Clarke agrees changes to unit-fines Act: Urgent reforms will mean legislation operates 'as Home Office meant it to'

URGENT changes to the Criminal Justice Act, ending the

'absurdities' that have dogged its first seven months, were promised yesterday by Kenneth Clarke, the Home Secretary.

Mr Clarke said he would introduce fresh legislation to ensure that the Act operated as the Home Office had always intended it should.

The system of means-related fines would be modified, he said, a move likely to bring lower penalties for people on middle incomes.

And the section limiting the extent to which judges can take previous convictions into account will also be rewritten following criticism from Lord Taylor, the Lord Chief Justice, that it placed the judiciary in a 'strait-jacket'.

Mr Clarke agreed to the changes after meeting a delegation from the Magistrates' Association, which has received a steady stream of complaints about the Act from its members.

They have expressed concern about the fines, which are worked out by multiplying an offender's disposable income with the seriousness of the offence, calculated in units. Thus, for a motoring offence worth 15 units, someone with a disposable income of pounds 10 a week would pay pounds 150, whilst someone with pounds 4 a week to spend would pay pounds 60.

There has been criticism that the scale of disposable income, ranging from pounds 4 to pounds 100, is too wide and leads courts to overestimate the amount of money available to people on annual incomes of about pounds 15,000.

Yesterday, Mr Clarke said he agreed: 'The system obviously needs changing to get rid of the absurdities in a small but significant number of cases.

'I know of no tax or means- tested benefit where the spread is one to 25 so I would like to re- address that.'

However, he emphasised that the principle of unit-fines, tying penalties to the wealth of the offender, would stay.

Mr Clarke appeared less determined to uphold the philosophy behind Section 29 of the Act, which tells judges that they cannot hand down a heavier sentence to someone with a previous conviction than they would to someone who has offended for the first time.

The Act was 'never intended to work like this', Mr Clarke said. 'I believe that a first-time offender is not the same as someone who goes out and offends again and again. I think courts should be able to take this into account.'

He added: 'It's just a question of going back to produce a fresh Bill which will become an Act of Parliament to make the law work in the way Parliament intended when it passed the 1991 Act.'

After the meeting, Joyce Rose, chairwoman of the Magistrates' Association, said: 'I think the morale of the magistracy will be lifted because we are going along the road we wish to go.

'Some of the changes cannot happen overnight, but at least we know there will be changes and they will be in accord, we hope, with what we are proposing.'