“In section 170 of the Road Traffic Act 1988, after subsection (4) insert—

‘(4A) A person guilty of an offence under subsection (4) is liable—

(a) If a person other than the driver of the vehicle suffered a fatal injury—

(i) on conviction on indictment, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 14 years.

(b) If a person other than the driver of the vehicle suffered a serious non-fatal injury—

(i) on summary conviction, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 10 years or a fine not exceeding £20,000 or both;

(ii) on conviction on indictment, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 10 years.

(c) In any other case—

(i) on summary conviction, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 10 years or a fine not exceeding £20,000 or both;

(ii) on conviction on indictment, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 10 years.’”—(Peter Dowd.)

This new clause would expand the existing offence of failing to stop after a road collision to create more serious penalties for failing to stop after collisions which result in death or serious injury.

Brought up, and read the First time.

I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:

New clause 18—Time to report road collision—

“In section 170 of the Road Traffic Act 1988, omit subsection (6) and insert—

‘(6) In complying with a duty under this section to report an accident or to produce such a certificate of insurance or other evidence, as is mentioned in section 165(2)(a) of this Act, it is an offence for a driver—

(a) not to do so at a police station or to a constable as soon as is reasonably practicable, and

(b) not to do so within two hours of the occurrence of the accident in relation to reporting an accident, or within twenty-four hours of the occurrence of the accident in relation to the production of a certificate of insurance or other evidence.’”

This amendment would amend the Road Traffic Act 1988 to reduce the time within which a driver must report a road collision in which they were involved from twenty-four hours to two hours, and make it an offence not to report an accident.

New clause 49—Amendments to the Road Traffic Act 1988—

“(1) The Road Traffic Act 1988 is amended as follows.

(2) In each of the sections listed below, after ‘a road or other public place’ insert ‘, or a private place adjacent to a road,’—

section 1 (causing death by dangerous driving);

section 1A (causing serious injury by dangerous driving);

section 2 (dangerous driving);

section 2B (causing death by careless, or inconsiderate, driving);

section 2C (causing serious injury by careless, or inconsiderate, driving);

section 3 (careless, and inconsiderate, driving).”

This new clause would extend the Road Traffic Act 1988 so that a range of driving offences can be committed in private places adjacent to roads as well as on public roads or in public places.

New clauses 17 and 18 relate to the offence of failing to remain at the scene of a traffic collision. My new clause 17 is clear and unambiguous. As Members will see from the explanatory statement, it would expand the existing offence of failing to stop after a road collision and would create a more serious penalty for failing to stop after a collision that results in the death or serious injury of the person hit by the vehicle. I emphasise the element that refers to victims of serious injury or death.

I put on the record the support provided to me by RoadPeace, particularly by Lucy Harrison. I want to mention Pauline Fielding, who died last year; her son was killed in an accident several decades ago, and she was a sterling advocate and campaigner on the issue in the north-west. I put on record my thanks for the work that Pauline did. I also thank Cycling UK, particularly Roger Geffen; Amy Aeron-Thomas at Action Vision Zero, who has worked on the issue; and a number of other organisations that have campaigned for many years. However, everything I say today is my responsibility and not that of others.

Why have these measures not been put on the statute book before? Promises to review the law have been made in the past and, to be fair, have been partly fulfilled, but there remains a great deal to do. It has been 10 years since the Government said that they would undertake a full review and consultation on traffic offences. Regrettably, as we discuss these issues, no full review has taken place. It seems to me that there is an irrefutable case for introducing these amendments, or a variation of them, on potential penalties. I am not servile to the wording of the new clauses; there can be variations on a theme. I recognise the legislative pressures on the Government and the workloads within Departments, but sometimes there are issues that have to be faced up to. In my view, this is one of them.

