APPENDIX 1
Supplementary memorandum submitted by
Sir Hayden Phillips GCB, Permanent Secretary, Lord Chancellor's
Department
Question 16: Why should it be that the cancellation
rate should be several hundred % higher in some areas than others?
Why is West Yorkshire failing?
The high cancellation rate in West Yorkshire
is due to an initiative to bring to a conclusion old legal aid
accounts, particularly in the Leeds district. The accounts have
a significant impact on West Yorkshire's outstanding arrears figure.
There has been much work undertaken to obtain from the Crown Court
and the Law Society the documentation needed before the accounts
can be enforced. Where it has not been possible to obtain documentation,
the court has cancelled the accounts. The initiative is ongoing
and will result in a high cancellation rate in West Yorkshire
for some time to come.
West Yorkshire operate a centralised finance
unit and so they are only able to provide a breakdown of cancellation
rates on a district basis rather than by individual court sites.
% | Jun
2000
| Sep
2000 | Dec
2000
| Mar
2001 | Jun
2001
| Sep
2001 | Dec
2001
| Mar
2002 |
Leeds | 31.1
| 19 | 22
| 34.5 | 130.6
| 24.2 | 26.6
| 108.2 |
Bradford | 35.8
| 24.6 | 45.2
| 30 | 30.8
| 34.6 | 68.5
| 35.8 |
Calderdale | 10.1
| 19 | 24.8
| 32.5 | 20.8
| 24.1 | 33.9
| 27.4 |
Kirklees | 33
| 33.3 | 29.7
| 33 | 30
| 39.1 | 26
| 28.5 |
Wakefield | 37.3
| 33.7 | 37.3
| 44.1 | 26.1
| 66.9 | 37.1
| 41 |
Question 29: In the meantime do you think it would be a good
idea for somebody centrally, probably yourselves, to give some
kind of guidance to magistrates' courts in such eventualities
[foreign nationals not paying fines] to avoid this kind of situation
arising in the future?
Mr Trickett mentioned (Qq 22-29) a case that had arisen in
his constituency where a £500 fine was imposed on a French
lorry driver who subsequently returned to France without paying
the fine. He asked what enforcement options were open to the court
pending the conclusion of EU negotiations on a draft Framework
Decision, which would provide for financial penalties in one Member
State to be enforced in another Member State. He also asked that
the Lord Chancellor's Department (LCD) issue interim guidance
to the courts to prevent such a situation arising in the future.
As I explained at the hearing, there is at present no means
for an English court to directly enforce a fine on a foreign national
who then returns home. However, it is because of the comparative
weakness of the current provisions on mutual co-operation that
the UK, France and Sweden have proposed a draft Framework Decision
based on Articles 31(a) and 34(2)(b) of the Treaty on European
Union. This will provide for financial penalties imposed in one
Member State to be enforced in another Member State. I understand
that it was intended that this should be agreed this summer, but
this now looks unlikely as a number of issues remain unresolved.
UK implementation should occur up to two years after agreement
is achieved.
In the interim, a Home Office working party (the Fixed Penalties
Procedures Working Group) is currently exploring options such
as the feasibility of introducing a system of fixed penalties,
or a graduated deposit system, whereby the haulier would pay a
"deposit" as a guarantor of court attendance (should
the operator/driver fail to attend court, the deposit would automatically
be forfeited to the Exchequer).
Finally, further enquiries have produced new information
on which I had not been briefed at the time of the hearing. EU
Regulations and Directives governing international road haulage
operations contain a standard provision requiring mutual co-operation
between member states in ensuring that hauliers comply with the
road traffic legislation of countries in which they operate. In
circumstances such as those described by Mr Trickett, the court,
having been unable to enforce a fine against a foreign national,
may write to the Department for Transport (DFT) giving details
of the offence and the penalty imposed. The DFT then immediately
passes this information to the transport department in the country
of origin, urging the host nation to take all necessary steps
to ensure that the fine is paid. About 18-20 such requests are
processed by DFT each year.
I shall ensure that the courts are reminded of the availability
of this option, and I shall ask the Criminal Enforcement Policy
Advisory Group to consider (in liaison with DFT) what further
advice might be offered to the courts.
Questions 31-32 and 38: Why is there no incentive to encourage
people to pay quickly? Is it something you have looked at?
The White Paper Justice for All, which sets out proposals
for reform of the Criminal Justice System, contains proposals
for improving fine enforcement, including the introduction of
a discount for prompt payment of fines in line with agreed terms
and to increase the fine if the defendant fails to pay on time.
