A Portuguese lorry driver was sentenced to three years in jail after being found guilty on Monday of causing the deaths of a family of six by careless driving in Cheshire.

Husband and wife David and Michelle Statham and their four young children died when Paulo Jorge Nogueira da Silva's 40-tonne lorry smashed into their people-carrier on the M6 last October.

The family, which included sons Reece, 13; Jay, nine; Mason, 20 months and 10-week-old baby daughter Ellousie, was driving home to north Wales at the time.

"The overwhelming aggravating feature of what happened is the number of those killed," the judge, Justice Irwin, was quoted by the Press Association as saying.

The impact of the crash was so ferocious that the remains of the victims could not immediately be identified.

The prosecution suggested to the jury that da Silva, a lorry driver for 21 years, may have been using a satellite navigation system on a laptop computer as he drove along the motorway.

He denied the claim and said he did not see the vehicles ahead until it was too late.

Da Silva had told the court in Chester that he had seen electronic signs warning of possible queues and had slowed down, but could not explain how the collision occurred, the Crown Prosecution Service said after the case.

"The prosecution said that it was clear that for a period of around a whole minute da Silva was not paying proper attention to the road and fatally hit the car," added a CPS spokesman.