Dangerous Driving Penalties

Jim Fitzpatrick Excerpts

Thursday 17th September 2015 Westminster Hall

[Jim Fitzpatrick (Poplar and Limehouse) (Lab)]

Thank you very much, Mr Hollobone. It is good to see you presiding over our business this afternoon. I will certainly do my best to follow your stricture about time.

I am pleased to follow the hon. Member for Reading West (Alok Sharma). I congratulate him on securing the debate and on his continuing campaign on this issue. This is not the first time he has raised it, and he continues to lobby all of us to make sure that, if we can, we support him in his endeavour. He makes a powerful case that the punishment should fit the crime.

I look forward to hearing the Minister and the shadow Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull East (Karl Turner), respond to the points that Members raise in the debate. It is good to see colleagues here, and I welcome them to their places.

The issue that underpins the question of penalties for dangerous driving is road safety. In itself, that is not controversial. There are no party politics involved in this issue; there may be differences of approach and emphasis, but we all want the same outcome: safer roads and fewer casualties.

When individuals break the law, the appropriateness of their punishment arises. As the hon. Gentleman said, that is not about vengeance or retribution, but about society making a statement. Attitudes to road safety have been changing. Drinking and driving used to be the norm; now it is socially unacceptable, but that took time. Getting people to wear seatbelts took even longer, and thousands of people were killed in the meantime.

The language around these issues is critical. In the fire service, in which I served, we used to talk about RTAs—road traffic accidents. They are now classified by the police and the fire service as RTCs—road traffic collisions. That language is important, because the majority of crashes, collisions and incidents have an avoidable cause: people drinking, taking drugs, speeding and using mobile phones. We are talking about deliberate decisions by human beings—drivers—that impact on innocent victims. In that sense, these are not accidents. Although some accidents do happen, the majority of fatalities and serious casualties are caused by people doing something deliberate. The word “accidents” is now passé for the emergency services, and, given how important language is, it should be passé for us too.

I am grateful to the Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety and the Cyclists Touring Club—the national cycling charity—for their briefings for the debate. Both make what is for me the most important point: enforcement is the most effective deterrent. Penalties and tariffs are important, but enforcement is critical.

That takes me to the issue of policing. CTC’s briefing says:

“CTC’s Road Justice campaign has for several years been highlighting the fact that roads policing has suffered disproportionate cuts in recent years, compared with overall police numbers. Traffic police officer numbers fell by 37% from 2002/3-2013/14”.

This is not a party political point; these things have happened under different Governments. The CTC goes on to say that traffic police numbers have fallen

“from almost 7,000 uniformed officers down to just 4,356…total policing levels fluctuated a little from year to year, but not to this degree”—

overall police numbers fell by about 3.5%, but traffic police numbers are down by nearly 40%.

Both PACTS and CTC cite individual cases where the punishment does not fit the crime, and the hon. Gentleman movingly recounted many such cases, drawing on his own experience and that of other colleagues. Of the punishment, the CTC says that the length of the prison sentences and the length of the driving bans is totally inappropriate.

The CTC also raises the review the Government promised, which the hon. Gentleman also mentioned. The previous Justice Secretary announced a review of road traffic offences and sentencing. In a previous debate, also moved by the hon. Gentleman, the Minister’s predecessor promised widespread consultation on sentencing, but no word has been heard since. The hon. Gentleman asked the Minister for an update, and I am sure we would all be grateful for one.

I pay tribute to all the campaigning organisations, many of which have been founded by victims’ relatives and have campaigned for years, and even decades. When I was road safety Minister, I had my first request from a victim’s family for a meeting to discuss their relative’s death. I have huge regard for the civil service, but my civil servants said, “Don’t do it, Minister.” I asked why not, and they said, “If you meet one, you’ll have to meet them all.” My line was, “If I meet one, I will meet them all.”

These people have a lesson to teach the rest of us, and if we understand their suffering, we can use it to emotionally drive us to arrive at the right conclusions and to get the balance right between crime and punishment. They were some of the most moving meetings I ever had, and they were inspiring at the same time, because bereaved families want to make sure that no one else suffers as they did, as the hon. Member for Reading West explained. I look forward to the Minister’s updating us on the review.

Preventing road traffic collisions in the first place and protecting pedestrians, cyclists and other road users is essential, and enforcement is the key to that. We have all seen how road users behave near speed cameras, in average-speed camera zones and when a high-visibility police car is travelling on the same stretch of road that we are on. Their attitude is completely different from that of the minority of drivers who just do not care about the rest of us. The real deterrent is visibility and visible, effective policing.

I would like ordinary citizens to be able to empower the police more. Some constabularies operate a system by which if several members of the public report someone they have seen in the pub getting into their car, the police will send the driver a warning letter to say, “You have been reported to us; we are watching you.” That has an impact, and I have been told, and have read, evidence of that. I want ordinary citizens to be more empowered to report drivers they know are breaking the rules. That system might help to restrain the minority of selfish, dangerous and potentially killer drivers, before they ruin lives.

