Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 14th September 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, as the last Back-Bench speaker, I want to introduce my speech by saying to my noble friend Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe that I can beat him when it comes to making noisy protests, because I did one last week and he clearly did not.

I shall concentrate on Part 5, on the road traffic issues, which we have been debating for 10 years if not longer ago than that, especially with the noble Earl, Lord Attlee. The problem is partly that we never quite know who is in charge: is it the Ministry of Justice, the Home Office or the Department for Transport?

The poor old road user wants to use the road safely, whether for cycling, driving, walking, coaches or trucks—we will have scooters soon, I think. The penalties need to be fair, proportionate and a deterrent, as many noble Lords have said. Much of this legislation goes back decades—perhaps even to the horse and cart—and it is interesting that, in 2014, the Government promised a full review of the framework for road traffic offences, but it never happened. There were some limited proposals in 2017, but there is an argument for having a much wider overhaul of the legal framework to address its many failings and prevent the proposals in the Bill having unintended adverse consequences. Some of the proposals are good, so, along with others, I will bring forward some amendments in Committee, largely supporting the work of Cycling UK and RoadPeace.

I will give examples of three issues. Drivers routinely escape driving bans by pleading that this would cause exceptional hardship. A statement or speech by a Member of the House of Commons yesterday quoted a Bentley driver—the Bentley cost £160,000, I am told—who escaped a speeding disqualification by pleading that he had to use the car to walk his dog. That is pretty stupid, and I have some examples from where I live in Cornwall that are equally stupid. We need to look at this—exceptional hardship is a cop-out, frankly.

We need to look at the maximum sentences for hit-and-run offences when someone is left very seriously injured. I come back to the full review of offences and penalties, as promised seven years ago; we need to look at the legal distinction between careless and dangerous driving, driving bans, interim driving bans and a few other things—I know that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, referred to some of those in his speech.

My question to the Minister is this: how can we take this forward, together with the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson, the noble Baroness, Lady Vere, and perhaps the Home Office, so that we can get one policy, a decision and a series of meetings, rather than being played off against one another, which I fear has happened in the past? Perhaps the Minister could respond to that.