A LABOUR peer who admitted texting while driving minutes before he was involved in a crash in which a Lancashire man died has been jailed for 12 weeks.

Sheffield Crown Court was told Lord Ahmed, who admitted dangerous driving, was involved in an accident which left a man dead on the M1 near Rotherham on Christmas Day 2007.

But the judge made clear the text messaging had finished before the accident took place and was not connected to the fatal incident.

The judge, Mr Justice Wilkie, heard Lord Ahmed sent and received a series of five text messages, all of which were described as substantial, rather than a few words.

The judge said the exchange of messages with a journalist amounted to a conversation, which took place as the peer was travelling at about 60mph over a 17.8-mile stretch of the southbound carriageway.

The judge was told the fatal accident happened close to junction 35 of the motorway.

Lord Ahmed's Jaguar collided with an Audi. Its driver, Martyn Gombar, 28, from Leigh, had crashed minutes earlier and is thought to have been trying to retrieve his mobile phone from the vehicle.

The court was told that subsequent tests showed father-of-two Mr Gombar had been drinking and crashed his car into the central reservation, spinning it round. As Lord Ahmed approached the Audi, it was facing the wrong way, straddling the two outermost lanes in total darkness.

The court heard another car clipped its wing mirror and a further vehicle had taken such drastic avoiding action that it also collided with the central reservation. But the judge said Lord Ahmed's text message conversation ended three kilometres (1.86 miles), or two minutes, before the collision with the Audi.

Scapegoat

Lord Ahmed's solicitor, Steve Smith, said outside court that he thought his client had been used as a 'scapegoat' by those attempting to drive home the message about not using a mobile phone while at the wheel.

Mr Smith said he was launching an immediate appeal against the sentence and said he would be pressing the Court of Appeal to deal with it quickly as it was likely the peer would only be in prison for a short time.

He said: “I've been with him. He's very philosophical. He's approaching it with great dignity.

“He says 'If that's the law, if that's what the law says, then that's what must
be'.

“I, on the other hand, tend not to agree with it.

“I am extremely disappointed with that sentence.”

Mr Smith went on: “I think he's been used as a scapegoat because there aren't any cases on the topic of using mobile phones by way of messaging in driving cases.

“So to that extent I think he's been used as a fall guy.”


The solicitor said: “I don't think it's right that you can simply say in text message cases you must automatically go to prison and here's a nice example for you.”