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Road Safety Bill [HL]

My Lords, however well it may play with a section of the tabloid press, the Government’s plan to send still more people to prison in a week when the British prison population has reached an all-time high is surely the height of folly. At this rate, we will need not only prison ships but also prison railway carriages parked in disused sidings. The Minister said that if the amendment is carried, the penalty would be no more severe than that for simple careless driving. But the Minister is wrong, as the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, pointed out, because there would be automatic disqualification for at least a year. Simple careless driving hardly ever results in disqualification, which is quite a severe penalty, and rightly so. It is true that because of a truly ghastly procedural blunder after the Lords’ amendment to Clause 20 was carried in the summer—whose fault it was I do not know—the power of Crown Courts to impose a prison sentence for this offence was not removed as had always been intended. Despite what the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lyell, said, I do not suppose that it is possible in this Session to do anything about that. But at least a quarter of a loaf is better than none.