A driver who killed his partner and her mother in a crash has been jailed for six years and nine months at the High Court in Edinburgh.

Stephen MacPherson had admitted causing the deaths of Lynn Paterson, 41, and her mother Margert McGarvie, 70, by driving dangerously and at speeds of over 90 miles per hour on a road in the Black Isle in April 2007.

At an earlier hearing, the court was told that one passenger in the car said that the speedometer was reading 130 mph before the crash. The Peugeot became airborne when it crossed a hump-back bridge and crashed into a dry stone dyke before being propelled into a field.

A police investigator described the scene as resembling a "small air crash" because so much debris was scattered over the field.

The judge told  MacPherson he would have been jailed for nine years had he not pled guilty.

Macpherson had a previous conviction for drink driving and a previous conviction for dangerous driving in the 1990s.