I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention, because there is a serious point here. I have heard it anecdotally, speaking to prison officers and others who spend their time in prison, that if is often said, “If you want to kill someone, run them over,” because the sentences are such as joke. We have known about that for such a long time in this country that it is hard to understand why it still exists.
Even police officers who have seen Christina’s campaigning in this case have said that they need this power. We have been working with the family and Government, with the to-ing and fro-ing that happens in this space, and the Government have said in response that the police have those powers. They may well have them, but when the figures requested by the hon. Member for Neath come out of the Government, we will see that they are hardly ever used, so there is clearly a problem. Either the police do not know about it, or the problem is with their training and understanding that seeing a perpetrator driving round for the next 12 months without any sanction whatever, having seriously injured or killed one of our constituents, is clearly not acceptable, and not only for us as MPs who represent these cases. Imagine being a family member seeing that. We clearly have to address something there.
I reiterate my request that the Minister meets the family. It is so important that these voices are heard. As MPs, we see a lot of injustices and so on, but this one appears particularly egregious. Think about your son or partner losing his life in the way Tom did, with the perpetrator leaving the scene of the accident, admitting perverting the course of justice, drink-driving and so on and going to prison for three and a half months for killing your son or fiancée. That is not right. We all know it is not right, but no one has quite been bold enough to grasp the nettle on this. I commend the Government for increasing sentences from 14 years to life for some crimes, but that needs to be broader. At the moment, there does not seem to be a clear delineation between the damage someone can cause by, for example, knocking off a wing mirror and failing to report it and actually killing a human being. It is pretty basic stuff, but we do not often see it until it is clearly painted by seeing one of the families, as we have here today.
What do I want on behalf of the family? I want the Government to take this issue seriously and really address that core point. Leaving the scene of an accident is not a normal reaction. In other instances, such as an athlete failing to take a drugs test, it will be pretty obvious why they have done that. We need to make the sanction for leaving the scene of an accident as bad as being done for the crime, so that people are actually honest and victims can actually get some sort of justice.
Ultimately, we are all accountable, and police officers are public servants too, and I am a huge fan of them, but where operational decisions cause this much pain and injustices of this scale, we have to intervene and ask what is going on with these sentencing provisions. A person can essentially kill someone, using a car as a weapon, leave the scene drunk or high on drugs, go and hide and then hand themselves in the next day and get away with three and a half months in prison. That is extraordinary. It reflects really poorly on all of us. Crucially, think about if that happened to your son, partner or fiancé. You would be absolutely livid if that was the price that we, as legislators, or the House of Commons or the police put on your son’s or fiancé’s life.
I urge the Minister to think about those things in her response. I reiterate the request that she meet the family. We will continue with this campaign. If someone fails a binary drugs or drink test at a roadside with calibrated equipment and is therefore clearly not fit to drive, they have not taken their privilege of driving responsibly enough, and I can honestly see no clear reason why they should not therefore lose their licence. If the judge decides afterwards to give it back, fine, but there should be some sort of mandate whereby someone loses that privilege—it is a privilege, not a right—to drive if they are caught over the limit for drink or drugs. That is a very low bar for a Government that is committed to victims and to upholding the rule of law to achieve.
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