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Road Safety Bill [HL]

My Lords, I have always been grateful to the Minister and his colleagues for the courtesy with which they have accepted my opposition to this Bill and the help that they have given me in meeting Ministers, Home Office officials and the families of those whose genuine bereavement and upset is driving this clause. This clause will do two things. It is wrong in principle and is likely to do serious injustice. A third point is that it is likely to confound expectations—people will be disappointed at the extent of its effect, because it will be terribly unjust. To put unjust measures on the statute book is a deep mistake which devalues the effect of justice for those who have been rightly sent to prison for dangerous driving. They will simply say, ““It’s a lottery””. Why is it wrong in principle? Nowhere in this country, except in the most arcane areas, do we send people to prison for ordinary negligence. I was astonished to read the Secretary of State say in the other place, as the basis of his argument, that taking a life is taking a life, no matter how it is done—in other words, the fact that, tragically, careless driving leads to a death means that there ought to be a prison sentence available. We do not take that view. Will that view apply to industry, where employees are sometimes tragically killed because of a breach of the Factories Act? Will it be taken in construction, or education when people take children on trips? Will it be taken in medicine or in transport generally? It is contrary to principle in this country to send people to prison unless you reach the broad standard of gross negligence. Ordinary negligence—ordinary carelessness—sad though it is and tragic though it can be, is something for which we do not send people to prison, and we are entirely right. Secondly, there is likely to be serious injustice because the clause blurs the at present very clear distinction between dangerous driving and careless driving. Dangerous driving is driving that falls far below the standards to be expected of a competent and careful driver in circumstances where it would be obvious to a reasonable driver that what they were doing was dangerous. In other words, it has an element of intention or recklessness. If that is the case, it would be perfectly right and proper that a prison sentence should be available and sometimes imposed—and, indeed, that sometimes a very severe prison sentence should be imposed. I am in no way soft on this issue. I commend the Government’s actions in relation to speeding, which are doing a lot of good. When I was Attorney-General, I—like my predecessor—brought a number of cases before the Court of Appeal and sentences in practice were greatly increased. A lot of right and proper things have been going on and are being maintained by this Government. But this is a very serious mistake. How will defendants know how to behave? They will find themselves accused of dangerous driving, but they will be equally likely to be sent to prison if found guilty of careless driving. How will they know what the ingredient of dangerous driving is and where the line comes between that and careless driving? How will they know which aspect the prosecution is saying is the real nub of the matter? At present and very properly, the Crown Prosecution Service has to decide whether there is sufficient credible evidence to give rise to a realistic prospect of conviction for dangerous driving or careless driving before bringing such a case. When the case is presented, the essential ingredients are stated to the court, the defendant knows what he has to meet, and justice can be done. This will blur that situation. The defendant will not know until the sentence is given where the nub of the matter lies. As my noble friends have said—I strongly support what they have said from their practical experience—this will have unintended consequences. There is a serious danger that more people will be unwilling to plead guilty. There is also a danger that juries, thinking that this is an unfair law, will acquit in circumstances where someone might even have pleaded guilty if they had not felt it necessary to air the whole matter. It saddens me tremendously to see the Government going down a route that will lead to serious injustice. The hour is late and I have put the essential points. I very much hope that the Government will not sit on what was a purely technical oversight in this House and cling to their five years in the Crown Court simply because an amendment was not moved. I had not understood that that was remotely the Minister’s intention. I thought that we were at least being allowed to debate the matter so that it could be handled properly one way or the other. It would be a great mistake to introduce a prison sentence for careless driving when, very sadly, a death has followed a case of carelessness. It does not help a tragedy to compound it with an injustice.