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Mr. Kidney: Let me be the first to congratulate my hon. Friend on the pressure that he has brought to bear. It has finally led to the Government's policy in response to the Halliday report coming to light.
Mr. Stinchcombe: I thank my hon. Friend for those kind words. The purpose and effect of new clause 4 is almost identical to Government policy. The only difference is that the new clause would implement a slightly different maximum potential prison sentence. However, the general purpose is identical: to introduce into the law of the United Kingdom for the first time the offence of causing death by careless driving.
The reason why it is important in policy terms to introduce such an offence is that cars kill. If I am careless with a cup of tea in my kitchen, the worst that I might do is burn myself and cause a mess, but if I am careless with a car that weighs 3.5 tonnes and travels at 60 mph, the worst that I might do is kill someone.
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Indeed, if, through my carelessness, I hit someone at just 40 mph, in nine times out of 10 that person will die. Every year, 3,500 people die on our roads. That is 10 people every day. A large number of those people are children. Roads are the second biggest killer of children after cancer.
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I attended the funeral of my second cousin 15 years ago. She was a teenager. The whole school walked through the village of Wotton-under-Edge to go to the funeral. I can remember that harrowing moment. We should mark, in the law, the respect that we owe to all who grieve and have lost loved ones.
Enough children die on our roads every year to fill a school, but that is not reflected in the law. The law is asymmetric and inconsistent. We mark the gravity of the offence of culpable driving, when it causes a life to be lost, and is dangerous driving, through the application of a second offence, with a markedly different penalty. If it is just dangerous driving, someone might be put in prison for two years, but if someone is killed as a result of dangerous driving, the driver might be put in prison for 14 years. Yet we do not mark at all whether culpable driving is criminal negligence. There is no offence known to English law of killing someone by careless driving. So someone can only be charged with careless driving and he can only be fined.
On the gradations of carelessness, there is a huge continuum of careless acts when someone is driving. Someone could be killed by mere inattention, very careless driving or dangerous driving. On the threshold known to law between carelessness and dangerousness, when someone is just below or just above dangerous driving, there is a huge gap in the law. The prosecutor or jury have to decide whether someone was killed by dangerous driving, in which case they can send someone to prison for 14 years, or by extremely careless driving, which was not dangerous, in which case they can only fine. That huge hole needs to be filled because it causes injustice, not just in how we mark our moral disapproval of that behaviour.
I want to pay particular tribute to the family of Alexine Melnik, two of whom are in the room today. Alexine Melnik was a 17-year-old constituent of mine. She was being driven home from a pop concert in Great Yarmouth last year. The car behind hers did not brake in time and drove into her car, which was forced into the oncoming lane. There was a collision and she died.
The driver admitted culpability by driving unlawfully to a level of negligence that was criminal. He pleaded guilty and received a £500 fine for killing Alexine. As he pleaded guilty, the trial did not even consider the circumstances that lead to that death. As he could only be fined, questioning him forensically as to why he did not brake in time did not matter. When Peter and Tracy Melnik left that court they did not know what acts of carelessness caused the loss of their daughter's life. That adds a deep sense of injustice to a burning sense of grief. That is why I have tabled the new clause to fill that gap.
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I shall make three points in particular about the new clause. First, the sentence, especially in light of the Government's proposal, is designed to fit into the hierarchy of existing sentences between the two years for dangerous driving and the 14 years for causing death by dangerous driving. Secondly, I am not suggesting that every person who kills through careless driving should go to prison. That is not remotely the case. I am a trustee of the Prison Reform Trust and spend most of my time arguing that fewer people rather than more should go to prison, but for some people, especially those whose actions were close to that threshold of dangerousness, prison should at least be a possibility for the courts to consider. Thirdly, the new clause is designed to fulfil another purpose of the White Paper, which is to reflect the severity of the offence when careless driving causes serious injury. Again, I do so on behalf of a constituent of mine.
Vikky Bailey—24 years old—was filling her car at a petrol station in Little Irchester in my constituency, just off the A45. A car came off the road at 60 mph. That car hit her car, her car hit her, and she lost her foot, her job and her home. If that accident was caused by carelessness, the gravity of the offence should reflect the severity of her injury.
In arguing for the clause, I already have the support of the 82 Members of Parliament who have signed my early-day motion 541, of PACTS, and, now, of the Home Office. I also have the support of the British public. Four weeks ago I launched a campaign in my constituency, with the assistance of Peter and Tracy Melnik and the Evening Telegraph. We invited the paper's readership and my constituents to say whether they supported the new clause. I have the responses here. There are more than 2,500 of them, of which only seven disagree. All the others agree. They are not just from my constituency, or from those of Labour Members of Parliament. They come from across the political divide and from a number of areas across the country, as well as more locally. There is a huge weight of public opinion in support of the proposal. Indeed, if the Home Office is asking for there to be consultation, they will receive these responses in a parcel as consultation replies.
