What percentage of prisoners in Northern Ireland are fine defaulters.

What proportion of those serving a custodial sentence in Northern Ireland were convicted for defaulting on fine payments.

Although on average fine defaulters occupy up to 30 prison places at any one time, they represent 30 per cent. of all committals to prison. Ministers have made a commitment to deal with that overuse of custody by a range of alternative community-based penalties.

The Minister will be aware that the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee, in a report on the Northern Ireland Prison Service, said that the sending to prison of fine defaulters placed an unreasonable demand on the scarce resources of the service, and recommended that immediate steps be taken to ensure that short-sentenced fine defaulters did not abuse the system. What steps exactly are being taken to ensure that?

I warmly welcome the report from the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee, which put its finger on a number of important issues, including that one. It is quite a misuse of public resources that 2,000 prisoners each year are committed to prison in Northern Ireland because of fine default. They stay an average of four days, and usually their fine is of less than £600. In the new criminal justice measure that I shall shortly bring before the House, a new supervised activity order will put in place unpaid work instead of prison placement. Also, later this year, the fine default working group will produce further recommendations, which will include a proposal to introduce deduction from earnings and benefit, which of course should be in place well before custody is ever considered.

Does not the presence of fine defaulters in the Maghaberry high-security prison illustrate the Government's failure to implement the recommendations regarding the treatment of those prisoners who require the lowest level of security management? When will the Government implement those recommendations, which will go some way to dealing with what the Secretary of State said in February was an "outrageous waste" of prison time and resources?

The hon. Gentleman suggests that that is an important issue that needs to be tackled, and to that extent I agree entirely. I have said that it is being tackled, and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has set out a prospectus to do just that. We are beginning with the supervised activity orders that I have described, which will be followed by deductions from earnings and benefits. We are rebalancing the criminal justice system in Northern Ireland: those who pose the greatest risk of harm to fellow citizens will go to prison for longer than was the case in the past, while less serious offenders will be given robust, community-based punishments.

Will the Minister give an estimate of the number of women in prison in Northern Ireland for defaulting on the television licence?

I cannot give a precise response to that question, but I shall write to my hon. Friend with the clear answer that he has asked for. However, it would be wrong to hold women or anyone else in prison for the non-payment of the television licence fee, or for any other minor matter. Such people should be dealt with robustly and their fines should be enforced, but they should not be detained in prison.

What does it say about the Government that they have found time to pass legislation granting amnesties for mass murderers in Northern Ireland, but not for legislation that would deal with fine defaulters and keep them out of prison? Will the Minister look at the legislation that was introduced in the old Stormont Parliament after the Social Democratic and Labour party held a rent and rates strike? The legislation meant that money could be docked from benefits as well as from earnings.

I am always grateful for the right hon. Gentleman's advice about things that were tried in the past, but I hope that he will agree that committing 2,000 people to prison each year in Northern Ireland for defaulting on fines is entirely wrong. In certain exceptional cases, it may be necessary to use prison as the last resort, but there needs to be a series of alternative, community-based punishments. I look forward to working with the right hon. Gentleman and others to make sure that the necessary reforms are made, so that fine defaulters are dealt with robustly but in the community.

The House is aware of the problem with fine defaulters, some of whom are in prison for as little as 24 hours, but there is also a problem with the number of remand prisoners in Northern Ireland. They make up 37 per cent. of the prison population there, compared with 15 per cent. in England and Wales, and that proportion is rising. What does the Minister consider to be wrong with the criminal justice system in Northern Ireland, and what can he do about it?

As I have said already, we are reforming the criminal justice system in Northern Ireland to make sure that those who pose the greatest risk are dealt with most severely, while less serious offenders are dealt with in the community. The hon. Gentleman rightly states that about a third of people in the prison system in Northern Ireland are on remand. We must speed up the administration of the criminal justice process in Northern Ireland, but we are absolutely committed to doing so and have put in place targets to that end. Also, the criminal justice order that he and I will no doubt be debating soon contains a proposal to introduce electronic tagging to enforce curfews. Where appropriate, that will be another alternative to remanding people in custody, and it shows that we are taking action to rebalance the system to make it work more effectively.