According to Buzzfeed's Alex Wickham:
Paul T Horgan of The Conservative Woman added:Dominic Cummings and senior No10 aides have drawn up plans over the last few weeks re BBC licence fee. They are looking either abolishing it entirely or decriminalising non payment. Source says they want to relieve burden on justice system of chasing people who don’t pay. Tories pointing to the famous statistic that around 1 in 10 cases at magistrates courts are re the TV licence:— in 2013 nearly 200,000 were prosecuted.— 7 in 10 of those prosecuted were women.— 30 people a year jailed.— Tories say time/money better spent on more serious crimes.
All the prosecutions are private prosecutions conducted by Capita, paid for by the BBC. About 30 people a year are jailed for non-payment of the fines for not having a licence. The BBC refuses to disclose how much these private prosecutions actually cost.
The average prosecution costs about £1000 (as a proportion of the CPS budget). Of course, there will be a lot of hidden costs as well in terms of the Capita contract, Police time and so on.
ReplyDeleteProsecutions of TV licence fee cases will be at the lower end of costs, I expect, but the overall impact could well be around £1000 per case, especially if you consider the social services involvement re people prosecuted who are single parents (I suspect this is probably why so many cases are women - they are women with children who know they are not going to be sent to prison whatever happens).
If it is £1000, then the annual cost will be around £200 million.
Decriminalisation could well be a first step on the road to sanity!
"The BBC refuses to disclose how much these private prosecutions actually cost"
ReplyDeleteWould that be a #purposesof FOI-exempted refusal that appears tenuously-linked to journalism, art or literature, that the BBC uses like a GPMG on everyone else, including security services?
A source say ?
ReplyDeleteA source says
"Buzzfeed UK warned it will be dissolved in two months if it fails to file accounts after missing deadline "