Ben Maguire

I welcome the Minister, my former Home Affairs Committee colleague, to his place. I urge all Members to support the excellent amendments tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Chichester (Jess Brown-Fuller), particularly new clause 11 on the suspension of driving licences during bail on driving-related offences, which is a common-sense proposal. I echo her praise of our hon. Friend the Member for Eastbourne (Josh Babarinde) for his excellent, passionate and successful campaign on tagging for domestic abuse crimes—a policy that the Government have adopted. I join my hon. Friend the Member for Chichester in urging the Government to go further than that by supporting new clause 8, which would make those aggravated crimes. I tabled new clause 35, which has already received support from across the House, on behalf of the of the Saltern family from my North Cornwall constituency. Their campaign—known as Ryan’s law—was launched a few years ago by Helen and Mark Saltern after their son Ryan was tragically hit and killed by a car after leaving the village carnival in St Teath. The driver did not stop to check on Ryan, administer first aid or even phone the police or other emergency services. Instead, Ryan—a father of one—was left in the road to die. The driver drove into work the next day as if nothing had happened. What punishment was the offender given for that fatal hit and run? He avoided prison entirely and was handed just a four-month suspended sentence by the magistrates court. The family of course acknowledge that accidents happen, but the driver left a young man dying in the road, did not even give it a second thought as he sped off—too cowardly to do the right thing—and did not spend a single day in prison for his crimes. I cannot imagine the pain that the family must feel. In response to that enormous injustice, they launched their “Ryan’s law” campaign and a petition that received overwhelming national support, reaching 167,000 signatures. Countless other families have been affected by similar cases right across this country.