Let me set the context for these proposals. Every 16 minutes, someone is killed or seriously injured on a road in the United Kingdom. That is quite a stark figure, as I am sure hon. Members will agree; it is an official figure based on the average over the 10-year period from 2013 to 2022. To put it into an annual context, it means that 31,000 men, women and children were killed or seriously injured in collisions, out of a total of about 135,000 casualties right across the piece, including very minor collisions. In a year, 1,766 people killed were killed—1,711 in Britain and 55 in Northern Ireland—and 28,941 seriously injured: 28,031 in Britain and 910 in Northern Ireland. Road deaths have increased by 10% since 2021 and are close to pre-pandemic levels. Serious injuries are up 8% since 2021. I stand to be corrected, but on average, if I have my figures right, 85 people are killed or seriously injured every year in each of our constituencies. That is seven every month. The lives of our constituents are lost or irreparably damaged or changed.

Meanwhile, many drivers simply leave the scene of the collision—as many as 17,000, according to figures from the Motor Insurers’ Bureau. Not all of those are related to serious injury or fatality, which this clause deals with, but many families are left bereft and victims are left to carry on with their lives while perhaps very physically or neurologically damaged, not to mention the ongoing psychological impact of not knowing who was responsible and of not being able to settle. Let us say that families approached us in our constituency surgery having found out that some of the drivers involved in collisions had fled the scene—in other words, they had hit and run—and had avoided potentially more serious consequences as a result. What would we say to our constituents?

In preparing this speech, I pondered whether to give case examples of lives destroyed and families left shattered. I decided not to. Members have had so much to take in already—we have heard that today—that I do not think that adding to that with more tragic narratives would be appropriate, but I will challenge them in a different way. For the purposes of the debate, I will set aside the emotional effect on the victim’s family, knowing that their daughter, son, brother, sister, mother, father or other relative has been left on the road or the side of the road to die by a fleeing driver because the driver decided not to stop, or, having stopped, got back into the car and drove off.

What would Members say to a constituent sitting in front of them who presents the evidence of their experience? What would we say? “What a shame, I am sorry to hear that”? What if the constituent said, “You have the power, capacity and wherewithal to change the legislation, given that you are a member of this Committee. Will you speak up for me in the Committee? Will you help to change the law?” What would be our response? Would we defend the status quo? Would we, figuratively speaking, shrug our shoulders and say, “There is little I can do to redress the balance”? Would we sit there in silence, or would we look at the data and the information provided by our constituent and road safety campaigners, and make a decision on the basis of that data and information? I hope we would do the latter. We have that opportunity. That is what I am asking hon. Members to do—no more, no less.

These people, our constituents, are not seeking vengeance or retribution for themselves; they are seeking justice for others, or for those who may be affected in the future. In our proceedings over the past few weeks we have sought justice by changing or introducing measures when faced with evidence, however upsetting those stories, information and narratives were. It has been pretty upsetting; we have heard that again today. I am going to be a proxy for those constituents. The Committee has dealt with so many harrowing cases. Colleagues listened carefully and respectfully when we discussed child sexual exploitation, adult sexual exploitation, grooming gangs, fraud, knife crime, coercive control and the abuse of intimate images. There have been many other sensitive but necessary interactions and interventions. It can be distressing, but why should it not be? In effect, the Committee has ensured additional and more serious consequences for actions that we consider to be intolerable.

We have a responsibility and a job to do to protect the public. We have taken that very seriously over the past few weeks. It is our first and most important responsibility: protecting the our constituents’ wellbeing and, wherever and whenever we can, seeking justice. After all, we are discussing the Criminal Justice Bill. My amendment seeks to ensure that we fulfil our responsibility by making it clear that heartlessly driving off after having hit another human being—including children, but no matter how old they are—will result in a sanction that sends a clear message that such selfish behaviour is intolerable and unacceptable.

Members may ask why people drive off. Is it shock, a sort of flight or fight response, or even “I didn’t realise I had hit somebody. I did not notice”? Really? Seriously? What are some of the other reasons for driving off, leaving a person potentially dead or dead? Dr Matt Hopkins from the University of Leicester, who has interviewed dozens of hit-and-run drivers about why they failed to stop, said:

“What the research seems to be pointing to is that a fair proportion of hit-and-run collisions are related to drivers who tend not to have valid insurance, tend not to have a valid licence”.

Others had a ban in place at the time of collision, or were under the influence of drink or drugs, or both; others did not have a licence, or were in stolen cars. It is clear that a driver trying to avoid responsibility by driving off can potentially avoid the consequences of their actions.

