A 23-year-old man has been jailed for four years for his part in a spate of high-value burglaries.

After one of the break-ins, drink-driver Paul McBride was involved in a high-speed pursuit which ended when he lost control of the Audi A4 he was using and collided with a police car on Leylands Avenue, Bradford.

In the boot of the vehicle police found a plasma television which had earlier been stolen from a house in Effingham Drive, Harden, but there was no trace of another Audi A4 worth £22,000, taken from outside the property.

Because the burglary did not come to light until later, McBride was only charged with driving offences and bailed by magistrates. Prosecutor Richard Davies told Bradford Crown Court yesterday that four days later McBride walked into a doctor's surgery in Selby, where he stole the car keys from a doctor's jacket and drove away in his £11,000 Volkswagen Passat.

A tracker device helped police trace the vehicle to Bradford and McBride was arrested.

The court heard that after he was remanded in custody in October, McBride, of Hatfield Road, Undercliffe, Bradford, admitted his involvement in the break-in at Harden and confessed to other offences which he asked to be taken into consideration. As well as pleading guilty to the two burglaries and a charge of dangerous driving, McBride admitted driving while disqualified, driving without insurance and drink-drinking.

He also asked for eight burglaries, an attempted burglary, and one offence of taking a motor vehicle without consent to be taken into consideration under a "clean slate" policy.

McBride was already subject to a three-year driving ban, but Judge Robert Bartfield yesterday imposed a further three-year disqualification with a requirement that he take an extended test.

His barrister Gerald Hendron stressed that his client was not the prime mover in the offences.