Stephen Barclay – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Ministry of Justice

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Stephen Barclay on 2014-04-09.

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many convictions there have been for the offence of causing serious injury by dangerous driving since its introduction in 2012; and what the average length of sentence handed out by the courts for that offence is.

Jeremy Wright

The maximum penalty for causing serious injury by dangerous driving is 5 years custody. Since the introduction of this offence on 3 December 2012, 1 person has been proceeded against at, found guilty and sentenced at a magistrates’ court in England and Wales in 2012. There is too small a sample to provide a meaningful average custodial sentence length. We are keeping the law in this area under review. If any changes are needed, we will bring forward proposals.

Court proceedings data for this offence for 2013 are planned for publication in May 2014 as part of the Criminal Justice Statistics 2013 publication. Please note that this data presents the principal offences under which a defendant has been proceeded against. If a defendant has been proceeded against for two or more offences it is the offence with the higher or highest maximum penalty that is selected.