Clause 20 - Causing death by careless, or inconsiderate, driving
Road Safety Bill [Lords]
11:45 am
Brian Iddon (Bolton South East, Labour)
The problem here is quite simple and I do not want to complicate the issue by taking on board the amendment proposed by the Opposition. We have a threshold definition that is difficult enough for the Crown Prosecution Service and the police to interpret, with dangerous driving at the top end of the scale and careless driving at the bottom.
As I pointed out on Second Reading, it would be hard to find another Member of Parliament who has had more related fatalities in their constituency than myself, in the densely populated urban area that I represent. I read out all of the cases there have been in the past few years, some of which were very serious. They have involved me in a lot of discussions with the police and different branches of the CPS. I have tried to see the situation from the police’s point of view when they make the charge, and that of the CPS when they take it to court. On many occasions the CPS, against the police’s wishes in a majority of cases, change the charge that is prosecuted in court.
The difficulty that the police and the CPS are in is this: if they have a case where there has been a fatality that is close to the threshold, which side of the threshold do they prosecute on? The police and CPS will say that in order to bring justice to the families who have lost loved ones, relatives and friends, they have to prosecute above the threshold and go for death by dangerous driving. They will also say that they lose so many cases by doing that that they are entirely frustrated. Of course, when they lose such cases, the families involved are extremely aggrieved and feel that they have not got justice.
On the other hand, the police and the CPS could play it cautious. After looking at the past cases and precedents, they may feel that they will not achieve a result above the threshold, so they go for a charge of careless driving. And my goodness, that greatly aggrieves the families who have lost loved ones in fatal accidents. As my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford has pointed out, the problem is that there is a huge gap that has to be dealt with by the families who have suffered from fatalities, and by the Crown Prosecution Service and police. It is extremely difficult to decide whether to prosecute above the threshold or below. They cannot win in many of these cases.
The amendment that has been accepted and the one we are discussing at the moment will give the police and CPS a new charge and penalty to plug this huge chasm between the upper and lower charge, which will bring justice, and it will be seen to be done by the families who have suffered fatalities. Although lawyers are against it because they believe that it will make accidental conduct seriously criminal and worthy of imprisonment, the sort of cases that will be prosecuted under the new charge by this new penalty are not those where people have been blinded by sunlight. They are serious events where we would like a charge of death by dangerous driving, but the evidence is not there. They are not minor offences, but very serious ones.
Although the lawyers do not like it, as I put on record on Second Reading, the CPS has clearly said that
“The new offence will be valuable in bridging the existing gap between causing death by dangerous driving and careless driving. In the most difficult cases that fall very close to the line dividing these two offences, it will enable prosecutors to place both offences on the indictment, thus allowing the jury to make their assessments of the facts.”
That is what we are trying to do, and I do not want to complicate matters by changing the law in the way proposed by Opposition Members because in my experience when there is a substantial—not significant—change in the law, it takes the courts years to bed it down and to learn how to interpret the change through taking cases through the court. The change of law that we have suggested is far simpler and easier to interpret for the Crown Prosecution Service, judges and juries who have to deal with it in the courts than that proposed in the Opposition amendment.