Dangerous Driving

Debate between Jim Fitzpatrick and Robert Buckland

Monday 8th July 2019 Westminster Hall

[Robert Buckland]

I am grateful for the hon. Lady’s contribution in her speech and intervention. I ask the question “How?” simply because it can very often be an issue for all of us, so ignoring it and trying to pretend that it is not an issue would perhaps be an easy way out for me as the responsible Minister.

I want to get on with this, and I know that all hon. Members present, as well as those with an interest who cannot be with us today, want to get on with it. I accept that we owe that not just to the families of those who have already been bereaved, but to future potential victims. I say that—I hope with sufficient force—because I have seen from my case experience as Solicitor General the problem with the current maximum.

I am grateful to the hon. Member for Coventry North East (Colleen Fletcher), who quite rightly mentioned the appalling case in her constituency. I became very familiar with that case because I dealt with the unduly lenient sentence reference myself; I felt that there was such a strong public interest to be served that I appeared before the Court of Appeal as Solicitor General and presented the case myself. I am glad that in that case Sir Brian Leveson, the then president of the Queen’s bench division—he has just retired, but during his long and distinguished career he took a keen interest in these cases—rightly increased the sentence to 10 and a half years.

I argued on behalf of the Crown in that case that there was justification, in cases of causing death where there were multiple fatalities, to depart from practice and to impose consecutive sentences. I felt that would be an acknowledgement of how, in cases of such seriousness, that was the only sufficient way for the court to reflect the gravity of the offending. The Court of Appeal did not accept my submissions. Therefore we are back in the position where, without an increase in the maximum sentence, the totality of the offending cannot be adequately reflected when, for example, there is more than one fatality, the driving conduct was particularly aggravated or there is aggravation because of previous convictions.

Therein, perhaps, lies some of the answer to the concerns expressed by families: that the total criminality is often not reflected by the level of the sentence. Sentencing precedent and guidelines allow that to be done when the principle of totality of sentencing is applied. Even though a charge is recorded on a particular offence that might not have merited a separate penalty, the offending should and must be taken into account when assessing the totality of the sentence. That might include having no insurance. Driving offences of that nature should be reflected in the overall sentence passed on the lead offence, which would often be the most serious matter.

I want to deal with each, in turn, of the excellent contributions that we have heard today.

[Jim Fitzpatrick]

I wanted to intervene before the Minister moves away from his general points. I pay due regard to his expertise as a former Solicitor General, to his explanations about complicated interpretation and definitions, and to what he said about the Court of Appeal not accepting what the Government were trying to do. However, given that he accepts that there would be unanimous support for Government legislation on this issue, can he give an indication of how long it will be before the Government come forward with proposals for legislative scrutiny?

[Robert Buckland]

I cannot give the hon. Gentleman a date. That is a matter of bitter regret to me, but today’s debate will be used as an important platform to indicate the degree of concern, impatience and anger that people now feel about the delay. It certainly reinforces me in my determination to get the matter sorted out. As I have already mentioned, my ministerial and professional experience has led me to the firm conclusion that to deal with the full criminality of the gravest crimes under the definition in question, judges need that space—the ability to use their discretion.

Before I deal with individual speeches, it would be right for me to dwell for a moment on the important submissions that hon. Members have made to me, the accounts that family members have given me of their experience of the system, and my concern on hearing about aspects of the use of the victim personal statement. It would be invidious for me to intrude on proceedings where I have not read all the evidence, or seen the transcript, but I would be concerned if the reason for the editing of a victim personal statement was that somehow it would upset an offender. That seems a wholly irrelevant and inadequate explanation to give to anyone, legally qualified or not.

Surely what should drive proceedings is relevance. Having read hundreds of victim personal statements, lawyers and court practitioners are well able to distinguish when an opinion given in the statement might take matters no further; but a real sense of the effect on a victim comes through a well written and well prepared VPS. Since the introduction of the system, police officers have become better and better at drawing out from a victim or their family the sense of loss and bereavement—the whole effect of the crime on their lives and the lives of their loved ones. Those documents are important and must form a key part of the decision making in sentencing.

I was heartened to hear some families’ praise for the way individual judges dealt with each case with sensitivity, care and precision. We are fortunate that almost universally we are well served by our judiciary, who find such cases particularly difficult. I have spoken to many of them, and they feel at the end of a case a sense of inadequacy about what cannot be undone, and what cannot be restored to the families and loved ones of those who have died.

