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Mrs. Louise Ellman (Liverpool, Riverside) (Lab/Co-op): The new clause was tabled to ensure that loss of life and serious injury on the roads are treated with the same concern that is shown for loss of life and serious injury inflicted by other means. It is a major issue and a human one. It is filled with anguish. As we all know, every day about 10 people die on our roads and about 90 are seriously injured. In the wake of those incidents are left ruined lives as a result of bereavement or serious injury.
As several hon. Members have said, the issues have been long running. The Select Committee on Transport considered the matter in its report ''Traffic Law and its Enforcement'', published on 13 October 2004. The Select Committee took evidence from a number of individuals and organisations, including RoadPeace, which spoke for the bereaved and those affected tragically by death and accidents on the roads. We also spoke to the police, who gave evidence too. We accepted that there were undoubtedly instances in which death and injury were caused by tragic momentary errors. However, there were many other cases where the system let down the bereaved and their families.
The issues that arose and that were drawn to our attention covered a range of matters. The specific sentencing issue that the new clause addresses is related to the question of assessing and gathering
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evidence at the scene of an accident. Concern was expressed that sometimes there is an overriding wish to get the traffic moving again, rather than to collect the necessary forensic evidence to enable a proper charge to be brought. Concerns were expressed about the inadequacy of the charges brought—about the Crown Prosecution Service's bringing charges of careless driving when more serious charges should be brought in the circumstances.
There are problems relating to the inadequacy of the records kept on what happens to cases in which people have been killed or seriously injured on the roads. We are talking about three sets of statistics: collision statistics, court statistics and information from the CPS. Even now, those figures and that information are not properly collated. There are derisory sentences, to which reference has already been made by my hon. Friends, and sometimes there is a lack of proper concern for bereaved families and inadequate contact with them.
On the question of sentencing, I can do no more than quote the evidence given to the Select Committee, not by members of a bereaved family but by the police, and in particular by Sergeant Pattison of Northumbria police, who stated:
''The obscenity of the present restriction is that if one driver punched the other and caused, say a broken nose (assault occasioning actually bodily harm), the offender could be sentenced to five years imprisonment or, if the driver deliberately or recklessly damaged the other driver's motor vehicle and was charged with criminal damage, a maximum of ten years imprisonment could be imposed, or where life was endangered, life imprisonment. Yet when guilty of dangerous driving and grievous life threatening injuries are concerned, the maximum available to the Judge, is two years imprisonment.''
That statement from the police is just one indication of the grave injustice that has been done for so long.
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The Select Committee called for a new offence to be created: that of causing death or serious injury by negligent driving. It also called for the Halliday report to be published. I am delighted that today we have the consultation document arising from the review of the situation. Unlike Opposition Members, I am pleased that it has been published now; it is extremely timely.
I was particularly pleased to see that there are two major measures proposed in the report that go a long way towards meeting the concerns of the Transport Committee, and they are reflected in the new clause tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough. The proposal for a maximum custodial penalty of five years for the new offence of causing death by careless driving would clearly not be imposed in every case, or even most cases, but the new clause would make that maximum penalty available. In addition, the consultation document suggested that the court should be required to take account when sentencing of the consequences of bad driving offences, including the inflicting of injuries. Those two proposals address the main concerns of the Committee.
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I am pleased that the Government are responding to those concerns. I congratulate my hon. Friend on the timely action that he has taken in pursuing the matter in the way that he has. He has focused the minds of Ministers on an issue that has been of long-term concern. Through his diligence and in trying to bring some kind of justice to the family of Alexine Melnik, he has been able to bring about the publication of the document containing the proposals for a change in sentencing.
I hope that the Minister will assure us that, although the document has come from the Home Office, he will be able to support the general trend of the proposals, so that at long last sentencing recognises the impact of death on the roads and the serious injuries inflicted.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Mr. David Jamieson): I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough on bringing the matter before the Committee, and on the consistent and persistent way he has advanced the issues and created debate inside and outside this House in pursuit of the interests of his constituents. It is a model of how a good constituency Member of Parliament can advance such issues on behalf of their constituents.
My hon. Friend referred to the number of casualties on our roads, as have a number of Members. I have said it before but I shall say it again that the record of this country bears good comparison with any other in the world. We have one of the best records in this area. None the less, it is a fact that 270 children—the number of pupils in a medium-sized primary school—and about 3,500 people altogether are killed each year on our roads. The good news is that the number of serious injuries on our roads, particularly of children, is falling very rapidly owing to an accumulation of measures taken over the past 30 years by Governments who have taken such issues very seriously.
Before I come to the substance of an otherwise good and constructive debate, I want to say that it was completely sullied by the speech of the hon. Member for Christchurch. At the beginning of his contribution, he talked about having some consensus on these matters, but he went on to make the most non-consensual speech that I have heard in a long time, complaining about something that does not directly concern the Committee: a Home Office document that came out today.
Last week, the hon. Gentleman asked when the report was coming out, and I told him that I did not know. That was the truth; I did not know. He and other Committee members must know me well enough by now. Had I known, I would have told him. I had no reason to say otherwise. I did not know that the document was coming out until yesterday morning, and I did not see a copy of it until this morning. My Department had been consulted about it, but I had not seen the final document.
There are two things going on here. My Department is responsible for road safety policy; offences are a matter for the Home Office. Over the past four years, since I have been doing my job, my
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officials and I, along with many others in the House, such as PACTS, which has been very good, and my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford (Mr. Kidney), who has helped, have been putting together a number of issues that we thought would be good candidates for a road safety Bill. That Bill is now in front of us. We have here many measures that I think we agree across the Committee are good measures. We have put the measures together, we have put them in a Bill, we have put them to the House, and I think that we agree on the vast majority of them.
At the same time, because of other campaigning, some people felt that we did not necessarily need new offences, but that we needed to adjust the penalty for the existing ones. So the work in my Department on the Bill was in parallel with a review of the offences. The Home Office employed Mr. Halliday to look at the offences and to collect opinions and views for an internal report, which has today been put into a consultation paper. That process has been going on for two and a half years. Work on this Bill has been going on for four years. Coincidentally, the two things have come together.
The consultation document does not affect anything that we are doing in the Bill. The hon. Member for Christchurch said, ''Well, if we had known this earlier in the week, we would have tabled some amendments.'' How ridiculous. It will be several weeks before we receive people's views on the consultation paper, and then a Bill will come not through my Department but through the Home Office. To say that after 48 hours we should pre-empt responses to the consultation document and table an amendment is quite ludicrous. On mature reflection, the hon. Gentleman will realise that.
Mr. David Wilshire (Spelthorne) (Con): The Minister has just put on the record that he did not see the paper until yesterday. Will he clarify whether he means that he did not see a version of the printed copy until yesterday, or whether he had not seen the contents presented in some other form? The approval of his Department is on the back of the document. If the Minister did not agree the contents on behalf of his Department, who did?
Mr. Jamieson: I did not see the final version until yesterday. Our Department will have been aware of the contents, as we and the Department for Constitutional Affairs have been working together and talking to each other about the contents. However, I had not seen the paper until yesterday morning.
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