§ Mr. Arthur Lewisasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will seek to introduce a system whereby, when the courts impose a fine on a person, it is notified to the Inland Revenue, and that if the fine is not paid within the stated period, the fined person's PAYE code and income tax is adjusted to take into account and collect the fine due.
§ Mr. MayhewNo. If a person who defaults in the payment of a fine is in employment, the court has power to make an attachment of earnings order requiring the employer to deduct payments towards the fine from the defaulter's earnings and forward the money to the court.
§ Mr. Arthur Lewisasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department if, in view of the growing practice of persons fined in court deliberately refusing to pay fines and the fact that after a period no action either to recover the 415W fines or impose imprisonment is taken, he will publish in the Official Report as much detailed information as is available as to the total amount of fines outstanding for payment, the amount that is time expired, and the number of instances of write-off for the same period where imprisonment had been imposed for failure to pay the fines imposed.
§ Mr. MayhewThe total amount of fines in England and Wales, excluding inner London, outstanding for payment at 30 September 1982—the most recent date for which information is available—was £41,267,000, to the nearest £1,000. Information on the proportion of this amount in respect of which time for payment has expired is not included in the quarterly returns submitted to my right hon. Friend by justices' clerks. Information about the number of persons received into prison in default of payment of a fine is published in "Prison Statistics: England and Wales"—table 7(b) of the 1981 edition, Cmnd. 8654.