I wish to talk specifically to amendments 8 and 9 that are in my name and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Mike Kane). There is something very strange happening with driving penalties. The law says that a driver should be banned if they receive 12 points on their licence, unless they would face exceptional hardship. It also says that the same plea for exceptional hardship should be used only once. I would not be surprised if there were a few people driving legally with 15 points, but I would not expect there to be 8,000 people frequently driving with many more points. I would not expect a person in Liverpool to be driving with 47 points on their licence, or a woman in Bolton to be driving with 27 points on her licence. I wonder how many pleas of exceptional hardship they have made. I am not sure I could even think up that many pleas to put before the courts.
Exceptional hardship is not about losing one’s job, but it could be about losing one’s home or about other people losing their job. The terms of exceptional hardship are very narrow, so why did the Squeeze singer Chris Difford escape a driving ban after pleading that it would cause exceptional hardship as he would no longer be able to travel the country playing gigs? The 47-year-old earns up to £100,000 a year performing around the country and was caught doing 88 mph on a 70 mph road.
The son of Tony Christie, famous for his song “Is this the way to Amarillo” claimed exceptional hardship because he would not be able to drive his dad to gigs after he totted up 25 points. The jockey Kieren Fallon escaped a driving ban after he claimed that it would cause exceptional hardship because the state of the racing industry was such that he could not afford a full-time driver. Premiership footballer Zak Whitbread, who admitted speeding at 97 mph with 17 points already on his licence, escaped a ban after saying that he would not be able to find another football job if he could not drive.
There are many other cases of people who have escaped bans. Not all of those 8,000 people are famous, but often they are rich enough to pay a good barrister to get them off. Alex Williams, the Tory candidate for Stretford and Urmston at the last general election, got off because he said that he would not be able to afford to pay his £2,000 a month mortgage if he could not drive. I do not understand why those people could not pay somebody to drive them around. They could have taken a taxi, train or bus like the rest of us.
As I have already said, drivers cannot use the same exceptional hardship plea each time they are taken to court, but there is no central record of which plea has been used. There is also no record of whether these drivers are involved in later accidents. If a driver can clock up 47, 27 or even just 15 points, they must have a disregard for the law and therefore pose a risk to other road users.