With the leave of the House, I shall try to respond to some of the points made in the debate which, as we came to expect in the course of Committee, was instructive and well balanced. I start with the remarks of the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Mr Slaughter), who made his case for new clause 22. He kindly indicated that he has no objection to new clause 14, which I welcome, and he made it clear that he has little objection to some of the other measures in this group, and I am grateful for that.
As I said in my earlier remarks, we intend to consider a number of aspects of the criminal law in connection with driving offences in the course of the review that I described. I can certainly undertake to the hon. Gentleman that the issue of driving while disqualified, particularly where it involves repeat offending, which is the type of offending highly likely to lead to sentencing at the top end of the scale, whatever that scale may look like in the
future, is something that we are highly likely to want to consider as part of the review. I am sure he will maintain his case for the inclusion of that.
The difference between the circumstances we are considering in relation to new clause 14 and the circumstances we are considering in relation to new clause 22 was conveyed very movingly, as we have heard before, by my hon. Friend the Member for Kingswood (Chris Skidmore). New clause 14 is designed to address what we perceive to be some egregious cases in which sentencing powers were not adequate. It was clear to us from those cases that we should plug that gap in the sentencing regime. There are other questions that we have to ask about driving offences and how those offences are punished, which are about whether we have pitched properly the sentencing powers of the judiciary. But we have not yet had the opportunity to consider in detail the implications of the change set out in new clause 22, and I doubt very much that the hon. Gentleman has, either.