I thank the hon. Member for St Helens South and Whiston, who made a significant contribution to the debate, not just for her speech, but for her persistence in working with my predecessor, and with me, to ensure that her constituents’ point of view and cause are heard. Her contribution today was particularly important in that respect, and I thank her for it. She asked several questions—in particular about manslaughter. She is absolutely right to talk about the existence of that offence, which has long been part of our criminal law and remains an available option for prosecutors in certain circumstances. Those circumstances would involve cases of the highest gravity. Case law is clear that manslaughter would be charged where the facts disclosed a very high risk of death to another person—a type of offending at the very high end of culpability.

That is why the offence of causing death by dangerous driving has been a very important addition to the criminal law. It has made the test somewhat more straightforward, as opposed to that used in manslaughter. I can therefore see huge merit in marrying up the sentence level—a maximum of life imprisonment—with the advantages provided by using the test for causing death by dangerous driving. Those sorts of offences should not become some sort of legal minefield or maze. They are difficult enough for everybody involved without adding those extra complications. That is why, although the offence of manslaughter is, of course, available and is used, we must understand that it is hedged around with particular tests that mean that it is not always the most straightforward case to prosecute.

I was asked by my hon. Friend the Member for Wells (James Heappey) about a particularly harrowing case involving his constituents, to whom I pay tribute and who, as we heard from him, have been through unimaginable pain. He asked about the terribly distressing circumstances involving the death of a child yet to be born. He asked me to consider what can be done to reflect the loss of such a child in traumatic circumstances. He rightly anticipated the argument that I would put to him, that there is a danger in changing the law relating to the position of unborn children. Consequences for the autonomy of mothers and the ability to take otherwise lawful action must be considered carefully before attempting to change the law.

However, that is a matter that I would be happy to discuss further with my hon. Friend; it seems to me that the real issue is how to take into account the full harm and the full sense of the impact upon a family in those circumstances. We come back to the matter of harm; paragraph 3 of the current sentencing guidelines, which are now some 11 years old, says of causing death by driving:

“Because the principal harm done by these offences…is an element of the offence, the factor that primarily determines the starting point for sentence is the culpability of the offender.”

That gives us a clear indication of where the law starts from on these matters.

--- Later in debate ---

[Robert Buckland]

My hon. Friend makes an important point; I am perhaps illustrating in my response the struggle, the tension and the difficulty that exist here in fully reflecting the harm and the loss caused as a result of that particular course of driving. That is why I am firm in my conclusion and the Government’s conclusion that to deal with those very serious offences, which come to the top in terms of not only culpability, but harm, judges need more headroom.

I have already thanked the hon. Member for Heywood and Middleton (Liz McInnes) for her important contribution. She quite rightly talked about a case involving her constituent and his family. I thank her for drawing to our attention a powerful example of how the current law is not providing the degree of justice that so many families look to the system to provide. I look forward to working with her on this issue in the months ahead.

The hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick) made an important and interesting contribution to the debate, talking about the position on road safety. He rightly reminded us that there is no room for complacency on this issue and that, while this country is among the safest in the world when it comes to road traffic incidents, there are still far too many incidents that are simply avoidable.

It is important to note that, although the hon. Gentleman says they have plateaued, road deaths have continued to fall over the past 12 years—the reduction in fatalities was some 39% in the years since 2007—but I accept that that is almost always as a result of other initiatives that have been taken, rather than better driver awareness. We have safer infrastructure measures; we have new vehicle technologies; we have better hazard perception testing; we have better trauma care, where lives are often saved that would not have been some years ago; and, yes, we have a sense of shifting social attitudes, which I am glad of—we all welcome it.

Hon. Members have referred to the fact that when it comes to drink-driving, what would have been acceptable a generation ago is no longer acceptable at all within society. That is all welcome, but we still experienced more than 26,000 deaths or serious injuries on our roads in 2017, of which 48 were young children. Too many of those incidents involved criminal behaviour, whether dangerous or careless driving, or failing to stop at the scene, and every avoidable death is one too many.

It is hard to see how the criminal justice system can ever adequately compensate for the loss and grief felt by families in these dreadful circumstances. Since 2012, however, we have seen a greater proportion of drivers who have caused fatalities through careless or dangerous driving being sentenced to immediate custody; it increased from 53% in 2012 to 60% last year. We have also seen an increase in the average length of custodial sentence for those offences.

Clearly, the courts are in some measure reflecting societal attitudes and the change in attitude that we have seen toward those serious driving offences. That is reflected by the number of people who signed the petition that prompted today’s important debate and the fact that, as we have heard, the consultation that took place was one of the most significant undertaken in recent years, because the number of responses was considerable.

As a result, not only was this proposal put forward, but two other key proposals were accepted. The first was to increase the maximum penalty for causing death by careless driving while under the influence of drink or drugs from 14 years to life imprisonment, and the other was to provide a stronger response to offences of careless driving resulting in serious injury. We propose to deal with that by introducing a new offence of causing serious injury by careless driving. It will sit alongside the existing offence of causing serious injury by dangerous driving, which was introduced in 2012.

