§ Baroness Howells of St Davidsasked Her Majesty's Government:
What steps they are taking to improve the enforcement of fines and community penalties imposed by magistrates' courts. [HL3055]
§ The Lord ChancellorI have today announced challenging targets for magistrates' courts committees for 2002–0:3 for enforcement of financial and nonfinancial penalties:
Enforcement of financial penaltiesAn increase of 5 per cent on the 2000–01 national average payment rate, i.e. rising from 63 per cent to 68 per cent.
Enforcement of community penalty breach warrants75 per cent of adult bail and no-bail warrants executed or withdrawn within 28 days of issue. and
75 per cent of youth bail and no-bail warrants executed or withdrawn within 14 days of issue.
Magistrates' courts committees will be given nearly £10 million extra from April 2002, ring-fenced for enforcement, to enable them to improve performance. We will expect the amount of fine money recovered to increase as a result of the extra funding and will monitor the position carefully to ensure that performance improves.
We are already taking forward a programme of work to improve enforcement arising from my department's post implementation review of the transfer of warrant execution project. The post implementation review report will be published on the department's website on 5 March. We shall be holding a series of conferences for enforcement practitioners in April. These will be followed by the establishment of a criminal enforcement policy advisory group 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.
Copies of the post implementation review report will be placed in the Libraries of both Houses on 5 March.