'(1) This section applies in relation to a person committed to prison—

(a) in default of payment of a sum adjudged to be paid by a conviction, or

(b) for contempt of court or any kindred offence.

(2) As soon as a person to whom this section applies has served one half of the term for which he was committed, it is the duty of the Secretary of State to release him unconditionally.

(3) Where a person to whom this section applies is also serving one or more sentences of imprisonment, nothing in this section requires the Secretary of State to release him until he is also required to release him in respect of that sentence or each of those sentences.

(4) The Secretary of State may at any time release unconditionally a person to whom this section applies if he is satisfied that exceptional circumstances exist which justify the person's release on compassionate grounds.'.—[Hilary Benn.]

Brought up, and read the First time.

I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

The new clause re-enacts, with appropriate modifications, section 45 of the Criminal Justice Act 1991, as amended, which sets out the release provisions for offenders committed to custody in default of payment of a fine or for contempt of court. The new clause provides for the unconditional release at the halfway point and will cover those serving terms of both less than and more than 12 months. It preserves the effect of part of the old provision, which provided for the unconditional release at the halfway point of a person committed for a term of less than 12 months or at the two-thirds point in the case of a person committed for a term of more than 12 months. However, under the new framework, offenders sentenced to a ''normal'' term of imprisonment of more than 12 months will be released automatically at the halfway point, so it seemed sensible to extend the provision to fine defaulters and contemnors.

The new clause also provides a power to release such offenders unconditionally on compassionate grounds because the clause is self-contained and therefore does not attract the provision to release on compassionate grounds from sentences of imprisonment in chapter 6 of the Bill.

In principle, I have no objection to the measure, but it gives us the opportunity to discuss how we enforce fines. It can be done in several ways, but if the message is sent out that even those offenders who try to buck the system will have to serve only a short term of imprisonment, we may fail to emphasise the need to comply with the payment of fines. The Minister may find this odd, but if we reach the point of locking someone up for fine default, it could be argued that they should be locked up for the full term, especially as terms of imprisonment tend not to be long and a person will usually have been dragged through a series of hoops to get to that position.

I reassure the Minister that I do not intend to vote against the new clause, but it does raise certain issues. The fining system needs to work better. We have discussed the amount of outstanding fines. We know that a huge percentage of fines are not paid or collected and that people manage to slip completely from the clutches of the law. No one wants to lock up people for non-payment if there are other ways of dealing with the problem. We discussed seizing cars and other measures that could be equally effective, but we need to send an appropriate message about failure to co-operate. After all, if someone genuinely cannot pay a fine, there should be no difficulty in their going back to court and asking for the fine to be reduced or remitted. We need a system with some bite. I welcome new clause 8 but hope that the Minister will bear those points in mind when considering the issue of fine enforcement.

I do not intend to divide the Committee on new clause 8, although I have a few comments to make. The hon. Member for Nottingham, North (Mr. Allen) has repeatedly made a point about the clarity of the court's decision. We have a situation where the court is determining a period of committal to prison and then releasing the prisoner early rather than specifying a term and a potential additional term. That point was also made by the hon. Member for Witney (Mr. Cameron).

Order. I cannot hear Mr. Heath because of the conversations taking place in this Room. I want to listen to him.

Thank you, Mr. Cran. I am indebted to you for your attention. Obviously I am not commanding the attention of some of the other Committee members. When we talk about honesty in sentencing we should talk about honesty and clarity in this area. The Committee as a whole has agreed on that point.

We need to consider the extent to which people are being committed to prison for what are effectively civil offences, be they fine defaulters or whatever, and whether that is the appropriate disposal for them. A different approach is needed for them from that to contemnors, who by definition open themselves to

whatever recourse the court may feel appropriate. The Auld report's basic recommendation is that conduct that cannot properly be regarded as criminal and which would be better dealt with elsewhere should not be the subject of criminal court proceedings.

The same applies to imprisonment. Things have changed over recent years and far fewer fine defaulters are imprisoned now. I hope that my figures are accurate: in 1994 22,469 males were imprisoned for an average of seven days and 1,454 women for an average of five days; by 2001 those figures were greatly reduced to 1,382 males for an average of six days and 73 females for an average of two days. That is a result of changes that were brought in.

Of course I welcome the reduction in the number of people in prison for fine default, but does the hon. Gentleman have the figures for outstanding fine amounts and the extent to which outstanding fines have been rising for the respective years for which he is quoting? I do not have the figures, but I fear he will find that the amount outstanding on fines today is higher than it was then.

The honest answer is that I do not have the figures. I suspect that the hon. Gentleman is right that the number of fine defaulters has increased. That has been the subject of a recent investigation by the National Audit Office. We should be concerned about that matter, but it is a question of what is the appropriate remedy. Imprisonment is rarely the appropriate remedy, but we have discussed other remedies in the Bill's context. The hon. Member for Rayleigh (Mr. Francois) made the excellent suggestion of credit rating, which I still hope will find its way into Government thinking by circuitous means. We have discussed preventing the use of motor vehicles, which is a sensible route and one appropriate to the misdemeanour of default—I will not use the word crime. Prison is probably not the appropriate way to deal with it, especially in the context of the rapidly burgeoning prison population, which we discussed earlier.

I welcome what the Minister said about the proposal. Prison is used as a sanction for default in some sorts of cases; in others, which gave cause for concern a few years ago, it is used less often. It was a ridiculous misuse of the system to put people into prison for TV licence evasion, which is essentially a civil debt, or for council tax offences. Contempt of court is the largest category and it is probably right that prison should remain as the appropriate sanction open to the court for contempt. We need to explore alternative, and better, ways to enforce fines so that they retain their deterrent quality, which should be the basis of their effect. Imprisonment is not the best, or the most cost-effective, way of dealing with the matter, notwithstanding the ameliorative effect of the Minister's proposal.

This is the third opportunity that the Committee has had to debate fines, so I shall be mercifully brief. I confirm what the hon. Gentleman said about the significant decline in the number of fine defaulters imprisoned in the past decade. I endorse

what he and the hon. Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve) said about the importance of maintaining and enhancing the credibility of fines as a penalty and the Government are proposing measures in the Courts Bill to that effect, including clamping vehicles, which the hon. Member for Rayleigh raised in the debate on his amendment. We will reflect on whether those measures are successful, learn from them, apply them more widely and then reflect further on them. It is important that fines should have credibility as part of the criminal justice system.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause read a Second time, and added to the Bill.