TOUGH new laws banning drivers using mobile phones have been urged by Darwen and Rossendale MP Janet Anderson.

The call comes despite the fact that she and all her fellow East Lancashire MPs admitted having used such devices in the past while at the wheel.

Mrs Anderson believes the current law is not adequate to tackle the growing safety problem. Experts believe that 16 deaths have already been caused by motorists on such phones while behind the wheel and warned that many more accidents could have been caused by them.

Mrs Anderson yesterday introduced a Private Members Bill under the ten minute rule to beef up the current law along the lines already taken by New York. She accepts such measures rarely become law but hopes that with cross-party support, this one will make it or at least prompt the government to bring in its own similar measures.

East Lancashire Labour MPs Gordon Prentice and Greg Pope plus senior Tory backbencher Sir Sidney Chapman and Liberal Democrat Paul Keetch, supported Mrs Anderson's Bill but it was was condemned by Ribble Valley Tory MP Nigel Evans as "ridiculous".

Burnley Labour MP Peter Pike expressed reservations about any new law and appealed to drivers to use common sense.

Mrs Anderson told the Commons that existing laws on careless and dangerous driving, which ministers have long argued ban the use of mobiles while driving, were not adequate to stop the practice. She said she was inspired to bring in the Bill by Rossendale councillor Geoff Cheetham, who represents Eden ward, who asked her one day: "When are you MPs going to do something about people talking on their mobile when they are driving."

The former Labour minister said there could be no MP who had not at some time seen someone at "the wheel of a motor vehicle who was at the same time conducting a conversation on a hand-held mobile phone". She said many would have done so themselves, adding: "I am sure that I am one.''

She said that while it was technically an offence under the Road Traffic Act 1988, because using a hand-held phone meant drivers were not "exercising proper control of the vehicle at all times", the current legal position was not up to the job of stopping motorists endangering themselves and others by doing so.