New Clause 4 - Causing death or serious injury by negligent driving
Road Safety Bill
10:45 am
Mr Paul Stinchcombe (Wellingborough, Labour)
I thank my hon. Friend for those kind words. The purpose and effect of new clause 4 is almost identical to Government policy. The only difference is that the new clause would implement a slightly different maximum potential prison sentence. However, the general purpose is identical: to introduce into the law of the United Kingdom for the first time the offence of causing death by careless driving.
The reason why it is important in policy terms to introduce such an offence is that cars kill. If I am careless with a cup of tea in my kitchen, the worst that I might do is burn myself and cause a mess, but if I am careless with a car that weighs 3.5 tonnes and travels at 60 mph, the worst that I might do is kill someone. Indeed, if, through my carelessness, I hit someone at just 40 mph, in nine times out of 10 that person will die. Every year, 3,500 people die on our roads. That is 10 people every day. A large number of those people are children. Roads are the second biggest killer of children after cancer.
I attended the funeral of my second cousin 15 years ago. She was a teenager. The whole school walked through the village of Wotton-under-Edge to go to the funeral. I can remember that harrowing moment. We should mark, in the law, the respect that we owe to all who grieve and have lost loved ones.
Enough children die on our roads every year to fill a school, but that is not reflected in the law. The law is asymmetric and inconsistent. We mark the gravity of the offence of culpable driving, when it causes a life to be lost, and is dangerous driving, through the application of a second offence, with a markedly different penalty. If it is just dangerous driving, someone might be put in prison for two years, but if someone is killed as a result of dangerous driving, the driver might be put in prison for 14 years. Yet we do not mark at all whether culpable driving is criminal negligence. There is no offence known to English law of killing someone by careless driving. So someone can only be charged with careless driving and he can only be fined.
On the gradations of carelessness, there is a huge continuum of careless acts when someone is driving. Someone could be killed by mere inattention, very careless driving or dangerous driving. On the threshold known to law between carelessness and dangerousness, when someone is just below or just above dangerous driving, there is a huge gap in the law. The prosecutor or jury have to decide whether someone was killed by dangerous driving, in which case they can send someone to prison for 14 years, or by extremely careless driving, which was not dangerous, in which case they can only fine. That huge hole needs to be filled because it causes injustice, not just in how we mark our moral disapproval of that behaviour.
I want to pay particular tribute to the family of Alexine Melnik, two of whom are in the room today. Alexine Melnik was a 17-year-old constituent of mine. She was being driven home from a pop concert in Great Yarmouth last year. The car behind hers did not brake in time and drove into her car, which was forced into the oncoming lane. There was a collision and she died.
The driver admitted culpability by driving unlawfully to a level of negligence that was criminal. He pleaded guilty and received a £500 fine for killing Alexine. As he pleaded guilty, the trial did not even consider the circumstances that lead to that death. As he could only be fined, questioning him forensically as to why he did not brake in time did not matter. When Peter and Tracy Melnik left that court they did not know what acts of carelessness caused the loss of their daughter's life. That adds a deep sense of injustice to a burning sense of grief. That is why I have tabled the new clause to fill that gap.
Vikky Bailey—24 years old—was filling her car at a petrol station in Little Irchester in my constituency, just off the A45. A car came off the road at 60 mph. That car hit her car, her car hit her, and she lost her foot, her job and her home. If that accident was caused by carelessness, the gravity of the offence should reflect the severity of her injury.
In arguing for the clause, I already have the support of the 82 Members of Parliament who have signed my early-day motion 541, of PACTS, and, now, of the Home Office. I also have the support of the British public. Four weeks ago I launched a campaign in my constituency, with the assistance of Peter and Tracy Melnik and the Evening Telegraph. We invited the paper's readership and my constituents to say whether they supported the new clause. I have the responses here. There are more than 2,500 of them, of which only seven disagree. All the others agree. They are not just from my constituency, or from those of Labour Members of Parliament. They come from across the political divide and from a number of areas across the country, as well as more locally. There is a huge weight of public opinion in support of the proposal. Indeed, if the Home Office is asking for there to be consultation, they will receive these responses in a parcel as consultation replies.
I make a special appeal to Opposition Members. I would hope that this new clause, or a similar one that reflected more closely the Government's concluded view, had the support of every party in the House, but at the moment it does not have the support of the Conservatives. Only one brave Member of that party has signed my early-day motion, and we know, because I read it into the record last week, that the shadow Attorney-General thinks the proposal is profoundly wrong. Last week I asked the Conservative Front Bench spokesmen nine times whether they would disagree with the shadow Attorney-General's view. I do not want to embarrass the Opposition. I want, instead, to beg them to support the campaign by lending their names and, in due course, their votes to it so that we bring about a change in the law, fill the existing gap and mark, albeit inadequately, the deaths of so many people, including Alexine Melnik.