I make a special appeal to Opposition Members. I would hope that this new clause, or a similar one that reflected more closely the Government's concluded view, had the support of every party in the House, but at the moment it does not have the support of the Conservatives. Only one brave Member of that party has signed my early-day motion, and we know, because I read it into the record last week, that the shadow Attorney-General thinks the proposal is profoundly wrong. Last week I asked the Conservative Front Bench spokesmen nine times whether they would disagree with the shadow Attorney-General's view. I do not want to embarrass the Opposition. I want, instead, to beg them to support the campaign by lending their names and, in due course, their votes to it so that we bring about a change in the law, fill the existing gap and mark, albeit inadequately, the deaths of so many people, including Alexine Melnik.
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Mr. Chope: We live in interesting times, Mr. Pike. I suggested that we should have a differential penalty for careless driving that related to the consequences of that driving, and that we might debate that alongside new clause 4. I now understand exactly why the Government did not want that to happen—although, in my naivety and ignorance, I did not want it to happen either. They knew jolly well that they had cooked up an announcement, to be made at a time when it would be too late for Members of the Committee to table new clauses, and to debate and consider that announcement. That has come forward today—
Mrs. Ellman: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Chope: Not at the moment.
The hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr. Stinchcombe) said the paper in question was a White Paper, but it is nothing like one. It is a consultation document. If it were a White Paper, it would be subject to a full statement in the House today, as the Speaker has said so many times. Then we could have had a discussion about it.
Mrs. Ellman: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Chope: Not at the moment.
The way in which the Government have dealt with Committee Opposition Members on this serious issue is frankly despicable. Having mouthed about the need for consultation, and, as far as possible, for getting consensus on these issues, they have deliberately kept us in the dark by behaving in the way that they have.
I asked the Minister when we would be getting the report from the Halliday review. I said it was regrettable that the report had not been produced in advance of consideration of the Bill. The Minister said, as I recall, that he did not know when we would be getting the Halliday report and suggested that I put down a parliamentary question to find out. I duly out down a parliamentary question. That question was due for answer on 1 February—the day before yesterday—and on that day the Minister responsible at the Home Office sent me a holding reply. That is not open government. That is government designed—
Mr. Liam Byrne (Birmingham, Hodge Hill) (Lab): Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Chope: In a moment.
That is government designed to prevent proper and open debate, because we could have had that information earlier. The Minister said, in the context of our debate on cycling, that there was a document which was not in perfect form for distribution. Yet the document that we have received today obviously went to the printers before Tuesday. It must have been known that it was going to be produced today and the Government decided that, rather than allow it to be made available to us earlier, they would delay it until the very end of the Committee proceedings.
I am not as gullible as the hon. Member for Wellingborough about this because, in the short time we have had to look at the document this morning, I have looked at the costs. I notice that chapter 5 says:
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''The Government believes that the proposals canvassed in this paper would improve the quality of justice dispensed through the courts in road traffic cases, and increase public confidence in the criminal justice system, including its contribution to road safety. Government Departments have done some preliminary work on the possible costs of the proposals, including their impact on the size of the prison population. This preliminary work suggests that the proposals in respect of offences of bad driving could create an additional demand for about 800 prison places. The great bulk of these would result from increasing the maximum penalty for dangerous driving from 2 to 5 years' imprisonment, to which the Government is already committed, when resources are available. The proposed new offence of causing death by careless driving would probably also create additional demand, although much would depend on how it was used by prosecutors and courts''.
I suspect that, all along, the Government have been seeking to use the delaying factor to prevent putting on to the statute book a law such as the one canvassed in that consultation paper today, in support of which the hon. Member for Wellingborough has spoken. We know that the previous Home Secretary said he thought that our prisons were too full of people who have been convicted of motoring offences. I suspect that the Government are not really committed to doing what the public wants, which is to stamp down really hard on bad drivers and put them, if need be, behind bars.
I do not see the new clause as being the answer that the hon. Member for Wellingborough thinks it is because if it was, the Government could have legislated for it in the Bill. They could have introduced their proposals when it was published before Christmas, and then we could have had consultation about this in the intervening period, followed by resolution. The new offences could have been incorporated into the Bill if thought appropriate and put on the statute book to come into operation in the summer. Instead, we have a consultation paper, with a closing date of 6 May, when there will be a change of Government. This is an issue, therefore, that we will have to take forward as a Conservative Government. It could have been addressed, nevertheless, by this Bill, but the Government have deliberately decided not to, leaving us in the dark.
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