I thank my hon. Friend, who has raised something, certainly in serious cases, that should be part of the review, to give the sense that those people can never get behind the wheel of a car, which they have turned into a lethal weapon.
The second thing that needs to change—it has already been covered, and I want to add my support—is the failure of sentencing to give real justice to the families. Let me make it clear that this is not an instance of
politicians saying, “We want longer sentences per se.” We have a confused and, in some ways, conflicted system for sentencing people. We have too many different offences and a wholly inconsistent approach when it comes to the interpretation of guidelines, and there are weaknesses in those guidelines. After four years and 20 weeks of his sentence, the driver who killed Jamie Still was allowed to move to an open prison, and could drive—potentially in the area where he had committed that crime.
That brings me to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Sherwood (Mr Spencer) that it is absurd for driving bans to run concurrently with prison sentences. It is such an obvious, simple and common-sense thing for driving bans to begin on the day on which people can drive again, whether on weekend day release or whether they are out. Certainly, as soon as they have an opportunity to get into a car, those terms must be considered. Far too few people have received the maximum sentence available, even where it is warranted, as in some of the cases that we have mentioned.
Another problem concerns plea bargaining and the fact that far too often the charge for dangerous driving is careless driving. I have great sympathy with Brake’s view that the solution is to get rid of the offence of causing death by careless driving and to have only the offence of dangerous driving. The judge can then sentence on the basis of appropriate guidelines, with a maximum sentence for the worst offences to lower ones for lesser offences.
We have heard of cases today from up and down the country of terrifying, wilful, aggressive, reckless criminal driving being deemed not dangerous, but careless. That is simply dishonest, untrue and wrong. That fails people such as the family of Jamie Still. Due to plea bargaining and due to the CPS deciding that it is easier to obtain a prosecution for death by careless driving, people who are clearly guilty of dangerous driving are allowed to opt for a lower sentence. That is why we need the offence of dangerous driving with adequate sentencing guidelines for all who have driven dangerously, as all the people mentioned clearly have done.
It seems to be police practice, at least in some areas, that someone who has failed a breath test, and is therefore deemed to have broken the law, is not automatically drug tested. There are instances where it is strongly believed, or even known, that someone has taken drugs as well as being over the drink-drive limit, but that is not tested for, because a prosecution will be guaranteed anyway. That is another factor that should be taken into consideration when assessing the severity of the offence, its recklessness, and therefore the sentence.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Kingswood (Chris Skidmore) said, it is utter nonsense that the maximum sentence for causing death by driving illegally while uninsured or disqualified is two years. That is absurd. In the case of David and Dorothy Metcalf, the driver was in this country illegally and therefore was not allowed to drive here, yet that could not be treated with the severity that it should have been. The fact that someone should not be behind the wheel of a car should be treated as a serious factor in increasing the sentence, as it is in other countries.
At the moment, the families of victims of dangerous, careless driving, who are suffering the most unimaginable loss, are not eligible for compensation under the criminal injuries compensation scheme, even though they have
lost their loved one as a result of criminal activity. Why should the families of the victims of murder or manslaughter be compensated through this important scheme, while the families of those who have died as a result of a car being driven in a dangerous and reckless way as a weapon are not? That is another example in this litany of cases of how, despite improvements, our system still does not adequately give justice to the families who have lost their loved ones.
The lives of two families in my constituency have been devastated by the appalling criminal, reckless driving of others. In neither case did the perpetrators of those crimes receive the punishment that they deserved, and therefore the families did not receive justice. I am delighted that the review has happened, but the message from the House today is simple. We have a year of this Parliament to try to change the law. We all speak on behalf of our constituents, and I hope that our voices will be heard loud and clear and that we get not just a review but the kind of common-sense change that we are talking about today. We need justice for all the families who have been referred to today. We need justice for the Simons family, the Still family and the Metcalf family. The amazing campaigning efforts of Karen Strong, Jamie’s sister, Rebecca and Peter, Jamie’s grandfather, show that these people want change to stop such things happening to other families. We cannot prevent people from getting behind the wheel of a car and behaving in a reckless and criminal fashion, but we can, as a civilised country, sentence them appropriately. All hon. Members from both sides of the House who have had these experiences must get together. I look again to my hon. Friends on the Front Bench and ask that we please have some simple, common-sense change, so that in future people will at least know that they will get real justice if they are in the awful situation of losing a loved one to such appalling, reckless, criminal behaviour.
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