The backlog of uncollected court fines and surcharges in England and Wales has risen to £747m, according to the latest Ministry of Justice figures.
The sharp rise in courtroom-imposed debt over the past two years is substantially due to the ill-fated criminal courts charge, which was introduced by the former justice secretary Chris Grayling and abandoned after less than eight months.
While the amount recovered by the department has risen significantly over recent years, convicted offenders are facing increased demands for punitive payments.
The £747m figure is the MoJ’s estimate up to the end of September 2016, and compares with £680m at the end of December 2015. It includes fines imposed in magistrates and crown courts, compensation orders, costs orders, criminal courts charges, victim surcharge orders, and unpaid fixed penalty notices and penalty notices for disorder that are registered as fines for enforcement.
Between the financial years 2011-12 and 201516, fines and charges imposed annually by courts in England and Wales rose from £385m to £598m. Over the same period, sums collected have risen from £279m to £381m a year.
The surge in uncollected debt was highlighted by the Liberal Democrats. Tim Farron, the party’s leader, said: “What’s deeply concerning is that the amount left uncollected by the government is £747m. This is a very worrying trend, and we need to increase collection rates.
“This is a sizeable sum of money that could, and should, have been put to good use by the state. Imagine how many schools or hospitals could be built or police officers, social workers or soldiers could be employed with that cash – it’s frankly scandalous.”
Those convicted face a formidable array of financial penalties. Offenders not only have to shell out for any fines imposed on them, but they may have to meet the expense of Crown Prosecution Service costs and are also liable for the victim surcharge.
Grayling introduced the criminal courts charge in April 2015. It required convicted criminals to pay an additional charge of between £150 and £1,200 towards the cost of their case.
The extra costs provoked mass protest resignations by magistrates who refused to impose the new charge. They argued that many defendants would never be able to pay their accumulated fines. In December last year Grayling’s successor, Michael Gove, abolished the criminal courts charge. The sums imposed during that eight-month period still appear as uncollected on MoJ records, however.
The victim surcharge, introduced in 2007, started off at a flat £15 but has been progressively raised so that it now stands at a maximum of £170. It may explain the fresh increase in uncollected courtroom debt over the past year.
Penelope Gibbs, a former magistrate who is director of the charity Transform Justice, said the steep rise in the backlog of uncollected fines may also be linked to an era of austerity that has left many defendants without the resources to pay.
She added: “Publicity over the imposition of the criminal court charge may have undermined the credibility of the whole system of fines.”
Ben Summerskill, director of the Criminal Justice Alliance, said: “The whole of HMCTS [Her Majesty’s Courts and Tribunal Service] is in chaos at the moment. There’s no question that the criminal courts charge imposed fines on people who had no means to pay them.
“It was a quixotic attempt to square the public finances that was drawn up without any thought about its implementation.”
A spokesperson for HMCTS said: “We take the recovery and enforcement of court fines extremely seriously and our performance is improving. Last year we collected a record £381m – an increase of over £110m since 2010 – and the number of those fined not meeting their repayment terms has fallen by around a third in the last five years.”
