I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. I remember the days of endorsements. We introduced the points system to give us more flexibility, but 12 points was regarded as the threshold for losing one’s licence. If more people are driving around with more than 12 points on their licence, it lessens the effect of the deterrent. It may lead people to think, “Perhaps I can get away with driving around with more than 12 points on my licence.” The whole threat of people losing their licence after 12 points, so therefore driving within the law, has been weakened.
Of course we need to tackle the sentencing of people convicted of causing death or serious injury by dangerous driving or driving while banned, but the whole issue of driving offences—and the way that cars can be used as weapons—needs to be addressed. We need drivers to realise, at every level of offence, that bad behaviour will be punished in order to make our roads safer. The Bolton News, my local daily paper, has been campaigning on this issue for some time. It ran a survey a while ago in which 83% of people agreed that 12 points should mean that drivers are banned. There is real support for that proposition.
We know that young people aged 15 to 24 are more likely to die in road accidents than as a result of any other single cause and, sadly, the number of deaths is increasing. Of course we need justice for those who have lost loved ones, but we also need deterrence. We have to take road safety and driver behaviour seriously, and do everything we can across the spectrum, from the point at which people start offending behaviour in a car to the final catastrophic effect of a terrible accident.
I have been trying to raise the issue of 12 points in various ways for several years, often with the support of Brake. Transport Ministers told me to speak to Justice Ministers, who told me to talk to the Sentencing Council, which told me to go back and speak to Transport
Ministers. I am therefore relieved to have a place in which to raise this issue, although I accept—given what the Minister said—that the issue will not be solved in its entirety. I have spoken to magistrates and the Institute of Advanced Motorists about this very issue, and they are very concerned about it. The magistrates raised the issue of the difficulty of getting accurate information from the DVLA about the number of points that a driver has. Secondly, magistrates are concerned that there is no record of the pleas used. Although a driver cannot officially use the same plea of exceptional hardship, the magistrates have no way of knowing whether it has been used before. Thirdly, the magistrates worry about a lack of consistency. Different magistrates accept different pleas of exceptional hardship, so some drivers are allowed to keep their licence in some courts whereas others in other courts are not.