Currently, the maximum penalty for driving off after a collision is up to six months in prison, excluding other potential subsequent penalties. That might suffice where a driver leaves a scene having, for example, damaged a car, but not when they have left someone—a pedestrian, a cyclist, a motorcyclist—dead or seriously injured in the road.

New clause 18 would reduce the amount of time a person has to report a collision from 24 hours to two hours. There are so many cases where after a collision occurs, the driver, who may be under the influence of drink or drugs, drives off and then sobers up. If or when they are found, they are free of the intoxicating substance and so can avoid the penalties that might have arisen had they been tested at the scene of the collision or soon after. Given that, the new clause reduces the amount of time a person has to report a collision—I say collision because many of these are not accidents; they are collisions. Two hours is more than enough time, given that virtually everybody today has a mobile phone, which did not exist when the legislation was first introduced.

I hope Members understand the spirit of what I am intending with these new clauses. They are quite simply designed to ensure that those who seriously injure or kill a person they collide with face justice if they decide to leave the scene of the collision. As I said earlier, if Minister wishes to take away my new clauses and give the intent behind them some thought, I would be more than willing to withdraw them and give the Government the opportunity to carefully consider the points I have made, our constituents have made and road safety campaigners would make if they could speak directly to the Committee.

I rise to speak to new clause 49 on behalf of my hon. Friend Gerald Jones and others. The new clause would amend the Road Traffic Act 1988 to provide that dangerous and careless or inconsiderate driving offences may be committed on private land adjacent to the highway. In August 2017, 22-month-old Pearl Melody Black from Merthyr Tydfil was tragically killed while walking with her father and brother. Pearl was killed by an unoccupied vehicle that rolled from a private drive in Merthyr on to a highway and down a hill, crashing into a wall that subsequently crushed Pearl and injured her father and brother.

In the months after the incident, officers from the serious collision unit of South Wales police worked tirelessly to put together a case to provide justice for the family. In short, all tests concluded that the car was mechanically sound and that it had rolled because the handbrake was not fully engaged and the automatic transmission was not fully placed in park mode. The case was sent to the Crown Prosecution Service in March 2018 and was worked on by the London office as well as by an independent QC hired by the CPS. Everyone was hopeful of a conviction under the causing death by dangerous driving category, and the CPS looked at other possible options. However, in June 2018 the CPS stated that it was unable to send the case to court as a glitch in the law states that the vehicle must have started its journey on a public road for a prosecution under the Road Traffic Act 1988. Even though Pearl was killed on a public road, the fact that the vehicle started its descent from a private drive meant that prosecution was not possible.

The coroner stated that the vehicle was well maintained and it seemed that the issue was very much driver operation. The inquest heard that the handbrake had not been fully applied in park mode. The inquest into Pearl’s death was heard in October 2018 and the outcome was that it was an accident. However, with the support of South Wales police and the CPS, Pearl’s parents have been seeking a change in the law to prevent other families from being unable to secure justice due to a legal loophole following such a tragic and completely preventable accident as this. As Gemma and Paul acknowledge, it will not help to bring justice for Pearl, as legislation is not retrospective, but if this law can be changed to prevent anyone else from suffering this injustice again, it may provide some comfort.

My hon. Friend the Member for Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney put forward a ten-minute rule Bill that had cross-party support, including mine, but it fell due to a lack of parliamentary time. Meetings with various Justice and Transport Ministers have been helpful in that they were all sympathetic, but there is currently no major transport Bill that could provide a vehicle for this change. This new clause would therefore allow for the change to be made.

It is wholly wrong that, in cases as tragic as the one I outlined, justice cannot be achieved. There can be no conviction simply because the land on which the incident took place is not classified as public. If the law were changed in relation to driving offences occurring on private land adjoining public land, that would be a powerful deterrent to road users being careless, as well as those who have no doubt exploited the current loopholes in the law to avoid conviction when they have undoubtedly been at fault. People would be more likely to take care and pay more attention when parking or driving on private land close to public land if they knew that there could be serious consequences for their careless and reckless behaviour.