There are also proposals to provide fines officers with statutory
powers which will enable them to impose a range of sanctions for
fine default including: registering the fine with the registry
of judgements (which prevents defaulters obtaining credit); ordering
the clamping of a defaulter's vehicle, which could be sold if
the fine was not paid; authorising bailiffs to seize defaulter's
goods; or ordering deductions to be made from defaulter's pay
or benefits. There will be a right of appeal against fines officers'
discretionary decisions and appropriate safeguards for those who
are genuinely unable to pay.
Questions 73-76: What proportion of the 37% of fines which
are not collected is represented by those people who are on benefit
and have already had three attachments of benefit? What proportion
of defaulters in the 37% cent are on benefit?
As was indicated in the parliamentary answers to Mr Gibb
(HC Deb, 12 July 2002, col 1225W-1226W) this information is currently
not collected centrally by LCD or the Department for Work and
Pensions (DWP), but we are examining whether it would be possible
by research or sampling to estimate the data requested. The table
below, provided by DWP, shows numbers of Income Support/Job Seekers
Allowance (Income Based) claimants at a point in time each year
since 1994, with a deduction in force on their benefit for fines
recovery.
Year | IS Claimants (1000's)
| JSA (IB) Claimants (1000's)
|
May 1994 | 7
| |
May 1995 | 9
| |
May 1996 | 16
| |
May 1997 | 14
| 8 |
May 1998 | 13
| 7 |
May 1999 | 13
| 6 |
May 2000 | 12
| 5 |
May 2001 | 13
| 4 |
Feb 2002 | 14
| 4 |
Questions 103-107: How many people who have received community
service orders have had their sentence written off and been told
that they do not need to serve it?
The number of community punishment orders (formerly community
service orders) which terminated before completion of the order
in each year since 1995 in England and Wales was as follows:
Year | Number
|
1995 | 14,700
|
1996 | 14,400
|
1997 | 13,400
|
1998 | 12,700
|
1999 | 12,300
|
2000* | 13,500
|
* Latest year for which complete information is available.
It may be that the Committee was referring to breach warrants
which have been withdrawn by the courts, in which case the only
data available is from April 2001 (when MCCs took responsibility)
to end February 2002. In that period 25,728 warrants were issued,
of which 2,591 (or 10% ) were withdrawn. Reasons for these being
withdrawn include convictions for other offences, new information
coming to light (the offender now in prison) or that the offender
has disappeared without trace. The PAC transcript refers at Q
102 to a breach rate of 30%. That of course is not the same as
a 30% failure to enforce such orders. Only a small proportion
of breaches result in a warrant being issued and only a proportion
of those end up being withdrawn.
Question 124: What exactly is going on with this additional
money other than buying stand-alone systems, which is probably
quite a waste of money because in 18 months' time a completely
new system will be available?
The spreadsheet at Annex A indicates what the money
available through the pilot netting-off scheme will be spent on.
Question 144: Could you say something about other international
comparisons, what they do in various states in the United States,
what they do in Europe? Is this an endemic problem in all western
criminal justice systems or have other countries found ways?
We have looked for successful criminal enforcement models
throughout the world and those which seemed to have the most potential
are the recently reformed systems in New Zealand and the Australian
States, especially as they were reforming systems which resembled
our own. We therefore looked at the lessons which can be learned
from those jurisdictions. Details of these systems can be found
at:
http://www.courts.govt.nzi
http://www.lawlink.nsw.gov.au
http://www.justice.wa.gov.au
http://www.courts.sa.gov.au
http://www.fru.nt.gov.aul
The experience of reform of fines recovery in New Zealand
is examined in more depth in two publications in a series of case
studies about innovations in New Zealand's public sector by Victoria
University of Wellington through Victoria Link Ltd. These are:
Criminal or Customer? Creating New Ways of Collecting Court
Imposed Fines (1998); and
Anchoring Change. A case study of the Collections Unit, Department
for Courts, illustrating why organisational change programmes
can take several years to deliver results, and showing how one
business managed to anchor the changes it set out to achieve (2000).
Copies of both publications can be obtained from the School
of Business and Public Management, Victoria University of Wellington.
Question 152, 183 and 228: Could we ask you to give us a supplementary
note of the ten starred courts who are the best at collecting
money . . . can you explain why the payment rate in Staffordshire
is 90%, whereas in Surrey it is only 58% . . .?
