A FORMER Conservative minister, Sir Nicholas Scott, was yesterday banned from driving for a year and ordered to pay £900.
He was arrested in June last year after his car shunted another vehicle and trapped a three year old boy in his pushchair. Sir Nicholas (62), a former social security and Northern Ireland minister, was fined £200 (with £450 costs) for driving with excess blood alcohol. For failing to stop he was fined £250.
Sir Nicholas pleaded guilty to driving with 98 milligrams of alcohol in 100 millilitres of blood. The legal limit is 80 milligrams. The MP for Chelsea denied failing to stop after the accident.
The magistrate, Mr Roger Davies, was told that Sir Nicholas had just left a party at the Chelsea Farmers' Market with his secretary, Miss Patricia Sill Johnston, and was about to drive off in a red Volvo automatic borrowed from his mother in law, Lady Ena Faure Hawk. He said he was not used to the car and it had pulled forward but he did not think anything more than a minor bump had occurred.
But the court was told that the vehicle had shunted a Volvo estate in front of it and that vehicle had trapped Thibault Perreard (3) in his pushchair.
The little boy was caught in the buggy between the Volvo estate and a Jaguar. Thibault's father, a Swiss banker, Mr Yves Perreard, described how he tried to free his son as passers by were shouting and trying to make Sir Nicholas pull his car back to release the child. He said he later tried to find the driver but could not.
Police interviewed Sir Nicholas two hours after the accident at the nearby home of his doctor. They had received a telephone call to say that Sir Nicholas was there waiting to be interviewed. PC Philip Logan said that Sir Nicholas told him he had drunk a couple of glasses of wine and was later given a glass of whisky by his doctor.
Sir Nicholas said he patted the child on the head and then decided to walk to the nearby Conservative Association office to phone for police or an ambulance. The association office was closed. He, had walked back to, the scene to find a lot of people in a state of "confusion and turmoil" and had decided to wait for police at his doctor's home.