There are a huge number of instances where private land adjoining public land is readily used and potentially dangerous to those around it, including residential driveways, schools and nurseries, supermarkets, shopping centres, hospitals and doctors’ surgeries to name some of the more common ones. When we consider those examples, we can see that driving on that specific category of land can present a high risk to people in everyday situations, and especially children, the elderly and some of the most vulnerable among us.

I am sure that all hon. Members agree that nobody who has suffered the loss of a loved one or had an accident or an injury as a result of a driving offence should have to endure the injustice of seeing those responsible go free simply because of a loophole in the law. Prosecutions for driving offences—indeed, for any illegal action—should be based on what happened, not where it happened.

I shall be brief. My hon. Friends the Members for Bootle and for Swansea East have addressed new clauses 17, 18 and 49, and I pay tribute to them and to my hon. Friend the Member for Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney for the work they have done on road traffic incidents. All three new clauses illustrate the need for a sentencing review for serious road traffic offences, and Labour is committed to doing that alongside sentencing for other serious crimes across the system.

The Minister and the Committee heard the tragic accounts outlined by my hon. Friends, including that of a runaway car that killed a young child. Sadly, in that case, there could be no justice for the child or her family as no offence related to the circumstances of her death. Surely that cannot be right. I am sure the Minister agrees that we have a duty to act in all three areas outlined in the new clauses. Has she examined the impact of those measures on cost, particularly in relation to the additional cost of prison places? If she has not, will she consider doing so before Report and share that information with the Committee, so that we are better informed? If she cannot support the new clauses today, I would be obliged if she told us what action, if any, her Department is considering for such offences and whether the Government plan to address them in the Bill at a later stage, or perhaps during Committee of the whole House on the Sentencing Bill, which I believe is due within the next few weeks.

There can be no doubt that the new clauses would close loopholes in the law that currently prevent families of loved ones killed in tragic circumstances from achieving either justice or closure. I look forward to the Minister’s response.

I thank the hon. Members for Bootle and for Swansea East for compellingly setting out the impact of various forms of driving offence that are raised in our surgeries. When we talk about driving offences, there is often a narrow focus on things such as drink-driving for which the penalties are serious; we do not talk enough about things such as causing death by dangerous driving, which can be unbelievably reckless and irresponsible and cause the most serious harms.

The hit and run that the hon. Member for Bootle so powerfully described was an extension of dangerous driving. Whether panic, cowardice or other offences that the perpetrator is concerned about come to the fore, such incidents are absolutely devastating for the families of the victim. I therefore pay tribute to those hon. Members for the way in which they presented the new clauses.

It was helpful to hear that the hon. Member for Bottle is not wedded to the language he has used in his new clause. I had some remarks to make about that, but I will not spend too much time on that because of his indication. I do not know whether this applies to the hon. Member for Bootle too, but I understand that the hon. Member for Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney is having conversations with the Department for Transport. I hope the hon. Member for Bootle will allow time for those conversations to happen and for us to engage with them before the Bill comes back. With all that in mind, I will lay out the framework for how we deal with the hit and run issue and I will then come on to the other points and where the Government’s thinking lies at present.

In a small number of hit and run cases, the driver leaving will contribute to serious injury or even to the death of the victim, but in the vast majority of such cases, the convictions for drivers who fail to stop come after they caused minor property damage or more low-level personal injury. As I said, I will not spend too much time on the new clause except to say that the way it is drafted would create a very high penalty while not making it clear that there is necessarily a causal connection between the fact that the driver has departed the scene and the injury itself. Ordinarily, within the contours of this area of the law, the more serious penalties are reserved for cases in which there is a causal connection between whatever the driver did and the injury that followed. I have already said that there can be cases where there is a direct correlation, and it may be that the hon. Member for Bootle had that in mind when he drafted the new clause, but I just point that out to him.

Where there is evidence that the driver caused harm, there is a range of other offences. There is, of course, causing death or serious injury by dangerous or careless driving. At the extreme end, a hit and run can amount to perverting the course of justice, for which the maximum sentence is life. I do not want the hon. Gentleman to think that there are no circumstances where a more serious penalty can be applied. It is also the case that departure from the scene of the crime would be aggravating in the normal context of sentencing for a crime of that nature. We are therefore concerned that the penalties in the new clause would create a sense of disproportionality in maximum sentencing compared with other death or injury offences where there is a higher level of culpability. Indeed, I have already said I consider causing death by dangerous driving to be an area in which Parliament should be particularly interested.

