"My baby died-then I was convicted over lapsed car insurance"

Broken and lost after her three-month-old daughter died from pneumonia, Jenny Beasley forgot to renew a policy ―and found herself prosecuted as a criminal under the controversial Single Justice Procedure, Tristan Kirk reports

- Tristan Kirk

JENNY BEASLEY held the hand of her three-month-old daughter Scarlett as she died in hospital from pneumonia. At that moment, she knew her life had been irrevocably changed. Jenny was plunged into unimaginable pain and despair, and in the weeks after Scarlett’s death she continued to look after her other young children, had to cope with doctors and the coroner, and plan for her baby’s funeral.

In that maelstrom of grief, Jenny’s car insurance lapsed for a single day as the normal day-to-day administration of life was waylaid. She paid for a new policy as soon as she realised but Jenny found herself being taken to court by the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency over that single day when she was not insured. She then became one of the victims of the controversial Single Justice Procedure.

Jenny trusted the justice system to be fair, but her heartbreaking letter — setting out how she had accidentally let her insurance lapse after her daughter died — was not even read by prosecutors from the DVLA.

In the fast-track courts, the chance to withdraw the case against her was lost and she ended up with a criminal conviction.

“I am upset and angry because I’ve now got a conviction for something that, to me, was really out of my control,” she said. “What I was doing when Scarlett died was being a convicted criminal. That’s not anything that I want attached to that time of my life.

“I want to be able to look back and process that on my own without having to think about being prosecuted for ‘one day’.