§ Mr. RandallI beg to move amendment No. 89, in page 13, line 9, after "above)", insert
unless the court is satisfied that this would be unreasonable having regard to the circumstances of the offender".404 This amendment would allow courts operating the unit fine system to calculate an offender's weekly disposable income at less than £4 where to calculate it at £4 would be unreasonable.The means-related unit fine system, which this clause extends nationally, has been widely welcomed as an important and valuable reform. At the four courts where unit fine experiments have been conducted—Basingstoke, Bradford, Swansea and Teesside—the system has markedly improved the rate of payment of fines and has reduced the fines imposed on poor offenders to a much more realistic level, and at three of the four courts it has produced falls of between 24 per cent. and 27 per cent. in the numbers of people imprisoned for fine default. The fourth court, Basingstoke, rarely imprisoned offenders for fine defaults even before the experiment.
Under the unit fine system, the size of the fine is determined by multiplying a number of units representing the seriousness of the offence by the weekly disposable income of the offender. Clause 16 stipulates that the disposable income of the offender must not be assessed at below £4 per week. The reason for that is easy to discern: it is intended to avoid setting fines at such low levels that they might appear derisory. The four courts involved in the experiment all set themselves minimum levels for that reason. Three of the four courts set a minimum amount of £3 per week, and Bradford set a minimum of £5. However, those amounts were not legally binding and the courts did not invariably keep to them. They were simply general rules that each court laid down for itself, from which it could depart when it saw fit. In practice, the courts often did so when faced with poverty-stricken offenders.
The Home Office evaluation of the experiments—reported in Home Office research and planning unit paper 50 entitled "Unit Fines: Experiments in Four Courts in 1990"—found that, although Bradford had a nominal weekly minimum of £5, in practice 34 per cent. of fines were set at £3 or less, with 11 per cent. being set at £1 or £2 per week. At Swansea, 41 per cent. of fines were set at £3 per week or less, with 13 per cent. being set at £1 or £2 per week. At Teesside, the area of highest unemployment, nearly half—47 per cent.—of the fines were set at £3 per week or less, with 39 per cent. set at £1 or £2 per week. At the fourth court, Basingstoke, which is a better-off area, there were few fines below £3 per week, although even those magistrates fined the occasional offender £1 or £2 per week.
We believe that the amendment would bring the statutory framework for unit fines in clause 16 into line with the practice of the successful pilot areas. To enact a rigid £4 a week minimum would reduce the benefit of an otherwise admirable measure to inject greater credibility and fairness into the system for imposing fines.
§ Mr. John PattenI cannot accept this amendment. Giving the courts the discretion to set a value lower than £4 a week runs the risk of setting up a system such that the monetary value of the fine would become derisory. As I have said many times, the victim cannot and must not be forgotten. Whenever I am tempted to forget the victim, the ghost of my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (Mr. Dicks) looms up behind me to remind me of the importance of victims and of proper punishment.
I am not prepared to promote a system that could lead to the setting of such small fines that the victim is left feeling that the criminal justice system has no regard for 405 the pain tha the or she has felt or for the loss of property that he or she has suffered. The hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, West (Mr. Randall) did not, on this occasion, get his capitulation in first by saying that he would not pursue the amendment to a Division, but I hope that he will not.
§ Mr. RandallI am disappointed with the Minister's comments, but I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
§ Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.