Dangerous Driving: Penalties

Joan Ryan Excerpts

Tuesday 13th September 2016 Westminster Hall

[Claire Perry]

The hon. Lady raises the issue of what dangerous driving tragedies mean to families. When we read the victim statements, which I will address at the end of my speech, it is impossible not to want to do something.

I want to focus specifically on the law. I go back to what the then Secretary of State, Paul Channon, said in 1989, in introducing a series of changes to the Road Traffic Acts designed to make those who commit these crimes more accountable:

“We aim to ensure that the penalty matches the offence and that those who drive very badly are properly punished.”—[Official Report, 7 February 1989; Vol. 146, c. 801.]

That has been an aim of many Governments, and very good work has been done on it. In 2004 the Labour Government increased the maximum tariff for death by dangerous driving from 10 to 14 years. In 2011, and again in 2015, the coalition Government introduced various categories of death by dangerous driving, to ensure that deaths caused by texting while driving could be prosecuted as such.

Last year, 188 deaths were caused by dangerous driving and 201 were caused by careless driving. However, although three fifths of people sentenced were jailed, the average sentences were very short—less than four years. Brake, to which I pay tribute for all the work it does, suggests that only a third of people convicted of causing death by dangerous driving are sentenced to more than five years.

I have three matters to raise with the Minister today, and I am grateful that the Justice Secretary has agreed to meet us later this morning. First, why are these cases not tried as manslaughter? Involuntary manslaughter is

“where the offender did not intend to kill or cause really serious harm but where death results from an unlawful act or from gross negligence.”

I cannot conceive how driving at up to 90 mph through a residential zone, wilfully ignoring vulnerable road users and racing a car, is not both unlawful and an exhibition of gross negligence. Indeed, I have been told by Ministers that manslaughter charges can be applied to driving offences, but that they almost never are. In fact, the Library could find only two instances of such charges having been applied.

I am no lawyer, but I know how difficult it is to change the law. No one would ever want to second-guess the decisions made by the judiciary or the guidance given by judges, but it seems perverse that, even if we cannot try more cases as manslaughter, the maximum penalty for what is clearly manslaughter cannot be increased. These men killed James Gilbey as surely as if they had thrown a knife or fired a gun down a crowded street; their weapon of choice just happened to be driving 2 tonnes of steel at 90 mph. Surely the maximum tariff for causing death by the worst kind of dangerous driving, which these defendants did, should be lifetime imprisonment. That should be the tariff with which judges and juries can start to work.

Secondly, would increasing the tariff make any difference? The sentencing guidelines are clearly not allowing judges and juries to apply the existing penalties—in this case, up to 14 years. Why is it that defendants are given automatic reductions in tariffs—I do not mean only for a guilty plea; I will come to that—for not being found to be drunk or on drugs at the scene? How would anybody know whether the defendants, one of whom had convictions for the possession of class A substances, were drunk or drugged? They fled the scene. They sped off, burned their clothes and destroyed the evidence. Why do we presume that they are innocent of those charges?

I ask for something the Government have been promising for two years: will they set a date for the review of sentencing guidelines for this particular suite of crimes? Will they look at the maximum tariff of 21 years? Of course, the Government should never be entirely swayed by public opinion, but it is hard to ignore the fact that nine out of 10 people think that crimes of this sort should be tried as manslaughter. Will they commit to a robust review of the tariffs and sentencing guidelines, in order to set a direction with which the Sentencing Council can work?

Thirdly, we would like to see an end to automatic reductions in prison tariffs for guilty pleas or, indeed, an end to the automatic 50% reduction of the sentence with the remainder served on licence. As somebody who has long been involved in justice debates, I understand that we do not want to fill up our prisons to the point at which they can provide nothing by way of rehabilitation, and I am always sympathetic to Government attempts to divert people from custody. Nevertheless, in this case, in which a life was taken by people behaving so recklessly and callously, with such disregard for James as he lay dying on the road, it is absolutely right that a prison sentence is given.

Surely an automatic reduction in tariff for a guilty plea should be at the judiciary’s discretion. By the way, in this case, one of the guilty pleas was not offered automatically: as I mentioned, Mahmood denied causing death by racing until the very last possible minute, yet he was given the benefit of a reduction in tariff. In my view, those benefits—serving only half a sentence or getting a reduction in tariff—should be at the discretion of the judge and jury.

I want to leave the Minister with a question. We already have a suite of sentencing guidelines that claim to punish those who cause death by dangerous driving. Bearing this case in mind, though, just how dangerous does the driving have to be for a maximum tariff to be awarded? As my hon. Friend the Member for Eastbourne (Caroline Ansell) mentioned, these gentlemen will be out on licence within four years, and towards the end of their sentence they will of course be serving a stepped-down version of it. They will be on day release and in open prisons, and they will be back on the streets very soon. My constituents, Major and Mrs Gilbey, have been given a life sentence, as have the rest of their family. They live every day with the loss of James, a man who was walking across a road, using a pedestrian crossing. A man who stood no chance once he was in the lights of those particular cars.

I can end only by reading what Major Gilbey said:

“I want my son, I want to shake his hand, hug him and chat, laugh and joke with him over a pint but I can’t. All I can do is hold and kiss the urn that holds his ashes, talk to him through that and his pictures and light his candles. That is not enough”.

I agree that it is not enough, and I think the whole House agrees. I look to the Minister urgently to repair the situation by bringing forward the sentencing guidelines, setting a date, and setting the maximum tariff to fit the crime.

[Joan Ryan (in the Chair)]

That was very affecting. Thank you, Ms Perry.