Oral Answers to Questions

Roberta Blackman-Woods Excerpts

Wednesday 9th October 2013 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I will certainly look at the petition that my hon. Friend talks about, and I would like to join him by offering my condolences to the friends and families of Ross and Clare.

This is the most appalling crime: someone with 10 previous convictions, as my hon. Friend says, and who was disqualified at the time driving dangerously and killing two people, snuffing out their lives. The sentence was 10 years. As I understand it, the maximum sentence available for a crime like this is 14 years. The Government have introduced a new offence of causing serious injury by dangerous driving, so we are looking at this whole area. I can also tell him that the Justice Secretary has asked the Sentencing Council to review the sentencing guidelines for serious driving offences, and we should look at this specific case in the light of that.

[Roberta Blackman-Woods (City of Durham) (Lab)]

Q7. A family in my constituency earning £18,000 a year are paying a massive £3,276 in energy bills, so why is the Prime Minister siding with energy bosses charging inflated prices, rather than with hard-pressed families?

[The Prime Minister]

I want to see people’s energy bills come down. That is why we are legislating to put people on the lowest tariff; that is why we will go through to see what regulations and rules, put in place by the Leader of the Opposition when he was Energy Secretary, we can change to keep bills down; and that is why we need a competitive market. But simply making promises that you admit the next day you cannot meet is not proper politics.