cause 350 death, that must be taken into account by the court. Sometimes, circumstances occur that are unforeseen, and we must be wary of the way in which we impose obligations on the court and constrain judges in their ability to impose sentences. The judge must be given a level of discretion that enables him to tailor the sentence to the circumstances.
I am a little wary of going as far as some hon. Members have suggested in constraining judges in the sentences that they can impose. I know from my practice in the courts that each case is very individual. Many different factors have to be taken into account by judges, and I am anxious to ensure that that occurs in driving cases where people are injured or killed as much as in other circumstances.
The Government's aim is to ensure that we have provisions that enable the court to deal with cases in the best way possible. We need to ensure that the Crown Prosecution Service and the police are able to put forward appropriate charges. We are seeking to provide a balance of various levels of charging and appropriate sentencing, which the courts and the prosecuting authorities can consider and tailor to the circumstances of individual cases.
It is relevant in this debate to remind hon. Members of the important provisions in the Crime and Disorder Bill, which will place a new statutory duty on the Court of Appeal to consider improving existing sentencing guidelines when cases come before the court, and to establish the principles that guidelines take into account. The Bill will establish the new sentencing advisory panel to provide advice on sentencing to the Court of Appeal and to help inform guidelines. The panel will provide the court with statistical information and will consult a wide range of interested parties, including, importantly, victims' groups. We believe that those provisions will lead to more comprehensive sentencing guidelines, which will ensure greater consistency in sentencing.
I have listened carefully to this debate. I shall liaise with my colleagues in other Departments to ensure that we get it right in tackling these serious and important issues. They need to be dealt with very sensitively and to be given the importance that they deserve, and we are determined to ensure that they are. I am grateful to my hon. Friend for providing hon. Members and the Government with an opportunity to debate these important issues today.