THE 10 BEST
PERFORMING MAGISTRATES
COURTS COMMITTEES
Payment rate (defined as the amount paid into court as a
percentage of new amounts owed) April 2001-March 2002
1 | Dorset | 89%
|
2 | West Yorkshire | 86%
|
3 | Surrey | 79%
|
4 = | Cumbria | 76%
|
4 = | Lincolnshire | 76%
|
6 = | Durham | 75%
|
6 = | Essex | 75%
|
6 = | North Yorkshire | 75%
|
6 = | Thames Valley | 75%
|
10 | Norfolk | 74%
|
| National Average
| 59% |
THE 10 POOREST
PERFORMING MAGISTRATES
COURTS COMMITTEES
Payment rate (defined as the amount paid into court as a
percentage of new amounts owed) April 2001-March 2002
42 | Merseyside | 34%
|
41 | Cambridgeshire | 36%
|
40 | South Wales | 40%
|
39 | Gloucestershire | 43%
|
37 = | Warwickshire | 46%
|
37 = | Greater London | 46%
|
36 | West Mercia | 48%
|
35 | Northamptonshire | 52%
|
33 = | Cleveland | 54%
|
33 = | Avon & Somerset |
54% |
| National Average
| 59% |
The payment rates quoted in Q 183 refer to the year 2000-01.
The ranges of debt analysis returns from MCC areas for 2001-2
were:
Payment Rate: from 89% to 34%
Cancellation Rate: from 3% to 52%
Write-off Rate: from 1% to 32%
COMMENTARY ON
CURRENT PERFORMANCE
Lead responsibility for warrant execution was only transferred
from the police to MCCs on 1 April 2001, thereby giving MCCs control
over the whole enforcement process. A major factor that will have
added to the range of results for their first year of responsibility
for this work is the local position each MCC area inherited from
the police. The transfer came about because of the continuing
problems that the police had with this type of work. It is therefore
early days for the MCCs and greater consistency should come about
once the new system beds down.
Many MCC areas are still struggling with the backlogs inherited
from the police (over 100,000 in total, ranging from none in Gloucestershire
and Leicestershire to 25,000 in Greater London Magistrates' Courts
Authority). Inevitably, the ability to be able to enforce those
warrants, or the need eventually to deal with them by way of write-off
or through an application and judicial cancellation will vary
considerably. Responsibility has only been with the MCCs for just
over one year.
There are also variations in the method of enforcement employed
by each MCC ranging from in-house civilian enforcement officers
to approved enforcement agencies and contracting the work back
to the police. From analysis so far, no one of these approaches
has proved more or less successful in increasing an individual
MCC's payment rate. There is also no correlation between areas
as both metropolitan and rural MCCs have both varying high and
low levels of payment rates.
Other factors have also emerged. For example, the reason
for the highest cancellation rate is in fact due to an initiative
in West Yorkshire to bring to a conclusion old legal aid accounts,
which are having a significant impact on their outstanding arrears
figures.
It is also worth emphasising that the cancellation of a debt
is a judicial function, and it appears that benches across the
country vary in the frequency with which they employ this power
to deal with unsatisfied debt which includes not only fines but
also fees, compensation, confiscation orders, legal aid contributions
and some maintenance orders.
The vast majority of write-offs occur because the offender
has moved home and cannot be traced. The problem of tracing offenders
can be compounded by the fact that some are highly mobile and
either deliberately or inadvertently fail to notify the courts
when they change address. To address this problem, the Government
took powers in the Access to Justice Act 1999 to enable the courts
to seek information from other Government agencies on the whereabouts
of offenders. A national arrangement with the Department for Work
and Pensions was implemented in April 2001 to coincide with the
transfer of responsibility for warrant execution. The DWP database
covers 100% of the population, and contains 83 million records.
The initiative has been very successful; over 171,000 requests
for information were processed by DWP during the first year of
operation, and nearly £465,000 was recovered that would otherwise
have been written off as unenforceable.
The Department is assisting MCCs to share good practice in
enforcement through:
(i) holding regional conferences in April 2002 , which
enabled delegates to share good practice, to discuss problems
and find solutions. Researchers working on the Home Office research
into fine enforcement made presentations on their findings at
the conferences; and
(ii) the establishment of the Criminal Enforcement Policy
Advisory Group (CEPAG) which will be tasked with exploring and
evaluating good practice initiatives, revising and updating guidance
and taking forward other issues arising from the conferences to
improve enforcement. The first meeting is planned for 24 July.
