A Labour peer is to be prosecuted for dangerous driving after someone allegedly sent a text message from his mobile phone shortly before a fatal motorway crash.

Lord Ahmed, 51, was driving his Jaguar X-type on the M1 last Christmas Day when it hit an Audi A4 that had crashed into the central reservation and stopped in the outside lane. The driver of the other car, Martyn Gombar, 28, was killed instantly.

South Yorkshire Police confirmed yesterday that Lord Ahmed is to be summoned to appear in court in connection with dangerous driving. The maximum sentence for that offence is two years.

The police investigation has centred on reports that someone in the car used Lord Ahmed’s mobile telephone to send a text message to a journalist shortly before the crash. It is claimed that the message was sent from his car about three minutes before the same telephone was used to call 999.

Lord Ahmed said that he had not been informed of the decision to prosecute him and refused to comment on claims that he might have sent a text message shortly before the accident. “Obviously I am still denying anything to do with any dangerous driving and I will speak to my lawyer,” he said.

The Pakistani-born politician suffered cuts and bruises in the accident. His wife, Sakina, 49, and his mother, Rashim, sustained minor injuries. Shortly after the incident Lord Ahmed confirmed that he had been at the wheel at the time of the crash. “There was a red car in the third lane facing the wrong way and there was nothing I could do,” he said. “It was absolutely horrendous, but I don’t want to talk about it.”

Lord Ahmed was appointed to the House of Lords in 1998 as the first Muslim peer of modern times.

The father of three has become one of the most prominent Islamic politicians in Britain and played a role in easing tensions between communities after the 2005 terror attacks on London.

A South Yorkshire Police spokesman said: “On advice from the special crime division of the Crown Prosecution Service, a 51-year-old Rotherham man will be issued with a summons to appear at Sheffield Magistrates’ Court on a date to be fixed in relation to driving his motor car dangerously on the south-bound carriageway of the M1 between junctions 40 and 35.”

Mr Gombar and a friend, aged 30, had reached safety on the hard shoulder of the motorway after his Audi crashed into the central reservation and ended up in the outside lane facing oncoming traffic. The father of two from Leigh, Greater Manchester, returned to retrieve his mobile telephone to call police when the car was hit at about 6.20pm.

The maximum sentence for a more serious offence of causing death by dangerous driving is 14 years, but the top end of the range is rarely imposed by judges. However, Sentencing Advisory Panel guidelines published in 2003 include driving while the driver’s attention is avoidably distracted, for example by using a mobile telephone, as factors that aggravate the seriousness of the offence and should be taken into account.

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