Jake Berry
Main Page: Jake Berry (Conservative - Rossendale and Darwen)Department Debates - View all Jake Berry's debates with the Ministry of Justice
Road Safety: Sentencing Review
Jake Berry Excerpts(8 years ago)
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Jake Berry (Rossendale and Darwen) (Con)
Thank you, Mr Bailey, for calling me. I congratulate the hon. Member for Clwyd South (Susan Elan Jones) on an exceptionally good, thoughtful and thought-provoking speech. I want to add to it only briefly—I, too, want to give the Minister as much time as possible to respond.
I want to draw attention to an issue that I raised in Prime Minister’s Question Time on 25 November 2015. On 3 August 2015, an intoxicated John Morton offered Amy Baxter, aged 27, and Hayley Jones, aged 32, a lift home in his car. He crashed that car. The injuries that Amy Baxter suffered are so severe that she did not see her children for seven months, because of her head injuries. Even after that, it was too distressing for those children to see her. She is paralysed from the neck down. Her injuries have been life-changing. The issue is not just about death; it is also about serious injuries caused by dangerous driving.
Unbelievably, when Mr Morton pleaded guilty in March 2015, he was simply sentenced to a three-year driving ban, a fine and a 20-week overnight curfew. That is an appalling thing for the family to deal with. They feel that he really has had no punishment whatever for causing life-changing injuries to one of their family members.
But it gets worse than that. Three weeks after Mr Morton was given his overnight curfew, he went to Bolton magistrates court to have his tag removed to enable him to go to a stag party in Portugal. When the family came to see me, they said they felt like that was another sentence with which the magistrate had slapped them in the face. That is absolutely disgusting behaviour by our courts. I do not for one moment blame the magistrates, because I do not believe that they have the sentencing guidelines or flexibility to attach real punishment to people such as Mr Morton.
I wanted to contribute to the debate to say that I certainly have not forgotten Amy Baxter’s tragic injuries and the fantastic campaign that her mother, my constituent Pauline Baxter, has run. Following my question at Prime Minister’s questions to the then Prime Minister, David Cameron, I went to see my right hon. Friend the Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove), who was at the time Secretary of State for Justice, and he told me, as he told the hon. Member for Clwyd South, that something would happen and there would be a review of sentencing. Amy Baxter’s is just one more appalling case, and I say from the Government side, reflecting cross-party support for the hon. Lady’s call: “For goodness’ sake, let’s get on with it.” We have had promise after promise. How many poor mothers like Amy Baxter have to see the drink-driver who caused them life-changing injuries not punished properly before the Government will take action? I hope that the Minister will respond with something concrete, because there is frustration on both sides of the House about the intolerable delay in the Government’s review of these sentences.