Dangerous Driving

Robert Buckland Excerpts

Monday 8th July 2019 Westminster Hall

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Robert Buckland)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Moon, but a greater pleasure to thank the hon. Member for Warrington North (Helen Jones) for opening the debate with a sensitive and sensible speech. She used her experience in the law to helpfully give us a pen-portrait of the evolution of driving legislation in England and Wales. She was right to draw the House’s attention to the way the law has evolved in this area.

When we take the steering wheel of a car or a vehicle, it means that we assume a responsibility to any passengers in the vehicle, to other vehicle users, to pedestrians and to wider society. Driving law rightly criminalises what we would regard as unacceptable behaviour. It also rightly draws distinctions between types of behaviour. I readily accept that the law gets into difficulty where we have a combination of extreme culpability and blameworthiness in the manner of driving, and the extreme level of harm that can be caused by that degree of bad driving. We now call it dangerous driving; the hon. Member for Warrington North referred to it as reckless driving, as it was known prior to the 1991 reform. I have grappled with that difficulty—not just as a Member of Parliament, serving my constituents, but as a professional and a member of the criminal Bar, having been called upon to prosecute these cases, as well as in my latter incarnation as Her Majesty’s Solicitor General.

Before coming on to those examples, I add my own tribute to the families of the victims of these horrendous crimes who have come here today, have supported petitions calling for reform and have, with extraordinary dignity, exemplified all that is good in our society and positive in our world, despite the horrendous experiences they have gone through.

The offence of causing death by dangerous driving is a particularly unusual, sensitive and difficult scenario because all of us, in this room or outside, could suddenly find ourselves in the same situation as the families here today and the thousands of others who are not here but share the same experiences. Suddenly, without any warning, they are drawn into an entirely different world: a world of police and criminal justice, of procedure, of court proceedings that they never expected they would become involved with in a month of Sundays. That can only add to the sense of loss, grief and suffering that the families endure, and continue to endure—often for many years after the incident itself. It is a set of circumstances that all of us struggle to put into words and to come to terms with fully. I still struggle now, even though it is probably a quarter of a century since my first direct contact with a family who have suffered in this way.

Frankly, there is nothing that a court or this House can do to right the wrong that has been done to such families. Having said that, merely acknowledging that is never going to be enough. That is why we, as parliamentarians and legislators, must do all we can not just to mitigate the circumstances or to try to create a degree of justice, but to send a wider message to society that the system supports those who suffer, works in their interest and at least tries to deliver the highest degree of justice.

I was struck by the conversations I had this afternoon. I am grateful to the hon. Members for Warrington North and for St Helens South and Whiston (Ms Rimmer) for allowing me to come and meet the families. It was extremely useful and informative, and I felt the better for having heard what they had to say. I pay warm, meaningful and deep tribute to them.

To directly answer the question put by the hon. Member for Bradford South (Judith Cummins), I should say that the Government have not changed their view about the need to reform the law of causing death by dangerous driving. It is our settled intention to increase the maximum penalty from 14 years to life imprisonment; the issue is when. I want to do this as soon as possible; I would like to see legislation done in a swift and effective way.

My offer to right hon. and hon. Members here and across the House is to work together, to ensure that any Bill that is introduced can be dealt with as speedily and expeditiously as possible, without—with the greatest respect to hon. Members, who have the right to amend any Bill they see before them—a plethora of amendments and other issues that could impede or slow down the process of legislation. That is my request and my offer; I would very much like to work with Members of the Opposition on that, in order to achieve our common goal.

[Liz McInnes]

The Minister has struck an unnecessarily adversarial tone. It is very clear that there would be cross-party support for this. It was welcomed in October 2017; he does not need to concern himself that anyone in the Labour party—I am sure I speak for the SNP as well, in this case—would try to do anything to impede the progress of such a Bill. We just want it to come in as soon as possible.

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[Robert Buckland]

I certainly was not suggesting in any way that hon. Members of any party would want to impede such a Bill. The point that I seek to make is that we can achieve this with broad and deep consensus. I absolutely take the hon. Lady’s point and embrace what she says; having listened carefully to her speech, I know that she comes at the issue with entirely the right and appropriate sense of inter-party and intra-party co-operation, and I am very grateful to her.

[Judith Cummins]

The point that speaker after speaker has made is “When? Not how, but when?”

[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.

[James Heappey]

I am grateful to my hon. and learned Friend the Minister of State for his reply, and I welcome the opportunity to meet him to discuss this further. I simply reflect on the fact that, whatever the sentencing guidelines may say now, three years and seven months for life-changing injuries to mother and daughter, and for the loss altogether of a 26-week-old baby as yet unborn, suggests to me that the current guidance is nowhere near adequate, or does not apply well enough in those sorts of situations.

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[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.

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[Robert Buckland]

The point is made and understood, which I can say because I can make promises on behalf of my colleagues. I am sure they would do the same for me.

I am extremely grateful to the hon. Member for Bradford East (Imran Hussain), whose measured and sensible remarks drew together the debate in an informative way. He rightly reminded us that this issue goes beyond party politics and should bring people together in a constructive tone. That is certainly what I want to do, with him and other Members, to make the sort of progress that all our constituents expect.

I bitterly regret that I am not able to give hon. Members that all-important timescale, but the force of the speeches today leaves me and the Government in no doubt about the high priority placed on this much-needed reform—in fact, I would say it is the highest priority. The force of the argument put forward reinforces my sincere wish and drive to bring forward this reform at the earliest possible opportunity. Let us work together to do that.

I once again thank all right hon. and hon. Members for the part they have played in making this a wide-ranging and reflective debate. I hope it struck the appropriate tone not only for the families of those we have lost, but for everyone who rightly wants to see that higher degree of justice for offences of this appalling nature, because they are committed against us all.