The hon. Gentleman presented new clause 18 on mandatory reporting in a compelling way. In a way, I think that what he is saying is two halves of the same whole, which is not just that the person should stop but that they should take positive action to make the police aware of what has happened. Again, I hope he will read my comments in the context of the existing legal framework and understand why I make them.

In the majority of road traffic accidents, we are looking at something more minor, where stopping often marks the beginning of the reporting period, in the sense that both sides will swap details and there is then a claim to the insurance company; the notification takes place in that way. One of our concerns about reducing the reporting time to two hours is that that could create unnecessarily onerous reporting restrictions, particularly if there is no police station anywhere nearby. We are also concerned that having to report all accidents to the police could put too much pressure on police stations when, as I have already said, quite a lot of those accidents are minor and can be resolved without the intervention of the police. I am sure the hon. Member for Bootle had that in mind anyway.

The hon. Member for Swansea East, who was presenting the amendment on behalf of the hon. Member for Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney, told us of a case that I had never heard about before. It is truly tragic, and I can understand the sense of injustice. There seems to be an anomaly in the law where if a vehicle takes off from private land, makes its way on to public land and a fatality occurs, the family is left without recourse. I think that engages an important question.

The hon. Lady will know why there is a general prohibition relating to private land, and how many legitimate uses of vehicles on private land would not be acceptable on a road. Obviously, any change to private land more widely would have far-reaching implications for other aspects of the Road Traffic Act 1988, such as having a driving licence, motor insurance and the definition of vehicles that falls within the Act’s scope. There are things such as buggies—I do not know what they are called—that people can go around in private land.

Quad bikes.

Hon. Members will know what I mean: those things that are not cars. There is, therefore, quite a lot of classification. We have a two-part system.

I am slightly confused. I get all the stuff about not being insured and not needing a driving licence, but surely if a person clobbers somebody with a quad bike and causes them injury, there has to be some recourse?

My hon. Friend is correct, but that would be a civil action for negligence, for which remedies would be available. We treat private land separately, but I think the was saying something rather different, about where private land becomes public land. When the index offence takes place, it relates to a motor vehicle on public land; we are not dealing with particularly difficult definitional issues. I undertake to take that point away; I had not understood it from the motion and the explanation of the hon. Member for Swansea East, so it might require some further thought. I hope conversations are happening in the Department for Transport, but I will ensure that that point is included in the Department’s thinking.

I point out, in the interest of completeness, that there is a broad definition of land that is defined as “private”. Some complications may exist around the classifications of private land, such as that used for military, commercial or other official purposes or land that is exempt from legal proceedings for offences committed there. There is a legal framework in place. Accidents on private land are covered by civil law and compensation—I talked about negligence in relation to a quad bike. In extreme cases such as gross negligence manslaughter or breaches of the Offences Against the Person Act 1861, the criminal law may be engaged too. With all that in mind, I urge hon. Members to withdraw the motion.

I hear what the Minister says, and I will withdraw the motion. It was a probing amendment in an attempt to give consideration to this issue, which affects so many people—our constituents—day in, day out; I gave the figures. As I said, I recuse myself from giving examples, because they are dreadfully distressing for people and I do not want to distress Members any more than I need to. I recused myself from giving examples, of which there are so many, but I hope the Minister hears the spirit of what I tried to say. It is not about people wanting vengeance; it is about getting an element of justice. I hope the Government will give serious consideration to these matters, because at some point they will come back.

I acknowledge and accept that this is not a transport Committee, but my proposals are within the scope of the Bill, so the Government have the power to pursue them if they wish. I ask the Ministers to take them away and think about them. I will be in touch with the Department for Transport, although, as I mentioned earlier, Departments are often packed out with work. None the less, this issue is of such import—it impacts on the lives of our constituents day in, day out—and we and the Government must consider it very carefully as early as practically possible. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion.

Motion, by leave, withdrawn.