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Fourth Standing Committee
on Delegated Legislation
Wednesday 30 June 2004
[Mr. David Amess in the Chair]
Draft Discharge of Fines by Unpaid Work (Prescribed Hourly Sum) Regulations 2004
2.30 pm
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs (Mr. Christopher Leslie): I beg to move,
That the Committee has considered the draft Discharge of Fines by Unpaid Work (Prescribed Hourly Sum) Regulations 2004.
May I say what a pleasure it is to support the small but perfectly formed draft statutory instrument that is before the Committee today? First, I should like to introduce the subject and give a little of the background to put it in context.
The Courts Act, which many hon. Members remember fondly, received Royal Assent on 20 November 2003. It contained, among other things, a new scheme for fine enforcement. The new measure makes a clear distinction between offenders who co-operate with the court and pay their dues, and those who do not. The main provisions in that part of the Act are the wider use of attachment of earnings and deduction from benefit orders, a new offence for non-provision of financial means information, a late payment penalty on those who, for example, default and do not pay in time, and other sanctions, including the clamping of cars, registration on a register of judgment for persistent defaulters and so on. The sanctions focus on those who refuse to pay. Various combinations of those sanctions are being piloted in six magistrates courts committee areas. A national pilot of the wider use of attachment of earnings and deductions from benefits orders is also under way.
For the ''can't payers''—those who are genuinely unable to pay—the fine may be discharged through fine payment work as set out in schedule 6 of the Courts Act. The power of a court to allow an offender to work off their fine by means of unpaid work is also in the Act, and that provision requires the regulations that we are debating today.
Until now, offenders have been able to avoid punishment by claiming that they do not have enough money to pay their fine. Those people do not refuse to pay, but genuinely have no means of doing so. Typically they are offenders who have been fined, but whose financial circumstances have changed since they were sentenced and from whom the money can no longer be collected. At the moment, the courts have no option but to remit the fine; in other words, to let them off. It is for those people that fine payment work is being introduced. When it appears to a court that a fine cannot be enforced by any of the usual means, it can give the offender the chance to discharge the fine
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through unpaid work instead of cash. If the offender agrees, that is likely to avoid lengthy, expensive and probably fruitless fine enforcement action. It also avoids having to remit the fine. We believe that fine payment work will be a valuable contribution to the improvement of fine enforcement.
When the offender agrees to the proposal that their fine may be discharged through work, the court can make a work order.
Mr. Dominic Grieve (Beaconsfield) (Con): Is there not an unpaid work provision in the Criminal Justice Act 2003? How is that linked to the new provision?
Mr. Leslie: I am glad that the hon. Gentleman's clairvoyancy is kicking in even at this stage. I shall make some comments about that, but I want first to outline the details of the work order before us. We can then draw comparisons with the Criminal Justice Act.
If the offender does not agree to a work order and does not have a good excuse for refusing, serious consequences will follow. Those consequences for wilful non-payment include a number of steps up to and including imprisonment.
The work order must state both the amount of the outstanding fine and the number of hours of work required to discharge it. Clearly, there must be a consistent rate at which an amount of fine converts into hours of work and that is the subject of the regulations being debated today. We are proposing a conversion rate of £6: for every £6 that an offender owes in fines they must complete one hour of work. Any odd fractions of an hour will be rounded up to the nearest whole number. The offender is therefore working at a nominal rate of £6 an hour, although he never sees any of the money. Indeed, no money at all changes hands. All that happens is that the offender's fine is reduced as he works.
We propose a rate of £6 an hour for two reasons. First, concern was expressed during the passage of the Courts Bill—the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath) will remember this—that offenders would be made to work for less than the national minimum wage. In response to many of the concerns that were raised, we have ensured that that will not happen.
Secondly, we needed to create a distinction between the conversion rate for the fine payment work order and that which applies to a fine default order under the Criminal Justice Act, which the hon. Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve) so ably recalled. As I explained, the work order under the Courts Act provides a method of paying a fine; it does not represent further punishment on top of the fine but is equivalent in effect to paying cash. It could be used, for example, with an offender whose only reason for not paying their fine is that they have lost their job, perhaps through no fault of their own.