As to prosecutions, PACTS writes:

“There are reports that the reductions in CPS budgets and staff are impacting on the level of Dangerous and Careless Driving prosecutions.”

I should be grateful if the Minister commented on that observation, in the light of the evidence cited by the hon. Member for Reading West about reduced numbers of bans and the complications of concurrent bans. [Interruption.] I see the Minister’s officials nodding, so perhaps a note will be coming in a moment; I look forward to a response to what PACTS has asked.

The debate is about penalties for dangerous driving. All the evidence informing public opinion is that more could and should be done to prevent dangerous driving, but the social mood has changed about those cases where it happens and convictions are secured. The punishment should fit the crime.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Andrew Selous)]

As always, it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. Thank you for the efficient way in which you have chaired our proceedings.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Reading West (Alok Sharma) on securing this important debate. The seriousness with which dangerous driving is taken is evident from the strength of feeling among Members on both sides of the House. I pay tribute to him for his persistence and for how he has brought this matter before the House. Indeed, I thank all hon. Members for the non-party political way in which these serious matters have been addressed.

My hon. Friend was right to say that it is not possible for us to imagine the pain of the families who have lost loved ones to such terrible experiences. I regularly meet victims, and I will continue to be available to do that to try to give myself the best possible idea of what they have been through. He mentioned the 102,000-signature petition, which is a significant achievement. I note that he has been to see the Prime Minister. The shadow Minister spoke about the Prime Minister’s supportive attitude on this matter.

I am also grateful to my hon. Friend for mentioning the case of my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford (Jeremy Lefroy), whose constituent, a teacher, was killed on account of someone browsing the internet while driving a lorry—an atrocious thing to have done. My hon. Friend the Member for Reading West asked three particular questions and, yes, the five issues that he raised are being considered as part of the Government’s review. Secondly, I hope to be able to move to the public phase of the review soon, and we will do everything possible to attract the widest public attention. Thirdly, the reforms are likely to require legislation and so will be debated by Parliament. All hon. Members will have a chance, as they have had this afternoon, to put the views of their constituents in that debate.

[Jim Fitzpatrick]

The Minister says that he hopes the review will move to its public phase soon. Can he be more specific about the definition of “soon”? When I was the Minister for a time, a civil servant drafted an answer for me that said, “The answer to the parliamentary question will be published in the autumn.” I asked, “When is the autumn?” They said, “23 December, Minister.” I said, “Well, that’s usually Christmas.” They said, “It’s the end of the autumn Session, Minister.”

The word “soon” is even less specific than “autumn” and certainly “this year.” It would be nice to know whether that means the calendar year or the parliamentary year.

[Andrew Selous]

The hon. Gentleman is a former Minister, and he knows how such things work. I am sorry that I am not able to be more specific, but I can tell him and every other Member here that I get it. There is clearly huge concern on both sides of the House about dangerous driving. A commitment has been made to have the review, and I assure the hon. Gentleman that my officials and others are working on that in earnest. I would be extremely grateful if he were good enough to accept that for now.

The hon. Gentleman made an excellent speech, and he is right that we all want safer roads. He spoke about the language we use in such matters, and I agree that using drink, drugs or phones does not make it an accident. Getting the language right matters, and I hugely agree that enforcement is critical, as my hon. Friend the Member for Reading West also said. As a former road safety Minister, the hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick) brings great experience and knowledge to this debate. The issue of prevention resonated most strongly with me, and the public reporting of drivers who break the rules is an interesting idea. He also said that the punishment should fit the crime.

I assure hon. Members that Ministers and officials in the Department for Transport will be sent the transcript of this debate so that they can study what has been said, because that is an important aspect of our proceedings. The hon. Gentleman specifically asked about prosecutions and, despite the increased number of cars on our roads, the number of incidents and, more significantly, the number of deaths on our roads have fallen very significantly. As a result, there are fewer prosecutions for causing death by dangerous driving, but the sentence length has increased, which is part of a long-term trend.

I listened with great interest to the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Derbyshire (Pauline Latham). Safety near schools is incredibly important, and I commend her for continuing to campaign on that issue. She made an important point, which links to the point raised by the hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse, about the need for effective enforcement. Again, I will ensure that that point is passed on to the Department for Transport.

The three Es mentioned by the hon. Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Catherine West)—education, engineering and enforcement—are right. She also made a useful contribution to our proceedings. My hon. Friend the Member for Henley (John Howell) told us of a personal experience from his constituency. He speaks as a member of the Select Committee on Justice, so I welcome his contribution. I am struck that 63% of respondents in his constituency expressed a fear of road traffic crime. I agree that that is a significant finding, and one of which we should take note.