How many prosecutions for the offence of causing death by careless or inconsiderate driving have been brought; how many convictions have been obtained; and what the average length of custodial sentences handed down has been to date.

Causing death by careless or inconsiderate driving under section 20 of the Road Safety Act 2006 came into force on 18 August 2008. Court proceedings data, including prosecutions and so on for 2008, will not be available until autumn 2009.

I am grateful to the Solicitor-General for the answer. The lorry driver who killed six people on the M6 was convicted of causing death by careless driving and is serving three years. Of course, if that offence had not been introduced, he would have only received penalty points on his licence and a fine. The judge in the case said:

"This was one of the most serious offences of its kind."

Is the Solicitor-General therefore surprised that the sentence was three years—nowhere near the maximum of five years?

The hon. Gentleman is exactly right in his analysis of what would have happened if we had not introduced this offence: it would have been possible only to charge the driver with careless driving, which is summary only and only involves a fine. So by introducing the offence, we have allowed for the right level of culpability to be applied to people who do such things, with appropriate penalties. The case is not one that the Attorney-General can refer as an unduly lenient sentence case, although causing death by dangerous driving, which the jury did not find, would have been such a case. I cannot comment on individual cases, but the hon. Gentleman may get some sense of what we think about it by my making that observation.

While not in any way disagreeing with what my hon. Friend Mr. Bone has said about the case and accepting that the Solicitor-General does not want to expand on it, does she accept that many people who cause death by careless or inconsiderate driving are not of the criminal fraternity and that, although they should be certainly very severely punished, a community sentence, rather than a custodial one, is very often a better way to punish them?

We leave sentencing to the judges, within the parameters that are set down by Parliament. It is a very serious matter to drive a vehicle carelessly. For instance, in a number of cases recently, people have been texting while driving cars. Such rashness, carelessness and dangerousness does require condign punishment and ought to be met with imprisonment in my view, although I am not a sentencer.