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Road Safety Bill [HL]

moved, as an amendment to Amendment No.  19, Amendment No. 19A: Line 8, at end insert— ““2C   CAUSING DEATH BY CARELESS, OR INCONSIDERATE, DRIVING: DISQUALIFICATION    Where a person is convicted of an offence under this section, the court must order him to be disqualified for such period not less than two years as the court thinks fit unless the court for special reasons thinks fit to order him to be disqualified for a shorter period or not to order him to be disqualified.”””” The noble Lord said: My Lords, this is a very large group of amendments. Apart from one very minor point of detail, I have no quarrel with Amendment No. 20, which deals with deliberate offences, committed in the full knowledge that they are illegal. However, Amendment No. 19 is clearly extremely controversial, as the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Oldham, rightly conceded. If that were not the case, its provisions would have been passed into law decades ago. After all, the problems that it purports to address are not getting worse, like anti-social behaviour or gun crime; on the contrary, they are either static or declining slightly. Fatalities per million vehicle miles are well under one-tenth of what they were 40 or 50 years ago. Although one should never be complacent, it is worth noting that we have almost the lowest road fatality rate in the world. What has changed is public sentiment. Forty or 50 years ago when a road fatality took place, people would say, ““How very sad, how tragic, but accidents will happen””. Nowadays, people—at any rate, the younger generation—refuse to accept that accidents will happen. They maintain that almost all accidents are avoidable and that anyone responsible for a fatal one should have the book thrown at them, whether they be a motorist, a hospital doctor, a nurse, a railway signalman, an air traffic controller or anyone else who is deemed to be responsible for a death. Objectively, one can see many philosophical and practical flaws in this attitude. However, subjectively, one cannot help but sympathise enormously with the family and friends of the victim, which is why I have been in favour—certainly, since our very lengthy consideration of the Road Traffic Bill in 1988 in which I took a fairly active part—of some modest change in the law, as I indicated in Committee, with the accent on the word ““modest””. Unfortunately, the change that the Government propose is very far from modest. I wonder how many noble Lords realise that the maximum sentence proposed today for causing death by careless or inconsiderate driving is exactly the same as that stipulated in the 1988 Act, which received Royal Assent 17 years ago last week, for causing death by dangerous or reckless driving. Monetary inflation in this country is thankfully down to below 2.5 per cent per annum, but what one might term ““maximum sentence”” inflation has been running at about 7 per cent per annum compound. Certainly where death by dangerous driving is concerned the maximum sentence has gone up by almost by three times in something like 16 years. The ostensible reason for what is now proposed is to eliminate careless driving and thereby save lives. By and large, it will not achieve this objective, although, obviously, if even a handful of lives are saved that is to be applauded. It will not achieve this because as long as the human race exists human errors will occur. But the largely unspoken reason for the amendment is to give the public and the tabloid press what they have asked for. In this, the Government may be successful—in the short term at any rate. However, unless the maximum sentence of five years is reduced, there will be two unintended consequences. If the maximum remains at five years, the public and the tabloid press will understandably expect everyone who is convicted of this new offence to be sent to prison for at least three or four years where careless driving verges on the reckless and for between 12 and 18 months in other cases. There will be outrage in the press if only non-custodial sentences are imposed. In consequence, not only irresponsible yobs like boy-racers will go to prison—there will be a few of those, of course—but also considerable numbers of students, young mothers with small children, hard-working heads of families, little old ladies and drivers of HGVs whose vehicles ““inconsiderately”” spray mud and slush over the windscreens of cars causing the latter to crash and kill someone. We know this because an increase in the prison population is anticipated: one of the reasons that this amendment is so late in reaching your Lordships—it is late to bring it in at Report stage—is that the Treasury was apparently unhappy about having to find the funding for extra prison places. The second unintended consequence is that jurors will very soon become reluctant to convict, realising that ““there but for the grace of God go I””. However, if the maximum sentence is reduced to two years—or three years as I propose in Amendment No. 19C—it will be tacitly understood that prison will be reserved for those whose careless driving verges on the reckless, with almost all others receiving fines, possibly community service—perhaps in an accident and emergency ward—and of course disqualification. As the noble Lord, Lord Davies, mentioned, in Amendment No. 19A I have proposed raising the minimum discretionary period from one to two years, as with the assistance of Back Benchers of all parties and none I was able to do in 1988, for dangerous driving. I firmly believe that if the family and friends of victims are satisfied that the guilty party is to be kept off the road for a period they will not be so vocal in calling for a prison sentence to be imposed. Reverting to imprisonment, I favour a two-year maximum sentence, but I calculated that I might get more support from various quarters of the House if I made it three years. A three-year maximum is not habitual, but there is certainly plenty of precedent for it. I have discovered at least seven offences that were created between 1959 and 1986 inclusive in which a three-year maximum sentence features. Amendments Nos. 19B and 20A are essentially probing amendments dealing with the number of penalty points. The noble Lord, Lord Davies, explained these to my satisfaction. I find it hard to believe that the Government would want offences as serious as this to attract potentially a mere three penalty points, but, nonetheless, in view of the time that we have available, I am prepared to not go any further with them My Amendment No. 29A is important. I listened very carefully naturally to what the Minister said, but there cannot be a single driver with more than 100,000 miles under his or her belt who has not from time to time found that their normal driving standards have lapsed for one reason or another. This amendment is designed to acknowledge human imperfection. However, again, I am not prepared to go much further on that unless I get support from other parts of the House. The noble Lord said that the Government have consulted a number of organisations on what they propose and that the legal profession is not very happy about it. I take it that they have consulted the Bar Council, the Law Society, the Lord Chief Justice and the Magistrates’ Association, as well as ACPO and the motoring organisations. No doubt the noble Lord will verify that. If such consultations have taken place in the three weeks since the Government’s precise intentions became known, were those organisations entirely in favour? Obviously, some of them are not. Did they disagree in whole or in part? Could we have more detail on what they disagreed with? Was it the maximum sentence, for example? Since, unfortunately, this new offence comes to us via not a Bill but a Report stage amendment no explanatory notes are provided, as would be normal. So, first, we are not told of the financial effects of the amendment; secondly, we are not told of its effects on public service manpower; and, thirdly, we are not told of the regulatory impact assessment stemming from the amendment. All of that would normally be in the Explanatory Notes. Amendment No. 19C is the really important amendment, which reduces the maximum sentence. I fear that if it is not reduced, things will not go as benignly as the noble Lord, Lord Davies, suggests. Many more people will be sent to prison than the Government anticipate. But convention demands that at this point I move Amendment No. 19A. I beg to move.