I confess to a sense of frustration at the incremental nature of the way we deal with driving offences. If I were able to wave the proverbial magic wand, I would like to see a thoroughgoing codification of the law to make it readily and easily understandable, but I recognise that I cannot do that and that time is not on our side. Therefore, the incremental approach is the best way forward if we are to achieve real change for society, and for the families and victims who have been affected.

I was talking about the contribution of the hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse, and I was particularly interested in his discussion of Brake’s helpful and important work in this field. I have probably partially answered his question about a review. Tempting though it is to use that as a cloak for inaction, that would not be good enough. I bear in mind what he says about the sentencing gap caused by the gradation between careless and dangerous driving. I do not have an easy answer about that.

Returning to what the hon. Member for Warrington North said, I do not advocate introducing an offence of reckless driving—a subjective test offence, which might better reflect the gradation in individual driving standards, but which could make the test more difficult in terms of actually proving an offence. This is a vexed question that needs to be debated properly, and I thank the hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse for raising it. I do not want it to be used as a reason for further delay.

The hon. Member for Barnsley East (Stephanie Peacock) made an important and powerful contribution on the case of Jacqueline Wileman, which she has put to me before in the Chamber. I am grateful to her for having brought Jacqueline’s family to meet me some weeks ago. What they said to me was powerful, informed, measured and dignified, and I pay tribute to her constituents for playing their part in adding to the swell of pressure rightly being brought to bear today. I thank her again for campaigning in this area.

That was an important case because the prosecutors used the principle of joint enterprise to bring to book those who were not actually driving but who were part of the course of conduct in that heavy goods vehicle. That sensible use of the law will hopefully send a wider message to prosecutors that, just because an individual might not be at the wheel, it does not mean that he or she is not responsible for what happens in the vehicle and the consequences of those unlawful and criminal acts. I am grateful to the hon. Lady.

The hon. Member for Stroud (Dr Drew) made a distinctive contribution in which he rightly talked about the number of people disqualified from driving. He asked about discretionary disqualification. It was certainly always my understanding, from practice, that to achieve an exemption under a discretionary disqualification, one had to show exceptional hardship above and beyond the ordinary inconveniences of not being able to drive. If that test is not being applied stringently, that is a matter of concern to me. It was intended not to be some cheap get-out clause, but to reflect those exceptional cases where there might be real hardship—usually not to the driver, but to people who might depend upon that person.

The hon. Gentleman made a general point about impunity and rightly prayed in aid the important work of local voluntary groups in speed watch schemes. I am a qualified speed watch operator, and I have joined many local groups in my constituency to patrol roads of particular concern, with some good effect, I am glad to say, where the behaviour of drivers has changed, with greater forethought given to the quality or otherwise of their driving, particularly in residential areas.

I take the hon. Gentleman’s point about consequences and how to better use the information obtained from devices in speed watch schemes to improve conduct and enforcement. That information is usable, and I am happy to talk further on that with him, and perhaps with some of our local police and crime commissioners, to see how we can achieve further crime reduction in our neighbouring police constabulary areas. I readily take up that invitation for us to work together.

The hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey (Drew Hendry) rightly drew the House’s attention to the work of the Scottish Government on reducing road casualties and on dealing further with the offence of driving while over the alcohol limit. I am glad to say that, on the south side of the border, work continues within Government to pursue the strategy set out in the 2015 road safety statement, which drew together a number of important safety measures. That statement resulted in a number of successful bids to the safer roads fund from right across the country; increased penalties for drivers who use handheld mobile phones while driving; and—I think rightly—learner drivers being allowed to go on our motorways, thereby obtaining vital experience before qualifying, rather than leaving it until after qualifying, which I always thought was an odd way to train new drivers.

That road safety statement is refreshed and improved upon periodically; this work is ongoing. As always in the sphere of criminal law, before and after devolution, much we have learned from the Scottish criminal justice system has been used here. While I cannot make any commitments relating to drink-driving legislation on behalf of my colleagues from the Department for Transport, we watch with great interest the effect of those changes on behaviour within the population. I note the figures that the hon. Gentleman cited on the reduction of drink-driving incidents, which I found extremely informative.

[Jim Fitzpatrick]

The Minister mentions the road safety statement, which was welcome and made a difference. It is refreshed occasionally, but that is now overdue by at least six months. The Department for Transport was supposed to produce it, and the reshuffle has delayed it even further. Perhaps he can have a quiet word with his colleague at Transport to find out when it will arrive.

[Robert Buckland]

My colleague will hear that. I am told that the statement is due later this year, so they had better crack on with it.

[Jim Fitzpatrick]

It was due at Easter. It is now summer.