A BANNED driver, said to be addicted to getting behind the wheel, crashed into the back of a broken down car on the motorway - only three weeks after a court disqualified him for five years.

Adam Virr, 30, then persuaded his girlfriend to lie to police, claiming her car had been stolen in a burglary, and threatened to end their relationship if she did not do so.

Prosecutor Andrew Horton told Bradford Crown Court that a BMW had broken down in the outside lane of the M606. The driver had contacted the police and got out of the car. The BMW was written off when Virr drove into it in his partner Fiona Smith's Volkswagen Golf. Smith was with him. They ran off and got into another car.

An hour and a half after the accident, on March 29 this year, Smith made a 999 call to police claiming her home had been burgled. Police went to the address.

Both defendants were there and showed the officers a smashed vase they said had been caused by the intruders. Smith made a false statement, claiming her car keys had been stolen and the Golf driven off from outside the house.

Mr Horton said Smith used a police officer's phone to cancel bank cards. Police returned the next day and Smith admitted making up the burglary.

The Golf was examined and found to have Virr's DNA on it, but he denied driving it.

The court heard Virr had a number of convictions for dangerous driving, as well as aggravated vehicle taking, perverting the course of justice and wasting police time. On March 7, Virr was given a 16-month suspended prison sentence and banned from driving for five years for offences which included dangerous driving, when he drove dangerously for 20 minutes, went through red lights and rammed a police car.

Virr, of Brooklyn Road, Cleckheaton, pleaded guilty to attempting to pervert the course of justice and driving while disqualified.

The court heard that probation officers considered Virr had a "severe addiction" to driving.

Virr's barrister, Thomas Stanway, said his client had panicked after the accident and put pressure on Smith to report a burglary to police. It was not a sophisticated offence and he was keen to address his behaviour.

Shufqat Khan, barrister for Smith, who pleaded guilty to attempting to pervert the course of justice, said Virr had written a letter in which he said he had told his partner to make the false burglary report to cover up what he had done, and when she refused he continued to force her to report it to police, saying he would end the relationship if she did not do so.

Mr Khan said she had been a class A drug user, but had turned her life around.

Judge Colin Burn told Virr he had put pressure on Smith to "make up this complete fiction".

The judge added: "You have a compulsive desire to get behind the wheel of a car.

"The courts have to make it clear that disqualified means what it says, and if they are driving while disqualified, prison has to follow."

He sentenced Virr to four months imprisonment for attempting to pervert the course of justice, with a consecutive two months for driving while disqualified. Judge Burn further activated 12 months of the suspended sentence, to be served consecutively. But he said Virr would be released in around two months due to time spent in custody and on curfew.

Sentencing Smith, 32, of High Street, Cleckheaton, to four months imprisonment suspended for 12 months, with 100 hours of unpaid community work, the judge said police were "running around, you having given a false story, to try to gather evidence to support a lie."