Road Traffic Offences (Sentencing)

Debate between Mark Spencer and Susan Elan Jones

Thursday 16th May 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Mark Spencer (Sherwood) (Con)]

First, let me say that it is not my intention to take up the full two hours that are available to us for this debate, but I do want to raise an issue that is very important, in particular to my Sherwood constituency. One of the issues on which I stood for election was resolving the terrible road safety record in Sherwood, particularly around the A614, a stretch of road with which all in the east midlands will be familiar. There have been a lot of fatal accidents on it, with people killed at some of the terrible junctions. That was affecting the local community.

There was one tragic accident in which six people were killed, which resonated particularly strongly with the local community, and it became one of my ambitions to get elected as a Member of Parliament and resolve some of the problems facing the people living around the A614. I have campaigned long and hard to introduce measures to improve junctions. We have been able to improve the Ollerton roundabout and make traffic flows much smoother. We have also been able to put in new traffic lights at the Rose Cottage junction and improve the flows in and out of Edwinstowe.

We have also introduced average speed cameras, which have reduced traffic speeds along the A614 and—I hesitate to say this—stopped the fatal accidents; there has not been another one since they were introduced. Those cameras are not universally welcomed. Some of my constituents do not like them; they complain they delay their journey, so it takes them longer to get from A to B. I recognise the frustration of some drivers travelling up and down our busy roads, but my priority is making sure people are not killed on the roads.

It is important to draw a distinction between a conviction for speeding, for which someone might get a £60 fine and three points on their licence, and more serious incidents for which the perpetrator might be convicted of dangerous or careless driving. There is a conception among the public that it is easy to secure a conviction for speeding, such as driving at 34 mph in a 30 mph zone, but that there is less enthusiasm among the police and in the Crown Prosecution Service to go after the more challenging conviction of dangerous driving, as the burden of evidence is much greater.

I was contacted by a constituent of mine, Louise Stanbrook, who had been to a concert at the Nottingham arena and was crossing the road to walk home when she was knocked over by a driver and quite seriously injured. She suffered a broken collar bone and was knocked unconscious. She also suffered damage to her teeth and spectacles and to her possessions. It was a very serious incident. The perpetrator had a number of previous driving convictions, and was also due to be sentenced for another crime unconnected to this driving offence. The CPS and the police decided it was not in the public interest to pursue the individual for the driving offences he had committed on this occasion, as he was serving an offence unconnected to driving.

It strikes me that the justice system is there for two reasons, the first of which is to make sure that those who commit crimes are rehabilitated and are able to come back into society, having paid their debt. However, the justice system is also there for the victims to see that justice has been done and that when they have been violated in any way the perpetrators of the crime against them make recompense and have to pay a debt to society. That might involve a fine, a custodial sentence or a driving ban, which is another point I wish to deal with a little later.

Louise would say that it is a perception—it is her perception—that people who commit a minor speeding offence, which is still an offence, are prosecuted on a regular basis, as we can agree is only right and fair, but people who commit a much more serious offence such as dangerous driving or careless driving do not suffer the same enthusiasm from the Crown Prosecution Service; there is a reluctance to pursue convictions for such offences because of the amount of evidence that has to be gathered in order to pursue them. That sends the wrong message to society, and the House needs to overcome that and ensure that we turn that tide, so that not only is justice being done, but it is being seen to be done by our constituents and they can have confidence in it. We have to put our hands up and say that many people get caught speeding, but people need to feel that those who commit serious offences are being pursued by the legal system with the same vigour and enthusiasm.

That is very important and it leads me to my second point, which relates to where the justice system is letting us down. It seems wrong that where someone is convicted of a very serious driving offence and is sent to jail, and part of the sentence is a driving ban, they can serve that ban while they are in prison. Given that they cannot drive then anyway because they are being held at Her Majesty’s convenience, it would seem only appropriate that any driving ban that is part of the sentence should be served when they come out of prison and back into society. I would ask the Minister to pass my comments on to the Justice Secretary; he should examine that issue closely on his return, as it is a fundamental part of this debate.

There is another perception that people get enormously frustrated about—my constituents certainly do. Most people work hard, they purchase a car, which can be very expensive, they pay their tax by buying their tax disc and they pay for insurance to drive that car. They also pay for an MOT to make sure it is roadworthy and if they are caught committing a driving offence, they of course pay their fine. However, a section of society does not take out insurance, does not pass a driving test and does not obey the laws. When such people are caught committing a driving misdemeanour, they are often taken to court, prosecuted and then given points on their licence—which they do not possess—and banned from driving, even though they did not possess a driving licence in the first place. Members of the public find it enormously frustrating when they see all the hoops they have to jump through to be a law-abiding citizen and to drive appropriately, yet they perceive that those people who—I hope hon. Members will forgive my Sherwood language—stick two fingers up at the law and ignore it seem to get away with it. That really does need addressing.

[Susan Elan Jones (Clwyd South) (Lab)]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that one idea worth considering is giving greater flexibility for juries on the upper sentences allowed at the moment? It seems to me that there are certain cases where juries ought to be able to give a higher sentence based on the situation in the case, because, as he rightly says, it is ludicrous how low some sentences are.

[Mr Spencer]

I am grateful for that intervention. I was just coming to that point.

I suppose the challenge is that the law is in chunks—careless driving, death by careless driving, dangerous driving, death by dangerous driving—and there are very tight boundaries. There is no sliding scale of punishment. I believe that lack of flexibility is what drives the CPS sometimes not to go for the more serious chunk, but to satisfy itself with a conviction lower down the scale because it can be sure of obtaining one. That needs addressing, and the only way to do that is to have a review of what laws are in place and whether those tools need adapting. Within the current law the tools are available to make those serious prosecutions, but at the moment the CPS is not minded to go for those serious convictions, whether that is because of the chunking of the convictions or the lack of a sliding scale. That is what needs addressing.

As a point of interest, the Nottingham Post reported that in Nottinghamshire, 58,373 speeding tickets were issued in 2011-12. That shows that our police force is out there, robustly enforcing speeding offences.