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Mr. Kidney: The hon. Gentleman said earlier that the courts were strangled by regulation, but is not the situation that he has described a consequence of High Court judgments? Has not the law led to the procedure in the magistrates courts? Is he calling for legislation to make it easier to send people to prison for not paying fines?
Mr. Malins: I am afraid I am. I will be blunt. It is time to make it easier to send people to prison for non-payment of fines, and to give courts discretion to do so. While the number of unpaid fines is going up and up, the number of relevant custodial sentences is going down and down. In 2001, only 42 people received custodial sentences. A couple of years earlier more than double that number received such sentences, and even more received them before that.
There was a time when fines were recovered much more effectively. A metropolitan stipendiary of my acquaintance would look at his list of, say, 30 fine defaulters at 10 am, and summon them. He would have the first three up one by one, and, if not entirely satisfied by their explanations, would immediately commit them to prison for a fortnight. He would say to the other 27, "Why don't you wait in the hall, and make a couple of phone calls if you want?" A couple of phone calls? There would be at least 27. The money would be pouring in by lunchtime, and the first three were usually released by teatime anyway. That is how it worked.
I am not saying that we should return to that arrangement immediately; I simply say that we must understand that there are thousands of fine defaulters in the London area who could pay but will not pay. These are the young people who say, "I am out of work"—but
then the mobile phone rings, and in answer to a question they will say, "Yes, I smoke 20 cigarettes a day and drink two pints of lager a night. Why the hell shouldn't I?" There is an answer to that: the fine comes first. But it does not. Young people who do not want to pay—and it is mostly young people—are putting two fingers up to the whole legal system.I hope I may be forgiven for saying this, but those who come to court wearing suits and apologise profusely for not insuring their cars owing to an oversight pay immediately. Those in work pay. What about those who are out of work, or not quite out of work? That is where we will need a much tougher approach.
Let us have a little look at what the Bill does. I am not sure that it does an awful lot. I offer a word of advice to the Government. It is not perhaps entirely the fault of the fine defaulter. We must have a sensible policy on collecting and imposing fines. Across London and in many parts of the country the fines imposed are not realistic: they are too high. What is the point of having a guideline? Who issues these guidelines? I have never taken any notice of them. Someone must issue them. Is it the Lord Chancellor's Department or the Court of Appeal? Perhaps the Minister will tell me. Somebody somewhere issues guidelines to magistrates. What is the point of a magistrate imposing a £600 fine on someone for no insurance on a motor car when the car is worth only 150 quid? That is the reality in London. In the days of the wild west the young man needed his horse, and in the same way the young man in London needs his wheels, and they cost 150 quid a time. Imagine fining someone six times the value of his car for no insurance. There would be a few red faces in the House. It is unrealistic.
Mr. Beith: Surely the purpose of insurance is not to enable the gentleman to replace the car—he has probably only got third party insurance—but to ensure that someone who is injured by his activities is covered for the injury and damage that they suffer.
Mr. Malins: The right hon. Gentleman is right, but my point is slightly different. We must recognise the world in which someone gets their wheels for a couple of hundred pounds and does not insure the car. They are wrong, and perhaps it is time for a national compulsory third-party insurance scheme funded by the state. People could buy comprehensive insurance as a top-up. I have often argued for that. Many of these youngsters do not insure their cars.
I do not know what my car is worth—I wish I had not started that sentence. Let us assume that hon. Members in the Chamber have cars worth a modest £5,000—I really wish I had not started this argument. What is the point of fining someone £20,000, which is four times the value of the car? It breaks people. There should be a realistic fine. I would much rather a low fine and disqualification than an absurd fine that will not be paid. Fines should be realistic. We should find out what will work, so that we have a better chance of collecting the fines.
What does the Bill do? It is terrific stuff. I am told that the Lord Chancellor, in a pilot area, can designate a fines officer, whose role it will be to manage the
collection and enforcement of fines. Well, there we are. As I understand it, the court will impose a fine and will hand over enforcement to the fines collection officer. This gets better by the moment. Who is the fines officer? Is it the clerk to the justices or a court employee? Does the person work in the building? Do they have judicial training, and are they part of the judiciary? Will it be a full-time post?I understand that discounts will be available if the collection order—apparently, there is something called a collection order—requires the fine to be paid within a specified period and it is paid before the expiry of that period. That sounds terrific, but just imagine the bureaucracy involved in calculating discounts.
I have a serious question for the Minister. I may be on to a good point, but I am not sure. I understand that these discounts are available when there is a collection order, and there is a collection order when someone is fined and they are given time to pay. Does the person who receives the following homily from the magistrate have a discount? The magistrate says, "Stand up, Smith. You've pleaded guilty to drunken driving, you're fined £500 and disqualified for one year"; and Smith says, "I'll pay straight away" and out comes the money. I am not sure that a collection order has been made. I will be corrected if I am wrong. If it has not, is there a discount for such a person? I simply do not know.
Funnily enough, I have never been much of a fan—[Interruption.] The hon. and learned Member for Dudley, North (Ross Cranston) intervenes on me mildly from a sedentary position to the effect that he has never come across someone paying a fine straight away. Sometimes people do. I did. Perhaps I should not have said that. It was 25 years ago on a speeding charge, but that is all by the way. If people pay straight away, do they get a discount? That is a serious point. I am not happy about some judicial functions moving to the collections officer. I think that the collections officer has the power to say, "We'll extend this a bit". I shall be corrected if I am wrong, but as far as I can see he or she has the power to vary a decision by a district judge. If that is right, I am not sure that it is a good idea. I should very much like that point to be considered.
To top everything, there is an appeals system against a fines officer's decision. That is a recipe for bureaucracy. The fines officer, who will be a shining example, has to serve notice on the defendant that he intends to do something. That is most interesting. It is good news that the fines officer will write to the defendant saying that he will enforce the fine by a certain method, thus inadvertently giving the defendant notice that he can so arrange his affairs as not to have to pay the fine.
The Bill contains the majestic little passage that says that the fines officer can issue a distress warrant. We have done that before. It is as though we have never had such a policy, but it has been in existence for X number of years. It beggars belief that the Minister should suggest that the fact that the distress warrant is now in the hands of the fines officer, as opposed to the magistrate, is a new development that will really help.
Then there is registering the fine in the register of judgments. That is irrelevant. I cannot think of a defendant in the Camberwell Green area who would be
the slightest bit concerned whether the fine was registered in the register of judgments or not; ditto on the attachment of earnings order and—this is the best bit—on the taking of other steps. I do not know what other steps the fines officer will take, except the new, magic clamping order to fit an immobilisation device on a vehicle that is registered in the defendant's name. This is a serious point. If a car is registered in a person's name, they could lose their livelihood and job if their car is clamped. That may be a minor problem.I think that the Bill provides that the vehicle that is to be clamped and seized must be registered in the defendant's name. The Minister must correct me straight away if I am wrong, because otherwise the next 15 seconds of my speech will be completely irrelevant. She has not done so, so I assume that it is right that the vehicle must be registered in the defendant's name. Does anyone believe that any of these vehicles in the east end are registered in the defendant's name or in anyone's name? Of course they are not, and it is nonsense to suggest that. I do not think that anyone has been down the Old Kent road or sat at Thames court.
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