The Labour life peer Lord Ahmed was today sentenced to 12 weeks in jail for dangerous driving after he admitted sending text messages from behind the wheel before a fatal road accident.

Lord Ahmed had sent several long text messages on December 25, 2007 while driving at 60mph on the M1 motorway near Rotherham, South Yorkshire. Martyn Gombar, 28, a Slovakian man from Leigh, Lancashire, died when Lord Ahmed's Jaguar hit an Audi car that had crashed into the central reservation and was lying stationary across the middle and outside lanes.

Lord Ahmed pleaded guilty to dangerous driving but Mr Justice Wilkie made it clear that the offence had no causal link with the fatal accident.

The dangerous driving “involved driving at an earlier stage at speeds of around 60 mph along the M1 receiving, reading, composing and sending a series of text messages”, Mr Justice Wilkie said at Sheffield Crown Court.

It was now "well established that reading and composing text messages over a period of time constituted a gross, avoidable distraction and amounts to driving involving deliberate disregard for the safety of others".

He sentenced Lord Ahmed to 12 weeks in prison but the peer will serve half of that tariff.

David Cicak, Mr Gombar's cousin, said: “We’re not happy with this. He could be out in six weeks, that’s nothing. [My cousin] left behind two small kids now with only their mother.”

The court was told that Lord Ahmed sent his last message about two minutes before colliding with the Audi.

The peer pleaded guilty to dangerous driving after a police investigation plotted his phone use. He exchanged at least five messages with a journalist as he drove his Jaguar from Junction 40 to Junction 35, where the accident happened.

Mr Gombar’s Audi collided with the central reservation on the unlit motorway at about 6.20pm and was lying stationary on the road without lights.

Mr Gombar and a passenger had escaped to the hard shoulder but Mr Gombar then dashed back to retrieve his mobile phone. One driver saw the Audi at the last minute and managed narrowly to avoid a collision. Another clipped the Audi before Lord Ahmed’s car ran into it.

Police accident investigators said that the Audi was not visible to other drivers until they were almost upon it.

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