WHY THERE
ARE SUCH
LARGE VARIATIONS
IN PAYMENT
RATES
Establishing a reliable measure of payment of financial penalties
is not straightforwardlargely because many impositions
are not settled in full at a fixed point, but instead are settled
over a period due to payment by instalments. While at first sight
it is simple enough to say "X owed Y a total of £Z,
and only 50% was recovered", in aggregate terms it is more
complex. The convention is to use the payment rate, which provides
a snapshot of the amount paid into court as a percentage of new
amounts owed in a given period. While the payment rate is the
best performance measure we have, a number of factors affect performance:
differences in the characteristics of defaultersa
point made in paragraph 1.6 of the NAO Report. (HO research suggests
that those offenders from the poorest neighbourhoods are significantly
less likely to pay their financial penalties than those from more
affluent areas. Courts with low recovery rates tend to have a
higher proportion of their offenders living in poorer neighbourhoods,
and needed to take more enforcement actions against a greater
proportion of their offenders. Such courts had a significant proportion
making no payment whatsoever);
differences in the type of offences for which
fines are imposed in the first place eg if there is a high proportion
of fixed penalties or relatively small traffic fines these are
more likely to be paid off quicker than other fines. If an MCC
is in an area with a busy motorway running through then this may
be a factor compared to other areas;
the ease with which offenders can be traced (it
can be far more difficult to trace offenders in areas with a high
proportion of temporary or bed and breakfast accommodation);
the proportion of persistent offenders (who can
rack up large debts, and who often know how to play the system);
the effectiveness of local enforcement methods;
transfers of fines. Small town or country courts
are often able to transfer out large numbers of cases because
defendants live outside their areas. Normal practice is to accept
payment when it is made on receipt of a fines notice even if the
offender resides outside the courts' jurisdiction. Fines are therefore
transferred only if requiring enforcement. Net importers of fines
will therefore have to perform more enforcement process than those
areas which are net exporters. This will affect the cost of enforcement,
arrears figures and the number of difficult cases the courts have
to deal with;
if the rate at which money is paid into the court
remains stable at a time when fine impositions happen to fall,
the proportion of debt to impositions will appear greater; and
distortions created by large impositions, payments
and large arrears.
VARIATIONS IN
WRITE-OFFS
A number of factors may cause variations in write-off rates:
the socio-economic make up of the population served
by the court, which can affect the chances of successful recovery;
the nature of the offences (defendants in some
motoring cases appear to be more likely to pay);
sentencing policymagistrates using their
discretion to set a fine at a lower level will see a higher proportion
paid, and less written off, than those who set fines high, even
if the amount of money collected is the same; and
the policy of the MCC regarding the enforcement
measures that must be attempted before write-off will be authorised.
While a continuously high write off rate might indicate poor
enforcement, a very low write off rate might mask administrative
inefficiencies in clearing unenforceable debts. An aberrant high
rate may be indicative of distortions caused by writing off large
impositions, or as a result of a `purge' on unenforceable debts.
CANCELLATIONS
Accounts which are required to be closed by law or by a decision
of the courts are generally referred to as `cancellations'. These
are not included in the write off figure. Neither do cancellations
necessarily arise from a failure in enforcement.
Cancellations arise in the following situations:
Committal of the offender to prison upon default;
`Lodgement'. (A defendant can apply to have his/her
fines `lodged' while already serving a term of imprisonment for
another offence. The court must decide if the term/s are to be
served concurrently or consecutively to the existing sentence.
The effect of this is that upon release the defendant faces no
further financial obligation to the court);
Remission of the imposition. (The court may at
any time remit the whole or any part of the fine, but only if
it thinks it just to do so having regard to a change of circumstances
which has occurred since the date of the conviction);
Setting aside of conviction and sentence;
Successful appeal against the imposition;
Compensation being no longer payable following
a review by the court; and
Statutory declaration. Section 14 of the Magistrates'
Courts Act 1980 enables the accused to make a statutory declaration,
at any time during the life of a case, that they did not know
of the summons or proceedings until a date specified. This has
the effect of all the proceedings and any other order of the court
(including any financial obligation to the court) being void.
This procedure would be used, for example, if a fixed penalty
notice was issued in error to the registered owner of a vehicle
when that vehicle had in fact been sold on to the person who committed
the offence.
Question 169-172 and 263: Why does it take three years to do
a research project on the enforcement of financial penalties?
. . . that research work was due to report in early 2002. Now
you have told us . . . it will be later this year. Can you explain
why this delay is happening?
This project started in late 1999 (with funding from the
government's Crime Reduction Programme). The researchers were
appointed after a competitive tender. Their first task was to
identify promising issues in fine enforcement to be pursued at
the pilot stage. Once this was done, 20 courts were selected to
take part in the research. The researchers carried out a pre-implementation
data gathering exercise to get detailed baseline data on the use
of financial penalties and enforcement practice at those courts.
The courts then bid for funding to run particular pilot schemes,
the subjects of which mapped onto the areas identified initially
by the researchers as potentially promising. The pilots themselves
ran in the first 6-9 months of 2001.
