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Road Safety [HL]

My Lords, we are in a sad position, as this is bad legislation that will do injustice. None the less, I thank the Minister because, although we have disagreed strongly on all these matters, he has been unfailingly courteous and his ministerial colleagues have given me a good deal of time to try to explain the position and to tease out what I believe are great flaws in this legislation. I am sorry, but I cannot resile from the fact thatthis legislation has been rushed. A mistake was made on 10 January. I was certainly part of the mistake, which was made by everyone, including, I say with great respect, the House authorities, and I do not believe that the Government realised at that time that there had been a mistake. Let me just remind noble Lords what happened. After we voted on Amendment No. 4, which kicked out prison sentences from the magistrates’ courts, the words from the chair were, ““Amendments 5 to 8 not moved? Not moved””—and the crucial Amendment No. 5 disappeared into the ether. That is the difficulty of being rushed. Because the matter was not brought before your Lordships' House until Report stage, instead of there being three opportunities to consider and vote on it—in Committee, on Report and, if necessary, at Third Reading—there was an opportunity to vote on it only at Third Reading. If we had known about the matter at the beginning, at Second Reading, I am sure that it would have been corrected either in Committee or on Report. Therefore, I warn the House and, with great respect, the Government against bringing forward very important measures at this stage. The Minister said that the matter had been carefully considered beforehand. I beg to disagree. There was a short consultation period, which lasted two and a half months. The Minister may tell me that that is normal, but it seemed to me to be very short. I find it very surprising that, despite being warned against the serious potential injustice of this matter by the Lord Chief Justice, the Council of Circuit Judges and the Justices’ Clerks’ Society, who all know exactly what they are talking about in this area, the Government should charge ahead. Why is this going to cause injustice? The Minister said that it would somehow all be put right by the Sentencing Guidelines Council. I shall look with the greatest interest to see what the poor Sentencing Guidelines Council will say about this measure, which has filleted out the very well understood distinction between dangerous driving and careless driving. Dangerous driving falls far below the standards to be expected from a reasonable and prudent driver and applies to circumstances where the driver knew or should have known that what he was doing was dangerous and was likely to hurt or kill someone. Careless driving is simply that other area of driving that, sadly, is all too common, but which simply falls below the ordinary standard. Dangerous driving is massively more likely to cause death than careless driving is. Although statistics in this area are not extensive, they clearly show that dangerous driving is at least 20 times more likely to cause a death than careless driving is, yet 31,000 people are currently convicted of careless driving. It will be tragic for the victims and for the driver, but some of those incidents will lead to death. How is a court now to tease out in which of those cases of careless driving that cause death it would be just to impose a prison sentence? I say to the House that nowhere in all our law, in any field of life, do we impose prison sentences for ordinary negligence. I was astonished to see Alistair Darling seeming to propound the principle that sounded like an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. He said that a life is a life however it comes to be lost—I may not be quoting exactly, but that was the nub of it. Will that principle be carried to teachers who take children on outings or to doctors and nurses who have to administer drugs? Will it apply to industry and commerce? If people are to be sent to prison for ordinary negligence, we are in an uncertain and potentially unjust world. I come back to careless driving—I will not go on for too long. When it is between dangerous and careless driving, whether it be in the Crown Court or the magistrates’ court, the prosecution must set out clearly what those dangerous ingredients are that justify a conviction for dangerous driving. In the right case, a sentence—possibly a severe sentence—would be justified for causing death or, indeed, for the dangerous driving itself. What are the ingredients of careless driving that will justify the prison sentence? Prosecutors in our world do not ask for sentences. It is contrary to our tradition.