A 62-year-old lorry driver who killed a family of four, including two young children, was jailed for six years at Maidstone Crown Court on Wednesday.

Peter Murray was two-and-a-half times the legal drink-drive limit when his HGV smashed into a VW Vento parked on the hard shoulder with a flat tyre near the Clacket Lane services at Brasted, Sevenoaks, on August 8, 2006.

In the car were Medhat Sawirs, 40, his 31-year-old wife Ghade Sita and their two daughters Mary, aged four, and two-year-old Sylvia. They had pulled over next to an SOS motorway telephone box.

The court heard that the Vento was "partially crushed, partially dragged" beneath the lorry and across all three lanes of the M25 before colliding with the central reservation and catching fire.

Murray, of Brighton Road, Kingswood, Tadworth in Surrey, had been driving lorries for 40 years. He admitted four offences of causing death by dangerous driving.

Passing sentence, Judge Philip Statman said cases such as this were "probably the most difficult" to deal with.

He said it was impossible to imagine the impact this tragedy had had on the Sawirs family, and that Murray would have to live with the consequences of his behaviour for the rest of his life.

The judge said that this was a "high culpability case" due to the consumption of alcohol, the nature of the driving and the multiple deaths that occurred.

He added that he had taken Murray's guilty pleas, previous good character and genuine remorse into consideration.