Clause 3 - Amount of penalty and form of penalty notice
Criminal Justice and Police Bill
12:15 pm
Mr Oliver Heald (North East Hertfordshire, Conservative)
The Conservatives have tabled two of the amendments in this group. Amendment No. 23 would limit the fine to £100 and I shall come to amendment No. 78 in a moment.
We were discussing what happened with the public order offences that were dealt with by fixed penalty notices in New South Wales. One of the conclusions in the reply from the New South Wales ombudsman to the Home Office consultation was that if the fines are too high, they simply are not paid. ACPO has said something similar. If one reads the mass of documents that the Minister has, as I have done, it becomes clear that the general feeling is that the right level to pitch the fine is between £50 and £100. That seems to be the view of ACPO. It is the view of the Inner London Magistrates Courts Service, so I hope that the Minister would agree that we are talking about that bracket. It would have been helpful for us to see in draft form the order that the clause allows the Secretary of State to make, setting out exactly what he has in mind. He may want different levels for particular offences, which would have informed our debate. As the Bill is being rushed through, however, we have not seen such an order.
Does the Minister agree that, if the penalty were pitched too high, collection would be a problem? There is also the worry that offences of seriousness will be dealt with by fixed penalty notice when they should not be, and that that would diminish the punishment effect. However, if penalties are too low, they are inadequate. There is a balance to be struck, and we need to know the Minister's intention. Amendment No. 23 suggests the other end of the bracket from the Liberal Democrat proposal of £50, based on the consultation responses.
Amendment No. 78 takes a different tack and would allow the Secretary of State to set fixed penalty notices at no more than a quarter of the level of the maximum, rather than half. I shall describe the effect of that for offences in clause 1. For example, under section 12 of the Licensing Act 1872, the maximum fine for being drunk in a highway would be £50. It would be £1,250 for throwing a firework in a thoroughfare and £625 for knowingly giving a false alarm to a fire brigade. It would be £250 for the next four offences—trespassing on a railway, throwing stones at trains, buying or attempting to buy alcohol for under-18s and disorderly behaviour while drunk. The fine would be a maximum of £625 for wasting police time. It would be £1,250 for the destruction of, or damage to, property without lawful excuse and for the telecommunications offence. It would be £250 for threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour and £125 for consumption of alcohol in a designated place.
If the Minister wants the level to be one half of the maximum, as the legislation provides, he needs to explain whether he is seriously saying that he would contemplate fixed penalties for some of those offences that were twice the figures that I have given. Is he seriously thinking of making it possible for a fixed penalty notice of £2,500 to be issued to someone? It would be wrong in principle to issue such a notice. An offence serious enough to have a £2,500 fine applied to it should not be dealt with by a fixed penalty notice, because we do not want serious matters to be trivialised. I hope that the Minister will reassure us that there is a reason why he needs the power to set fixed penalties, a lesser disposal, at potentially such a high rate. Our amendments would provide the Minister with options: a lower maximum level or less scope for the setting of fixed penalties.
My other question arose from a similar concern to that expressed by the hon. Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey about the means of the accused person. Previously, the Minister said that, if someone were unable to pay a fine, it would be registered with a magistrates court, which could give time to pay under its enforcement jurisdiction. If an inappropriate notice is given to someone who does not have any means, is it right that the system's effect is for him to be fined one and a half times the amount of the fixed penalty notice? Is that not building on an initial failure? A fixed penalty notice may be imposed on someone without means, who does not pay the fine because he cannot. Is the answer to make the fine one and a half times its original amount and then say to the magistrates, ``Now, get the money out of him''? I have doubts about that.
How are such conundrums to be solved? Liberty is worried that the measure will discriminate against the most vulnerable in society. It says that it is
``likely to cause problems particularly for those with temporary housing or who are homeless.''
It asks whether those who are in debt and unable to pay the fine could end up being imprisoned. Crisis, the national agency for single homeless people, is worried that fixed penalty notices will particularly hit homeless people. On social grounds and on those of effective policing, is not it right to set the fixed penalties at realistic levels and have some means of avoiding unreasonable and unfair treatment of the most vulnerable in society?