On the other hand, the default order under the Criminal Justice Act is designed to deal with offenders who are unwilling rather than unable to pay. It is intended to punish serious and wilful refusal to pay a fine. The conversion rate for the fine default provision is around the £5 mark. We need to contrast it with the
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fine payment work conversion rate, which should be a little more generous to the offender, and believe that the necessary differential would be maintained by a fine payment work conversion rate of £6.
Mr. Grieve: I understand the logic behind what the Minister has done, and he has provided me with considerable reassurance. However, I was a little surprised to hear about the £5 rate for the fine default order. I would have thought that the correct rate for the defaulter would be the national minimum wage.
Mr. Leslie: I say that the rate is around the £5 mark because in fact the schedule to the Criminal Justice Act relates the rate to the size of the fine. The figures in the table are not drawn on a nominal hour-by-hour basis but broadly work out at £5 an hour, which, incidentally, is not a million miles away from the national minimum wage.
We will pilot the £6 rate for the work order to determine whether it is right in practice or whether it will require adjusting—that is the point of piloting. If the rate needs adjusting at the end of the pilot or at any stage in the future, both Houses will be given an opportunity to debate the matter further, not least because we gave a commitment to use the affirmative resolution procedure.
To enable the best package of fine enforcement measures to be introduced nationally, schedules 5 and 6 of the Courts Act are being piloted in several courts. The outcome of the pilots will be taken into account in drawing up the final arrangements, which will also need to be confirmed by affirmative resolution of both Houses. This is a belt-and-braces approach to scrutiny of these matters, and I appreciate being able to debate them.
I hope that the logic is fairly straightforward and that the Committee will accept that we are trying our best to ensure that we give those who are convicted every opportunity to pay their fines. Certainly, they should pay if they are able to; however, if they cannot pay, we have provided the option of unpaid work to convert their fines. I believe that most people would recognise it as a useful advance, and I commend the instrument to the Committee.
2.39 pm
Mr. Grieve: May I welcome you, Mr. Amess, to the Chair this afternoon?
The Minister has answered my first point in his replies to my questions, so I shall not take up the Committee's time with it. I understand the logic in selecting the £6 discharge rate and do not find it in any way wrong; indeed, I believe that the Government got that right. I also accept the Minister's point that it is impossible to set a categorical rate for defaulters, as the rate is adjusted according to the amount of the fine itself.
May I take this opportunity to ask the Minister a few questions about the way in which the order fits into the total picture of fine enforcement? At present, notwithstanding the Carter report, we appear to be moving towards a situation in which fines are used far more frequently. However, the overall picture for fine
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enforcement in England and Wales has been lamentable. At the top of the range is Dorset, where the payment rate of 89 per cent. was the best in the country.
Mr. David Atkinson (Bournemouth, East) (Con): Of course.
Mr. Grieve: At the bottom is Merseyside, where the rate was 38 per cent. Delighted as I am to see my hon. Friend in his place and making a sedentary intervention, and although I agree with him that Dorset is an excellent county, 89 per cent., although good, is by no means perfect. That figure shows how proactive the Dorset magistrates bench is in enforcing fines. It also contrasts with the appalling performance in Merseyside. Many areas in between the two show depressingly low levels of fine enforcement.
So, if we are moving towards a regime of better enforcement, as I know the Minister is committed to doing—and I can well understand how the order is intended to fit into that picture—it would be useful if he updated us about how matters are progressing. My recollection is that the pilot areas for fine enforcement measures in the Courts Act were Cumbria, South Yorkshire, Cheshire, Cambridgeshire, Gloucestershire, Devon and Cornwall. Will he give us an update on how matters are progressing there on fine enforcement, as we consider the order as an extra tool in that. How does the order fit into the picture?
Will the Minister also say when it is hoped that the pilot areas will be extended? Notwithstanding the order, outside the pilot areas, it will presumably not be possible to use discharge of fine by unpaid work. When is it anticipated that the scheme will be extended nationwide?
I hope that the Minister can reply to those brief points, which will help to enlighten me, and doubtless other Committee members, about how the scheme will work in practice.
2.41 pm
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