The researchers then gathered the post-pilot data on the
effects of those initiatives. They produced a first draft of their
final report, to time, by November 2001. A second draft taking
account of comments from the project's steering group was produced
in January 2002. However, we then took the decision that the researchers
should concentrate on producing a short summary report aimed specifically
at practitioners in time for the LCD enforcement conferences in
April. Both the researchers and the Home Office (HO) staff participated
in the planning for these conference and the researchers gave
a presentation on the research at each of the five conferences.
This took us to May this year. The researchers then re-started
work on the final draft of the study's full report, which is due
to be submitted in mid-July and published at the end of the month.
In the circumstances I hope you agree that two years (from
issuing of the Invitation to Tender to receiving a first draft
of the final report) to produce such a substantial piece of innovative
research (which actually empirically tests the effects of various
promising-looking enforcement strategies) is reasonable.
I also undertook to send Mr Rendel details of the key points
in the research, and I enclose a copy of the Home office Development
and Practice Report Fine Enforcement in Magistrates' Courts which
was published in April and disseminated to MCCs at the regional
enforcement conferences sponsored by LCD. The main lessons for
magistrates and for enforcement and other administrative court
staff are summarised on pages 4 and 5 of the booklet.
I shall, of course ensure that a copy of the full research
report is placed in the libraries of both Houses on publication.
As I explained at the hearing, this is expected to be later this
month.
Questions 201-202: Apparently there were some pilot schemes
. . . where people who had not paid their fines were given community
punishment orders, curfew orders and driving disqualification.
How many were actually administered? For example in Norfolk and
Greater Manchester how many community punishment orders were there
and how many curfew orders were given and how many people were
disqualified for driving?
The new measures for fine defaulters, persistent petty offenders
and others were fully evaluated in the Report of the Crime (Sentences)
Act 1997 Pilots by Robin Elliot and Jennifer Airs of the Home
Office Research, Development and Statistics Directorate, which
was published in 2000 (ISBN 1 84082 415 8).
Copies of the Report may be obtained from the Home Office,
Information and Publications Group, Research, Development and
Statistics Directorate, Room 201, 50 Queen Anne's Gate, London
SW1H 9AT. Telephone 020 7273 2084.
Question 236: I should be grateful if you could just check
. . . whether you do have guidance in place which says that all
the information available about an offender and the situation
in court should be transferred to the other[transfer of cases
between courts]?.
The Enforcement of Financial Penalties Working Group issued
guidance in 1996, which covered the transfer of fines between
MCC areas. The guidance (which reiterated guidance previously
issued by LCD in September 1992, recommended that:
"where a Transfer of Fine Order is made, a record of
the enforcement action taken to date (if any), together with a
note of any evidence recorded at a means enquiry and any responses
from the offender, should be forwarded with the Order to the receiving
court."
The protocol agreed between MCCs and the Department for Work
and Pensions in respect of the information sharing regime that
was put in place on 1 April 2001 makes it clear (paragraph 31)
that:
"if an MCC finds that the person for whom they have requested
an up-to-date address has moved to an area served by a different
MCC, the fine may be transferred to the MCC where the offender
now resides. For this purpose, the original court can inform the
new court of the defaulter's address, as disclosed by the DWP."
Question 240: If somebody who has been charged writes in to
say that they intend to plead guilty to the charge but they do
not want to have to attend the court . . . they will presumably
in most cases normally be expecting a fine. Are they then asked
how they will pay the fine before the court convenes?
An inter-agency working group convened by a member of Her
Majesty's Magistrates Courts Service Inspectorate is currently
devising a recommended standard means enquiry form to be issued
to defendants with their summonses. The form is for use by the
court when considering the defendant's financial circumstances
and ability to pay when the fine is set, and by defendants when
requesting time to pay the fine. The group will consider the inclusion
of a question on preferred payment method although methods available
vary across MCC areas and the defendant would need to know what
was available locally.
Questions 253-254: Is it possible to provide a note on [whether
victims or witnesses fail to turn up because they felt there was
no point as offenders might not pay any penalty]?
We do not have any evidence to support the assertion that
the belief that an offender will only receive a fine, which might
not then be paid is deterring witnesses and victims from coming
forward. We have evidence, from the National Witness Satisfaction
Survey, only of the views of victims and witnesses on the fairness
of the verdict. Of those asked, 64% thought the verdict was fair
but this survey takes samples only from those witnesses who do
attend court.
The National Witness Satisfaction Survey 2002 is currently
being carried out. The question on the fairness of the verdict
has been supplemented by a question on the fairness of the sentence.
The same caveats, however, will apply to the responses received.
Sir Hayden Phillips GCB
Permanent Secretary
Lord Chancellor's Department
|